[Dirtywitches]

Good Morning all:
My name is "Kathy (Katt if you please) I am pretty new to the whole website endeavor.
With a fairly small budget to work with. A nice gentleman suggested I get some feedback. On how to best use my time & money. If you have a moment to take a look. That would be most appreciated.I do need to warn you it is a adult toy store, With some pretty interesting items. Some might even say shocking! But that is who I am .
Thank you for your time Katt
dirtywitchestoybox.com

Remember a dirty witch is a happy witch

[Tigger]

hi kathy

welcome to the madhouse, and don't worry about shocking images here we are all adults, well other than Brent

Can I ask a few questions, the site you bought looks to me like a turnkey site? if so how much did you pay for the setting up and dare I ask what silly fees a month they are charging you ??

did you do any research into the company and if they have any webmasters that are doing well, other than the "example" ones they showed you

[Dirtywitches]

My friend is actually the webmaster I finally after 4 yrs of thought I decided it was something I could do. You know how everyone is asking where do you want to be in 5 yrs? I have always wanted to sell sexy stuff so my friend helped me. It is my foot in the door until I figure out how to do it on my own.I am slowly building my own stock of items. I do in home parties. thats where most of my revenue come from. As far as the payment It was a gift from said friend. I do pay a fee of $15 a month. Got to run thanks for taking the time to ask ? have a great day.

[Tigger]

I would do some more research on the company that your paying that $15 to as whilst is not much you are in my view wasting your money

These types of guys feed on people that don't understand the industry charging a lot to set up plus monthly fees with very little chance of making any real money.

Personally I wouldn't invest the time thats going to be needed and if you want to have a stab at the adult industry learn it from the ground up by learning about HTML & marketing, then once you have the basics look around at some of the very good affiliate deals on offer.

Trust me, you'll spend months trying to make money and during that time you could have the basics and start your own site

good luck

[Tigger]

this should make interesting reading

Adriatic Services/Own Your Own Adult Store,Home based Business Reviews, HYIP Reviews, MLM Reviews

[VoyGeorge]

The $15 is basically the cost of your Web site, I suppose, so that's not bad, but in general terms, the site is a white label for a toy sponsor/drop shipper and as such you've got tons of competition because these are simple to set up so everyone has them.

Not saying your friend didn't do you a favor by setting it up for you, but the real work is still ahead of you.

If you sell at parties you might have local sales generation, either for this site or one where you sell from your own stock, so that's a plus. But to make real money you'll need to promote the site somehow and get traffic to it. That's the real challenge everyone faces.

Finally, I found the layout of the site a bit confusing. The domain name, and the main heading, suggests your emphasis is on toys, but the first items are DVDs. It looks like a DVD site with toys thrown in.

[Tigger]

have you seen the setting up prices quoted for a site VG? $329 - $1600 !! and that doesn't come with any SEO advice or help

obviously the member here never paid that, but I would struggle to trust partnering with a company when they charge figures like that and then just leave someone high and dry

but I agree its a mix match of toys / dvds and lets face it we know to get either ranking is a battle but to try and get a site ranking for both sets of keywords is really well out of the reach of a newbie

[Dirtywitches]

I do kindly thank you for your input.tahts why I am trying to find out how a # of people feel & think in the intersest of my website. I have previously read that article.my thoughts on that is if you look enough. You can find a good or bad review on anything.But it all is food for thought. I will keep trying to figure out html.
I am however taking a closer look at what I can do on my own. thank you so much for taking the time to discuss your thoughts on this matter.

[VoyGeorge]

Right on all counts. We usually hear about the setup/affiliate fees AFTER someone has fallen for it and have come here. Then it's too late.

I imagine some of these outrageous setup costs even involve these kinds of white label sponsors, where it takes all of an hour to do. Of course, if you're a newbie it looks daunting, but as you say you'll learn along the way.

The way this site is set up now the only thing it'll rank for is the language on the warning page. There is no other text as the logo is a graphic and the title tag has the domain name. But these are things to teach Katt about, and now that's she's here perhaps she'll want to learn more.

We can all use SEO help. I've been doing this now since 1996, and there are still lots of things I forget to do, don't do, don't know to do, do wrong. Learning is ongoing.

[VoyGeorge]

So here are my specific suggestions for improving sales/biz.

