What are good ways to promote your site and get the public to notice! I just finished mine and would like to get the word out. This is all new to me so anything would help! Thank Yani Z
Well, the first thing to do when asking a question like this is to mention the URL of the website and what the intent of the site is. There's no way to tell if you've started a site for collectors of the AMC Gremlin, a sex toystore, a repository of Visual Basic scripts for manipulating text files, or maybe a site that endorses a political candidate.
The second thing to do is to submit your site to all the major search engines with the hope that Google, AltaVista, whatever will spider your site and eventually index your site and include it in the search results. Proper text content and directory naming will result in better search rankings.
Third, promote your site in relevant locations on the Internet. If your content is interesting/appropriate enough, then maybe it'll find its way onto popular discussion sites such as Slashdot or Fark.
LoL- Yes, just took it for granted that i posted on ADT. Its an Adult site showing hardcore photos-including Anals, Dps and major gapes! Has cum swallowing as well as cum shoots on breasts, asses and of course the face! There will also be video for you to see as soon as I know I can get high quality video down loads for the fans. I realize this is an extreme hardcore site and I can't post it everywhere, put if you can give me sites were it's ok to post this would help out a lot as well as help out others that might read this! here is my site link vizualfilms.com Yani Z
Just my opinion, but if I were you, I'd work on polishing up the site's presentation and functionality before you go really public. The Vivo Clothing site you redirect underage folks to is just an annoying placeholder. At least you could pick a live site with content like Yahoo! or Disney.
Next, you should extend the courtesy of providing ICRA tags. You might try some including some better HTML page titles, too.
The thumbnail photos look pretty good, which isn't surprising since you're a photographer.
Every content-driven site needs a certain amount of free, frequently-updated "magnet" content to get people to keep coming back. Have you planned for that?
Right now, the site looks incomplete and amateurish at best, and I'm guessing that a certain percentage of web surfers are used to more polished destinations and if they visited your site, might never visit again. Don't put up a bunch of placeholder pages saying "Coming soon" or "Under construction".
I will point out that I spent very limited time on your site, but hopefully you've thought about these things. Good luck.
Good points! Its not underconstruction? It did have to be moved to a bigger server, the host did not expect it to be so big. But it broke all my links which I fixed.I will be butting up content in the membership section every 48 hours! I have enough content for this right now for a long time!
cv wrote: "Every content-driven site needs a certain amount of free, frequently-updated "magnet" content to get people to keep coming back. Have you planned for that?"
Most of the big sites i noticed do not have much content on there tour pages. So I am back and forth on this. Most say I have to much free content on my site!?!
"cv wrote: Next, you should extend the courtesy of providing ICRA tags. You might try some including some better HTML page titles, too."
I havn't seen this on other people sites but it is a good idea and will look into it!
"Just my opinion, but if I were you, I'd work on polishing up the site's presentation and functionality before you go really public. The Vivo Clothing site you redirect underage folks to is just an annoying placeholder. At least you could pick a live site with content like Yahoo! or Disney."
You kinda lost me on the importance of this! What makes you think Vivo Clothing is a dead site? I think the content in the site is the most importent!
Hi CV, Took me a sec. to look up were you got Cumming soon from! I should make it more clear I see. This is movies that are coming out, not the site it self that will have the pictures in the site! I will make it clearer as soon as the uploading is done. Which looks like at this rate will be late in the night as I am butting up about 2GBs of stuff right now! I will give it a more finished look I was working so hard to make it easy to navigate through since this want kills me on other sites! Thanks again Yani Z
If you're telling people to go elsewhere, at least you might point them to someplace trustworthy or someplace that has compelling content that's going to last and might encourage repeat visits. Yahoo! is not bad because A.) it's reliable, B.) it's the most recognized web directory/portal, and C.) it's gonna pass the kids' content filters.
I'm just not impressed visiting Vivoclothingcompany.com and finding out that the domain is for sale. It's really a courtesy issue. If you have no problems sending people to a placeholder site, well, good luck.
The front page is too plain. It does nothing to grab the viewer's attention and make them want to enter your site.
Also, the text on this page appears to be a link (roll the mouse over it and it turns into a hand) but there's nothing behind it. In fact, that seems to be the case with every page. The exception seems to be the "Join" page where you want the billing methods to show as clickable, but they don't.
