Better Pictures with FREE Software

Take a look at the pictures to the right. Look quickly. Don't drool. The young lady is Denise Milani, an internet model who is quickly gaining some fame for obvious reasons. If you are interested, I can tell you that she was born in eastern Europe, now resides in the US and is making her living by having her picture taken. She does not do porn, nor pose nude; though she seems to be doing quite well for herself. If you would like, you can visit her site to learn more. I would think for those working in either a "babe" or "big boob" niche, she would be a natural.
For our purposes, however, I am more interested in the photographs themselves. Take another look. If you can pull your eyes off of the obvious for a moment, you will notice that I have used the same picture twice. The second picture has been altered.
First, I cropped it. After all, chances are good that those who come to your site didn't come to look at the water. They came to look at girls. So give them a look a the girl without all of the background clutter. NOTE: Sometimes the "clutter" is important. For example, if Miss Milani were exposing herself and there were some passers-by in the background, the keeper of a flashing blog might determine to keep that entire shot, since it is specific to his niche. Capiche?
The second thing that I did was lighten the picture just a touch. This is a pretty girl. We don't want her to be lost in the shadows, do we?
I know what some of you are thinking. "Now we have to go buy Photoshop or some other megadollar picture imaging software." Not at all. Remember, our goal is to do this for free. Even though I have some fairly pricey software, there are some great freebies on the net that will allow you to do some pretty fancy photo editing. I would recommend that you start with Picasa. Picasa is now available as a part of an free essential software package provided by Google. Over in the right column of this blog you will see a square that advertises that package. Aside from Picasa, it includes an Antivirus scan from Norton, a Spyware protection package, a new version of Adobe reader, the ultra-cool Google earth (serves no significant purpose, but it is addictive nonetheless) and a few other nice trinkets.
Picasa will let you crop, correct, add special effects, create albums and collages as well as organize all your photos. For a free program it is pretty robust, and will definitely serve the blogger well. So grab the Google Essential Software package and start sharpening up those pictures on your blog.

Track your visitors.

OK, so you have begun. You have set up your blogging account and determined your niche. You've found some webmaster affiliate programs, you have chosen a few free hosted galleries and you have created your first posts. Good for you! Now all you have to do is sit back and wait for checks to begin rolling in, right? In the words of that college football analyst, "Not so fast, my friend."

The first days of a blog are its most difficult. It takes a little while for people to even find you. When they do, they need to like what they see so that they will bookmark the site and come back again. They may stop by two, three or even four times before they buy. And - let's be honest - not everyone buys.

I would suggest that you develop a means of tracking the visitors that come to your site. There are several places that offer free site statistics. One of the best is called StatCounter. It has all the features you need to see how many people are coming to your site, what they are looking at while they are there, and what they are clicking on. With that information, you can begin to see what sorts of things are the most popular with your visitors and then tweak your site for maximum potential.

Frankly, StatCounter gives you a great deal more than just those basics. Want to know where your surfers are coming from? What keywords did they use in their search to find you? What page did they enter your site on? From what page did they leave? How long were they there? How many of your pages did they look at? You can also see what other sites are linking to yours, and even get a LIVE view of the visitors at your site at any given minute. No, you can't see them, but you can see everything that you need to know about their visit.

At this point, assuming you are a beginning blogger, you will undoubtedly be most interested in seeing the number of visitors increase every day. Over the next couple of days I will suggest some quick ways of doing that. Don't give up yet. Get yourself some free blog statistics softwareand start watching the traffic grow.

Program Spotlight - PAYSERVE

The programs that I will review and recommend are a result of my own experiences as an affiliate. Believe me, I have signed up with scores of programs and can give you a long list of those that aren't worth your time, energy or blog space. There are some good ones thought that covert well and pay promptly.

Just a few days after the first of the month, like clockwork, I receive my payment from Payserve. Since I live in the US and Payserve is a European company that pays in Euros, I get an extra "bonus" as a result of the conversion rate. Speaking of conversion, Payserve is one of my best converting sponsors. "Conversion" refers to converting a "click" to a sale.

