HTML tutorials for Niteflirt and other stuff

Let’s say you have your own domain. You have uploaded files, say, photos, and you intend to sell access to those photos. You don’t want to give access to anyone who doesn’t pay. All you want is to sell access to photo sets by email, not start a member’s area where someone could have full access to all the files you might have.

If you’ve read this far, you probably aren’t sure how to go about this. There are a lot of ways to do it, many of them requiring a fair amount of technical expertise.

I’m going to skip around those and give the one that is the easiest to use that I know of.

Let’s say I have a domain named mydomain.com. The URL of that domain is http://mydomain.com. If I have an ‘images’ folder, as many people do, the URL would be http://mydomain.com/images/. If you have an image in there named myimage.jpg, the URL of that image is http://mydomain.com/images/myimage.jpg.

The first thing you need to do is check to see what happens if you go to that /images/ directory by typing in the address http://mydomain.com/images/. It is often the case that typing in a folder name will by default send you to an index page you have in that folder. But if you don’t have an index page in that folder (because maybe you didn’t put one there), depending on how your server is set up by your host, you may see a default directory page that has clickable links to all your images.

This is a bad thing, as anyone who knows you have an /images/ folder (or anyone who guesses you have one) can see everything you have in there. You may want to contact your host to see if they will change that, or you can simply create and upload a blank index page.

Open Notepad (Start=>Accessories=>Notepad), select File=>Save As. In the window that pops up, choose where you want to save it on your computer first, so you won’t forget where you put it. Type index.html in the “File name” box. Change “Save as Type” from “Text Documents (*.txt)” to “All Files”. Then click Save.

Upload the file into any directory that doesn’t already have an index file of some sort.

Now, let’s say you want to sell someone a set of files named reddress1.jpg, reddress2.jpg, and reddress3.jpg. You may want to sell multiple sets. It’s really convenient to name them like that, because it makes it easy for you to see what you have and work with it. But it also makes it easy for someone else to guess what else might be there. So if someone who bought Set 1 guessed that Set 2 contained reddress4.jpg, reddress5.jpg, and reddress6.jpg, then typed those in, they could very well find them. They might also go looking to see what you named your other photo sets, based on your sales info.

Obviously that’s way too easy. Here’s what I do. I append a random string to the end of the file or folder I am giving access to, using PassUtils, a free password generator. Unzip it and install it. To use it just open and uncheck the “punctuation box”, because having punctuation in a filename can mess up opening that file. Create as many passwords as you like. Then right click each password and copy the password to your clipboard. Rename your files one at a time by right clicking in a Windows ‘Save As’ or ‘Open’ window, or in FTP, by right clicking and selecting ‘Rename’. The name will be selected. Hit the right arrow to put the cursor to the end of the file name, between the file name and the file extension. Type an underscore ‘_’ or hyphen ‘-’, then copy in the random string.

The goal is to change the file ‘reddress1.jpg‘ to ‘reddress1_6cYm2FTg.jpg‘. Now you can still read what the file contains based on what you named it, but nobody can possibly guess correctly what you named it to access it without permission.

You can also do the same thing with folders containing multiple images. If you sell a single set of images in a folder named /Set1_6cYm2FTg/, nobody can guess the folder name, and you can still give the photos easy names inside the folder.

It’s a lot easier for people who are reading your post when you quote the post. But it gets confusing if you just copy it and paste it in, as it seems like it’s part of what you wrote.

When you want to quote a post in a forum, look for a “quote” button or link at the top or bottom of the post you want to quote from. Click it. When the post appears, it will have the entire post you are quoting in it.

Like this one:

(Nothing will happen when you click the button.)

Then you can delete everything but what you are replying to.

People who spend a lot of money on website design sometimes put a fair amount of money into marketing research to determine what design features will end up getting them more conversions (sales). If you are observant, you will find that in certain industries, certain types of web design predominate. It would be reasonable to take that into consideration if you were designing a site in that industry.

A lot of the research which has been done is available for free or a small charge. For instance, we know things like the first place someone looks when they land on your page (upper left-hand corner). We know that the more clicks someone has to make to find what they are looking for, the more likely they are to just give up. We know that the more information you have on a page, the less likely they will immediately see what they are looking for, even if it is right there.

So the question is, how is your listing design working for you?