As cv noted, several pages have "coming soon" signs on them. You need to bear in mind that in Internet time, "soon" is an hour or maybe a day at most.
You don't have too much free content on your site, and what you do have isn't laid out too well. Again, as cv says, your pictures are very good and should be the focus of each page. I would also recommend a more consistent layout for your model pages.
Looking at Nikky Blond's page, (one of my favorite actresses, by the way) I'm puzzled by the fact that some images are edited to hide a vagina (for example) while others aren't. What's up with that?
Oh, one more thing. I'm looking at a URL that says: http://www.vizualfilms.com/outside_pages/Intro_to_site/Intro_to_site.htm
I recommend against using folder names like "outside_pages" as this encourages some to try to discover your "inside_pages." In other words, avoid any suggestion that there are places on your site that viewers can't get to because some of them are bound to try.
PS- don't get discouraged by all this criticism. You've made a good beginning. Now you need to apply lots of polish.
Your right, I didn't not vist that site myself since I didnt think it was so important. I linked to that site for a friend but will change the link and make many updates as soon as the this batch is done uploading! This is new to me so everything you say does help! Yani Z
Hi Hardware! Hardware wrote: "PS- don't get discouraged by all this criticism. You've made a good beginning. Now you need to apply lots of polish"
Naa I don't mind criticism at all. This will make my site a lot stronger as I am not a webmaster but someone who always wanted to give it a go! So criticism away my friend!
I do see some sites that have have only a couple of pages of free content how much do you think is good enough? I know this is a loaded Q's as everyone will say put up it all for free! Yani Z
You know, I think you should spend some more time visiting your competitors' websites and see how they differ from your's. You'll have to remove your emotions and distance yourself.
Note that you do *not* need to put all your content up for free. You just need to communicate to your visitors that what they are seeing (for free) is the tip of the iceberg and the content changes regularly. That means daily.
Here's an easy exercise.
Why don't you visit Danni's Hard Drive and compare how her site's free visit is different from your's. Write down some notes. Then find 10-20 friends (male & female) to do the same.
Why Danni? Danni probably made all the same mistakes that you're making right now. But she learned and made a lot of good decisions. She was lucky that she did this years ago when there was *far* less competition. Your challenge? You get to compete against Danni.
You claim that you are not a webmaster; your photography skills are noted and even admired here, but it's a lot more than a few pictures of pretty models that's necessary for a successful adult website.
Thanks CV I am glad I decided to ask you and the rest here at ADT I new there are a lot more skilled then I at this web stuff. So with you and Hardwares input I will make a better site. Yani Z
CV I just went to Dannis web site and I can only click into one tour page? Every picture I click into takes me CC sign up? It seems she is not giving away many free pictures unless you sign up to her new section and give her your e-mail.
Danni's free content is embedded in the sign-up pages (usually listed as a "preview"). It's there, but there are no free "gallery directories". Smart. You're forced to navigate through her entire site to retrieve the free content rather than surfing to a directory that has all the free stuff.
Better yet, her free content is video, not still images. You're a good photographer, but you must think to videography. The ability to download high-quality bitmap images from USENET has been around for 10+ years.
I'm sure you can find other competitors beyond Danni. Just remember that you have to think how Joe Blow will see your website relative to others.
I for the life of me can not find any free pics or video that is not on that one page. May be she has a big enough name were she does not need to give away stuff anymore? Video is being added to my site! Thanks for complement! I went to school and learned photography and video a long time ago. I was happy to pass this learning on to a lot of people in the industry. But I guess I am back to square one with this web stuff and now the student once again :) Yani Z
I think cv's suggestion about visiting other sites is a good idea.
From my perspective, there are two major problems with what you've got right now. First is the technical things that need to be fixed. Things like wrong coding causing non-linking text to appear as links, and the navigation through the site being difficult (no Home button, for example).
Second, and more importantly, is that the layout doesn't do a good job of explaining and selling what you're offering. Let's take the main page. What purpose does having the DVD covers serve? Are you selling DVD's? No, you're selling girls, right? The girls will sell the DVD's. So the girls should be prominent on the page, and the "VIP Member, Video Store and Join" buttons should be on the bottom. Also, the page should fit a standard screen size, say 1024x768. You don't want your customers missing important information because the page is too big and they have to scroll to navigate it. Some of them won't know how. If you can't get it all to fit, then make sure the critical stuff (the stuff that will sell folks on your site) is at the top.