Payserve is primarily known for being the home of the "Seventeen" brand. For years, Seventeen has been known as one of the best porn magazines out of Europe, featuring young, fresh-faced girls in explicit hardcore. Their websites have continued that tradition. With 14 sites in all, they are not limited to the teen niche. They also have some reality content, asian girls and - drawing on the history of their well-established company - classic and vintage material. Payserve releases new Free Hosted Galleries every week and has an arsenal of tools at your disposal to help you use their content to build a successful business.

Payserve offers both a recurring and flat fee program. Recurring means that you get 50% of all the money the surfer pays to Payserve for the lifetime of the membership. Recurring payments can build up long term income. If you prefer, Payserve offers up to 80% flat fee payouts. Depending on the conversion rate and the membership package the surfer chooses, that can be as much as $90(US)!

Payment can be made by check, wire or Epassporte. For those in the US, checks are mailed from an American bank, meaning your payment arrives promptly and securely.

Check out Payserve and see if they are the right fit for you.

Posting Pictures

A good blog is a good-looking blog. You will need some pictures to attract the attention of surfers and to let them see what you want them to click. After all, our purpose isn't just to have them reading, it is to have them clicking to see free hosted galleries so that they will buy memberships into our sites.

Thumblogger does not host pictures. That means that there is no way for you to put a picture into your posts without putting them somewhere so that they can be seen. The galleries themselves are hosted by our sponsors. But we need a way to post a sample on our sites.

Follow these simple directions and you will have pictures on your blog before you can say, "What the heck is hotlinking?"

1. Find a gallery. (I am assuming that you have already signed up for a webmaster affiliate program and know about Free Hosted Galleries. If not, read the associated posts) For the purposes of illustration, I will use this one. WARNING - This gallery is not safe for work, nor for those who are offended by nudity.
   
2. Choose the picture that you would like to use in your blog. I have selected the first picture in this case. I can use it here since it does not contain nudity. You should choose whatever you think will cause your blog visitors to click on it.
   
3. Save the picture to your hard drive. If you are using Firefox, just right click on the picture and "Save Image As". If you are using Internet Explorer you really should change to Firefox (see the link in the right column) for a dozen different reasons. But if you are steadfast in your desire to use IE, right click on the picture and "Save Picture As". Be sure to remember where you saved it.
   
4. We will use ImageVenue to host our picture. It is a free service made for bloggers. Open ImageVenue in a new tab or window. Click the "Browse" button and select the picture that you downloaded. Select image content (It's probably "not safe for work"). Then click "Send File(s). Now you can see your thumbnail image. My example thumbnail is on the right. All we have to do is get it to your blog.
5. Copy the code from the second box ("Hotlink a clickable thumbnail...). For convenience, lets paste it into notepad. You will notice two URL addresses. We are interested in the one that follows [IMG]. That is the address of the thumbnail. In our example, the address is http://img7.imagevenue.com/loc888/th_62950_test_123_888lo.jpg.
6. Log into Thumblogger, select the correct blog and click the "Add a New Log Entry" button.
7. Click the picture icon over the big text box. It looks like
8. When the new box opens, paste the address for the thumbnail into the Image URL field. Be sure to copy everything from http:// all the way to .jpg
9. Type an Image description and title. Use some "key words" for your blog.
10. Click the appearance tab. You will probably want to choose either left or right alignment. I have aligned our practice thumbnail on the right. That makes it appear on the right side of the post.
11. Putting the number 5 into the Horizontal Space field will keep things from getting too cramped. You can leave the other fields blank. (Or experiment to develop your own "look".)
12. Click "Insert". Viola! You have added a picture.
13. Left click on the picture in the Thumblogger new post box. You will see that the picture becomes highlighted.
    
14. Click the "link" icon. It looks like this .
15. In the "Insert URL" field, paste the link to your GALLERY. Be sure that the link includes your affiliate ID. If you used your webmaster program's gallery generator, it probably does.

That's it. Now write your content, adding a text link to the gallery and you are done. 15 steps sounds like a lot, but you will be flying though them by the time you have done 3 or 4 posts.

Get busy and get ready to start checking your stats.

Writing for Search Engines

A picture may speak a thousand words, but not if you are trying to generate web traffic, therefore you are going to have to write a few lines.

