For busy Webmasters who own multiple sites, content centralization makes a lot of sense. Whether as a tactic for increasing the number of sites you operate, or for increasing your ease of maintenance while lowering the cost of licensed content, it's something everyone should do:
The Mega-Site Approach
It's one of the little secrets of the pay site world: many if not most operations that own multiple sites across several niches will typically rely on one content filled "back-end" with multiple "front-ends" for marketing purposes.
It's a simple enough concept. If you have a collection of 50,000 images, 10,000 photos may be of blondes with big boobs, 10,000 might be of amateur models, 10,000 may show legal teens, etc. Why not take half a dozen or so of the best photos from each category and build separate front-end tours on different domains? Now not only do you have your main "Mega-Site" but you also have a "Big Titty Blondes" site, an "Amateur Sluts" site, and a "Teen Teasers" site as well.
Rather than (wrongly and illegally) claim "We offer 50,000 pics of nasty Teen Teasers!" these sites might (reasonably) proclaim "See our naughty Teen Teasers in uncensored, XXX hardcore action!" and "We offer 50,000 Hardcore Photos!" Both statements are accurate depictions of the site's content, even if they (arguably) mislead the surfer into believing that ALL 50,000 photos are of "Teen Teasers" or what have you:
This strategy makes a lot of sense for sites with vast amounts of content; as the member will unlikely see all of your available images - even if he joined several of your "sites," and so not feel that he has been taken advantage of, a feeling that can swiftly lead to an increase in your charge-back ratio.
You may now wonder why a surfer would join several of your sites, but believe me, it happens, and should even be encouraged by sending out special offers by email to him after his first membership expires. As long as he feels that he is getting something different, he may just bite and join again, especially since you are now a known (and hopefully trusted) commodity to him.
This is especially easy for Web operations that maintain their content dynamically (in a mySQL database for example). It then becomes a very simple matter to customize graphics, font faces, sizes, colors, backgrounds, navigational metaphors, etc. on your front-end and member's area, to help maintain the illusion of a series of totally unique sites.
Precious Metals - The AVS Approach
This approach involves a much simpler, scaled down version of the pay site strategy outlined above, and is most suitable for Webmasters who build AVS sites, especially the premium grade "Gold and Platinum" sites. For example, you might build four "Preferred" sites, each containing 50 photos. You might then build a "Platinum" site with 200 photos, comprised of just the gallery sections from your four Preferred sites. Now you have five sites to work with instead of the one Platinum site, and then you can use the four Preferred sites to up-sell the surfer on a Platinum membership, using your main site as your "sponsor."
This is a simple and effective way to maximize your profits and link list traffic...
This is a simple and effective way to maximize your profits and link list traffic, although some AVS' may not allow this common practice, so carefully read their site's Terms & Conditions disclaimer first. As long as you use unique graphics and build really clean sites, most AVS systems should not have a problem with you doing this.
Added Benefits of Centralized Content
There are a few more benefits to centralizing your content base: pay sites that often use a substantial amount of leased content may realize considerable savings on their licensing fees, which are typically based on not only the volume of traffic or bandwidth transferred, but upon the number of referring URLs. By calling all of your content from one domain, you will need only one license, and while this may not be fair to the content provider, I'm sure that it happens more often than not.
Another added benefit is easy management of your referring domains. Consider the plight of a Webmaster who wants to build 1,000 AVS sites and offer "Pornication" live video chat feeds on all of them, for example. Instead of registering 1,000 different sites with the content provider (a tedious and unnecessary task to be sure), why not register your main site, and have your other sites link to it?
For those unfamiliar with this procedure, most "live feeds" as well as other forms of hosted content, will only allow access by registered "referrers." Why not make it easy on yourself and them by simplifying the process, referring all your traffic through one domain and one account?
Finally, content management becomes infinitely easier when you centralize all of your externally provided (third-party) offerings. For example, for well over a year I happily promoted the fact that a hundred of my main AVS sites offered "6,500+ Erotic Stories! New Stories Added Weekly!" all of which came to me free, courtesy of the good folks at "Storydatabase.com."
Well, one day and without any warning or other notification, they decided to stop providing this service, and redirected all of the incoming traffic to their sponsor's site. I only discovered this outrage after one of my occasional "click everything manually" runs.
The story above illustrates the hard way to learn the value of centralized content. Reading this article is the easy way. No matter what size site, or how many sites, you operate, placing your content in one centralized location simply makes life easier and more profitable. Try it on your own site and see for yourself! ~ Stephen