Now, the welcome on your main page doesn't say enough about what you're offering. Here's what I might say in your place:
Welcome to Yani Z's. After years of being a professional photographer and capturing some of the most beautiful women on Earth for major companies to put in their movies and magazines, I've decided to bring these lovely ladies straight to you. Check out my models listing to see samples of all the hot babes waiting for you inside. In addition to established stars, you'll find plenty of teens and fine ass babes in glamour and POV hardcore sets.
You'll want to come back often, because new sets are added every 48 hours.
Then, I would not have the ASSES, POV and TEENS buttons. Do what you've started under the POV link under the Models link instead, like Nikky's page. It still needs a little work, but it lets you know what photo sets you have of Nikky. (BTW, that's a great butt shot in her "Silver Belt" set.)
Well, if you can't find Danni's free content, well, there's one weak link in her armor. Here's your opportunity to make your site's free content more accessible and obvious.
Hopefully you are asking for input elsewhere. You have two people responding to you on an adult-oriented website. I used to build non-adult websites for a living; sounds like Hardware has also been webmaster in some capacity.
You really need to be talking to people who don't know anything about running websites. The content that *they want* should guide you to questions on how to build it.
You are basically asking your questions out of order. You post here asking how to promote your website before you've built a site that is well-organized, functional, and content-driven.
To your potential customers the questions should be: "What do you want to see? How often do you want updates? What are you willing to pay? What merchandise would you like to buy? What unique content am I offering that ten thousand other sites aren't already offering at dirt-cheap prices or providing in their free tour sections?"
All of that before you ask: "How do I build a site that does all that? What sort of technical assets do I need? Are my own technical skills good enough to provide speed, reliability, privacy and security for my customers? Is there enough scalability and design forethought in terms of service demands and website popularity as more folks visit?"
And *finally*, "How do I promote my website which is ready to be launched?"
I like that Hardware can I copy and paste what you wrote? I can see now what you mean about making it clearer. When I started the site it was for promoting movies I shot. Then I decided I have so many pictures outside the movies that I shot and had to make the Model section A-Z. There are girls that you will not see in the industry and some will not do video but will do a lot and are extremely hot! It just grew as I was making it and found I had more then I need for one site. I did have insiders say I should make more then one site with all this content. I have such a wide range of shooting styles that makes it hard to keep it focused for my first time. I have a bunch of fetish stuff, fitness girls, hot upcoming models that do not want to do hardcore but modeling, but decided to go fully nude for my shoots when it started out as only fully clothed photo shoots. I have the teens, asses anal, Dp's, hardcore toy play up the ass, interracial and so much more. You should have seen how many buttons I had on one page for all these different things. Simplify is the key but easer said then done. I will work on it! Yani Z
No, cv, I haven't been a webmaster. However, I have overseen web site development, and I am a discerning consumer.Sure, go ahead, though it may not say enough about the range of content you intend to provide. As for having lots of different content, that's a good thing, but my guess is that beautiful models attract more customers than fetishes do. I would recommend starting out with your models list, then you can build a database to categorize your shots (fitness, anal, etc.) and put in a search function that will allow users to find that kind of thing. That way you don't need a ton of buttons on the page, but you'll be able to deliver various fetishes to interested parties. Ideally, you will have all your pictures in a database as well, and be able to generate 'fetish' pages on demand. Of course, that will require more advanced programming skills (and probably an even bigger, more powerful server).
In regards to not wanting to show adult content on the "Enter" page, good for you, I wish everybody had this concern. However, you can make it more interesting without showing tits and ass. You've got glamour shots of beautiful ladies, don't you?
Here's what I'm talking about when I say you have inconsistent censoring. The "radioactive" sign over Nikky' pussy is cute, but that shot is actually tamer than the one showing her with a cock in her mouth. If you're going to censor then be consistent and also make it VERY plain that the uncensored versions are available in the members section.
PS- when I said you don't have too much free content I didn't mean that you needed more, but that you shouldn't cut back.
