If there’s one thing I’ve seen consistently over the 10 years I’ve been running Elevated X and working exclusively with paysite owners it’s that no matter how competitive the paysite market gets or how high the barrier to entry seems, there are always people eager to break in and start their first site.
Here’s a list of “do’s” and best practices to help you create a quality site that will stand up to today’s competition.
Many of the most successful paysites began as a labor of love for the person who shot the content and/or built the site.
Educate yourself and know what you’re getting into.
Learn about the paysite market by joining several different sites you know are successful, especially those that you’ll be competing with or that are similar. If you only plan to offer a few dozen scenes, don’t look to emulate a giant site like Brazzers. By looking at sites like the one you plan to create, you will get a good idea of what’s required to compete both from a design and content standpoint.
Set realistic goals and expectations.
Unless you have a large budget and the know-how, don’t expect to generate huge returns right out of the gate. Have a realistic growth plan and also an exit strategy, even if that means selling your site or content at a loss or writing off the entire venture as a loss as a worst-case scenario. Expect to fund the venture out of pocket for several months to a year including initial build-time.
Don’t overspend and grow at a natural pace.
If you don’t need a huge dedicated server with multiple terabytes of storage and load balancers and a content delivery network (CDN) and lots of monthly bandwidth allotment, don’t purchase that to start. You can always grow into it later. Start with budget hosting or even a virtual hosting account. Even high-end, professional-level paysite management software like Elevated X works on virtual hosting plans and even GoDaddy. There’s usually no cost in moving hosts and many of the bigger, more reputable adult hosts will move you over for free when the time comes for you to expand.
Only pay for what you need.
Most sites don’t need fancy, expensive designs. That’s often not what sells the site in the first place. Like web hosting mentioned in the third item, you can always spruce up or upgrade and go for a more expensive design later. As long as your site looks high quality and trustworthy, you’ll be able to convert sales. If you look at many of the top-grossing paysites online you’ll see they only have a nice looking header and a few nice looking buttons or promo graphics and are very clean looking. Your money will be better used in other places than for a high-end design when starting out.
Pick your site management software wisely.
Obviously I am biased as the owner of a large paysite CMS software company but regardless of what platform you choose, do your homework. In any case, I recommend avoiding open source programs and non-adult general use programs like Drupal, Joomla and even WordPress. They may seem attractive but open source and public modules and add-ons will leave you with a good looking site that’s very vulnerable to exploits, hacking and with no one to go to in the event of a problem.
That alone should be enough of a deterrent but if not, by selecting software created specifically for paysite management rather than one that can be morphed, manipulated or customized for that purpose you’re guaranteed to get a feature set and the functionality intended for the type of site you plan to manage.
Choose something you can grow with and unlike design and web hosting, this is one area you don’t want to skimp on in the beginning to save money with plans of upgrading later. The small amount of money you’ll save short term won’t outweigh the cost and headache and lost time later when you decide to move to a better site management platform.
Know how much support you will need.
Identify your capabilities, strengths and weaknesses up front. This will help you determine what you can do on your own and what you need help with. If you have web design experience, for example, you may be able to forego involving a designer at any stage of the process. I never advise clients to host their own websites. It always ends badly. That said, if you have tech or web experience you may want to go with a host that offers servers with a control panel so you can do things yourself. I never recommend that either and prefer my clients pay more for fully managed hosting with 24/7 tech support included at no additional cost but it’s an option for some site owners. The same goes for site management software. If you’re well-experienced you may opt for a onetime purchase that doesn’t include support or pay as you go for service. If you prefer to have access to tech support anytime, look for software that includes this as part of a monthly fee.
Don’t be afraid to ask for help, especially if it’s included with what you’re paying for. Often those selling it are experts and their advice and guidance is free.
Make sure your site works on all devices, laptops, tablets and phones.
If you can get a responsive design, that’s the best way to go. If you really want to go all out and cater to the widest audience, go for a responsive design and a mobile-optimized version.
Make sure your content is up to snuff.
