“Newbie Roadmap” is a series of articles that discuss the basic issues that most entrepreneurs will need to consider before getting into the online adult website game. If you are thinking about building an adult-oriented website and are presently gathering the information you need to get started, then “Newbie Roadmap” is a good place to start.I consider myself to be a clever person. So it’s with no great pleasure that I admit that I was once taken in by an online scam. How did the scam work? A company, claiming to be offering traffic (visitors for a website) at rock bottom prices, took out an advertisement with another company that I knew and respected. I forget the specifics of the deal, as it was quite a few years ago now, but the offer was for hundreds of thousands of clicks to be spread out over a period of time and delivered to my website. I figured the traffic would be awful, but also that I wouldn’t have to convert more than 1 in 10,000 to make a profit. The website where I intended to send the traffic, at the time, generally converted on average at 1 in 250 with a mixture of excellent to decent traffic; 1 in 10,000 for crap traffic didn’t seem out of the question.

You probably see where this is going. I sent in my check, but the traffic was never delivered. The check was cashed. When I tried to contact the company again, they were gone.

Now, I went wrong in a number of places. First, I spent a good amount of money with a company that I knew nothing about. Second, I didn’t do any research on the company or ask for references before I pulled the trigger on the deal. Third, I did business with a company that offered only an email address and had no phone contacts. Had I simply asked around, I’m sure that I would have quickly found out that nobody could have vouched for that company. I probably could have saved myself an embarrassing and costly lesson.

So to make amends, I pass this story on to you, the newbie. Unfortunately, online scams are really quite frequent. And scams involving adult websites do happen quite a bit too. However, even companies that aren’t trying to scam you outright could turn into your worst nightmare if you don’t do your homework.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a newbie show up on the YNOT message boards for the first time and complain about a bad business experience with a company that they never should have contacted in the first place. The solution is really quite simple: make use of YNOT before you spend a lot of money. First, if a company is advertising with us then you at least know that we feel pretty good about that company – if we didn’t, we wouldn’t allow them to advertise on our website. YNOT has been around since 1996, so we know a little bit about which companies have been around and which need further investigation. Using our Service Directory to find the companies that offer the services you need is an excellent place to start, and if you have any doubts about a company that you’re thinking about doing business with then don’t hesitate to use our message boards to ask some questions; YNOT moderators, as well as your fellow webmasters, are very helpful and willing to share their experiences with you. If you ever have a bad experience with one of our advertisers, we have a formal complain process that you can initiate and we will investigate your claim.

The important thing is that you always keep in mind the possibility of a scam before you spend money; but also keep in mind the possibility that you’re just dealing with a new company that hasn’t perfected its game yet. Either way, you probably want to stick with the proven companies first, and ask around about the newer companies before you spend too much money that you might never get back.

Just don’t learn this lesson the hard way, because now you have no excuse if you do.