Wew-I was up to 2 pm last night making changes to the site. The uploading is still going on, says I have 20 mores hours of it. I wanted you guys to see the changes today, but untill the 2 GBs of photos upload I have to wait :( I just wanted to let you know That I am including what you say into the creation of the site. Yani Z
Maintaining a first-class website takes a lot of work. You don't have to implement all my suggestions but you do have to satisfy your customers that you're better than the competition. Original content is really key to that, but you have to make sure they can find it. - - -If they are located in the USA then it could be because of the new requirements the Department of Justice (cough, cough) has come up with to enforce the 2257 law. As for it improving sales, I doubt it.
Ok Hardware and CV I made some changes. They are not huge changes and I am not done. But then again I will be always changing and updating this site. vizualfilms Yani Z
I see that you've added two pictures to the front "Warning" page. The pic on the left does nothing for me but I like the one on the right. More to the point, the "Warning" still dominates the page. In your place I would put an identifying logo in the top part of the page, like "Visual Films" or "Yani Z's" and move the "Warning" to the bottom. Yes, you want people to read and respond to it, but you also want to give them a reason to continue. So, you need something to identify your site, and you need pictures that clue people in to what's inside. Here, look at Rebecca Lord's site. That's the kind of thing you're competing with. What might work is to have the site logo across the top, then underneath that put larger versions of the two pictures you have now, with a third picture to the left of the male shot (I assume that's you). That picture would have another model similarly posed as the one you have now, only looking right instead of left, so you'd have two sexy models looking over their shoulders at you. Then put the warning under that.
You've added pictures to the "Asses" and "Teen_outside_page1" pages. If this means that you plan to start off selling fetishes as well as models then you'll need a lot more of a sales pitch than what's up now to convince prospective members. You'll also have to decide on your sales approach - the "Tour" or what you've got now. If you stick with the layout you have now then make sure that each page has the appropriate buttons to get people to the other pages. Right now, neither "Asses" nor "Teens" has a button for the main page or one for the "Models" page.
Without knowing where you're headed, what you've added leaves us in the same position as a man looking at a construction site that has two more stakes stuck in the ground. OK, we see something else is going to happen on the site, but we still don't know what the building is going to look like.
While I'm not a webmaster, i know some code and whatever's not intuititve is easy enough to look up.
I'm not alone in hating everything about flash given the increasing number of ways to block it. it's incredibly annoying and if i absolutely don't need to turn it on to see something important i won't enable it. if I come across a website that I'm not bent on viewing out of some need---I'll close it and never visit again. there's really no need for it and for the users that don't have it or despise it-your page is going to look broken. I've always favored and come back to sites with the cleanest layouts and no frames. It's possible to have a site that's intuititve to move around and also contains advertisements and images--adt isn't too offensive(if you don't collapse the left column you lose valuable screen real-estate, which is annoying on a site that presents the reader such a high word-count to be useful).
images are usually good, but when they start moving or require proprietary plugins to perform annoying actions and make noise you'll lose some of the potential audience instantly. ask yourself what's really necessary to show off what you have--make it easy to look for the content people presumably are most interested in, but there's a massive overuse of flash for the almost nonexistant functionality it offers. same with acrobat--requiring plugins for what amounts to words and pictures is absurd on any document under 4 pages. i'll end my rant, but html isn't difficult but too many times sites end up a giant exhibition of the skills and abilities of the person creating them and this usually ends up in a lousy site with more excess code than functionality.
Is something supposed to be available on the 'Asses' and 'Teen' pages?
All I get apart from the two menus are the little pictures and the Flash window. None of which are links it seems.
I don't mind Flash when it does something useful that couldn't be accomplished without it. But using it just for showing text makes the site appear slow. Also my browsers pass the mouse wheel and keyboard presses to the Flash plug-in when the mouse is over a Flash area. This is bloody annoying as it stop scrolling dead until I move the mouse. I've removed sites from my history for less.
