Your chance to get in on the ground floor

[Hammer]

Sure, there's plenty of money to be made in Internet porn and there always will be, but just like any business, the ones that got in on the ground floor in the mid 90s had a much easier time of it and make up the majority of the big players in this business. Bang Bros is one of the exceptions though and proved that you can still make it big if you innovate.

But now we all have another opportunity to get in on the ground floor of the next big thing and I'm wondering how many of you are going to be kicking yourselves in the ass a few years from now because you thought it was just a fad.

What am I talking about? Mobile sites.

ESPN just announced that they are getting more traffic to their mobile site than to their PC website.

A few years ago people started talking about mobile and everyone said, "no one will want to look at porn on a little screen". Wrong.

The big problem with the early mobile sites was that they tried to set themselves up just like web sites and use credit card processing. But can you imagine people actually taking the time to type in their name, address, credit card number, phone number, and pick a user name and password on a mobile phone? Ain't gonna happen and those projects failed for the most part.

Next, everyone started talking about SMS billing being the future since the only thing the mobile surfer would need to do would be to text a message to a short code number and the charge would be billed to their cell phone. Oops, big problem. U.S. carriers won't allow adult content or even nudity at all to utilize SMS billing. Curses, foiled again.

So, what's changed that makes me say that mobile is the next big thing? Nothing. D'oh! Hammer, whachoo been smoking man? Nothing but some good cigars but I'm about to tell you why I ain't nuts.

For one thing, there is now the iPhone and LG has the Voyager. Both offer full html browser surfing and full querty keyboards to make filling in forms easy. The iPhone even has wifi. For another thing, most new mobile phones now utilize memory cards which means instead of only being able to load a few photos into your phones memory or downloading a tiny video clip we can now download a decent amount of video or lots of pics.

Sure, credit card billing for most mobile phones is still not a good option but that just means you need to think a bit differently about it. The way to go is sideloading. The person signs up at a website but can then pick and choose what content he wants to sideload to his mobile phone. For those of you with pay sites it would be a great upsell idea.

Do I think SMS is out completely? Nope. I don't think Verizon and the other U.S. carriers are going to ever allow porn to be billed directly to your phone and I think it's going to be a while before they allow tits but nothing is stopping you from selling bikini and lingerie content in the form of wallpapers that can be downloaded for $1.99 each or $9.99 a month.

Here's another idea. What about giving away free porn and using it to generate traffic to your mobile site and then using the mobile site to promote your website? What about a mini mobile TGP and instead of giving away hundreds of free photos a day you do one gallery a day? Obviously they can't look like a normal TGP gallery but you could have 10 text links that link to the photos and change them each day using a script. At the top of each page that displays the photo you have a text ad for your .com site.

Another new development is making mobile sites profitable. Advertising. Google Adsense is now available for mobile sites and would work very well on a non nude site. But, there are others. I use one called AdMobs.com and they pay 70% of the PPC cost which is higher than Google and they are working quite well for me.

Of course, there's no reason why just because you're trying to become a successful adult webmaster that you can't run mainstream sites too and there are going to be lots of new ways to make money with mainstream mobile sites. Did you know that PayPal now has a mobile billing option?

Building mobile sites is not really that difficult and since you need to keep the sites simple, you don't need a lot of design talent, but let me just throw in a shameless plug for myself and say that for anyone that is interested, we build mobile sites.

[sunfunbill]

Lots of informative advice with a sly plug at the end, nice! Yeah you seemed pretty interested in all the mobile stuff when I talked to you.

With a lot of crossdressers sneaking around about who they are maybe I should get a mobile version of my site so they can see it on mobile.

Thanks for the info.

[artwilliams]

Hammer,

Thanks for sharing some good thoughts. Before the usual suspects start pissing on your thread, I have two questions for you.

- What is your target size for pages since there are so many different display sizes?

- What devices do you test your pages out on?

---art

[Ledrak]

There's a huge market to get into in Europe if you want to go this route. Europe is way ahead of the US when it comes to mobile phones anyways. Not to mention I think Americans would be less likely to buy mobile porn (though I could be wrong).

[Hammer]

Originally posted by artwilliams

- What is your target size for pages since there are so many different display sizes?

- What devices do you test your pages out on?

We don't use a fixed page size and images will resize to fit if you don't used a fixed size in the code. 150 wide is a good safe size but some phones can display up to 220 wide so 200 might be a good compromise. Of course iphones have a much larger screen so it would be best to design a separate site for iphone users or if you were setting up a site that images would be sideloaded from, offer multiple sizes.

