Hello bhw family, I know there are a lot of newbie adult site webmasters and marketers on this forum, and a whole lot of members looking to dabble in the adult niche.
As an SEO practitioner for over 12 years who has been working in the adult niche and operating adult tube sites for the last decade, I would like to share a method, a "blueprint" if you will, for monetizing (and making serious money from) adult content sites.
You have doubtedly heard about one or two of the components, or even perhaps all of them but not in this context. Some methods on this list might leave you kicking yourself for not thinking about it sooner.
Before I begin, here are some examples of monetization strategies that will NOT be mentioned in this post:
This strategy does NOT involve:
- charging your users
- pop-ups/unders, push ads or anything that harms the user experience
- relying solely upon cpm/cpc advertising (it's not profitable enough for smaller or newer sites and not a smart business model for larger heavy traffic sites)
- being entirely dependent one method of monetization
- Spamming
- "Set it and forget it" mentality
- "rinse and repeat" system of operation
- generic, "casting a wide net" tube sites (eg PH / xvideos clone)
- piggybacking on another sites success by using similar domain names or misspellings
This strategy DOES however involve the following:
- a sensible amount of non-invasive ads
- diversifying your income stream
- creativity and "thinking outside of the box"
- the ability to hustle
- some online "people skills"
- A decent amount of work
- a specific "niche"
- knowing your niche audience and what will and won't appeal to them
These note, throughout the duration of this process you should be building links regularly, and do collect emails with opt-in for a potential mailing list - you never know you may need it or want to sell this info later and it's your hard won data
That said, without further ado, here is my method:
1) pick your niche - it's not even a topic of debate anymore, at this point it is common knowledge and overwhelmingly obvious that in order to stand a chance at being profitable in adult, unless you have tens of thousands of dollars for initial promotion and marketing on hand, you have to cater to one specific niche and focus on that.
Arguably almost as important as keyword research to determine potential traffic volumes, especially with this strategy, is picking a niche that you enjoy, or at minimum don't dislike or wont think of as a chore - as you will be much more effective at promoting growing and understanding your user base this way, which ultimately translates to more $$$
2) pick a domain that is not an EMD but that has your main keyword (or portion of a primary long tail keyword) in it.
This is what the Algo favors, you will get higher ctr this way as people searching for your keyword will recognize your site as being about that topic, and find it easier to remember for return visits
3) Choose a hosting provider. There are a lot of hosting providers who do not allow adult content at all, and even more that do not give a s*** about adult content but also provide really terrible service.
My "No Fly List" (DO NOT USE THESE) are:
- Hawkhost (extremely unprofessional)
- Stablehost (not so stable and try to get force upsells)
- 247-host (terrible up time terrible experience)
- Host.io (really awful support)
- GoDaddy (my first ever webhost as a noob - terrible mistake)
- All EIG hosting companies (a quick g search will tell you why)
- 1 & 1 (or whatever name they're going by this week) really shady Billing practices
Providers that I've never used yet but have only heard terrible things about:
- Vice Temple
- Abelohost
- Alex Host
Hosts i have been using for multiple years and it had only positive experiences with:
-. bihira.com
- hostinger.com
Cheap and have not had any issues so far on a small site:
- Hostkoala
4) pick a cms / platform, anyone that makes sense to you, personally I've been using wp-script ever since it was free and in beta, I now have an unlimited license to all present and future themes and extensions) populate your site with high quality, on topic videos, it does not matter whether you host them yourself or embed them (I still to
this day use embedded videos - it shifts the liability off of you for content, he's much more scalable, you don't have to pay for content, you don't have to keep records, your site will run faster, and you will save a s*** ton on hosting).