The toughest part about any business is advertising and publicity. Until people actually know that you are there, they can't very well buy from you. In a traditional "brick and mortar" business, the owner carefully selects his location for maximum exposure to his intended market, he takes out an ad in the yellow pages, he advertises in every available medium. All of that to let people know about his business and woo them to his store.

On the web, we all pretty much have the same location, the yellow pages are not a factor and advertising is only available for a price - and we are trying to do this for nothing, right? Don't despair, there is still hope.

The best advertising is good old-fashioned word of mouth. We'll talk about that another day. Your greater priority at this stage is that second form of internet publicity, the search engine. Google, Yahoo, MSN, Dogpile and AskJolene are the buses that will bring the curious masses to see what you are up to. So you need to begin your blog with them in mind.

Search engines can only read what you write. They will concentrate on your page titles, your headlines (blog titles), the titles for your pictures and the text you put in paragraph form. If all you do is post a picture with a link to a gallery, the search engine has no idea what your blog is about. You may have a thousand of the best pictures of girls with green socks on the net, but without written words no one will be able to find them.

Not a writer, you say? Stay calm, you don't need to be Hemingway to attract web traffic. All you need are a few lines that incorporate the "key words" that web surfers are likely to use when looking for pictures, videos and other information about your niche. Let's go back to our green-socked girls for some inspiration. What would you type into a search engine if that is what you wanted to see?

girls with green socks
teen green socks
green socks girls
babes green stockings
redhead green socks

Ok, the last one is a little more specific than our blog, but we want to get that guy too, right?

Make sure that when you write, you include those phrases and any others that you can think of. It is not necessary to include ALL of them in every post, just hit one or two.

"Yesterday, I was at the mall and noticed how many girls were there. None of them had green socks. I wish this redhead would have been there, to see her gorgeous legs wrapped in those green stockings would have made my day! Click here to see more pictures of this great looking redhead."

OK, so you weren't at the mall and that is probably the dumbest bunch of rubbish you have ever read. Agreed. But after you write a half-dozen post or so using those phrases, google will begin sending folks your way. Besides, if you are really into girls with green socks, you are going to come up with something better than that!

A quick side note. You aren't going to "fool" Google, Yahoo or the other search engines. People have been attempting that for years in an effort to attract more traffic to their sites by acting like the site deals with something that it does not. The search engine gods are working harder and harder (thankfully) at making sure that a site delivers what it promises. Be honest about what your site is, and the search engines will bring you people who are honestly interested. In the end that is what you want. People who are tricked into coming to your site aren't interested in buying what you are selling anyway.

OK, get busy. You need a half-dozen posts or so before your site is search-engine ready, so you have work to do!

Program Spotlight - NS CASH

I want to give you a brief introduction to the best adult webmaster affiliate programs out there. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of programs to choose from. Some are first rate, some are not.

One of the very best is NS Cash. These folks are professional, they have a ton of niches to work with, their content is updated regularly, their sites convert and - most importantly - they pay promptly.

NS Cash has over 55 different sites, serving many popular niches: pornstars, hardcore, solo, reality, masturbation, ethnic and interracial, big dick, bikini and classic porn. Unlike a lot of their competitors, NS Cash keeps updated content, providing new free hosted galleries every week. All of their material is exclusive to their sites.

The offer a Revshare program which pays 60% of their revenue to the affiliate and offer bonus days that pay you 80%. They pay on all inital sales and rebills for the life of each member you send them. Prefer your money up front? They now offer a flat $25 per sign up program. And I can attest that there is no waiting around for months to get your check. You will have it within a matter of days after the end of the month.

Check out NS Cash to learn more about the tools and content which they provide. I highly recommend them.

Free Hosted Galleries

I was talking to a guy yesterday about what I do for a living. He said, "If I had the money to invest in all that, I would probably be doing the same thing." When I told him that it wouldn't cost him one red cent, he said, "nothing is free". I suppose that is true. Someone has to pay for it. But in this case, it doesn't have to be you. There was a time when you needed to buy web design software, rent a host for your site and even buy content. But none of that is necessary to get your first website up and running. They day may come that you will want to expand, but you can begin your porn empire using stuff that belongs to someone else. And since they will be making money right alongside of you, they won't mind in the least.

