Building Trust with Your Surfers
When you are thinking about long term site growth, there is one word that you strive above all others: bookmarkers. Bookmarkers form the cornerstone of a site's traffic, and tends to be productive both in clicks (for TGPS and babeblogs) and sales. However, it can be difficult to start building up bookmarkers from nothing. There is one thing that will always serve you right in attempting to build up bookmarkers, and that's an issue of trust.
Trust comes into play because there are millions and millions of websites out there - so why would someone want to read yours religiously? First we'll have to look at the reasons that people bookmark sites. The first is that you have plenty of interesting things to look at. This could be anything from interesting blog posts to flash videos to gallery posts. Over time, many people will bookmark sites that they feel aligns the closest with their particular porn preferences. Bookmarks can be very fickle, likely to drop you for the latest and greatest thing if they get bored.
There is one surefire way to get plenty of bookmarkers your way, though. Be honest. In an age of prechecked crosssales, browser hijacks, and other types of nastiness being straight up with your surfers will take them by surprise. Most people associate being honest about what they're promoting with review sites. Although review sites do make the most sense for using this type of format, there are several ways to work it into nearly any type of site.
First off, although you can be brutally honest about what you're promoting, a more balanced approach is most likely for the best. The main thing is to make sure that you are making sure your surfers aren't getting mislead, because they can get that from tons of other sites. What they're looking for is a fresh approach that they can trust.
To start off with, you should probably know something about the sites you are promoting. If you can, get member's access so you can speak about it as an authority that has actually been inside of the site you are promoting. If you can't, try seeing if any of the big review sites (The Best Porn, Planet Climax, Rabbit's Reviews) happen to have a review up. What you're mostly looking for is how good the content is, whether it's properly focused towards the niche, how much content they have, how easy the site is to use, and how often they update. If you're dealing with revshare sponsors, you are going to want to know how often it updates anyway.
Now that you are armed with the facts, you can use them to your advantage. You don't have to be a complete ass to get your point across, but you don't want your surfers going into, say, a navigational nightmare that might have them blaming you for the site's failing. So you might want to tell them something along the lines that although the navigation sucks, the content makes it worth it. You can be negative without going over the top. This will help you to build trust with your bookmarkers, as you did warn them - you just put a positive with a negative so they canceled each other out. This will also stop your sponsors from wanting to kill you.
The fact that you are even a little big negative will help your bookmarkers to trust you.. They will come back again and again because they know they can get it straight from you, and then make their own decision whether it's worth it. It's the basis that the majority of review sites are built on, and the ratios those sites get are absolutely amazing. It just might have something to do with giving the surfers a breath of fresh air. At the very least, give it a try - it's only going to help.
