Steps and Tips to opening your first Adult Paysite

Making the decision to open you first Paysite is a huge life step and a major work load increase, even for the experienced Webmaster. For the Paysite newbie the process can be very overwhelming and can quickly turn into an unwanted expensive lesson.

The key to running an Adult Paysite is true dedication. You must focus on Members, Support, Updates, and Webmasters at all times. This is only the start; we also have 2257 record keeping, extra accounting, taxes, possible staff, extra servers for hosting and a need for improved security, and marketing. So the rule is: Never under estimate the dedication needed to properly run and maintain a single Paysite.

This article will assume that you have the proper skills to open and maintain an Adult Paysite. You either are a Webmaster and have the skills needed to publish and maintain a Paysite. Or you have the understanding, the money, and you can manage the people to make this happen. Paysites are not for the Adult Industry novice.

The quick of what is needed!
The listing below is guideline placed in the order that it should be completed in. You can’t get visa approved without an entire working Website, and you can’t build a design without Content. Steps are important!

• Select your niche: Start with something you enjoy.
• Purchase niche domains: Including the .net, org and misspells.
• Content: Video and Picture for members, tours and promo material.
• Get content web-ready: Either purchased ready or converted for web-ready use.
• Paysite design: Warning page, tours, join pages, and members graphics.
• Promotional material: Hosted galleries, banners, buttons, full-page ads, ect.
• Hosting: Quality servers and bandwidth really makes Members happy
• Content management system: Hand updates or a system to your manage content.
• Password protection: Member auth systems to protect from password leaks and attacks.
• 2257: Before you actually release you need to have your records in order
• Processors: Get your tours, join forms and members area Visa/MC approved.
• Costs: The overall costs of opening your first Adult Paysite.

Let’s get started!
The above list seems nice and simple, until you break it all down. Attention to detail and a vast amount of testing is a major part of setting up and running your own Paysite. The details are very important, even the smallest ones.

• Figure out what Niche you wish to target, you can use TubeSites to help find your next Niche. If you already have your own traffic base, this may be a simple answer. If not, just remember that some Niches cost a lot more than others. IE: The Gay-Tranny niche can be rather expensive, then again a glamor site may be cheaper to create but it can be harder to promote.

• Once you have a Niche, it’s time to select and purchase domains. Try to find the shortest, easiest to remember domain that you can find. Maybe add a keyword or two related to the niche within the Domain name. Don’t forget to pickup the .net, and if you want the .org and any possible misspells of the domains. Normally I spend about $50-$75 on domain reg fees when setting up a new Paysite.

Quick Tip: Before you spend the money on content production, step back and evaluate your decisions. Start by letting go of your personal feelings and ego, remember we all have created the next best niche and paysite idea. Make sure you aren’t letting your ego tell you what to do!

Content Time:
This is the hard part, you may have a deal with someone on DVD content, you could purchase pre-made and net ready content from online producers, or spend the big bucks and get exclusive content made. Either way, you will need about 10 movies and 10 photo sets, with updates, to help get the ball moving. The more you can afford to start with, the better.

• Non-exclusive / Web ready content can be a great starter point. $1000-$5000 in non-exclusive content can give you 100’s of movie and photo sets, all ready to be uploaded and used, ie: web-ready.
• Exclusive content on average costs $1500-$5000+ per scene. Having more or better models, the larger the cock, the more exclusive the niche or the higher quality it is, the higher cost it will have.
• If you produced your own content or purchased non-web ready content (a DVD) then you will need to encode the content for Web use. This costs anywhere from $15 to $200 per DVD. The price often depends on how much editing the encoders have to do, a straight DVD to Web burn is cheap, an edited burn that cuts out the trash increases the cost.
  • Burning and cutting DVD’s in house can be costly. The cost of the machine and burning/cleaning software isn’t cheap. The time it takes to learn it or hire someone that knows it already, isn’t easy or cheap. So paying a company to process the content for you can greatly speed things up and lower your costs.
  • A different, much cheaper solution is to purchase web-ready only content from online producers when starting out.

