PHONEIX, AZ – The annual Phoenix Forum gathering of adult internet professionals entered its second day on Friday, and the first topic of the day was website traffic. A panel of experts spoke to an audience of early risers at the Tempe Mission Palms Hotel in Phoenix, Arizona. The panel included Craig Tant from SexKey.com, Connor Young from YNOT.com, Sweetums from LightspeedCash.com, and Johnny V from Porn Posse. Traffic topics under discussion included both buying and selling traffic. The panel was moderated by CCBill’s Randall Crockett.How do you find traffic that converts?

“Finding traffic is easy,” said Johnny V in a voice made raspy by the previous night’s festivities. “Finding traffic that converts well is not.” He recommended that potential traffic buyers deal with professionals who have experience selling traffic to adult webmasters.

“Finding what converts for you if going to depend largely on what you’re trying to sell,” added Young, who explained that the quality and nature of a website’s content will affect how well it can convert any given traffic source.

“There’s going to be a lot of trial and error,” continued Young. He told the audience that it’s important to try various sources of traffic and to find what works and what doesn’t. Young reminded that audience that there are a lot of factors that might contribute to “hits to sales” conversion ratios, meaning a webmaster might not want to give up on an unproductive traffic source without first considering the various fixable reasons why that traffic might be unproductive.

Tant explained that when his company sells traffic to other websites, it wants to see good conversion ratios. So webmasters wanting to buy traffic first need to spend a lot of time optimizing their sites for maximum possible sales. According to Tant, his company likes to see ratios around 1:250 from buyers.

“You want to find what works best and then spend your resources and time doing it as well as [possible],” said Tant.

According to Sweetums, the traffic game has changed much over the past few years.

“More and more affiliates who don’t have their own sites are [getting] into the traffic procurement game,” said Sweetums, meaning affiliate marketers of various sponsorship programs are buying traffic and sending it straight to their sponsors without filtering it through their own websites. Sweetums advised the audience to know who they are dealing with before buying traffic.

Concurring with Sweetums, Young told the audience that it’s easy to get ripped off when you buy traffic from an unknown source. He strongly urged the audience to seek references for traffic brokers before signing on any dotted lines.

Johnny V spoke briefly about the reality of “shaving” in the adult internet industry, meaning some affiliate programs might not report all sales made by their affiliates. Young said that it can be hard to determine which companies are shaving and which are not, and said one way to judge a company is on the financial results. Johnny V nonetheless urged the audience to be absolutely intolerant of shaving if it’s exposed.

“Before you buy traffic, make sure that your stats are working,” said Johnny V. He urged the audience to monitor their stats on a daily basis.

Sweetums agreed that stats monitoring is important, and suggested that webmasters use automation and analysis tools to determine what their traffic is doing.

“What we’re looking for are things that are new, things that are different,” said Tant. “What we think converts right now the very best is getting away from a ‘megasite,’ getting away from trying to please [every surfer].”

“Be the one person who’s doing something fun and something different,” advised Tant.

Young added that it can be a challenge to convert at a high level with licensed, unoriginal content.

“Surfers are a lot savvier today than they were a few years ago, they know how to get free content online” said Young. “If they show up at your site and it says, ‘Hey, we have naked girls.’ Great, I can load up Kazaa and get that for free, why should I pay for it? … When you go to build your site, think about what’s unique about your site … if you can make it where they can’t go to Kazaa to get what you’re offering then you will have a better chance for success.”

Young pointed to solo girl sites and reality sites as two examples that have done well for many webmasters.

How much should a webmaster pay for traffic?

“You want to pay as little as possible for the highest quality traffic that you can get,” said Johnny V. “Made sure that if you put a dollar in, you get a dollar twenty out.”

Sweetums added that breaking even can even be a good thing for an initial test of a traffic source. If a webmaster breaks even initially, he or she can then make the necessary small tweaks to make the traffic profitable next time out.