educational

Selling Beyond the States

You are never so big – nor so small – that you can afford to ignore the profit potential of selling to the “foreign” markets; a lesson that I learned early in my adult career, when it became obvious that Italian men love sexy ‘Gypsy Girls’ like me – since they actually provided the second biggest market for my homemade amateur porno videos!

While I can’t say that I realized the same level of success selling memberships to my amateur Web site to Italian (and other European) men, I would have been remiss to not have tried. While I never really took it seriously enough to have a bunch of professionally translated tour or join pages made, I did construct a few different single-page “teaser” ads that offered a special Web site membership to surfers in their own “native language” – courtesy of Alta Vista’s “Babel Fish” translation service.

While hardly an optimal solution, this automated translation service provides quick, free results, that are “better than nothing” – and since my site’s visitors realized that I’m an American girl who doesn’t speak their native language, they appreciated the fact that I had tried to reach out to “them” – something that is easier for an “amateur site” to successfully pull off: Since my prospects don’t expect me to be “professional,” I can get away with being “cute” and “thoughtful” – something a non-amateur site may not get away with…

Show Me the Money
Being able to communicate with your site’s visitors is only half the battle, however. You also need to be able to accept their payment, if and when they decide to join your Web site, and / or purchase one of your “personal” items or products. While it is a simple enough matter if they have (and are willing to use) a MasterCard or VISA, various complications arise when they don’t have one of these ‘not-quite universal’ credit cards.

Fortunately, PayPal (my processor of choice) offers surfers the option of paying for recurring Web site memberships in U.S. Dollars, Canadian Dollars, Euros, Pounds Sterling, and Yen – while most other popular processors offer multiple currency payment options as well; making the task of selling to foreign markets that much easier.

(Re)Directing Foreign Traffic
Once you have made the decision to reach out to the wide world around you, and take your sales to the next level, you will undoubtedly start running into a few areas that can easily cause confusion; the most obvious of which is “How can I send non-English speaking visitors to the appropriate page?”

While the simplest solution by far is to use “Click Here” text links (translated via Babel Fish – of course!) in your various chosen languages, or small flag icons, across the top of your home page – each leading to the appropriate ‘Join’ page, this approach may not be the best, as it causes the surfer to take action (click on a link), and he could either miss it, or not understand that he is supposed to click that link (perhaps the translation is *so* bad, or his dialect so regionally-specific, or he is *such* a ‘newbie’ – or plain drunk!) that you unnecessarily miss out on another opportunity to make a sale! Is there a better solution?

Of course there is! I’ve often admired some of my husband Stephen’s “gateway” pages, where he uses bits of JavaScript and PHP snippets to send different types of users to different URLs based on their browser type, or where they came from previously, etc., and so I asked him if he had a piece of code in his library that would help. “How about a PHP snippet that’ll discriminate your users based upon their browser language?” Sure, it isn’t technically directing people according to where they live, but it’s their language, and being able to communicate with them, that we’re interested in, right? Stephen dug around in his ‘toolbox,’ and gave me this little beauty, which I’ll share with you all:

A Helpful Bit of Code
<?php

// LANGUAGE REDIRECT

$language = $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE;
if($language =='de') {
$goto = "https://www.domain.com/german/";
} elseif($language =='it') {
$goto = "https://www.domain.com/italian/";
} else {
$goto = "https://www.domain.com/main.php";
}
header("Location: $goto");
exit;

?>

To use the code in the example above, place it at the beginning of your home page (be aware, this will only work if you have a PHP enabled server, and your homepage is named “index.php“ not “index.html.“

The code uses a variable, $language which is initially set to the value delivered by the surfer’s browser. Comparisons are then made to (first German and then Italian, in the code example above) the visitor’s browser language settings, with different URLs being specified based on the result. All traffic that is not sent to a different Web page based on this test is directed to the final “main page” URL at the bottom – just be sure that this is not the same page as this script is on, or you’ll have an endless loop!