The issue is that while there are numerous different types of design in use (and apparently many of the different types successful), what matters is whether a design is working for you to make you money. How can you measure that?

Well, if you did it yourself—especially if you are not particularly skilled—are there errors on the page? Is it broken? Can you tell? Things like typos, grammatical errors, broken code, non-working buttons, and missing images need to be fixed, first of all. If you can’t tell by looking, have someone else look at it to see if they see anything that you missed.

Do you have a statcounter on the page? That will help you see how much traffic you are getting.

But if you’ve had a design up for a long time, it’s pretty much impossible to tell whether making changes would help you or not. It would be a mistake to simply assume that it will or won’t.

If you get a new design, put it up and WATCH CAREFULLY to see what happens. It’s not about your tastes and whether you like it. It’s about whether it inspires your customers to make purchases.

You may find your traffic and/or sales increase. You may find them drop off dramatically. I have heard several girls put up new designs, pleased as all heck, who took them down really fast when they found their business died off.

First of all, “LVS” stands for Listing Value Score. It is a system that was designed to rank the value of a listing in order to determine its relative worth to Niteflirt. It was used for two purposes: to determine the order in which listings should appear, based on that perceived value, and to set a relative price that individuals should pay to feature.

Niteflirt created pages for us to help us understand our LVS. They never told us what our “scores” were. The blue boxes (on a scale of 1 to 10) were never meant to give either accuracy or precision to our understanding. There were many factors they used, and we were never told what all of them were or how they interacted.

Prior to the LVS, everyone paid the same to feature for a position, and “featured listings” were in a separate section on top of listings that were not bidding to feature, which were ranked by points. And prior to that, all listings were ranked by points earned, so the 6 girls with the greatest number of points were always on the front page.

Back then there were plenty of guys scouring the indexes looking for new girls, so not having any points did not mean you were not going to get any calls.

Now that is impossible. One of the unintended consequences of LVS featuring is that one of the few avenues for a flirt’s increasing her business has been increasing the number of accounts she runs. From the implementation of the lvs up until the transition, the number of listings on the system maybe doubled. But now there are hundreds of thousands of new listings. Really.

One problem with the LVS is that when the decision was made what to reward (ie, getting clicks and calls directly from the indexes), it was also being decided that other types of business were of no value to Niteflirt. So girls who attracted calls through their websites got no credit. We still get no credit for signing up new customers, and Niteflirt directs them to the front page to prevent the flirt who attracted them from getting the call they signed up in order to make. There is no commission Niteflirt has to pay for doing that. Flirts pay money to give traffic to Niteflirt in exchange for absolutely nothing. Why should they ever change it?

You got no credit for mail purchases unless the customer was already a customer whose first transaction with you was a qualifying transaction. And there were lots of times you’d be paying for clicks that were entirely unfair. We were paying for clicks to blocked customers, who were never going to call. A $1 click a day from a blocked customer is going to cost a girl $365 a year. For 1000 accounts, that would be $372K a year of essentially unearned income for Niteflirt. Is it any wonder they refused to stop that?

After the transition, the LVS that was current about a week prior became the standard listing sort for months. Girls who had been consistently high earners were there, as well as girls who just plain got lucky.

After a while, they started to implement changes. What we have now, imperfect as it is, has been in effect since early this year. They keep making changes to it, but the fact that there is an LVS in effect is not new this week or month.

A lot of girls are so eager to get featuring based on LVS scores back that they are willing to pay for lots of clicks that don’t lead to calls. There is nothing in the implementation of that feature that is going to fix anything that is broken on the site. Niteflirt recognizes that girls are willing to throw money away and it is working mightily to provide that service.

The LVS we have is not the same as it was before the transition. Prior to that, listings in an account were linked together. A big purchase on one would pull up the rest of the account. Now they are not. Only the listings that earned a lot of money will show high on the indexes.

Featuring will be based on the LVS we have now. Giving flirts the ability to feature will not revert anything to what it was before the transition. There are probably 5 times as many accounts active as there when we last had the ability to bid. That’s 5 times as many girls desperate to get calls. You do the numbers.

It’s just a matter of supply and demand. Calls coming into the site are fixed. The demand for those calls is ever-increasing.