Rename the tiles for each video, and add a unique description that has one keyword per video within the first five words of each description
5) Get Social! For promoting adult, my go-to's are:
- Twitter (even with elon's nonsense I'm still getting good traffic from them)
- Reddit - there are a disproportionate amount of douchebags and trolls on reddit, but it can also be a powerful traffic source if you know how to use it rightly and are selective and methodical about what you post and in which subreddit, and don't only post links to your site. As early on as possible, I highly recommend starting your own niche specific subreddit or two and growing it over time with real (as in not bought from an smm panel) users and posting links to videos on your site within your sub at least a few times a week minimum and one to two times a day maximum
- additional adult and adult friendly social networks that have substantial audiences especially within your niche.
Pre-Dec 2018 , Tumblr merelaxedópconsiderably and allow most adult post, curious out on whether they will spring back full force though.
Other examples of adult social that can bring you serious traffic include motherless, fetlife, myvidster, mewe, bdsmlr, newtumbl, adultnode etc. (The one (s) with the highest amount of people posting or searching for your niche, you will find that only by investigating the platforms manually first)
7) Upload Method! But probably not where you think...
This is not one of those message where somebody shares some useless platitude about uploading to ph and XVideos or any of their sister sites,. I mean down the road when you have time that's always a novelty you can add to the mix, but it's not going to get you that much traffic right away.
The way I see it, you get as much easier to spot a koi fish in a medium sized pond then it is to spot a blue whale in the Pacific Ocean.
Translation: you will get infinitely more exposure and visability, and therefore traffic, from medium traffic tube sites that are not overly saturated then you ever will on the "spammed to death" conglomerates who collectively monopolize nearly as much the adult market as G does the search market.
Two other things to consider:
a) why give the big guys even more content?
b) with medium size tubes, you are also way more likely to get d 0 follow backlinks, and be able to link more often without fear of ban
A few examples of medium sized tubes to upload to:
- motherless.com
- fetlife.com
- myvidster.com
- eporner.com
- thisvid.com
- homemoviestube.com
There are literally hundreds out there, I recommend finding some that cater to your niche or a complimentary niche for the most traffic and greatest search impact.
8) CPM Banner Ad Networks
by now, you should have a fully functional site with hundreds of videos minimum, and you're probably getting a little bit of organic traffic, and definitely some social and referral traffic from your efforts.. it's time to commence monetization...
First course of action: add units that are not intrusive. I tend to stick with natuve ads and banners.
For this, I will at any given time be using banners or native, 2 sizes of placements per page from 2 to 3 different networks.
By this I mean:
- two banners from ad Network 1
- two banners from ad network 2
- and (maybe) two from ad network 3
For banner ads, I highly recommend sticking with the 720x90 along with either 300x250 or 160 or 180/600..
I strongly recommend never using pops of any kind, interstitials, or ads that pretend to be IMs. They ruin your user experience, keep people from returning, cut visits short and ultimately ultimately cost you way more in Lost revenue then the ad units will ever pull in.
Some decent ad networks for this purpose that I would recommend for these purposes are:
- Adsterra (highest paying by far for banners, but you have to watch the movie to make sure they're not doing something shifty like inserting top code in your banner ads, but again they do pay the most and on time never had a problem getting paid for them)
- Exoclick (although the earnings were low in terms of CPM, are there high standards for advertisers into much more visually appealing ads that are not likely to scam or piss off your visitors)
- A-Ads (old but good had network with a very low payment threshold and decent CPM crypto payments)
9) Webcam affiliate revenue
For this component, I use the chaturbate affiliate program, and I've recently also thrown the cam4 affiliate program into the mix as well. You can also use streammate, Cherry TV, strip chat, bongacams, livejasmine or literally any webcam site of your choice - provided they meet the following criteria:
A) They offer an affiliate program (duh)
B) lifetime revshare program of at least 20% minimum
C) they have a white label option in their affiliate toolkit that looks decent
D) you can select categories/hashtags etc or some sort of filter to display webcam models who would best fit your niche audience
My method: create a white label for each site, and create a header/nav bar and menu tab labeled "Chat" "Live Chat" etc and link that to your whitelabel.