You can specify as many language redirects as you wish by repeating the code lines below, changing the value of the language code (properly known as ISO 639 codes), as well as the redirect URL:

if($language =='language code') {
$goto = "redirect URL";
}

You can find a complete list of these country-specific ISO 639 codes here.

Not every surfer that you send to your custom, language-specific ‘Join’ pages will actually purchase a membership, but at least you tried, and you stand a much better chance of making that sale than if you hadn’t tried at all! And what do you do with all that traffic that hits your ‘Join’ page and then doesn’t? (Regardless of what language they speak!) Well, that’s a story for another day! ~ Ayrora

Copyright © 2024 Adnet Media. All Rights Reserved. XBIZ is a trademark of Adnet Media.
Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission is prohibited.

More Articles

opinion

How to Halt Hackers as Fraud Attacks Rise

For hackers, it’s often a game of trial and error. Bad actors will perform enumeration and account testing, repeating the same test on a system to look for vulnerabilities — and if you are not equipped with the proper tools, your merchant account could be the next target.

Cathy Beardsley ·
profile

VerifyMy Seeks to Provide Frictionless Online Safety, Compliance Solutions

Before founding VerifyMy, Ryan Shaw was simply looking for an age verification solution for his previous business. The ones he found, however, were too expensive, too difficult to integrate with, or failed to take into account the needs of either the businesses implementing them or the end users who would be required to interact with them.

Alejandro Freixes ·
opinion

How Adult Website Operators Can Cash in on the 'Interchange' Class Action

The Payment Card Interchange Fee Settlement resulted from a landmark antitrust lawsuit involving Visa, Mastercard and several major banks. The case centered around the interchange fees charged to merchants for processing credit and debit card transactions. These fees are set by card networks and are paid by merchants to the banks that issue the cards.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

It's Time to Rock the Vote and Make Your Voice Heard

When I worked to defeat California’s Proposition 60 in 2016, our opposition campaign was outspent nearly 10 to 1. Nevertheless, our community came together and garnered enough support and awareness to defeat that harmful, misguided piece of proposed legislation — by more than a million votes.

Siouxsie Q ·
opinion

Staying Compliant to Avoid the Takedown Shakedown

Dealing with complaints is an everyday part of doing business — and a crucial one, since not dealing with them properly can haunt your business in multiple ways. Card brand regulations require every merchant doing business online to have in place a complaint process for reporting content that may be illegal or that violates the card brand rules.

Cathy Beardsley ·
profile

WIA Profile: Patricia Ucros

Born in Bogota, Colombia, Ucros graduated from college with a degree in education. She spent three years teaching third grade, which she enjoyed a lot, before heeding her father’s advice and moving to South Florida.

Women In Adult ·
opinion

Creating Payment Redundancies to Maximize Payout Uptime

During the global CrowdStrike outage that took place toward the end of July, a flawed software update brought air travel and electronic commerce to a grinding halt worldwide. This dramatically underscores the importance of having a backup plan in place for critical infrastructure.

Jonathan Corona ·
opinion

The Need for Minimal Friction in Age Verification Technology

In the adult sector, robust age assurance, comprised of age verification and age estimation methods, is critical to ensuring legal compliance with ever-evolving regulations, safeguarding minors from inappropriate content and protecting the privacy of adults wishing to view adult content.

Gavin Worrall ·
opinion

Account-to-Account Payments: The New Banking Disruptor?

So much of our industry relies upon Visa and Mastercard to support consumer payments — and with that reliance comes increased scrutiny by both brands. From a compliance perspective, the bar keeps getting raised until it feels like we end up spending half our time making sure we are compliant rather than growing our business.

Cathy Beardsley ·
profile

WIA Profile: Samantha Beatrice

Beatrice credits the sex positivity of Montreal for ultimately inspiring her to pursue work in adult entertainment. She had many friends working in the industry, from sex workers to production teams, so it felt like a natural fit and offered an opportunity to apply her marketing and social media savvy to support people she truly believes in and wants to see succeed.

Women In Adult ·
Show More