Starting A Paysite Review Site
Paysite review sites are all the rage right now. They are popping up at a startling rate and I have been told by a few different affiliate programs that they are getting requests for review passwords almost every day. This is an area I have some good experience in so I will use this article to give you some ideas on how to make a good review site that makes you some nice money.
HAVE A GOOD FLOOR PLAN
Just like building a house, the floor plan on a big site is crucial. You want the site to be easy to navigate for your visitors and you want it to be easy for search engines to spider and index. For starters you will want to have clear cut categories. Don’t just lump all your reviews together. Instead make separate categories and pages for each niche you plan to review. This allows the visitors to jump right to categories they are interested in and skip the ones they don’t care about and it allows you to focus your keywords for search engines in each category.
Don’t use JavaScript, Flash or Active X when designing the site. It may make it look really nice, but search engines hate it and will have trouble indexing your site. Also some browsers have trouble with this stuff and you don’t want to have your visitors unable to view your site. Just keep it simple.
GET PASSWORDS
Most sponsors are use to getting review password requests. They will typically give you either a generic review password or they may give you a unique password that has a limited life. If the passwords they give you will expire after a period of time you will want to keep track of that so you don’t have to ask again.
To get passwords simply signup for a program and contact your affiliate manager. Tell them about your site and give them the url or a couple of urls to reviews you have done already and request a review password. I have heard of a couple of programs that don’t give out passwords. If they don’t give you a password, don’t write the review anyway. For whatever reason the program doesn’t want its sites reviewed, they will not be happy with you if you do it anyway.
WRITE GOOD REVIEWS
There are basically three different types of reviews you can have on a review site.
The quick review basically hits the main points of the site. It tells the visitor the basics like how many movies and pics a site has, when it updates things like that. These are often done in bullet points and are meant to be brief overviews of the site that often are around 100 words long.
The medium review typically runs between 400-600 words in length and covers the site with more detail. You will want cover the basics and tell the visitor about the amount of content the site offers and how it is delivered (can it be downloaded or is it online stream only). I also cover the quality of the content both from a technical aspect and an actual context aspect. Tell them how the movies and pics look, do they hold up if you enlarge them full screen size? How fast do they load? Things like that. Also tell them what the content is like. Does it deliver on its promises? If the tour promised teens do they actually look like teens or are they a bunch of 28 year olds in pigtails. Things like that. The medium length review also should briefly cover any bonus content you get with the site and have a closing that wraps up your thoughts on the site.
The detailed review usually runs 800-1000 words in length and covers everything the medium length review does and then some. Use more detail when talking about the content and the layout of the site. Give your thoughts on how the site is put together. You can also use this extra space to talk more about the bonus content and you can even compare this site to others in its niche. I personally wouldn’t want to make the reviews longer than 1000 words because porn is an impulse buy not major investment. The visitor sees something they like and they buy a membership. They, typically, aren’t in the mood to read an entire essay about the site – they just want to know if it is good or not and if it is worth spending money on.
Don’t be afraid to be critical of the site. The visitors are at your review site for your honest review of the site. They expect you to be impartial and to be honest with them about the quality of the site. There is nothing wrong with focusing on the positive aspects of a site, but if every review is glowing then your site will lack creditability. If you like something, say so. If you don’t like something say so.
Give your reviews a voice. If you are going to write all of your reviews yourself you want to give them a “voice” which is to say they should all have similar flavor to them. Maybe you want your reviews to be very technical or maybe you want them to be funny. It will help you gain visitors and sales if your reviews tend to have similar voice. Once they get used to your style and trust you they will be more willing to take your word on sites and buy memberships.
HIRING WRITERS
Running a review site can be a big undertaking. There are 1000’s of paysites out there so your review site can grow very quickly if you want it to. You may decide you need help and you want to hire people to write reviews for you. This is becoming a pretty common thing. Here are some tips for making this as painless as possible.
You can post on the more popular webmaster boards that you are looking for review writers and you will get a lot of responses from people looking for work and people recommending others. You may get flooded with responses so be prepared to handle the rush.
Ask for samples. If they have written reviews for other sites ask to see the samples. This will let you know if their style meshes with what you want to do on your site. If they don’t have any samples ask them to write you a sample review. Give them a site and let them do their thing. If they are unwilling to take the time to do this, I would steer clear of them.
Ask about turn around time. Some writers may work fast and get the reviews to you in a hurry, others, if left to their own devices, may take forever. Ask them how long it will take and if they are comfortable working with a deadline.
Write up clear guidelines for what you expect in a review. Tell them how long it should be, what they need to cover and how you want it formatted and sent back to you. You don’t want to spend a lot of time fixing screwed up reviews. Having a couple of good sample reviews for them to see will really help you out here.
Make sure the amount you are paying is clear up front. You don’t want to hire someone and have them do 20 reviews then find out they thought you were paying $20 per review when you are actually paying $15. Paying when the work is done is fine. I would suggest they do a couple reviews then you approve them and pay them for the reviews so everyone is comfortable. Then you can set up “batches”. For example you can pay them for every 10 reviews they finish. It doesn’t really matter how you decide to do it as long as you make sure both sides understand the pay schedule.
PROMOTE IT
There are many ways to promote your review site. The most obvious way is to use it like it’s your sponsor. Build TGP galleries and free sites and link to your review site from them just like you would link to a sponsor’s site. Of course you will want to use your own content for this, sponsors won’t be happy if you are using their content to promote your review site.
Link from you blogs and galleries. If you run blogs put a link to your review site on them. If you submit TGP galleries and don’t build galleries just to promote the review site you can put a recip on each page that links to the review site.
Use search engines. Search engines love review sites because they are often updated regularly and have unique content on them. Make sure to use keywords in your different niche categories and optimize every page for the search engines. As you start linking to your review site you will get indexed by the search engines. Many review sites focus heavily on getting search engine traffic. With a lot of different categories you can compete in a lot of different keyword arenas. Check out some of my other articles at the bottom of this page for more search engine information.
You can use just about any promotional technique you would use on any other porn site to promote your review site. Be creative.
Updating your site regularly will help with your search engine rankings and it will help to build up return visitors.
The cool thing about a review site is that once the visitor is there they know they are reading reviews of sites that they have to pay to enter. They will already be in the mindset of paying for porn and whenever they click a link to go to a site you have reviewed you are sending them right to the paysite itself and not to more free content so you will probably see a pretty nigh conversion ratio off of paysite review traffic.
Done correctly a paysite review site can be a very successful venture. It can be labor intense to get off the ground, but if you give it a voice, stick to it and think outside the box you can make a site that adds nicely to your bottom line
Other articles of interest:
Designing search engine friendly sites
Tips to improve your Google ranking
Reader Comments: (1 posts)
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March 4th, 2013 at 7:07am EST Rating:  |
