Please critique my business plan. Total noob here.
 

First let me say that it's a pleasure to join a community of such fine individuals. I've lurked a little bit and you guys seem like a sharp bunch of knives. I look forward to contributing to the community.

I plan on starting an erotica blog where I create a hot-wife persona who shares stories of her exploits. I'm male FWIW. The goal is to get a loyal following of subscribers who look forward with bated breath for each new post. I'm confident I can create content that does this.

At first my marketing strategy is to use twitter to find subscribers. I'm a total noob when it come to web publishing so I'm not expecting to be very good at SEO in the beginning. I will do my best to optimize my site but I'm thinking that it will take me a fairly long time to rank well for my keywords. So Twitter is going to be strategy #1 out of the gate.

I want to create a system that forces blog commenters to double opt-in to my newsletter in order to leave comments. I will provide extra content as well as advertising in my newsletters.

At the moment I don't have any web design skills so I am planning on using Wordpress.

Now I have a few questions.

1. What is the best way to monetize this? I guess the standard line would be to be an affiliate to cuckold and wife swapping sites. Is there a better way? My concern doing this though is that my subscribers will already be savvy with regards to these sites. I'm concerned that my conversion rates will be too low to make any real money. I was thinking about trying some non-adult affiliates. Will any non-adult affiliates accept me?

2. How do I do the double opt-in newsletters? Are there any wordpress plug-ins that do this? What are some good and cheap email programs to deliver the newsletters?

3. I'd like to get a slew of photos of a model who can be my persona. What are the best ways to go about finding such a model and how much will this cost? Is there a place where I can buy unique adult stock photos?

4. Do any of you have any general advice for a total noob like me?

So that's the plan. Any and all criticisms/ideas will be greatly appreciated.

I can help you a bit with #1...

Making any real money through affiliates with a single niche blog is going to be difficult. Your best bet is to build up a user base with free content (snippets of your blog, teaser images, etc.) and then try and monetize on top of that by charging directly for full access to your content. You know, take the porn star website approach. Niche is tough, niche blog is tougher...you are going to need some great visuals to accompany your writing.

In a more abstract sense, I suggest trying to engage your users as much as possible to try and build a real world persona for your "hot wife". Maybe a Q&A, or live chats - something to enable interaction beyond the passive approach of simply reading a blog post. Really bring her to life.

Whats this.. E-Whoring?

I was thinking about doing something like this, but was not sure about the legal problems it could create. It might be illegal to create a fake identity using someone elses pictures without their permission. If it is illegal to do it without their permission then who's permission do you need? The content producer, or the model? You may want to ask a lawyer about the situation.

Regarding the double opt-in plugin...I'm not sure which plugins would do this, but if you can't find any free, or premium plugs that do this...then it shouldn't be too expensive to have someone make one for you. Also, You can use a service such as mailchimp to send your emails. Mailchimp, and other services will usually even offer free blasts for small lists.

I worked for a mass media mailer, Vertical Response, for a while. These mailers (same as mailchimp) usually avoid ADULT like the plague. In order to avoid any holdups in mailng, make sure the CONTENT you are pushing is PG-13 in the emails and also coordinate w the mailers themselves. Let their delivery team know that you are having others opt-in and they will be fine with it.

I won't say too much, but make sure your lists arent purchased. SPAMtrap emails exist in purchase lists and flag them immediately. Not only that but many *cough cough* services will auto block "info@" "customerservice@" and other styles of prefixes and never tell you.... even though they charge you for them.

If you want to talk more, I can help you push social traffic and even trade social traffic if need be. IMHO, if adult is going social, we all need to whore each other out for a while and reinvent the acceptance in that space. I've... been doing that for a while. Ping me, my ICQ should be in my sig.

You did not ask BUT that is (imho) not a great plan there. Niche surfers are pretty savvy and can spot a fake a mile away. Best practice with a blog is to write from a perspective that reflects truth. You could switch this up and write from the perspective of the husband who secretly knows of his wife's exploits or something like that.

Not necessarilly true. A good blog will be pretty text rich. The SEs love the text. Keyword rich text will do more for your ranking then just about anything else (again imho).

Most non-adult (mainstream) sponsors will not go near adult. As far as monetizing it I would go with some well placed ads to sites associated with the niche, try to avoid looking too spammy. You also might try some dating and cam sites associated with the niche. Perhaps a white label dating site dedicated to the niche.

You can probably use most purchased content in this manner. You could get some good non-exclusive content pretty cheap or you could get someone to shoot some exclusive for you with some little known models. Check with the various content producers to see what they can offer you and if they have any problems with it being used this way. My guess is most of them have no problem with it. Check out http://www.adultlabs.com and http://voodoocontent.com they both have a great selection at a good price. Also check out Ma Dalton and the other content producers that frequent the board. Ma Dalton is http://www.amazingcontent.com/ I believe.

Listen and learn. Ask questions, ignore the trolls. Learn to recognize trolls, not everyone that answers without being friendly is a troll. Not everyone that answers friendly is a friend. Sharks are everywhere and most anyone can have an agenda :thumbsup


Good Luck.


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