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This is actually a multiple part question:
1) Site owners and adult affiliates, how long did it take you before your sites became the primary source of your income?
2) From what I understand, things have changed drastically since affiliate programs started. There’s now more competition. So, assuming someone isn’t doing something completely stupid, how long would you expect it to take a new site to grow to the point where it would be a primary source of income?
3) Do you think people will need to have more than one site to make enough money to be the primary source of income? If so, how many. Again, this is assuming they aren’t doing anything outrageously stupid.
My background is probably different from others, but I started out as a starving artist (photographer) before starting an adult site. I already had a fairly low-cost standard of living. The area I am living in is very affordable, but rich with resources to work from. Because I have no staff, all the media and design are done by me. There are no serious expenses yet, but the site is still in it’s infancy.
My website is 4 months old now, and already taken over as my main source of income. As things stabilize more, I will continue to venture out with more projects as well as rekindling old ones that have been pushed off to the side in the 6-month build process of RealMENrealHOT.
I don’t know of a world where money flowed easily in this business. I jumped in at the worst time, and still going strong This forum offers such great advice for long-term goals, but has so little on bootstrapping it from the ground up. There are ways to cut costs and live within your means to do well. The checks keep coming and keep getting bigger!
My adult sites were only a hobby for me for the first few years. I could have quit my normal job a couple of years before I did but I just didnt have the confidence to do it.
So for me it was more of a confidence thing than amount of money it made (apart from the first 2 years)
If I look at new projects I start, I often put in lot of money in the start then wouldnt expect to see any return any earlier than 1 year down the line.
A lot depends on what kind of site you are talking about. Paysite? Tube Site? TGP? Blog? Social Net Site? Each has their own time frame.
I’ve been doing it (“it” = affiliate blogs) pretty seriously for about a year and a half, but had traffic before that (just wasn’t trying very hard to monetize it). I now make about a third of my money off porn, but the other 2/3rds comes from mainstream stuff where I’m well paid (hourly work). It really depends on your costs of living. I’m in Manhattan, so I’ve got pretty high costs. If I were somewhere cheaper I could have lived off porn 6-12 month ago…
while it is possible to make money almost immediately, most people don’t. usually it’s because their own interpretations of what they’re told is based on beliefs that aren’t true or their opinions, which are not founded on experience and tend to be wrong.
of course, if you have a little seed money it doesn’t hurt.
as far as making your money via a paysite, there are a LOT of variables here from how much you pay per update, how often you’ll update, to your experience marketing and even your niche. i’ve known people who started entire paysites on under $3000 total and made money and people who spent up to $100,000 before launch. i also know people who spent $25 per update and people who spend over $3000 per update.
more important, i know of one site with wonderful downloadable HD content, real pornstars half the time, 100% hot models – and their site makes $1000 a month before expenses, not even enough to pay their models most of the time. someone else could do wonders with what they have – i’ve seen sites in the same niche with lesser models and content that do well – but the owner of this site can’t even break even after two years. so as you can see, the site owners’ marketing knowledge and experience are paramount to making a site profitable.
and when it comes to affiliates, the same is true. i know a guy who started a small str8 program with 3 non exclusive – in fact, VERY non exclusive – sites. through the fact he was well known and well liked years before his launch, he had a good number of webmasters sign up and send traffic as he launched his program. then due to VERY smart use of boards, he brought in tons more active affiliates. he had over 100 sites sending over 1000 hits a day within the first month and tons more sending 1 to 100 hits a day.
yet i know another guy who started a program with 3 sites in the same niches as the other guy plus a fourth site in another niche in his network. most of his content was exclusive. he lost money hand over fist. he did EVERYTHING wrong including deciding who to listen to. when he finally sold his network after a year, he had lost over $150,000 – but the guy who bought the program started making money almost immediately, partly because he knew how to upsell well and partly because he simply knows his stuff. over two years since the network was sold they’re doing well and the program is solid.
so there’s no answer – it’s entirely variable.
As an affiliate, I noticed regular sales about 6-8 months in. Part of that was because I was pretty green and listened to the wrong people. Also, it really started off as a hobby more than anything as I love to write and blog.
Then I met the right people and was offered some work with others. This set the foundation for full-time employment in the adult industry. Between this and my last Affiliate Manager position, blogging, uploading and writing for others, as well as affiliate sales from my own blogs, free sites, and TGPs, I manage ok. The cost of living here on the West Coast of Canada can be a bit much depending on where you live. I’m in a middle class neighbourhood, so we make out ok – my partner and I.
There is no exact answer. My first site started making me money after a two months and it generates many sales every day, but my new site started getting traffic and making a few sales each day after a two weeks. If you know how to create a successful site, you will make a decent bank sooner.
Our blogs started to generate sales when the google traffic came in. The first weeks I didn’t see many sales if any at all. When google traffic increased to about 200-500 uniques per day and blog the sales went up and became more stable. Directory traffic is much worse than SE traffic as surfers have seen many sites already before they visit yours, SE users might see your site as one of the first for the search term they typed in.
Furthermore I had to learn a lot about writing the storis itself, my first stories were’nt that sexy I guess.
As a general rule, a new business will lose money for the first 6 to 12 months. Then it will break even, and if you keep investing time and effort it should start making a profit in the second 12 months.
By the time the end of the second year rolls around, you will need new stuff and innovations in the pipe to maintain profitability then keep innovating and adapting or you will die.
If you have realistic expectations, put real time and effort (socializing for the fact of socializing is not effort, but networking for business reasons is) and have an outside source of income to keep the lights on and food on the table for the first half year or so, you can do it.
