One of the more significant components in determining the success of adult websites is the degree of good quality, adult traffic that they can generate for their site. Just like standard net businesses there are loads of different methods that adult webmasters can use to generate traffic.
Search engine traffic provides some of the highest conversion rates for adult industry web sites. Unfortunately search engine traffic is very difficult for newer sites to attract. In order to get traffic from search engines many sites try to use search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques to gain good rankings. These SEO methods are often hard and time consuming to implement and there are few guarantees of success. It is believed that the cause that search engine traffic converts more favourably is that users who search for adult images on the internet are less versed and therefore less likely to get free images.
Web galleries are among the most popular adult industry sites. Thumbnail galleries are usually large grids of adult images from lots of different photo sets. Users are encouraged to select an adult image, that takes them the sample adult photo galleries, on web sites where they are given the chance to sign-up. More recently thumbnail galleries have included video images with additional images shown on a signup page. The original thumbnail image galleries were quite general in nature, however they have become more and more specialist concentrating on particular adult niches. The main problem with thumbnail galleries is that they provide visitors with large amounts of cost free content which reduces their need to buy. Thumbnail galleries provide very high levels of adult website traffic but with exceptionally low conversion rates.
Site managers have created traffic trading systems to pull more visitors to their sites. This practice began as mutually agreed trades between two webmasters, often after a conversation on an adult message board. These swaps were done on faith, as the site owners almost never met face to face. Unfortunately, in many instances rogue adult site managers would bail on their part of the agreement, leaving the honest webmaster who had supplied traffic first out of pocket. Traffic trading remains one of the most common methods today with adult web site owners using complicated web scripts to reduce fraud. This, of course, has lead to a great deal of rivalry with the creation of ever more complex scripts. Additionally, visitors sometimes don’t take kindly to being passed around different sites, especially if they arrive on a different site to the one they thought they were going to land on. Due to its complex nature, traffic trading remains a technique that is used by the more seasoned players in the industry.
Of course there are a great deal more traffic creation methods such as banner swaps, PPC ads and emergent technology for the mobile sector. The adult industry has always been at the cutting edge of traffic creation techniques so it will be intriguing to see where the adult web goes next.