We use an emulator to test on about 6 or 7 different devices and also run the sites through http://ready.mobi/launch.jsp?locale=en_EN

[odysseus]

Man, Hammer, you've just been casting some serious pearls at the campus lately.

A few years ago I registered mobilehoes.com, thinking mobile porn would get big, real big, and I wanted to be on the ground floor as you say. Unfortuately, I have had zero time to learn anything about the mobile market for either mainstream or adult. The domain is parked.

I'm slowly starting to do mainstream stuff, and agree that it would seem more lucrative to hit the mobile mainstream market as opposed to the porn stuff. Out of curiosity, how much do you charge for your mobile sites? I have a few ideas, but don't know anything about mobile and I don't use my phone for anything but phone calls, so I don't really know what's possible, and what isn't possible.

[Ledrak]

Originally posted by odysseus
... but don't know anything about mobile and I don't use my phone for anything but phone calls, so I don't really know what's possible, and what isn't possible.

I think this is the main issue that has to be overcome with the US market.

[Hammer]

One more thing about photos. Keep them vertical in format.

Odysseus, thanks for asking but other than my little plug I'd rather not make this thread too spammy but I'll be happy to discuss prices with anyone that wants to shoot me a PM or an email. Our prices for mainstream clients would usually be much higher since they want us to do the entire website but for most adult webmasters, once they have the basic infrastructure, adding pages, updating images, etc. isn't that difficult so the cost would be much less.

Ledrak, I agree that mobile porn is much bigger in Europe but I think with the arrival of the iphone and all the clones that are bound to start popping up and the fact that the screen is a pretty decent size will lead to more interest in the U.S. market. However, like I said, there are other ways to make money with softcore and non nude content that isn't really intended to be viewed while jerking off but just viewed for fun when you've nothing better to do. I watch YouTube videos and news reports on my cell phone all the time. And even check out Maxim's mobile site sometimes. They've got babes and jokes of the day and a few other things.

Considering how much money will be made from ppc advertising on high traffic mobile sites, anything you can come up with that will generate lots of mobile traffic will work.

[Hammer]

I read an article this morning about a mobile conference recently where the keynote speaker claimed that 100% of iphone users surf the Net on their phones. I know I surf mobile sites all the time and I just have a WAP enabled LG although in August when my contract is up I'll either get the new LG Voyager or an iphone. With either of those devices I will basically have my laptop in my pocket and as more and more people start realizing that mobile devices aren't just for calling or texting people anymore, this is going to explode.

The question is, are you people going to paddle out early and catch the wave when it comes or wait until it's already crashing on the shore? Sorry, I love analogies.

[sunfunbill]

I think the thing is to target the young, ADD people that can't wait to get home to use their main PC. Most older people are busy at work or what not and will just wait till they can use their computer.

So you have to have something they can't wait to see or hear. Something that adds value or an add on to myspace, a forum, chat room, latest news, stuff like that.

I think the free soft porn will do very well. Kids will use them for the old "hey check out the tits on this babe" type of stuff.

I bought the name "freefuncrap". I plan to fill it with all that downloadable, fluff stuff all kids want, with lots of ads on it of course.

[artwilliams]

I've been thinking about the mobile thing again since my kid got an iPod touch. With real wireless internet and a full QWERTY on-screen keyboard, it makes surfing easy. (Also, there are a slew of mini laptops like the Asus EEE and Everex Cloudbook which have 800x600 screens but that is another topic). I agree with Hammer, this mobile thing has finally arrived.

[mynameisjim]

Good post Hammer, I hope it makes some people start to think creatively about their next project.

Like Odysseus, I was always the guy that just used whatever free phone my carrier gave me. But I sensed I needed to understand mobile so I bought an iPhone. Oddly, it sucks as a phone but some of the other stuff is pretty cool. It doesn't quite work like the commercial where you find a restaurant, get directions, and set a reservation in 30 seconds but I see why everyone is excited about it despite it not being quite ready for prime time.

Point is, if you want to get into mobile, pick up some type of smart phone and start playing with it, visit sites, store media on it, etc.

I do agree though that other than paysites using it as an upsell or bonus of some kind, mobile probably won't be that great for adult affiliates, unless you want to maybe brand a site.

[crockett]

Personally I think mobile sites are going to do good only for certain niches.

I mean sports is likely a given because people want updates and so on. Stocks are of course another given.