Buying Content: First thing, make sure you get the 2257 records and the producer is American, just to save yourself some possible issues. Then secondly, make sure you can use the content in all areas, like Members Area, Tours and Promotional Material. Anyway, the Content Blow Out is always a solid buy. They offer several content heavy packages that are cheap and 2257 compliant.

Don’t get stuck in the Content Rat Race, the ‘net is filled with great-affordable content producers just waiting to work with you! So have a look around, ask some friends, post on adult webmaster forums, ect.. You will quickly get bombarded with every Content Special you can imagine with just a little effort.

Tour & Members Graphics:
Now that you have content ready and a domain, it’s time to get a design. If you can design everything yourself, that’s money saved. You don’t have to spend a ton of money on a design to make a Paysite convert, actually a simple and fast loading design often does better.

• If you need the works, warning page, 2-3 tour pages, and a join page and members header design. It could cost a fair amount. From $400 to $2000+ could be spent.
• For the Webmaster skilled, you may be able to duplicate and complete many of the pages yourself, like extra tour pages. So a simple header and a few body images might be the only needed graphics. This could range from $200 to $800, again depending on the amount of extra graphics you need.
• Several design companies have packages, which can range greatly in prices. These packages can include all needed pages, warning and join pages, some banners/ads, and sometimes Hosted Galleries. If you plan on spending the money then take the time to talk the design companies and see what special packages they can create for you.

The different pages you may need to create:
The Paysite design / layout may not seem like much, but once you break it all down the overall size of a paysite, outside and inside, is staggering.

• A Warning Page
• Main landing-tour page and other content pages.
• The Join Form and Design, with proper Processor/Visa Details.
• The terms and conditions, privacy policy and disclaimer.
• A customer support section, contact forms, password lookup.
• Members Login Page, StrongBox.
• Error Pages, like 301 failed member logins and 404 file not found error pages.
• Exits or chains of exits, if any.
• The members area, a header, footer, and menu graphics. Depending on the complexity of your members design, it may require much more.

With a 3 page tour, a single Paysites ‘outside’ pages could consist of 15+ different unique Web pages. CCBill and Epoch both offer customer support, password lookup and other support pages that you can link to, cutting down on the total amount of pages you need to create.

Hosted Galleries
Hosted Gallery costs is rather hard to gauge. If you have hookups you can get galleries, with text, and thumbnails for $10 each, if your new into the game and can’t buy in bulk, it could cost as much as $30 for a fully web-ready gallery.

• Starting things out you can purchase 20 total galleries, 10 to open with and 5 weeks worth of updates with 2 new galleries a week. 20 galleries X $20 average per gallery is $400 total. Hopefully these are web ready for that price.

Banners and Advertisements
Banners, buttons, full/half page Advertisements aren’t really that expensive but you should shop around. Often you can find package deals that include several different advertisement sizes for a lower packaged price.

Adult Friendly Designers: I use and recommend Adult Design Evolution! For some other killer work, check out MachineGunKelly’s designs over at Twisted By Design.

Paysite Hosting:
The Online Adult Industry is filled with several honest, experienced, reliable and cheap hosting companies. If you are just starting out then it should be very cheap for you to setup and build, under a $100 monthly. Don’t be suckered in by super cheap hosts that promise the world though. Get a solid host, I host with and recommend PhatServers. Some other good hosts include: oc3 Networks, Mojo Host, and DWHS Web Hosting.

Members Area and Content Management:
While you are waiting on Design work to be completed it’s time to get the Members Content in order. This can be done by hand, and starting out that is fine. However if you ever want to go on vacation and not worry about updates, then I recommend you pickup a Content Management Systems (CMS).

I personally use Carma from TooMuchMedia, however I don’t recommend it for the novice, even though it is the best. Carma is a Smarty Template Engine driven CMS, in short if you can dream it up it’s possible with Carma, but unfortunately it’s a little more complex than dreaming.

Either by hand or through a CMS you need to get the Members Area and Content online. Don’t start off by publishing all your movies and photos at once, save about half for future updates. If you have a CMS, this can easily be scheduled in each week, otherwise create all your updates now so you don’t have to worry with them later.

