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The Inside Track

There's a virtual treasure trove of money-making marketing information right at your fingertips if you only know where to look, and what to do with the information once you find it. Let me give you a few examples...

I received an e-mail the other day from Zaandam, The Netherlands, in which Maria from Freeones detailed the Top 20 porn star searches happening at their web site. According to Maria, "Every day since July 2003, porn star/celebrity free site Freeones.com has featured a list of the most searched girls of the previous day. In answer to visitor requests, Freeones has now listed the overall Top 20 porn star searches, and will continue to inform the adult industry as well as its online visitors by publicizing monthly top lists, beginning in January of 2005. The overall top list doesn't contain many surprises: Jenna Jameson is by far the most popular porn star of the moment. Still, besides the expected big names, there are a few less familiar names in the list."

Maurice, the founder and owner of Freeones, added that "Over the last few years, my site has become quite important in measuring porn star popularity online, which is why we have decided to publicize our search-top list. As from this month we are also going to keep track of our monthly top lists. We expect to be able to provide the industry with monthly lists starting in January of 2005."

For those of you who are interested, here is Freeones' current Porn Star Top 20:

  • Jenna Jameson
  • Briana Banks
  • Tera Patrick
  • Krystal Steal
  • Devon
  • Aria Giovanni
  • Crissy M
  • Catalina Cruz
  • Silvia Saint
  • Jill Kelly
  • Chloe Jones
  • Nikki Nova
  • Nina Mercedez
  • Tawny Roberts
  • Sky Lopez
  • Lanny Barbie
  • Brittney Skye
  • Sophie Sweet
  • Amber Michaels
  • Gina Lynn

Beyond The Stars
But I didn't come here to talk about porn stars. I came to talk about these types of resources and how to use them to help plan and manage your marketing and advertising campaigns. By seeking out directory sites and traffic brokers who publish search term information, you are able to gain insight into potential new markets, while targeting keyword options for Pay Per Click and other advertising campaigns.

For example, if I was contemplating a pay site that featured porn stars, the list above would let me know what 20 stars I damn well better include in my members area. If I was opening a porn star TGP, I would want a list of text links that would send traffic to sponsors offering galleries of these ladies. More important than box office or video rental popularity numbers, what's popular with surfers is what we're interested in – we just need to find the sources of this information, and Freeones is helping to lead the way.

But what if you're not interested in porn stars? Then what? Have no fear, Overture is here...

Overture's Search Term Suggestion Tool keeps an eye on Yahoo! and other searches and provides relevant keyword suggestions based upon terms you enter into an online form. While designed to facilitate advertiser's use of their marketing system, Overture's tool let's you see popular searches related to your terms, and lets you know how many times these searches are performed over a one month period.

This is not only useful for helping to budget for PPC campaigns, but can help with developing domain names, titles, descriptions, "alt" tags and all sorts of money making tools and enhancements for your online operations – especially if you can be creative.

With traffic as hard to come by as it is these days, every advantage that you can find is one more tool with which to compete. Hopefully I've shown you a way to take your traffic – and revenue – to the next level. If there's some similar traffic resources that you would like to share, please list them in the message thread below. I'll see you in the trenches! ~ Stephen

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