Browsing porn on the other hand, IMO just isn't gonna be a big thing. The simple fact is, we are selling pictures and videos. The image size that you can see on a phone is about the size of the average TGP thumbnail.

Lets face it, we are in the biz getting people to jerk off and someone would have to be pretty hard up to jerk off to a thumbnail sized image. I really can't see porn doing much other than selling screen savers and so on.

Sure there will be some sucess at it, but in all honestly it's gonna be limited. I can think of a million other things that would likely sell better than porn on phones.

just my 2 cents anyway.

[odysseus]

Hammer, I'll likely sit down and send you a PM or email tomorrow afternoon and see what you have going on.

Jim, that's not a bad idea getting a new phone. I just bought 2 new phones for my wife and I, but maybe I'll hit the tmobile store and harass the sales kid who'd rather be texting his girlfriend for a little bit and see what they have. I guess I'll have to join the 21st century eventually. Hell, I get frustrated with my sister because all she does is text. Maybe I'm getting old, but really, have people forgotten you can actually speak on these things. It's like we've reverted back to the telegraph or something.

[Hammer]

Crocket, browsing porn is huge in Europe and Australia, especially softcore (boobs only) stuff since they can pay for it with SMS.

I'd like to point out that you don't need a smartphone to surf mobile sites. I have an LG 8600 and pay $5 a month for Verizon mobile web and I can access every mobile site. Actually I can access any site but since my phone doesn't have java and isn't a full html compatible browser the formatting is all screwed up and of course the screen is too small even if it wasn't.

Anyone that has a web enabled phone should check out playboy.com. They auto detect if you're using a mobile and you'll see the mobile version. The pics look great and if they were nude, I'd have no problem jerking off to them in a hotel room.

For those of you that don't have web access on your mobile phone, you can see a rough idea by using an emulator like this one. Just click this link, I've already set it up for Playboy for you. http://mtld.mobi/emulator.php?webadd...&Submit=Submit

[timelord]

I have a significant mobile content component in 3 different ventures.

'Three' here in Oz also have a 50/50 Revshare for supplying content across the 3 Mobile network in Oz.

I consider mobile makes up only 10% of our target market, but we expect that to grow to 40% within 3 years.

[crockett]

I could maybe understand it if the users weren't normal Internet users. Meaning maybe the only access they have to the net, is via cell phone. Other wise I just can't see them buying more than screen savers or ring tones.

Now I could see porn selling on other mobile platforms, like say systems in cars or other larger handheld platforms that are slowly coming out of the wood works.

I just read an article about a new technology that can broadcast TV to moving receivers. It will be streamed right with the current TV broadcasts, so it will allow you to pick up TV pretty much anywhere you can get a signal. So if they get TV to cars then you know the next logical thing will be the internet.

IMO the iPhone is about as big of a screen as a phone will ever get. I could "maybe" see watching video on them if it was turned sideways but then you limit the view of a typical picture. (not to mention video b/w on a cell phone might cause issues)

I dunno I just can't see it for phones, but other devices then yea probably. It just seems to me, like the web on the phones is more of a novelty, other than stuff like sports scores and stocks stuff, ect..ect..



btw..

Trust me I like to think forward and to the future, so I'm not saying this like the "internet is a fad" type thing. I'm just thinking of the actual user and what they would get out of it.

[crockett]

Originally posted by timelord
I have a significant mobile content component in 3 different ventures.

'Three' here in Oz also have a 50/50 Revshare for supplying content across the 3 Mobile network in Oz.

I consider mobile makes up only 10% of our target market, but we expect that to grow to 40% within 3 years.

but what type of content are you selling them?

[Hammer]

Well Crockett I'm always surprised what works when it comes to porn. I can't believe people pay to watch chicks have sex with dogs and donkeys or play with their poop, or pay to watch Paris Hilton in a low quality home sex movie but they do.

[Cozy Monica]

I can't believe people pay for ringtones or to receive daily jokes to their phones, but they do.

I really believe that mobile is the next big thing FOR SURE, and of course, the technology is going to move forward by amazing leaps and bounds.

This is going to be a massive change for porn, and probably change the whole industry as far as laptops vs. mobile stuff goes.

I think we will see more innovative solutions to the issue with smaller screens and keyboards and soon everyone will be carrying the equivalent of a computer in their pockets. Wireless internet will be everywhere instead of only for those who are rich enough to afford it... it will be cheap cheap cheap or even free.