Ok so i am just as guility as the next guy but here goes my rant...

<rant>
Ok so sales for me were really good up to around nov of 08 i totally kicked ass. Up to that time i did not really just totally bust my ass day and night and go out to find new trades ect ect. Like anything i got into a routine and did it daily and never really peaked out side of my box.

So as sales and traffic decreased i kicked a hole in the side of the box and looked around. You know now that i am out i am not liking what i am seeing. I see old sites that i traded with that were 200-300k aday now 20-30k aday. Totally abandoned or no longer maintained. I have been rebuilding my traffic for the last month working trades very hard. I am finding that no one is at the helm. You try to icq people, email people,pm people to set up new trades or up existing ones and guess what no one is the fuck home. People wake up! this is not 2007 any more. You have to actually put time and effort into your business to make money today. Its not like it was. I have been busting ass and working like i did when i started and guess what the dollar sign is incresing again instead of on its slide.
You have to take full control over your business do what you gotta do.

Want more sales? Cut the fat. We all use a program like stats remote or some form of tracking. If the sponsors ratios are shit pull them. It does not matter if they made you 10k 2 years ago, what counts is what they make you today.

Try prepaids. Some sponsors will give you a prepaid amount for X amounts of traffic to test it on. Be fair and charge them what you would make if you keep another sponsor their. Send them 20-30k in traffic and if it works great! if not you were prepaid, cut your loss and try the next one.

Rotate your ads. So like i am the worlds worst at this as well but spice up your indexes! You have had the same banners in the same spots for the past 3 years lol. I always notcie a increase in sales after i rotate ads. When surfers see the same thing day after day they dont even see it after so many times.

Backends likes ST and TGPX are what most of us use now adays. You can easily track the amonut of traffic you send to a fhg. How is the click threw for the fhg to the actual sponsor? This ties in with total raios and needs to be examined. You cannot base a good or bad sponsor based on sales ratios alone. You need to look at overall sent and ratios to have a true measure of a good sponsor.

Are you actively seeking new trades? If no you are not only loosing traded traffic but you are also loosing bookmarks and fresh eyes. New trades are the absolute best source for new bookmarks. They come from the trade they like your site and boom theirs one more bookmark and since they ever been to your site before all the ads are new and fresh and that much more clickable.

Check out your sponsors tours. Do they have traffic leaks? What is their billing? I noctied that some sponsors that if you do a PPS they no longer offer a trial on the join page only a 1 month or greater option. And lets face it, in todays time not alot are gonna ass out 30 bucks to see if they like a site.

ok this is kinda heavy for friday i know whatever lol. Have a good weekend peoples

</rant>

Good rant.

I think many of us feel the same way. I bet many of the people running those TGPs are focused elsewhere or simply out of the biz because income has dropped.

I got a trade I set up with ya. It's Big Tits but it usually does ok with Pornstar/babe sites. Hit me up

very good rant

makes me want to start focusing more on my projects

you make me horny when you talk like that - gotta go fap now
R

Back to work everyone

lol

I agree 100%. It's not like the old days. You gotta earn every penny.

You can't improve what you can't measure. Most of the tools and advertising people use (gallery rotators, FHG's etc) have zero tracking possibilities in terms of gauging how much you send where.

If you break things apart and measure each factor separately, then proceed to tweak each factor one by one, you can expect HUGE improvements, with very little work involved. That very idea is what Deming did for Japan helping create the "Japanese miracle" that whooped everyone's ass industrially and economically.

i gotta say its virtually impossible to get hold of half the old school pornstar guys here to even get trades setup or boosted etc. Always looking for decent trades or trying to hit up people but fuck getting hold of anyone is fucking impossible

good post Shane..

Very true. Alot of the old schoolers are really letting their shit slide and are hard to get a hold of. We also got a few projects that need some love, so im guilty there also, but that's because our efforts have been focused elsewhere, not just gone completely MIA like some people. Things didnt get easier the last 2 years, thats a fact.

You guys need to realize that, even if it's the intuitive thing to do, working harder isn't the answer.

The people whom you can't get a hold of, they're gone, pretty much. If you can't get in touch with them doesn't mean that someone isn't getting a cut of their traffic. Traffic trading is a zero-sum game, fresh traffic needs to come into the network from somewhere, otherwise the network keeps shrinking. So you need to look for fresh traffic elsewhere, see where the traffic is going nowadays.

Moreover, increasing your traffic simply means doing the same ol', same ol' over and over again, throw more shit against the wall and hope it sticks. Less and less of it will stick over time anyway, so a more intelligent decision would be to try make the most of your current traffic, nurture it, work on converting it better. Once you know how to squeeze the every last cent out of your visitors it's a lot more profitable to increase your traffic. And a lot easier too.

yep great point as well. Tighten up your "holes" in your site where traffic is being wasted or not best used. Look for ad spots outside the box and better momentmize your ad space. Try differnt styles of ads. Fresh rocks for new clicks

well if anyone running decent pornstar sites wants to hit me up for a trade im always around so hit me up on ICQ!

Great thread - Awesome advice all around.

I have to agree 100% and that's not only with TGP, its with all projects. I think, we as a whole need to really check our stats, and if a sponsor isn't converting like it should first try and find out why. Maybe youre not pushing it the way it should be, or aren't really hitting the target audience. If that doesn't work then its time to drop them.

I'm one of those that procrastinates too much at times. For me personally I need to step up and really put forth a full blown effort into the projects that have been sitting on the back burner far too long.

I recently had an epiphany that shouldn't have taken this long to figure out.. as long as I get something out there each and everyday the better off I will be. Whether that comes in the form of blogs, galleries, free sites, link lists, seo pages, portals, hubs, whatever that "thing" is - it needs to be public not just dried ink on my 'todo' list.

My #1 thing on my todo list is to hope everyone else just makes a list and lets it dry on the page...

#2 is to send people pointless long youtube videos eating away the time they have to do that todo list shhhh and keep clicking the links

haha PAR, hows that working out?

I know I was one of those in #1 for a while ..but thats changed.