If there is an option to create a link to a specific webcam model such as the option in Chaturbate, every once in awhile, making this a low percentage of your tweets, browsing through the directory on ChatterBait and find a webcam model who is online ATM and fits your demographics Target, create link to that room and post a quick tweet describing it.
Always choose the lifetime revshare program, never the $1 sign ups or even $4 sign ups... I still have people who signed up through my link 8 years ago that I'm still making money on.
10) choose an affiliate offer, I recommend crackrevenue search through the offerings pick one or two that you think would be a good fit, if they work keep until they don't anymore, if it's not taking off or no bites in a few days time maybe swap it out for another offer until you find something that resonates with your audience.
Don't be excessive with the promotion of it, a 300x250, a skyscraper ad, etc will be plenty.
11) Create a Blog Section. Add a good handful of blog posts up front, about four or five to start and then minimum of one, ideally two to three blog posts per week minimum 500 words, original, on topic and not gibberish.
After a week or two, you can start courting potential guest post buyers. Keep your prices realistic - not too cheap because then they will think your site is crap, but definitely not too expensive either... Do not advertise guest posts on your site itself at all ever ever ever ever, and do not post the name of the site or url you are trying to sell a backlink from in an ad or posting that you post or a comment or a reply to the same. That will get you deindex quicker than s***. Also, be wary of people who demand to know your specific domain urls prior to purchase, there are legitimately assholes out there who will pose as potential buyers in order to get the information they need to report you, their competition, to Google spam team.
That said, have editorial standards with people you sell links to, minimum word count, on topic or complimentary niche, and don't just accept any kind of post from anybody make sure that it's not something that's going to offend or disgust your viewers and that it is not plagiarized for a steaming pile of gibberish s***... Those will hurt your site. Apart from that, this actually expands your short and long tail keywords and helps you rank more pages in your site and gain more traffic while making money off of it, and the higher you boost your third party metrics, increase traffic, and the more RDS you get, the more attractive your site becomes to potential link buyers and therefore the more you can charge.
12) resource page links
Create a "resource page" and start off with a few, maybe three or four, sites that you believe your users would find enjoyable that are not your direct competitors. Do this when your DR gets into the mid to high 20s.
You can then sell resource page links with a small blurb describing the site.
The difference between blog post and resource page links:
blog posts are longer and you want to make sure they do not sound salesy or self promotional, as they are expected by the search engines to be more informational. Making these read like an advertorial could get you penalized.
Resource page links have a short ~100 word blurb about specifically the site mentioned, and is inherently self-promotional and that is to be expected on that type of page, so advertorial style
Language will not get you in any trouble.
13) direct sale banner ads
set aside a banner slot or two, either towards the head, the sidebar or the center of the page for direct sale Banner ad space. I typically make it simple by charging a flat rate monthly as opposed to purchasing extra tracking and adserve Scripts or having anything else to look after at all.
14) rent out a header/navigation bar / menu link
One or two of these will boost your revenue and not hurt your site at all, but don't sell entirely too many of them on any one site otherwise they lose they're effectiveness entirely and start to appear suspicious.
You can choose to rent them out monthly or yearly, in the beginning he would probably be smarter to do a lower yearly rate, within a couple years you will be able to charge per month what you were charging per year in the beginning.
15) forum sticky posts
Once you have developed regular consistent stable traffic, a couple thousand or more, you can start looking into adding a forum in order to foster a community among your users / visitors. Simply install the forum software of your choice onto a subdirectory of your domain in the add-on domain section of your cpanel or direct admin. Encourage participation, make it free and even ad free at first
Try to keep it as accessible as possible to users while trying to mitigate the inevitable spammers and once you build up to a couple thousand users, you can start selling forum sticky posts as well.