We have already discussed the site design and hosting business in an earlier article. Just get a free blogging account. Easy enough.

Now you need content to put into your blog. Just writing a post that says, "Its a sunny day outside of my window. Please go to Pornstar Key and join their site.", is probably not going to get you very far. What should you blog look like? Let's use this teen blog as an example. Just click the link, it will open in a new window.

Notice that each post is pretty much the same. There is a picture and a few lines of text. Both the picture and the text link to a gallery of pictures or some movie clips. The picture catches your eye, the text catches your interest and gives search engines something to hang on to.

If you click one of the links, you are taken to a free hosted gallery. The owner of this blog does not own those pictures, nor does he pay for the space to host them. He did not design the page or hire the models. The sponsor did all of that. They found the girls, created the content, built their site and collect money from their members. In order to advertise, they have an affiliate program. The affiliate, in this case the owner of the blog, has access to multiple galleries which he (or she) can use to promote the sponsor's site. The blog owner gets content, the surfer gets pictures and the sponsor gets traffic (and sales). Everybody is happy.

Once you have signed up as an affiliate you will gain access to the sponsor's free hosted galleries (FHG). Simply find those that match your niche and link to them from your blog using the url address provided by the sponsor. The link is coded in a way that tells the sponsor which affiliate sent the link. When the surfer buys, you get paid. It's that easy. Most reputable sponsors will give you credit for the sale even if the surfer does not buy immediately. By using cookies the sponsor will recognize "your" surfer even if he returns a month later. (All sponsors have differing policies relative to the amount of time between the first visit and a qualifying purchase.)

If you haven't already done so, start studying that list of sponsors on the right. Find out which ones have sites in your niche and sign up. Then start finding those galleries that will attract surfers - and dollars!

Know Your Niche

OK, you have your blog account set up. You may have even selected a template and fiddled around with a few test posts. So now it's time for the money to just start rolling in, right? Wrong. You still have some prep work to do.

Question number one. What kind of a blog do you want? I know, a profitable one. Besides that. You need to determine your blog's subject. "Ah", you say, "that's easy. Porn! Naked people!". You are going to need to be a bit more specific than that. Your blog needs to have a focus, a theme, a NICHE. For example, these naked people that you are thinking about; will they be men or women or both? Will they be professionals or amateurs? What color will they be? Are we talking California Girls or Women of the Orient? Are you thinking about young nubile teens, or mature MILFs? Hardcore or softcore? What about props? All of these things need your attention in order to have a consistency to your blog.

Let's face it, we all like something different. Not everyone will like everything at your blog. In fact, some people won't like anything that you post. That's OK. That means that other people will be obsessed by your content. I have a friend that likes, um... amply endowed women. I mean they bigger, the better. Dolly Parton just makes the cut on his scale of what makes a big chest. Frankly, that doesn't get my motor running. Which of us is right? Which of us is "normal"? Who cares? He will go after the Double-D blog while I go looking for other things.

So, how do you find a niche that will show up in search engines, find an audience and produce cold hard cash? Let's consider a couple of things:

1. Your niche should probably be something that you reasonably enjoy. At least to get started. That will make it easier for you to write posts and have something worthwhile to say. It will also ensure that your content will appeal to others who like the same thing.
2. You need to be sure that there is sufficient content to keep your blog well fed. You may have a thing for girls who eat peanut butter and jelly. That's fine, but you're probably going to find that it is difficult to find too many sponsors for your "PBJ Babes" blog. Take a look through some of the sponsors listed on the right. Each of them has a number of sites. You will begin to get a pretty good idea of the variety that is out there, and the limitations that you may face with extremely limited material.
3. While there is nothing new under the sun, you need to strive for some originality. A while ago I put together a blog that featured pretty teen girls, well photographed in fairly classy settings. The galleries really bordered more on art than porn. The blog was beautiful. The girls were beautiful. My hopes were high, but my stats weren't. Not only did I get almost no income, I saw very few people even visiting. Those that did clicked on nothing and moved on. The truth is that there are a gazillion teen sites, blogs, groups and wikis. I decided to swim in less crowded waters.

