First off, if you’re reading this and you’re thinking you want to start your own amateur site starring yourself, or if you’re a couple, then that’s great and I can certainly understand your desire. My wife Catrina and I were there not that long ago. Here is our story and where we are at this point.We are a pretty sexual couple, and my wife Catrina was getting naked on her cam a lot. We were having fun letting people view us having sex, etc. One day Catrina told a guy if he wanted to see us he’d need to pay, thinking she would get rid of him. Well, as you can imagine, he paid us to view. That was the beginning of our site.

Keeping in mind how fun this is, you must be prepared and ready for a lot of issues with, but not limited to, the following: low traffic, learning HTML, learning Photoshop, learning Dreamweaver, learning about blogs, forums, groups, getting traffic, trades and TGPs. These are just some of the issues you will encounter in trying to get your amateur site to succeed. Each of these items can take a huge amount of time to learn and master. That’s if you ever do.

You also will need to keep updated content in your member’s area if you want your members to stay. Don’t even bother starting unless you have about 1000 pictures and a lot of videos. Also, members nowadays really like person-to-person contact, such as live chat events and live cam events; we’ve found these events really make a difference in keeping your members.

If you manage to get yourself a nice design and you have a lot of content, keeping it updated is no problem – you just have to worry about getting traffic. Which is a huge, huge thing. You can’t make sales if no one goes to your site. The pros here at YNOT have helped me the best they can when it comes to traffic, and I’m still working hard at getting traffic up and keeping it up.

I’ve used some of these techniques to generate traffic: Top Lists – I’ve both joined them and made them. TGPs – surfers looking for free tend not to buy. Picture Post Sites – good traffic, but again, cheap surfers. Search Engines. Online Classifieds – I use AdBlaster. Traffic Trades – email other webmasters asking for a trade. Pay-per-click advertising. 404 error bought traffic – good for feeding a Top List. Yahoo Groups – talked in chat rooms person-to-person. Chatting – selling selling selling… most effective.

Also, one of the biggest things we are having trouble with now is really focusing on what niche we’re in. We are running a BBW site, so we need to maintain BBW trades, searches, links, top lists. All of our marketing needs to be directed towards the BBW surfer.

My recommendation is the same as others on this site. If you don’t have anything into it yet, go with a free site. Basically you sign up for affiliates and get a commission for selling their site. They have content, banners and much more that will help you in selling it. Make a site linking different categories to your different affiliate links. When people do buy, you get a commission.

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to ask me anything or recommend anything. I always love hearing from others in this business.