Hope this helps some of you as a road map to making decent money off of completely free adult tube sites comprised entirely of embedded videos in a way that does not at all compromise user experience yet lines your pockets nicely
As an SEO practitioner for over 12 years who has been working in the adult niche and operating adult tube sites for the last decade, I would like to share a method, a "blueprint" if you will, for monetizing (and making serious money from) adult content sites.
You have doubtedly heard about one or two of the components, or even perhaps all of them but not in this context. Some methods on this list might leave you kicking yourself for not thinking about it sooner.
Before I begin, here are some examples of monetization strategies that will NOT be mentioned in this post:
This strategy does NOT involve:
- charging your users
- pop-ups/unders, push ads or anything that harms the user experience
- relying solely upon cpm/cpc advertising (it's not profitable enough for smaller or newer sites and not a smart business model for larger heavy traffic sites)
- being entirely dependent one method of monetization
- Spamming
- "Set it and forget it" mentality
- "rinse and repeat" system of operation
- generic, "casting a wide net" tube sites (eg PH / xvideos clone)
- piggybacking on another sites success by using similar domain names or misspellings
This strategy DOES however involve the following:
- a sensible amount of non-invasive ads
- diversifying your income stream
- creativity and "thinking outside of the box"
- the ability to hustle
- some online "people skills"
- A decent amount of work
- a specific "niche"
- knowing your niche audience and what will and won't appeal to them
These note, throughout the duration of this process you should be building links regularly, and do collect emails with opt-in for a potential mailing list - you never know you may need it or want to sell this info later and it's your hard won data
That said, without further ado, here is my method:
1) pick your niche - it's not even a topic of debate anymore, at this point it is common knowledge and overwhelmingly obvious that in order to stand a chance at being profitable in adult, unless you have tens of thousands of dollars for initial promotion and marketing on hand, you have to cater to one specific niche and focus on that.
Arguably almost as important as keyword research to determine potential traffic volumes, especially with this strategy, is picking a niche that you enjoy, or at minimum don't dislike or wont think of as a chore - as you will be much more effective at promoting growing and understanding your user base this way, which ultimately translates to more $$$
2) pick a domain that is not an EMD but that has your main keyword (or portion of a primary long tail keyword) in it.
This is what the Algo favors, you will get higher ctr this way as people searching for your keyword will recognize your site as being about that topic, and find it easier to remember for return visits
3) Choose a hosting provider. There are a lot of hosting providers who do not allow adult content at all, and even more that do not give a s*** about adult content but also provide really terrible service.
My "No Fly List" (DO NOT USE THESE) are:
- Hawkhost (extremely unprofessional)
- Stablehost (not so stable and try to get force upsells)
- 247-host (terrible up time terrible experience)
- Host.io (really awful support)
- GoDaddy (my first ever webhost as a noob - terrible mistake)
- All EIG hosting companies (a quick g search will tell you why)
- 1 & 1 (or whatever name they're going by this week) really shady Billing practices
Providers that I've never used yet but have only heard terrible things about:
- Vice Temple
- Abelohost
- Alex Host
Hosts i have been using for multiple years and it had only positive experiences with:
-. bihira.com
- hostinger.com
Cheap and have not had any issues so far on a small site:
- Hostkoala
4) pick a cms / platform, anyone that makes sense to you, personally I've been using wp-script ever since it was free and in beta, I now have an unlimited license to all present and future themes and extensions) populate your site with high quality, on topic videos, it does not matter whether you host them yourself or embed them (I still to
this day use embedded videos - it shifts the liability off of you for content, he's much more scalable, you don't have to pay for content, you don't have to keep records, your site will run faster, and you will save a s*** ton on hosting).
