Here’s something to think about - the servers will cost me more than my house does! I am sure that’s true for many internet businesses, but at the moment this is all being personally funded by me until we go live and start making money. At the moment things are such that I am happy and perfectly able to do this.

Why have I gone for something so expensive?
We do have some high end requirements as we are building is a platform for media distribution and aggregation. i.e. there is going to be masses of downloads, streaming and data transfer. We could have actually spent a lot more, but what we have opted for is something which is perfect for the initial launch and very scalable. The scalability was a major part of the consideration. I don’t want to experience problems later when we have increasing volumes of traffic and can’t grow our back end fast enough to deal with it.

We needed a solution which:
- Is located well for serving both the US and Europe
- Has a redundant set up - one server can go down and we’ll not lose any data or experience any downtime.
- Has the ability to transcode media files from one format and resolution to another
- Has its own mini CDN (Content Distribution Network) which makes large data downloads such as video streaming more efficient.
- Can plug straight in to a larger CDN if we have to.
- Can have up to 1000mbps per server connection – that’s a massive amount of data being transferred at the same time, we have loads of space to store media and
- No restriction on monthly bandwidth
- Masses amount of storage space

We have all this! Beyond that I get lost in the technical specifications of the servers.
I can’t wait to start getting some sites up and running.

I mean I really can’t wait - I need to get the sites up and making money to pay for this before it bankrupts me!

On an unrelated note
I’ve just had to replace 3 more tyres on my car and have the windscreen replaced on another. I don’t believe anyone has worse luck with cars than us. I’ll definitely be getting something fast, impractical, environmentally unfriendly and uneconomical when the time is right. I can’t see how it will possibly cost me any more than the current sensible cars do.

Looking at unique page views it’s very clear that everything is very much how I would expect it to be. Hourly usage is at a peak from 5pm up to midnight. It dips while everyone sleeps and then picks up throughout the day.

Though I’ve not plotted payments over this, the trends do very much follow what I have observed. There are payments very soon after midnight, then little during the morning where it slowly picks up and hits a peak post 5pm which continues through the evening.

At the moment new traffic comes evenly from organic and paid campaigns, with no throttling our end, the distribution across the day is purely from when people choose to access the site or click on a link/ad somewhere.

I aim to have 30% new traffic to the site on any day. Unless we targeted very aggressively traffic at off peak times and stopped completely during peak different times it would not affect the graph much. And we’d have to ask ourselves why we would do that - is the ROI on members in the middle of the night better than those that will come to the site during normal hours? Again, it’s not tested but I seriously doubt it, so much so I won’t bother investigating just yet!!

I’ve not looked at day of the week activity, partly because it is far to easy to influence with newsletters which go out. If you send out a newsletter Wednesday you’ll be biggest spike of activity from this newsletter soon afterwards. This is particularly true on dating and community sites. What would be more interesting to know is on which day the same mailing gets the highest response….

If you do start looking at information like this to optimise advertising or any other call-to-action initiatives it’s important to realise that the moment you start reacting to trends, such as hourly activity, days members will read emails, you will also skew your results, so you need to segment and so that you can either test alternatives, or have a “normal” data set to compare to.

Ross, I know you read this, what’s your general finding on whitelabeldating.com - Approx what % of sales come in after 5 or 6pm during the week compared to earlier in the day, especially on casual sites like the ones I run with you?

I’m approaching a suitable time frame in a couple of days where I will have had sites with White Label Dating for 3 months so I am trying to dig in to my statistics to make comparisons to other platforms I’m promoting and have promoted in the past.

Affiliate Vs. White Label

Traditionally affiliate programs will deliberately hide a lot of the detail, often just give you your balances and member totals. They don’t want affiliates knowing what their own site performance is really like, what the margins are etc. It’s also true that when affiliates are paid a CPA they don’t need to be as interested in what goes on other than the conversion rate from traffic they send in to payments.

Generally an affiliate program will promote itself to an affiliate using the best case scenario - “earn $100 per payment” - what they don’t always tell you is that it’s only for confirmed credit card detail payments, or you need to be converting at 20% to get this. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this, it’s perfectly normal marketing and if affiliates make a profit everyone is happy.

White Label systems are generally more transparent with their commissions because they have to be, though this is not always true. Where you have to be careful is being given way too optimistic conversions and retentions rates which lead to unachievable expectations. Something I have witnessed and experienced personally. Not good!

Analysing a sites performance

The difficulties in comparing one system to another are:
- data is presented and accessed differently
- it is time consuming to collate
- I have to use a few algorithms to standardise the different data I collect.

Though I do like lots of statistics, most people are not as analytical as me. There is no great demand on white label providers to produce really extensive reports. Having worked for a white label provider I also know it is not a trivial matter.

Having too much data can be dangerous! You won’t find the information you need quickly, worse still if you produce multiple reports and there are discrepancies between them you’ll waste a lot of time scratching your head trying to figure out what is going on and debating which numbers are most accurate. Something I have fallen foul of. In my case I asked for explanation on the numbers from the platform owners but still to this day have no answer!

As I work with white labels, running my businesses on their platforms, I do need to have access to enough data to understand what my members are doing. I earn over the lifetime of those members so need to be able to plan and budget accordingly. Currently I have enough information at my fingerprints to do this.

The most important information you need is: Members, Paying Members, New Sales Totals & Re-Order Totals for any given month or pay period. This is enough to produce accurate reports.

The one variable I have little control over is time, which you also need when trending your members. Patience is not one of my virtues!

Once my first phase number crunching is done - I’ll post my findings.

One of the favorite domains I have ever purchased is fuck-buddies.com. A site since 2005, it is exactly what you would expect!