Also you state "This site has 100 photo galleries..." (if it had been HTML instead of Flash I could have cut'n'pasted that). Now of course I wouldn't doubt a fellow ADT'er but if it had been a random site I wouldn't believe that as I just can't see any indication that there is much content there at all. The only stuff I found was under 'News' which incidently is only available from 'Home'. You really need to make it much more apparent that there is real content available. I've never joined a pay site and I doubt I'll ever join a porn site. But if any site wanted to tempt me I think the best way would be to to open up nearly all thumbnail pages to visitors. The first thumbs could then lead to the sample hi-res pics and the rest could lead to the join page.
Don't have 'Video store' in your top menu when it isn't an active link.
And centre the content horizontally. When it's clinging to the left of my screen it doesn't look too good.
And like Hardware I hope the criticism doesn't discourage you. It's meant to be honest and hopefully constructive. If I tried putting up a site myself, it would look absolutely terrible I'm sure. Pointing out the faults in others work is much easier.
Kperv can maintain rationality when it comes to macromedia and managed to express a lot of what i was saying more tactfully and constructively(even talking about flash blinds me with rage). Consider things like flash as cheesecake-not something you should eat at every meal, but in situations where dessert is needed it's fine. i just personally have issues with any company that partners with doubleclick.com and the like.
Thanks all for your input! I get it-flash is a no go. I will remove this and put plain text! It is the only flash I have on the site! So this should be easy enough! You lost me on collapsing the left column? What is doubleclick.com? Is that what I have? I am now getting this craving for cheesecake J Cheers Yani Z
I made you guys a thank you page on my web site. It is devoted to Hardware and CV for there input onto the web site! I used Nikky Blond's pictures because you said it was one of your favorite actresses! Thanks Again guys!!!
i see a lot of very helpful info being given here, i'm also reading most of it and learning from it, because I want to start my own site in the future. So thanks for the helpful info.
And im not sure if anyone else mentioned this, its another way of promoting ur site, make sure you Tag all your media, be sure to put your url on all ur pictures, so that way if someone sends ur pics to someone else, and they want to see more of where it came from, they can easily get the web address and type it in and find ur site. And it also helps so people don't try to steal ur content.
And you should go around on message boards or other places and post your pics with ur url tagged on them, to get the word out.
The site design is a little sloppy, as others have said, but im sure with your dedication to making your site look good for the people, it will come around once you learn more about web designing.
what programs are you using to make your site?
hope any of this helps you, good luck with the site. I'm gonna drop you an email to ask u about a couple other things.
Regardless of how your page/site looks , you can always improve on the code/content ratio. I've yet to see a site that doesn't.
Actually, if you give up on automated "visual" tools [1], and learn lean and mean semantic (alias meaningful) html, then you will not only improve your search engine rank, but also serve smaller pages for identical content.
I know that what I have just said may seem & apear alien, but I just had to say it.
Porno movies, sexy videos, xxx. Adult DVD Talk at your service. 6409 Posts 11/99
Posted - Oct 25 2004 : 12:29PM
Hey Yani, some basics...
Link color should be a different color from your text color
Why have two-phase buttons for your left nav bar? They have the wrong background color - ie you can see the background for each graphic against the background of your page. Use graphical buttons sparingly. Navigation is easiest accomplished thru text. Buttons are ok when you really want someone to click on it (eg an add to cart button on a store's product page.)
Photos are the highlight of your site - so don't highlight the text (currently it is highlighted with a yellow background.) Let the photos speak. Most people don't read on the internet.
People click on images. Make sure your photos/images go somewhere that you want people to go.
Join - why should I join your site? OK, you have 100 photo galleries and a lot of asses. Are the photos high resolution? How much does it cost to join - let the person know upfront.
As far as promoting your site - a good place to start is link exchanges with related sites. But like others have said, don't promote your site until everything is functional.
Porno movies, sexy videos, xxx. Adult DVD Talk at your service. 6409 Posts 11/99
Posted - Oct 26 2004 : 10:58AM
Em - people who go to news sites and such read. people who go to photographers sites and porn sites tend not to read. if you saw the questions i get you'd see how many people just don't read. people are more likely to read captions and fragments then they are paragraphs.
Good advice Agentspits! Em what is code/content ratio?
“Actually, if you give up on automated "visual" tools [1], and learn lean and mean semantic (alias meaningful) html, then you will not only improve your search engine rank, but also serve smaller pages for identical content.”
Why would this improve search engine rank? Smaller pages for identical content?? Thank Em!
