Adult Webmasters: Are You Listening To Your Members? Your Competition Is!

Your bottom line objective as an adult pay site owner is to grow your membership base – it’s really that simple. It was true 10 years ago when you were just getting started and it remains true today. But adult webmasters beware – the rules of the  conversion and member retention game are changing and changing fast.  The introduction of free tube sites and file sharing networks are changing the adult landscape and now, you’re having to compete with FREE.
We believe there is still tremendous opportunity to grow a profitable online adult site, but you do need to understand some key trends that are shaping how people make sign-up / cancel decisions and be ready to take action.

Adult Webmasters Must Keep Up With Web 2.0 Trends!

The Adult Content Revolution:
There is a powerful revolution-taking place in the adult content market that serious adult webmasters and pay site owners need to be aware if they want to continue to play in the adult entertainment space in the not so distant future.
The revolution is an undeniable shift away from producer defined content and toward adult content produced specifically for customers based off feedback gleaned directly from the customers themselves through things like content rating applications and comment boxes.
Content rating and commenting applications embedded into the more web-2.0ish adult sites are proving invaluable to the adult site owners who are not only willing to deploy such technology in their websites but (more importantly) are committed to watching and listening to what their members are saying about the models and take action based on this valuable input.
This transformation is so new and so dramatic that many adult webmasters aren’t even aware of what’s happening.  However with a little effort to better understand what your members want to see in terms of updates, you can stay out front of the transformation and stand a better chance of securing your space in the new, user defined adult entertainment industry.

Let’s take a look a the traditional producer defined way of sourcing content for your pay site vs. the more modern member defined approach.

Old School – Producer Defined Content: In this scenario, adult site owners selected the models to be casted or purchased the content to be published in the member area of their site. There was little to no input from the member base as to whether this is a model they want to see or not. The pay site owner, much like the TV station program director made decisions on behalf of the member base.  If a member liked it, great – if not, oh well – there will be another update next week. Weekly updates are simply not going to be enough going forward.  In the world of online social networking, your members expect to be more involved. A couple weeks of less than popular site updates and you can pretty much count on your cancel rates going up.  This model worked in the past, because we had not real alternatives. Enter the more modern approach to choosing content for your adult pay site ..

The Future – Adult Site Member Defined Content. You’ll need weekly updates alright, but you’ll also need to be deploying next generation feedback applications so that you can allow your members to help you define which models get published in your members area and more importantly which ones do not. Do this and watch your member retention statistics start to trend in a positive direction fast.

Read this 5 times over if you have too. If you want to stay competitive in the adult entertainment industry and keep a firm lead on free tube type sites, your adult pay site will have to do a better job of getting feedback from and listening to your membership base. I’ll take this one step further and argue that the most successful pay sites in the future will go as far as to engage the member base to participate in the casting and production process to an extent. It’s that simple and that complex at the same time.

Examples of Applications You Can Deploy To Better Engage Your Members:
Let me give you a couple examples of baby steps you can take now to get your members more involved and improve your member retention stats and over all bottom line.

Site Visitors Should Be Able To Rate Models Easily

1)    At the very least you need to deploy a content rating application / script for each content set you have published. This will do two things for you fast. First, it will tell your members that you care about what they think (Do Not Under Estimate This!). Second, after a short period of time you will begin to see some trends that may impact some of your casting and or licensed adult content purchasing decisions. One model set from that past may emerge as a clear winner and would in turn be a model you would want to re-cast or seek other sets from your content provider – Think “ Back By Popular Demand Here” .. For an example, check out how we get feedback from site visitors on our male models here.
And check out this link for some PHP scripts that you or your webmaster could deploy to get you started: http://pennyhit.com/myratings.html

2)    Once Content rating is in place consider comment and voting type applications for each set. Keep it simple and just ask your members to vote yes or no to a simple question like .. “Would you like to see more of this model?” Here’s a link to a content comment and rating application for joomla site users: http://www.reviewsforjoomla.com/

3)    A third and slightly more advanced idea is to allow your members to play casting director to a certain extent. Publish head shots of potential models who have applied or models sets you are considering purchasing from you licensed content provider and get your members to decide who they want to see. Think “hot or not” here and watch yourself legally here!! But if done right, you would have a raving fan base on your hands fast.

Conclusion:
Ultimately, the responsibility still lies on you the pay site owner / content director to provide your members with hot fresh content that is updated on a regular basis. Based on our experience producing and selling adult content to some of the most successful sites on the web today, What matters most here is that you take steps to engage your customer base, seek out their opinions and develop a community of inclusion with your members and you had better be willing to act on their feedback.
We feel the future is bright for our customers who are embracing this shift to member defined content and deploying simple technology in their sites to seek member involvement. This is just a trend that we are noticing and wanted to share to other webmasters and paysite owners that may benefit from our experiences. Again this is only an opinion and we’d appreciate feedback and counter arguments from other industry pros.

About ACEBOYS:
Aces Entertainment & ACEBOY Models is an emerging leader in the wholesale adult content industry, working to improve member retention for our clients through stunning photos and video of the hottest male models on the web today.  For more information about our products and services for adult webmasters please visit our male model photography website
Purchasing licensed content from a professional content provider can be a cost effective way for your adult site to compete with the big players, but you have to be ready to address the needs of a target audience – you simply can’t be everything to everybody anymore.  Considering talking with an adult content provider that will truly partner with you and help you publish content that your members will love and pay for year after year.