great thread paul and glad things are going well

Well, traffic brings the members, content keeps them.

I am not sure things are going so well for him atm.

Honestly, after lots of time spent on GFY, even if you are a content producer, you should get a pretty good idea how the paysite, traffic and affiliate model work.

It isn't so easy that you just set up a paysite with average design and good content and then submit some galleries for it and start making bank.

And I am also quite sure, as someone suggested, that surfers have no idea who "Paul Markham" is - for them seeing your name, I don't think it's automatically a guarantee of quality and a sufficient reason to join your site.


Best luck to you anyway :)

What you have to remember is I'm a novice at reading these figures, so might be making a mistake. we are using www.indextools.com program anf this is what it tells me for yesterday.

Daily Unique Visitors to all Paul Markham Teens sites, inc TGPs. 1718
Paul Markham warning page page views, can't get uniques. 130
Front page views. 105 some of these will have come from the front page.
First tour page. 153
Second page 77
Third page 42
Order page 35

Sign ups were two.

With no experience on what is the wastage from site entry to sign up that looks good. But a lot of room for improvement especially off the galleries.

As I said this time next week we will have a better idea of it all as we will have others traffic and from more diverse sources.

Content also brings the traffic, unles you are putting up blank pages to get traffic. Content is a single word, so everyting is included in the word content.

polish_aristocrat things aren't going so bad. :1orglaugh

Will be flying to the US in two weeks with the family, then will probably go to Phoenix for the show there.

those are nice stats, second page CTR could be a little bit higher as you link the top thumbs to it, but the overall is pretty good. The only thing you have to find out, how will the numbers look like with high traffic. Try some top spot on a high traffic tgp, that could drive 20-50k to the paysite and you will see. The $400-600 one time investment is better than to wait weeks for the same result, saves a lot of time.

We've got a few whales to drive traffic to us so will test it with that, but on the list is to buy some good spots, but want to get the gallery conversions right.

Will be trying it out with some Ask Jolene traffic as well this week.

We are also resizing all the thumbs on the front page and throwing out 23 of the not so cute ones. So that will make some happy. :winkwink:

I've resized the thumbs on the bottom of the FRONT PAGE take a look and give me an idea of how fast they load please.

I understand you, but big spots are the best way to test real conversions and to improve the site. I know you would like to have as good converting site as possible first, but look at it as an option to do tests. But if you have webmasters who can send huge traffic, you will find out.

Yep because its about making the formula work, then you do the numbers game. Its just marketing.

BANNER ADS
http://www.brightsignproductions.com/paulmarkham/

TOURS
http://www.brightsignproductions.com...am/indext.html

Heres some of the stuff we put together for paul were working on some gallery templates for him now i'll post the links to those when they are complete.

check out our site for more samples
www.brightsignproductions.com

OK so where would you suggest buying some spots?

What impressed me about these Brigh Sign Productions was the way they handled my enquiry, before sending me to a portfolio page and telling me the price they showed me what they could do for US.

Most designers just gave me a price and not a clue what they would do for it.

Al4a and worldsex are available for sure. Its not the best traffic, but ok for teen and babe sites. If your site converts there, you know, it will convert everywhere. :)

any update?

This great blog needs an update ;-)

Read "Build it and they will come" in my blog. The link to my blog is in my sig.

Paul,

I don't know why I'm giving you this advice. I should be keeping it to myself. But take a look at these two sites:

http://www.nakedcollegegirls.tv (aka DonnysGirls.com)
http://tour1.nakedcollegegirls.tv (an alternate tour for the same site)

Which do you think converts better? The answer is the first one.

Think about it: you're selling the site as that of an dirty old man having fun with teens. Would ANY heterosexual male use girlish colors if they created the site themselves? Hell no. Get rid of the pinks, girlish writing, light blues... etc.

And, like I said above, read "Build it and they will come" on www.***************.com

Ya should have went with me, and saved 4 weeks of grief:)

But I like the happy ending.

I bought a partner account there, will see how it goes and be diverting one of the webmaters to do more submitting.

Here it is.

So it's been a long time since I posted anything, but not a lot?s happened. We were on holiday, the content business has taken off again and I had the flu. Anyway it's time for a small update.

Firstly we bought a new tour and put it behind the existing front page, sign ups went up and a lot of professionals told us it was confusing having two styles. But we stuck with it for a few weeks.