Though this site has been around for a long time, it has just re-launched it with a new platform. The complete feature list is actually simpler to what was there before, but with a good reason. The key differences (apart from a cleaner design) are:
- more user friendly features
- improved mailing notifications & member alerts
- more members, of which there are:
   - more real members
   - more active members
   - less fake/scamming profiles.

All of this means a much better customer experience, and I hope this will result in higher conversion rates, higher retention rates, and obviously higher per member values.

Primarily the success of a viral campaign comes down to the amount of views it gets, and the amount of traffic it can direct to a website. However in business terms it has to do one more thing. It has to generate business; in most cases this means sales. This advert I am sure will get plenty of views. I myself am fuelling it in a little way by bringing attention to it, but will it actually make them many sales. I am not convinced…

The original file can seen and commented on here by the way.
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-58396

But I did recently receive one email which I opened and read. It linked to a letter which was quite amusing:

Dear Internet Porn,

These last ten years have been quite a trip, have they not? My letter to you now, however, is not one of celebration… I don’t feel like we are the same anymore. We just don’t have that passion we used to.

When we first met I was a loser, and you were there for me. My parents told me that you were no good for me, but I didn’t listen. You showed me that there were plenty of people like myself getting laid. It was beautiful and passionate. Your softcore erotic videos were a tasteful introduction to my budding sexuality.

As I got older I started seeing girls on the side. I knew you were jealous, but you have always held a special place in my heart. You became naughtier and it affected my relationships. I started wanting all the things I had seen you do. I wanted to be just like you. I wanted to cover my girlfriend’s face, put it up her ass, choke her.

But that’s when I realized your dark secret, Internet Porn. You aren’t real: you are a fake and shallow individual. No girl wants a load on her face! Anal sex hurts and humiliates, and choking only leads to bruises that friends and loved ones ask about. You lied to me and changed my sexual expectations. Now no girl can please me.

I know it isn’t all bad. You’ve taught me so much. I can surf the internet with either hand and I know all the keyboard shortcuts for my browser. I know positions that aren’t even in the Kamasutra. But you have such a dark side. I’ve been late for work more than once and I find myself wanting to jerkoff at six in the morning. That’s what you’ve done to me.

Even now, on the eve of Christ’s birth, I sit hunched over my computer, penis in hand. I had to turn the nativity scene around so that Jesus wouldn’t see your filth. Try as I might, I can never hide you well enough either. It is harder to find you squirreled away on my hard drive than it is to get into my online bank account. Yet there is always lingering evidence. I’ve told you time and again to stop leaving your things at my place. But you ALWAYS forget something: a shortcut here, an unclear history there.

There’s no acceptance when you are discovered either. It might have been ok when we started - just innocent flirting with softcore. But now my girlfriends discover my asphyxiation collection, or that one goat video. I hate that you always invite your shadiest friends over when you come.

So I have one request. I know I can’t get rid of you… you are the psychopathic stalker to my teenage horror film. But if you won’t leave me alone, can you at least do me one favor? If I ever die, can you please format my hard drive? All of them? If you can’t do that, just burn my place down. My family can never know of my shame.

- Your shamed lover

Original article on Craigslist: http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/sfo/518589816.html

It’s funny is because its true! I bet there are very few men who read this and it didn’t ring true to some degree, at the very least they can empathise with it.

The internet was made for porn, it has revolutionised the accessibility of it. Last week on the radio psychotherapists were claiming sex addiction had increased, almost purely down to the internet.

The trend is obvious - porn is on the up, especially now the internet is evolving to be all about content, not just information. High speed connections, large downloads and video streaming are the norm.
Whatever your views or morals you can not deny that there is big money in porn. Loads love it, some hate to love it, and another bunch of people love to hate it. I have no issues with it, from a business perspective it is time to embrace porn.

You could argue the internet is already over saturated with porn, but the truth is there is always room for more! For anyone looking to get in to affiliate marketing online, adult related sites are without a doubt the easiest to promote.
Sex sells, so if you can market it there’s always an opportunity. If you have something a little different AND can market then you’ve got something special…..

…. and I might have something special.

AdultFriendFinder.com is the biggest adult personals site on the internet, and after much speculation Its owner and founder Andrew Conru accepted $500M CASH!

Dec. 12 PRNewswire

Penthouse Media Group Inc.,
parent to Penthouse Magazine, one of the world’s leading men’s lifestyle
publications and producers of online, licensed and broadcast content and
materials, announced today that it has acquired internet social networking
giant Various, Inc. and its subsidiaries for $500 million in cash and
securities. With $340 million in projected combined 2007 revenues, this
acquisition makes Penthouse the largest adult entertainment company in the
world.

Various has an extensive affiliate network, as well as a rapidly
growing member base of more than 260 million consumers and a total paid
subscriber list in excess of 1.2 million. Various operates more than 25
online communities including adultfriendfinder.com, which is a top 50 Web
site nationwide. Adultfriendfinder.com is one of the most highly trafficked
Web sites in the world with more than 18 million members.

full story

For me there are a few very interesting points about this story:
1) Though $500M sounds like a massive amount, I estimate it is only approx 3 - 4 times the EBITDA, very low for an internet company which normally see multiples from 15+. This has got to be because of the adult nature of the business hugely reducing the number of potential buyers. Also another factor must have been that only a day before the sale the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) restricted AdultFriendFinder’s promotional activities.
2) Andrew Conru never wanted to own the largest adult site in the world! It came about by accident after launching FriendFinder… This highlights my reasoning for being involved in adults dating, there is simply huge demand for it!
3) What will happen to all of Various Inc’s other properties, not only main stream sites, but sitse such as BigChurch… I cannot imagine that its members will be delighted about financing the porn giants Penthouse!

All very interesting news, especially for anyone interested in online dating or aspiring to be a porn mogul!