Rename the tiles for each video, and add a unique description that has one keyword per video within the first five words of each description
5) Get Social! For promoting adult, my go-to's are:
- Twitter (even with elon's nonsense I'm still getting good traffic from them)
- Reddit - there are a disproportionate amount of douchebags and trolls on reddit, but it can also be a powerful traffic source if you know how to use it rightly and are selective and methodical about what you post and in which subreddit, and don't only post links to your site. As early on as possible, I highly recommend starting your own niche specific subreddit or two and growing it over time with real (as in not bought from an smm panel) users and posting links to videos on your site within your sub at least a few times a week minimum and one to two times a day maximum
- additional adult and adult friendly social networks that have substantial audiences especially within your niche.
Pre-Dec 2018 , Tumblr merelaxedópconsiderably and allow most adult post, curious out on whether they will spring back full force though.
Other examples of adult social that can bring you serious traffic include motherless, fetlife, myvidster, mewe, bdsmlr, newtumbl, adultnode etc. (The one (s) with the highest amount of people posting or searching for your niche, you will find that only by investigating the platforms manually first)
7) Upload Method! But probably not where you think...
This is not one of those message where somebody shares some useless platitude about uploading to ph and XVideos or any of their sister sites,. I mean down the road when you have time that's always a novelty you can add to the mix, but it's not going to get you that much traffic right away.
The way I see it, you get as much easier to spot a koi fish in a medium sized pond then it is to spot a blue whale in the Pacific Ocean.
Translation: you will get infinitely more exposure and visability, and therefore traffic, from medium traffic tube sites that are not overly saturated then you ever will on the "spammed to death" conglomerates who collectively monopolize nearly as much the adult market as G does the search market.
Two other things to consider:
a) why give the big guys even more content?
b) with medium size tubes, you are also way more likely to get d 0 follow backlinks, and be able to link more often without fear of ban
A few examples of medium sized tubes to upload to:
- motherless.com
- fetlife.com
- myvidster.com
- eporner.com
- thisvid.com
- homemoviestube.com
There are literally hundreds out there, I recommend finding some that cater to your niche or a complimentary niche for the most traffic and greatest search impact.
8) CPM Banner Ad Networks
by now, you should have a fully functional site with hundreds of videos minimum, and you're probably getting a little bit of organic traffic, and definitely some social and referral traffic from your efforts.. it's time to commence monetization...
First course of action: add units that are not intrusive. I tend to stick with natuve ads and banners.
For this, I will at any given time be using banners or native, 2 sizes of placements per page from 2 to 3 different networks.
By this I mean:
- two banners from ad Network 1
- two banners from ad network 2
- and (maybe) two from ad network 3
For banner ads, I highly recommend sticking with the 720x90 along with either 300x250 or 160 or 180/600..
I strongly recommend never using pops of any kind, interstitials, or ads that pretend to be IMs. They ruin your user experience, keep people from returning, cut visits short and ultimately ultimately cost you way more in Lost revenue then the ad units will ever pull in.
Some decent ad networks for this purpose that I would recommend for these purposes are:
- Adsterra (highest paying by far for banners, but you have to watch the movie to make sure they're not doing something shifty like inserting top code in your banner ads, but again they do pay the most and on time never had a problem getting paid for them)
- Exoclick (although the earnings were low in terms of CPM, are there high standards for advertisers into much more visually appealing ads that are not likely to scam or piss off your visitors)
- A-Ads (old but good had network with a very low payment threshold and decent CPM crypto payments)
9) Webcam affiliate revenue
For this component, I use the chaturbate affiliate program, and I've recently also thrown the cam4 affiliate program into the mix as well. You can also use streammate, Cherry TV, strip chat, bongacams, livejasmine or literally any webcam site of your choice - provided they meet the following criteria:
A) They offer an affiliate program (duh)
B) lifetime revshare program of at least 20% minimum
C) they have a white label option in their affiliate toolkit that looks decent
D) you can select categories/hashtags etc or some sort of filter to display webcam models who would best fit your niche audience
My method: create a white label for each site, and create a header/nav bar and menu tab labeled "Chat" "Live Chat" etc and link that to your whitelabel.