Password Protection for Members:
This is an important step, and one that both CCBill and Epoch setup for you, if you give them FTP access. It’s fine to allow them to setup a simple auth to quickly get VISA approved, but after that you need to beef up your Members Area Protection. If you use a Standard Auth Protection, without anything to protect it, your Members passwords will quickly be blasted all over Password trading sites and your bandwidth bills will quickly increase.

• To protect yourself, your content and your members I recommend you purchase StrongBox, which is what I use. It costs $100 per site and has no monthly fees attached. StrongBox does the trick and doesn’t miss a beat, and it offers a handy support area so you can quickly assist your members with login issues.

2257 is a BITCH:
Old 2257 law or the new 2557 laws, who cares. If you are an American, you best keep your records. It’s a pain in the ass, but a simple excel sheet with each models record and a binder with the model records, listed in order gets the basics covered. Opening a Paysite isn’t a game, and if you plan on lacking on paper work, a Paysite isn’t for you.

Processors CCBill and Epoch:
Just before your Website is ready you will need to start the Processor Contract process with either CCBill and/or Epoch. This can take about a week to fully complete, so save you some time by starting early.

Visa and MasterCard Approval:
Now that Paysite is ready and we have the Biller Contracts started, you can register your personal, business and website information with VISA/MC (US or EU). VISA/MC have strong Chargeback and Refund limits. A lack of knowledge or focus can put you within danger levels very quickly, an area you do not want to play within. If you lose your VISA/MC account, you will have hell ever processing with them again.

• It costs $750 to setup a VISA/MC account through CCBill and Paycom. This is per master-account, per-processor and not per-website. Normally it takes less than two weeks to get approved, but it can take much longer. Each following year costs $350 per master-account, per-processor.
• Once you submit your Websites to be approved it is very common to have compliance email you back with simple corrections that need to be made. These can often be missing 2257 or Terms links or other basic billing details that they require. Either way, make the changes and email them back.

Quick Tip #1: Before you submit your Paysite for Approval you can email the Processor Support Centers and have them review your Paysite for you. Rules change, often, and having a quick one over from the Support Staff can save you some time with possible compliance issues.

Quick Tip #2: If you are going to be opening several Paysites you can create a mock tour, join form and members area (with content). This mock up covers all the basic VISA/MC Rules. Using a mock up design can greatly speed up the approval waiting processes. Once you publish the real Paysite I recommend you follow the first tip to make sure your new design is still compliant.

What does everything cost?
The cost of a starter Paysite isn’t all that bad. This guide is lower end of the Paysite food chain. Some Adult Paysites spend $20,000 - $30,000 a Month in exclusive content. Startup costs for large Paysites can easily reach $50,000 - $100,000. The largest “Single Paysite” investment I have heard of is about $3 million before launch.

Domains: $50 : The .com, .net, .org and 2-3 misspelled-related domains.
Content: $4000 : Content Package, web-ready, 20 movies and 20 photo sets.
Design: $700 : Basic warning page, tour, join form and members header graphic.
Hosted Galleries: $400 : 20 web-ready galleries at $20 each, if we get lucky.
Ad Material: $500 : Basic banner/button package from several Adult Design Companies.
Hosting: Starts off cheap, as low as $100 monthly. It can quickly reach $500 monthly when traffic and sales kick in.
StrongBox: $100 : Members area username/password protection system.
Visa/MasterCard: $750 : Per High Risk Processor (CCBill & Paycom)

If you can design or have a designer and have a content deal for web-ready content, you could open with as little as $1000.

Not bad! Looks like we could start our first decent Paysite for under $7,000!

Meum Cerebrum Nocet!
Welp, that about wraps it up, other than a few personal experiences to mention. I spent about $15k-$20k to open each of my Paysites, this includes 1-2 years of fully web-ready, exclusive content. My most expensive Paysite to open cost about $45k in non-web ready content. The biggest key to keeping costs down is the content. Find a hookup, a friend, a partner, someone that can help cover the costs and give them part of the pie! The overall idea is to keep all costs as low as possible, if it’s content, design, whatever it may be. And remember, every service and price in this business can be negotiated. Use that to its fullest advantage to really help save yourself some money!

Good luck! If you have any questions, suggestions, bitches or just want to say hello, then please post a comment below! ~ TheDoc

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