Just another Newbie....
Good evening.. I am a total newbie to the adult web-master scene and have a few quick questions I was hoping to ask without offending anyone with my complete ignorance. I know some answers may be opinion, but I'd really appreciate just that so we can get off to a good start. I hope to be an active member of the community here and even one day be able to offer others solid advice as I learn the navigate the murky waters of the adult ecommerce industry. No small task indeed it seems, there is no Beginners Manual (or I missed that!).
To begin, we'll be offering completely original content (photo, video and video on demand)...
1. MERCHANT - What merchant can you recommend for CC processing for our needs (we need one for both membership credit card processing, video on-demand, as well as a separate store for purchases). CCBill seems to be king, but do they offer a gateway for shopping carts as well or just membership processing? And are PayPal, Google Checkout, Checkout by Amazon completely out of the question? We signed up for a PayPal account but got systematically denied (no surprise) for PayPal Pro for our store which will sell new and used fetish clothing articles (stocking, nylons, etc.). They then put our account on hold until we got rid of the used clothing which I guess violates their terms. But I protested saying we were not going to use them for payment processing, we just wanted a frigging PayPal account in the company name to buy inventory from eBay, etc... but no go so far and our account is still suspended.
2. QUICKBOOKS INTEGRATION - In reference to above does anyone have any luck with any merchant gateways that interface with Quickbooks one way or another (direct connection or export>import flat file? Looking to avoid hand keys each membership fee transaction... our shopping cart software supports Quickbooks data exchange, but I can't seem to find any membership software that does, thus I was hoping to at least find an Adult credit card processor that did.
3. SECURITY - We plan to use Strongbox security system.. any comments either way or competitor we should look at? And how about membership Htpasswd Generators? There seems to be no shortage of freeware/shareware (Warden, AQL, HTAccessible, etc.) but does they cut it, or is there an industry standard commercial solution we should be looking at?
4. VIDEO - We are going to offer Pay-Per view Video in addition to photo set membership. Can I get recommendations for what software to go with for the whole enchilada? We have video production and editing fully in house (Final Cut, etc.) but what about for the front end and back end management? Right now I have looked closely at Pay-Per-View Chat from Camscripts but is this robust enough? I like the Flash/hosted Flash Media Sever model, but am open to any suggestions. I just would rather lay out the money now than go though a painful upgrade later.
5. MARKETING - Am I correct in that Google Adwords will now take adult ads? I reviewed their Terms and even created a 'test' ad and it looks like it got approved. We are going to be a 'soft-porn' site at worst, and a foot, shoe, nylon, hose fetish site at best with 'suggestive' content but no full nudity. What about advertising (or even a presence) on other social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace)? We have successfully created accounts and uploaded photos that have not yet seemed to bother anyone, but is there any where I can go to learn more about what avenue adult marketers can safety take and not waste time if ultimately we are just going to be shut down? We now have a pro account at Flickr, but what others are worth investigating? And the Million dollar question.... If you had a very small monthly ad budget of $5000, how would you spend it to get the best return (membership sign-ups?), etc.
I wanted to thank anyone in advance for your opinion and advice on any of the above. And if there are other areas/places to go for self-help, I have no problem investing my time in that... please do not hesitate to let me know what rocks to be looking under!
Billy
|