Getting the idea? Let's consider some possible niches. This list is by no means complete, nor do I suggest any of them as "sure winners". I am just trying to get your cerebral energies flowing.

• Amateurs - couples, swingers, teens, college girls, milfs, orgies, homemade videos, webcams and the like.
• Pornstars - solo, couples, groups, fan sites, movies, gossip
• Lesbians
• Bi Girls
• Bi Guys
• First timers
• Ethnicity - Oriental, Indian, African-American, Latinas, interracial
• Big boobs, small boobs, big butts, big guys, monster penises, heavy girls, tiny girls
• Girls with braces, with glasses, with casts, with food, with balloons, with toys (adult and otherwise)
• Dildos, strapons, vibrators, vegetables, machines
• Celebrities
• Gangbangs, threesomes, foursomes,
• Hidden cameras
• Web cams
• Exhibitionists
• Sex in boats, cars, outside, in the shower
• Gay sex. About anything we say for girls could go for guys as well
• Erotica
• Sex toys, reviews and sales
• "Reality" sex
• Messy sex
• Foreign Porn
• Vintage Porn

Okay, enough. That should be enough to give you the general idea.Your homework is to begin thinking about your niche. Already got it worked out? Great. We have more work to do tomorrow.

So what is an Affiliate Program?

Wikipedia defines Affiliate Marketing as

"a method of promoting web businesses(merchants/advertisers) in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts."

Chances are good that you have seen "Ads by Google" during your journeys around the cyberworld. You see them on nearly every site on the internet these days. Same is true with ads popping up on Facebook and other social media sites. Basically, if you click on one of those links, the owner of the site makes money. So does Google, or Facebook or whomever. That is affiliate marketing.

The Google model is "pay per click" - something you will rarely find in the adult world. Most are "pay per purchase". For instance, as I have been writing this post, I just received an e-mail telling me that someone has made a purchase as a result of clicking on one of my affiliate links. The person paid $19.95 for his first month of a recurring membership to a particular site. I will get $9.97 of that money. Since it is a "recurring" program, I will get 50% of all of his or her membership fees for as long as he maintains his membership in the site.

Some affiliate programs are one-time payments, instead of recurring memberships. Almost always, the sponsor pays you more than the first month's membership in the site. Let's say Tony comes to on of my sites and sees a link to a gallery of pictures. He likes the sample picture that I have posted, and clicks on it in order to see the entire gallery. Tony likes what he sees, so he clicks again on the gallery page where it says, "See all of her pictures here". Tony learns that for $29.00 he can see all kinds of pictures of that girl and others like her for a whole month. As a bonus, his $29 will get him into 10 more similar sites. Tony wants more, so he pulls out his credit card and pays the 29 bucks. If I am using a single payment affiliate program, I may make $35 or more. Some programs even run special bonuses on certain days. Whether Tony stays for 10 minutes or 10 years, the payout is the same.

So what do you need to get started? First, you need a website. Again, I recommend a simple blog. Then find a couple of good sponsors who will provide sample materials that you can use as content on your blog. I have begun a list in the right-hand column of quality adult webmaster programs. Believe me, there are dozens - if not hundreds - of them out there, but they are not all equal! Sign up, grab a few galleries and build some links.

Still need more help? Stick around. I'll have more to post very soon.

Blah, Blah, Blog

I have to confess that I am now in my second internet life. A few years ago I created my very first website. I began with Yahoo pages. I even used their "pagemaker" or whatever it was called. I added some text, in the form of experiences that we have had over the years. Then I found a couple of commercial sites that offered free content and hosted galleries. I signed up, decorated my pages with their banners and told people to go look at their pictures and movie clips. I made a little money, but I worked a LOT. Creating pages was tedious work, especially since I didn't know what I was doing. Writing all that content was tough, too. But I did it, and I enjoyed it. The return just didn't justify the amount of energy that I was dumping into it.

Then somebody invented the blog.

