By David Stein, Automatic On Line Systems
Sex sells is an advertising clichˇ. The business of selling sex, however, especially on the Internet, is neither so simple nor so different from selling any other product or service. In some ways, in fact, it might be more difficult, which is why the adult-oriented Internet has been at the forefront of online sales innovation since the first pornography websites went live. Banners, selling clicks, and hot-link referred revenue sharing--in which the site that links to yours gets some portion of the money you make if the person who clicks on the link buys something on your site--each made their first appearance on adult websites and each was a strategy for overcoming the kinds of problems that all online businesses face: how to drive traffic to a site and then, once the people are there, how to make money from the time they spend browsing.
An article in this month's Upside--a publication that is worth reading if making money on the Internet is of more than just a passing interest--outlines some of the more recent strategies adult-oriented websites have pioneered for squeezing more dollars out of the digital economy. What most interested me in the piece, however, were the sections on content. You would think an industry that makes its money portraying just about any permutation of the sex act you can imagine would not have to worry about the mediocrity that plagues most content on the web, which all too often is poorly written or not current or worse, irrelevant to the objectives of the site on which it appears. Give the subject some thought however, and you begin to realize that no matter how many different ways you can think of to portray people having sex, the experience will eventually begin to wear thin. The question these sites confront, in other words, is not how to find interesting and compelling content. They have that. Rather their problem is how to generate enough of it and in enough variety to keep their customers happy and coming back for more.
One answer the cyberskin industry has come up with is surprisingly simple: cross-links which send viewers back and forth between and among competing sites. While this practice may seem counterintuitive--why, after all, give customers to your competitors?--but the logic is straightforward: It's better to keep potential customers happy by referring them to a site that has what they want than to send them away empty handed. Especially, and this is the crucial point, when the referral puts money in your pocket as well as your competitor's. Indeed, one sex-site entrepreneur estimated that such arrangements earn him somewhere in the realm of $50,000.
How might this work in the non-adult world? Suppose you're a florist with a specialty in exotic flowers. You sell the more traditional flowers as well, but it's not the core of your business and you often have to tell customers you don't have what they're looking for, forcing them to wait while you order the flowers they want. Searching the web, however, you come across the site of a florist who sells precisely the flowers that you don't. An agreement like the one mentioned above to put links to each other's sites on your respective home pages will benefit you both. Not only will you be able to keep your customers and prospects happy by showing them you're more interested in helping them get what they need than in making a quick buck, but you'll also get a cut of what they spend on the other florist's site. More subtly, if you have the right kind of tracking features built in to your site, and if you get people who visit your site to fill out a form of some kind, you'll be gathering useful and important marketing information about who is buying what kinds of flowers when and why.
You should be thinking the same way when it comes to the text on your site. If one of your competitors has information on his or her site that you think your clients and prospects would find useful, why not work out some sort of deal where you can share the content, either through a cross link or by swapping something you have that is of value for the right to use the content on your site. Better yet, make use of links to information that's freely available, such as the kind you'll find on your trade association's web site. In the end, what matters on the web is what matters in the world of bricks-and-mortar: helping clients and prospects solve their problems, even if that means sending them to someone else for a solution you can't provide.
David Stein is president of Automatic On-Line System, a full service web design, marketing and maintenance company. He can be reached at (718) 361-3091 or by e-mail at internetdoctor@autoonline.net.