Breaking Into The Adult Webmaster Community
This industry, unlike many others, consists of a fairly close-knit network of people. In business, a phrase that is used often to describe such a network is “the old boys club”. What this essentially means for this industry is that the big players have been around for a long time, since the beginning of online porn, and they all know each other. It also means that this industry is almost like a club and it is fairly hard to break into, especially for a newbie that has not even got his or her feet wet yet. However, while you may not be able to make your way immediately into the upper echelon of the online adult Webmaster club, you may be able to establish a nice little spot for yourself somewhere in the middle of the pack.
If you are new in this industry, then most likely you have either started a position with an adult company or you are a Webmaster looking to make some bucks promoting adult websites. However, it does not really matter what your reason is for being new to the industry, because whatever your business is, you will want to make yourself known. To gain a reputation for yourself (and hopefully a good one), you will need to do the following. You must create a persona for yourself, you will want befriend a respected industry old-timer, and you must prove yourself somehow. If you successfully do all three of these things, then your position amongst the industry “club” will be on it’s way to being secure.
When I say create a persona for yourself, I do not mean that you should make up a fake personality. Too many times, I have seen people come into this industry pretending to be someone they are not in order to get ahead, and it ends up hurting them more than helping. Your first step to creating your persona is to establish an online screen name (or handle). People will use this name to identify you on boards, chat rooms and instant messaging programs, so you will want to ensure that you use the same name for everything. Use a name that is original, but at the same time easy to remember. The other part of your persona will be where you are from and what your business is. For example, let’s say that your online name is FatBoy. Your persona would be FatBoy from London, England, who shoots his own fetish content and also runs the content site FatBoyContent.com. When you register with the boards, you should make sure that you keep your persona and signature the same, or similar, for all of them. You will want to promote your persona (as well as your product or service) by becoming a regular on as many of the major message boards as possible. Stop lurking and contribute to discussions and ask questions to make yourself known.
Your next step to gaining some recognition is to try and befriend a well-respected industry member, or at least someone who has been around for a while and use them as your mentor. Go to the boards, and don’t be afraid to announce that you are a newbie looking for a little help. People are generally helpful to those who are admitted newbies. Once you find a mentor, ask them for advice on how to make yourself known, and if possible, to introduce you to some of their contacts. When I was a lowly newbie in the biz, I had the best mentor. She pretty much explained how the Webmaster network operates, who was who, which of them I needed to know, how to draw some attention to myself (and the content I was marketing), and most importantly she taught me how to lose my newbie status fast.
You may be able to make yourself known easily enough, but you will not gain the respect that is needed to stay within the Webmaster circle. One negative incident or episode and your name will be dragged through the mud and you will be out of the group and out on your ass. I have seen this type of situation happen countless times in this industry. All you have to do is rip off or piss off the wrong person, and that’s it, you are finito. To maintain your position within the industry, you have to prove yourself again and again. You can do this by conducting all of your business in a professional manner. You will want to treat all of your customers like they are the most important people in the world. You will want to be fair in all of your transactions and sales. Finally, you will want to try to establish mutually beneficial partnerships that will allow you more interaction with the Webmaster community.
Gaining respect and recognition in this industry is not something that will happen overnight. It will actually be a fairly slow process. If you follow the suggestions in this article, you will ensure that you are taking the steps necessary to break into the Webmaster network in the shortest amount of time. I think it took me at least a year when I was first starting to figure out the structure of this network. One last thing to remember is that putting a lot of effort into a solid reputation will be very rewarding in the long run.
Reader Comments: (1 posts)
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December 25th, 2008 at 7:40am EST Rating:  |