1. First is to not realy on your storefront to either bring in sales, or close the sale. These types of white label sites just don't do that. You'd have to push several thousand visitors to your store a day to see even one or two sales.

2. Create a main blog and talk about the toys you're excited about. If you yourself are an exhibitionist maybe create some videos of you using the toys. Maybe provide "instruction." (You need better hosting for that as it's easy to burn through thre gigabytes.) If you're not an exhibitionist yourself, maybe enlist the help of a friend. But whatever you do, be sure you're different than the rest.

2a. Be sure to add a new blog post a day or two, at least for the first month. Then reappraise your success. Keep your posts reasonably short - 200-400 words is fine. Use art (that you are allowed to reproduce) to add spice.

3. Submit articles to the article sites (there's one attached to this forum) and talk about sex toys. For mainstrain article sites be somewhat clinical in your discussion. Don't use slang terms and if you add images make sure it's the toy in its box, not the toy in use! These articles can be reviews of the toys you like the most.

4. Sign up to Twitter and Facebook and get a following.

Now, on to the site:

1. Lose the warning page (it is not legally required in the US), or integrate an initial sales pitch into the page. A PG-rated sales pitch is fine, and in fact will INCREASE the chance of people clicking through.

2. Your emphasis is on toys, not DVDs. If I were you I'd remove the DVDs. DVD sales suck.

3. But if you do keep them, I'd advise to make them less male oriented. Many of the categories, and nearly all of the DVDs listed on the main catalog page, are for men, not women. Your overall site theme seems to cater to women, so go with that. Highlight DVDs for women. I wouldn't just go with the "for women" category because those are usually just some man's opinion of what women like. If you have the option, hand-pick 6-8 titles YOU think would be of interest to your customers. (In my sales experience, I find women tend to prefer videos with only women - "no dicks allowed" stuff - even if they are not themselves bi or lesbian. However, don't forget a huge untapped market is bi and lesbian women.)

4. Rethink your color scheme and overall layout. I find it taxing on the eyes. I know you're going for an autumn colors sort of thing, but I don't think it's working. At the least use a contrasting color for your top navigation. The black text blends into the picture of the witch.

[Dirtywitches]

What exactly in the rank you spoke of? And the lack of text in reference to the logo? I am looking to make great work of my time learning about websites language and such. I guess I could have just gone poking around from page to page trying to figure it all out. But i'm a social butterfly I want to interact while I go about my schooling on the subject at hand. so I anxiously await your answer about text & your reference to my logo.

[Dirtywitches]

Thank you

[VoyGeorge]

Something like "Building a Website for Dummies" would be a good place to start. It'll answer most of the basic questions that do not require personal interaction. Save that for things that the books don't readily answer.

Not that you're a dummy, of course, it's just the name of the series. There are other similar books you could look at.

[Tigger]

bit late for the follow up on this but great tips VG

Kathy what control do you have over the site? I presume you have FTP access so you can make changes ??

The book VG mentioned is a great starter book and will give you all the basics, then you can either start working on smaller sites to feed traffic onto your main (current) site and you could either use blogs or static sites

Have you had any sales from the site? Have you tested them to make sure they are not skimming sales as some of the complaints I read about the company your working with were pretty harsh

[gonzogone]

great feedback there guys

Katt - I think they are both on target and VG has the real answer for you to get things rolling initially. Toy sites are a dime a dozen right now and it's a rough market to make money on with only one toy site. If you combine it with something else that you have some control over such as a blog for reviewing toys and how-to guides, you stand a better chance of developing a following and making some sales. You need to build a reputation as somebody who knows what they are talking about and give people a reason to buy from you versus the 1,000s of others around.

Personally, I think your "DirtyWitches" is cool and could work well as a gimmick to draw attention to a blog, Twitter, FaceBook fan page, etc. It all takes work, so nothing easy, but it can work. As you learn more too, you'll find other avenues of affiliate marketing that may interest you to make $$ from.

one more thing on the graphics - the witch drawings you have are nice, but looks like you may have gotten them from photobucket and such. If you're going to go down this path and use that concept, it's worth paying somebody a few bucks to draw you some of your own that you have true rights to use. A couple of our members are also in charge of a toon board and have EXCELLENT skills in that area. Check the Playground board for a thread on "Toons" and you'll find Loki and Itchy. They can get you hooked up. Fresh drawings, branded to YOU as "Dirty Witches"

hang in there and you'll get there