If there is an option to create a link to a specific webcam model such as the option in Chaturbate, every once in awhile, making this a low percentage of your tweets, browsing through the directory on ChatterBait and find a webcam model who is online ATM and fits your demographics Target, create link to that room and post a quick tweet describing it.
Always choose the lifetime revshare program, never the $1 sign ups or even $4 sign ups... I still have people who signed up through my link 8 years ago that I'm still making money on.
10) choose an affiliate offer, I recommend crackrevenue search through the offerings pick one or two that you think would be a good fit, if they work keep until they don't anymore, if it's not taking off or no bites in a few days time maybe swap it out for another offer until you find something that resonates with your audience.
Don't be excessive with the promotion of it, a 300x250, a skyscraper ad, etc will be plenty.
11) Create a Blog Section. Add a good handful of blog posts up front, about four or five to start and then minimum of one, ideally two to three blog posts per week minimum 500 words, original, on topic and not gibberish.
After a week or two, you can start courting potential guest post buyers. Keep your prices realistic - not too cheap because then they will think your site is crap, but definitely not too expensive either... Do not advertise guest posts on your site itself at all ever ever ever ever, and do not post the name of the site or url you are trying to sell a backlink from in an ad or posting that you post or a comment or a reply to the same. That will get you deindex quicker than s***. Also, be wary of people who demand to know your specific domain urls prior to purchase, there are legitimately assholes out there who will pose as potential buyers in order to get the information they need to report you, their competition, to Google spam team.
That said, have editorial standards with people you sell links to, minimum word count, on topic or complimentary niche, and don't just accept any kind of post from anybody make sure that it's not something that's going to offend or disgust your viewers and that it is not plagiarized for a steaming pile of gibberish s***... Those will hurt your site. Apart from that, this actually expands your short and long tail keywords and helps you rank more pages in your site and gain more traffic while making money off of it, and the higher you boost your third party metrics, increase traffic, and the more RDS you get, the more attractive your site becomes to potential link buyers and therefore the more you can charge.
12) resource page links
Create a "resource page" and start off with a few, maybe three or four, sites that you believe your users would find enjoyable that are not your direct competitors. Do this when your DR gets into the mid to high 20s.
You can then sell resource page links with a small blurb describing the site.
The difference between blog post and resource page links:
blog posts are longer and you want to make sure they do not sound salesy or self promotional, as they are expected by the search engines to be more informational. Making these read like an advertorial could get you penalized.
Resource page links have a short ~100 word blurb about specifically the site mentioned, and is inherently self-promotional and that is to be expected on that type of page, so advertorial style
Language will not get you in any trouble.
13) direct sale banner ads
set aside a banner slot or two, either towards the head, the sidebar or the center of the page for direct sale Banner ad space. I typically make it simple by charging a flat rate monthly as opposed to purchasing extra tracking and adserve Scripts or having anything else to look after at all.
14) rent out a header/navigation bar / menu link
One or two of these will boost your revenue and not hurt your site at all, but don't sell entirely too many of them on any one site otherwise they lose they're effectiveness entirely and start to appear suspicious.
You can choose to rent them out monthly or yearly, in the beginning he would probably be smarter to do a lower yearly rate, within a couple years you will be able to charge per month what you were charging per year in the beginning.
15) forum sticky posts
Once you have developed regular consistent stable traffic, a couple thousand or more, you can start looking into adding a forum in order to foster a community among your users / visitors. Simply install the forum software of your choice onto a subdirectory of your domain in the add-on domain section of your cpanel or direct admin. Encourage participation, make it free and even ad free at first
Try to keep it as accessible as possible to users while trying to mitigate the inevitable spammers and once you build up to a couple thousand users, you can start selling forum sticky posts as well.
Hope this helps some of you as a road map to making decent money off of completely free adult tube sites comprised entirely of embedded videos in a way that does not at all compromise user experience yet lines your pockets nicely