Look at your competition and make sure (objectively) that your content can compete. Is it as well shot? Are the models as attractive? Are you prepared to offer 4K or better quality if your competitors are?
The same goes for making sure you have enough content to launch and to sustain growth. Looking to competing sites, primarily those you know are good earners is a great way to gauge things and set minimums. If the best sites in your niche offer a couple hundred updates and add new ones daily, that’s more or less what you need to plan to match. You may be able to launch with less, even if it’s half what they offer as long as you can update daily and maybe charge less in the beginning to offset your lack of content until you are competitive.
Price your site reasonably.
If you offer 50 updates and update once a week don’t set your monthly membership price at $49.95. The exception might be if your content is extremely rare but in most cases you’re just asking for upset customers and chargebacks.
Pick a business model you can sustain.
Decide whether you want to run a membership site, a VOD site or clip store type site, both separately or a combination of both. Don’t bite off too much at once and focus on mastering one at a time if you don’t have a lot of experience with each or either type of site so you’re not spreading yourself too thin. It’s much easier to try to obtain and convert one type of traffic at a time than to cover multiple types at once unless you have a large marketing budget.
Know how you plan to obtain traffic.
In the good old days there was a famous saying “Content is King” but today, traffic, not content, is king. There are two reasons paysites fail: The site or content and/or management sucks, or the site didn’t get enough traffic. If your site is solid, the single biggest make or break factor will be getting enough visitors to the site. I see a lot of site owners, especially new ones, who believe if their site is good, they can just launch and traffic will come, affiliates will line up to promote it and they will spend their days counting their money. This is far from reality and you need to have a real game plan traffic-wise. Know what sources are available and what you expect from each.
Add good update titles, text descriptions.
For most sites, due to tubes, SEO doesn’t make much of a difference traffic-wise and their only hope is to capture a small amount of long-tail traffic from obscure or long search phrases. No matter, visitors still see scene and video titles and text descriptions and taking the time to ensure quality in this area only serves to improve the user experience for your customers. Members or content buyers will appreciate more descriptive titles than “Hardcore Hottie” or generic names. Descriptions don’t need to be long and also don’t need to describe the obvious since all sites now show thumbnails of the model or scene. This text is a great place to communicate with your customers and give them a sense that there are real people behind the site.
Add keyword tags and models.
Customers appreciate being able to sort and search and filter to see different things and taking the time to add keyword tags always pays off with happy customers. You don’t have to go crazy adding dozens to tags to every piece of content but adding several of the most fitting ones will go a long way toward building a great user experience. This applies to models too. If you use CMS software to run your site that allows model indexing and associating content with models, take the time to add all your models and add them all, male and female and transgender so your customers can click the name of their favorites and easily see all the content that features them.
Take your time.
One of the biggest mistakes I see both newbie and seasoned veteran paysite builders make is rushing things or thinking, “I’ll come back and improve that later.” The problem with that mindset is they never do come back and nothing gets improved. Taking the time to do things right ensures you get off to a good start and never have to worry about redoing or fixing things later or regretting rushing things in the beginning.
Enjoy the process.
Unless you’re an experienced paysite builder with an existing plan in place and are just doing it for the financial return, enjoy the building process. Many of the most successful paysites began as a labor of love for the person who shot the content and/or built the site. Donald Trump may be getting an awful lot of criticism currently running for U.S. president but one of the best things he ever said was that you can’t effectively sell something you don’t believe in. He’s an incredible salesman and that statement couldn’t be more true. Take your time and build a site you yourself would buy from and one you will be happy promoting and enjoy the bumps and hurdles and learning process and the steps along the way toward seeing your dream and your vision go live on launch day.
AJ Hall is a 16-year adult industry veteran, winner of the 2016 XBIZ Tech Leadership Award and CEO of Elevated X Inc., a provider of popular adult site CMS software. Hall has spoken at industry trade shows and written for several trade publications. Elevated X software powers more than 2,000 leading adult sites, has been nominated for more than a dozen industry awards and won the 2012, 2014 and 2015 XBIZ Award for Software Company of the Year.