A blog (short for web log) is nothing more than a mechanism for an online journal. The idea is to add something every day, or however often you feel motivated. You are now reading a blog. They are everywhere and they are easy to use. No technical skill is required. The blog is built on a template so you don't have to do any of the dirty work. There are several places where you can start blogging for nothing. I mean for free. Gratis. Like right here at blogger.com. This is NOT a place to begin an explicit blog, however. (Truth be told, it is getting harder and harder to find free places to set up a blog. At least those that deal in adult subject matter, and porn, specifically. But there are some options. You will find information about them in future posts.)

Blogs are great for other reasons. Search engines love them. And you should love search engines. Very few people are going to just type in the address for your site. Chances are good that they will go searching for their favorite topic. Let's say, "Blue-eyed brunettes". Now you may have a conventional site with thousands of pictures of brown-haired girls with baby blue eyes. But unless you have done some fancy footwork, Google isn't going to know that. A blog that deals with that topic though will come up high on a search. That's where you want to be - right where people can find you.

Blogs also live happily with other blogs. A lot of bloggers look for similar blogs for content. If they find something they like, they are likely to write a little post about it. That sends even more traffic to your site. A few days ago the stats at one of my sites skyrocketed. I was getting 10 times the number of visitors that I normally get. Needless to say, I was pretty curious to find out where they were coming from. Another blogger saw - and liked - my blog, and told his readers about it. They came in big numbers, and they bought in big numbers.

Bottom line. Blogs are easy to create, easy to maintain, and easy to draw traffic to. We'll consider each of those ideas in further detail in the future. For now, go find your new blog's home and create an account.

You Can't Make Money Online

A few days ago I read an article by a well-respected, highly-informed, talented writer who wrote an article entitled, "You Can't Make Money Online", or something to that affect. The title caught my eye for a couple of reasons. First of all, Ebay, Google, YouTube and a host of others seem to be doing a pretty good job of it. Secondly, I make money online. The author was specifically hard on those who peddle "adult entertainment" by creating small sites and posting advertising for commercial sites by means of galleries and video clips. That, as a matter of fact, is exactly how I make my money online. Now you see why I was so interested.

The thrust of the article was that anyone who wanted to make a few bucks through internet affiliate programs should just pack up his (or her) PC and head over to the local fast food place to see if they were offering any burger-flipping jobs. No money to be made online, he said. He listed a few reasons, all of which have some merit: The market is saturated with zillions of other people trying to make easy money on the net. Most affiliate programs don't pay until you reach a minimum commission, something which you are likely never to do. Nobody really pays for porn on the net, etc. etc. As a result, he said, forget that plan of quitting your job and waiting for the day that you can live off of those commission checks.

As I say, there is some merit to each and every point that he made. However, I still say that you can make money online. I say that because in a few short months I was able to do exactly that. My principle source of income arrives in a lowly post-office box week after week, allowing me to escape the rat race and live life on my own terms. Am I rich? Nope. But I wasn't rich before. Can you comfortably make several thousand dollars a month with an online business? Absolutely.

I realize that this sounds like one of those direct marketing letters. It is not. I am selling nothing. I am starting this humble blog as an experiment. I have a few specific goals:

1. I want to see if I can draw some traffic to a non-adult site. If you are looking for porn here, you have come to the wrong place. I purposely chose Blogger.com for a variety of reasons. Not the least of which is that they have a no-explicit-content rule. (Disclaimer: That does not necessarily mean that there will never be any links to content that may be considered adult)

2. I want to see if I can help others in their own online endeavors. The principles that I discuss here will be applicable to any niche - adult or otherwise. In fact. I have recently begun putting to practice some of these very principles in some very family-oriented ways. Successfully.

3. I want to begin to crystallize my own thinking. After months of experiments, trials, errors, successes and plain dumb luck, I am learning that there are some fundamentals that cannot be overlooked. By writing them out I will give myself a measuring stick to continue to apply to my own activities.

4. Let's be fair. I am in business. I hope to make a few dollars off of this blog, just as I do with my other sites. If I accomplish numbers 1, 2 and 3, I will accomplish number 4.

I have a fair amount of work to do before this blog will be of much help. Hopefully, within pretty short order those looking to add to their income will find this place to be a valuable resource.

So, welcome aboard. Let's see where things go, shall we? And good luck on your journey!