Then we took down the FRONT PAGE and the conversion ratio dropped 50%. So we put it back up and instead of showing the last 3 days updates we now show the last 5 days.

On this months traffic to that page we are getting 1:75, all we do is a Chameleon auto submit and a couple of partner accounts. Up to our eyes in other work and lost the person who was submitting. Problem is this month we have only had 10k in hits, so not going to get rich on this site yet.

We have one affiliate still sending membership traffic and he's converting better than us. The rest either never got started, sent a lot of traffic in a few days, which did nothing and now send nothing or had a few sign ups and faded away.

The good thing seems to be the retention rate, we seem to be keeping people. Over 45% are rebilling and a lot are opting for 2 or 3 months memberships at the beginning.

So what is planned for the future? Well I?m working on this tour at the moment, ALTERNETIVE TOUR it?s still in progress and needs some more work on it and I need the text written a bit better than my attempts. I want to try a different approach, I?m confident the surfer takes more notice of a different tour than the normal cookie cutter tours.

what this tour needs is some serious work without it turning out like a "Designed" site. Tell the surfer what to expect, and what's it will do for him and the quality of the content should do the trick.

We will be looking to buy another workstation in the office and get some one dedicated to submitting. We will also put the affiliate pay out up to 50% of all revenue and offer a bonus of a free Bargain Basement set for sign ups up to 10 a month and a Paul Markham set for those over 10. Will be looking at alternative hosting for the TGP/traffic side of the site and will thing about FHGs, we are giving out good free content though.

We will also be buying spots and traffic to see which ones work.

So that?s about it so far, over all very pleased with what it?s doing, know we have a long way to go before we rival anyone, but enjoying the learning curve. It?s very interesting what some people tell you and what you know to be true from your view of things

Want to know how to make it BIG? Let my company run your affiliate program and traffic acquisition department.


ICQ 239088209 for details. Anyone with sites can contact me, we have room for many new clients :)

Nice job

The first site is so different the surfer is looking at it rather than scanning the pictures. I think the second tour will do the same, just need to work on the text a bit more.

To be honest I'm up to my eyes in work and would love to find people to assist in this project. Problem is finding them, the good ones are busy and the bad ones are not worth the effort. I bought 20 TGP and MPG galleries and have to rewrite them. I think it's best to do them inhouse, but again who do I take off the job they have and who does that?

AlienQ and detoxed hit me up on ICQ.

bookmarked this thread, good read :thumbsup

{url=http://www.***************.com/2005/03/build-it-and-they-will-come.html]Build it and they will come.[/url] It was very interesting and other than the figures at conversion very true.

But traffic I find is the easy part. The key is converting it. I can go out and buy traffic, do a few auto submits, partner submits, adwords, etc and traffic will flow into the site. This is without opening and promoting a serious affiliate program, not ready yet.

From the figures I see on the webserver stats we are doing well.

496k uniques to allwww.paulmarkhamteens.com sites.
10588 uniques to the front page
134 new joins, half of which seem to be staying at least two months.
We burned $60 gig of BW in totla so no problems there.

We definitely need to know more about where how and what the traffic is doing. But it seems fine so far.

way to go :).. best of luck dude :)

The smarter and harder I work the luckier I get. :winkwink:

Glad to see things are working out for you Charly, you seem to be putting alot into this, and thats the wtg

This has got to be the best Paul Markum thread I've ever read. See Paul when you start off with a positive the feedback that comes back is good. I hope you make a million with your new site so all the positive keeps flowing. You certainly have lots of very knowledgable supporters now that you have changed your tune. Good luck!

http://www.fubarwebmasters.com/galle...1/p/z13279.jpg

Paul celebrates being #1 - the fruits of his labor finally recognized by his peers!

ADG

Legend!

___

This is the Paul I remember. He might have been clueless but he could admit it.

6 years later, still ?

Thanks a lot, asshole.

It's been a lot longer than 6 years, as far as being online. And 3 years after effectively closing the business, we still make money. :thumbsup

Not a lot, but I'll bet more than some of my haters. :1orglaugh

That was the problem 6 years ago. And why the site never grew as it should of. If someone had taken over the "marketing" side it would of been so much bigger. I just couldn't find anyone. Remember meeting someone, who always posted like he was some sort of God in traffic and everything else, and found out he didn't have two pennies to rub together. He wasn't the only one.

Still made a pretty penny.

Trolls can sling mud back at me with this statement.