Ok, I've seen enough bullshit answers to questions today that I feel that I owe you all some decent info. I'm going to target this at newbies cause they are the ones who need the most help around here. So here's the plan...
First think about whether you are serious about working in the adult internet industry, if you aren't you are just wasting your time and ours. Things to consider: How family will react... i.e. you don't want to end up like spacedog where your wife leaves you because you spend 10 hours a day online working with porn.. Also consider whether or not you care if people know you run porn sites. All my friends know I do and of course it sucks when it seems to come out more often than you like, especially around chicks you just meet, but that's the adult webmaster life, so deal with it or go work somewhere else. Alternatively you can try to live the secret life of and adult webmaster and tell everyone you are a web designer, internet marketer, etc... but once people do find out they are going to lose trust in you because they'll think you're a closet perv. So I suggest not keeping your skeleton in the closet to long.
Second, for those who decide this is something that you want to do you need to decide how much money you want to invest in your project. One thing I suggest you pull for before anything else is <a href="http://www.web-hosting-adult.com" target="_blank">hosting</a>, and preferably dedicated. You might think a couple hundred bucks a month is pretty steep for just starting, but if you are serious, this is the best step.. and if you have half a brain.. you'll be covering your hosting bill within the first or second month.
Third is content, there is enough free content offered by <a href="http://www.webmastervault.com/revenue.shtml" target="_blank">affiliates</a> as to where you don't need to make this a main concern at first.
Fourth start by working the <a href="http://www.webmastervault.com/tgp.shtml" target="_blank">TGP</a> circuit. Gallery creation and submission isn't the most exhilarating of tasks but it will teach you the basics of the biz.. you'll start getting an idea of how things work in the industry from the ground up. Also you may want to start up your own TGP on the side. I know there are a million and one TGPs out there, and your TGP may never reach more than a few thousand hits a day... but it doesn't matter, it's a stepping stone to bigger and better things. It will give you a chance to play around with some steady traffic and learn to maximize it's earning potential. Also if you start to get regular gallery submissions and check them daily... it will give you an appreciation for how many fucks out there are trying to cheat the system.
Fifth, work the niches! Niche traffic is going to give you more buck for you buck. Higher conversions with less traffic means less bandwidth bill. The more obscure the niche the better it will convert.
Sixth, <a href="http://www.webmastervault.com/se.shtml" target="_blank">search engine</a> traffic is gold. Learn how the search engines work/rank, etc. Concentrate on <a href="http://www.google.com" target="_blank">google</a> and <a href="http://www.dmoz.org" target="_blank">dmoz</a>, they are going to be your best bets. Here's a good plan to build steady SE traffic: Couple up your similar TGP galleries into small sites (the kind you would submit to <a href="http://www.link-o-rama.com/greenguy/therules.htm" target="_blank">link-o-rama</a>). These small sites you can submit not only to the <a href="http://www.webmastervault.com/link.shtml" target="_blank">link sites</a>, but you can also submit them to dmoz. The largest of the search engines pull their directory listings from dmoz and that's money in the bank for you on a steady long term basis. If you'd like you can put each of these small sites on their own domain name.. they are cheap enough now as to where you can do this and if you link several of these small sites together (link popularity), especially ones of similar niches, this will do wonders for you in google.
Seventh, don't try and cheat the system, you'll screw yourself in the long run.
Eighth, keep your eyes open, analyze what others do and try and improve on their ideas, play around with your own original ideas, trial and error will only help you in the long run. And lastly and most important keep an eye on how your traffic moves. Server stats are a MUST. If you can't get decent server stats find a decent counter script and stick it on all your pages. This business is 80-90% marketing and the rest technical. Know how people think, click, move, jerk, etc..! Along with this plan if you keep up with how the industry is moving (which is easy enough if you are a regular to the <a href="http://www.webmastervault.com/bbs.shtml" target="_blank">message
boards</a>), you will be well on your way to an independent successful career as an adult webmaster.
If you found any grammatical errors in my writings, too bad, that's what you get for free so go fuck yourselves!