I’m taking an online Sitepoint Javascipt live course for only $9.95. It’s for people who are comfortable with HTML and maybe CSS. If you think you’re ready for Javascript, you might want to check it out. It starts today, but you move along at your own pace, give that you have weekends to catch up.

There are videos, articles, assignments, and a private forum. We’ll see how it works out.

Many girls are now using Photohostess to host their images for Niteflirt. Unfortunately, although photohostess is intended to host photos for girls on Niteflirt and provide them with links to use, it does not provide you with Niteflirt-safe image code or the information you need to fix the links to make them work but keep them from getting your listing suspended.

In my last entry I gave instructions on how to clean up Photohostess links by editing them. That is no longer necessary. I have created a page that you can enter your image url, which will give you a working image link to copy.

There is also a second form which will generate a working link. So you can use it to create HTML code for payment mail buttons, image links to your blog, or whatever you want.

There is a third form you can use to create text links.

You must enter naked links with no tags. There should be no spaces in your links. If you miscopy, it will create HTML code for you that just won’t work. If you are making payment mail buttons, copy the plain HTML link from the window that comes up after you create or edit your payment mail button, not the popup that links from the payment mail index and provides you with a gray payment mail button code.

These are standard links. They will work with any text or image anywhere you need an HTML image or link code on the web. They will not modify your image size for you.

Photohostess link generator

Photohostess is a photo hosting site intended for use with Niteflirt. The site requires photos uploaded to meet Niteflirt photo requirements. Therefore, it is rather odd that of all the links they give you to use your photos, none of them is Niteflirt-safe and ready. (Click to enlarge the image if it appears small to you.)

You have a choice here, but either way you have to do some editing.

You can take the hotlink for websites code, and remove the link (shown in red):

<a href="http://photohostess.com/etc…"><img src=”http://photohostess.com/etc…></a>

Or you can take the direct link and turn it into an image link by adding the parts in green here:

<img src="http://photohostess.com/etc…">

Also see How to host an image on Niteflirt.

The basic principle:

1. Keywords you choose should reflect the page you have used them on.
2. These keywords should be used as much as possible in the following locations:
   • URL – yes, a domain that contains your top keyword is going to score you points with Google for that keyword;
   • Page title;
   • Meta tags in your document head:
     • <meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword1, keyword2″ />
     • <meta name=”description” content=”(page description)” />
   • Throughout normal page text, including headings, paragraphs, and alt tags on photos.

If you have a chance to buy a url with your main keyword in it (without making the url ungodly long), do it. I have a url containing a keyword that loads of people use in long lists. But I bought the url and I’m on top.

So a lot of you are probably thinking, “That seems like a lot of trouble. I don’t really want to pin myself down like that. I’ll put a long list that I found someplace in the keywords instead.”

Nope. The fewer keywords, the better. Your page isn’t about hundreds of different topics. It’s about one or two, which can each be described in a few keywords. The Google spider will look at your keywords and see how many times they were used in a natural manner on a page. If not at all, they won’t count at all.

If you’ve really got 100 specialties, your main page should have keywords that are generally about that. Then you should dedicate a page to each specialty to give it a good chance at getting rated well. Subcategory pages are good, too. Just make sure you have clear navigation for both the spider and your customers.

Still seems like a lot of trouble? Perhaps you should narrow down what you’re all about. You really can’t be everything to everybody.

The principles behind SEO (Search Engine Optimization) are as follows:

1. You get essentially free traffic from being highly placed in a Google search;
2. There are things you can do to improve your position on a search page.

I will probably post something about what you can do in the future. What I’m talking about today is making the kind of SEO mistakes that can get you in trouble with Google. In fact, if Google looks at your page and thinks you tried to pull a fast one, you can get banned by Google, and you won’t come up in a search at all for maybe 6 months until it expires – if it does.

Doing something to fake out Google has a name: it’s called Black Hat SEO. Shady companies do it to take the chance that they will shoot up to the top and not get caught. Or more frequently, companies that hire shady SEO consultants. The company trying to improve its placement is the one that gets caught, not the shady consultant. The shady consultant just drops the sandboxed company’s name from his list of clients and goes on to work for more unwitting clients.

Here’s one big issue: keywords. You pick your keywords, which are the words or phrases you are hoping that google will pick you up in a search on, and you put them into the header in a meta tag:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”keyword #1, keyword #2″ />

Google will look at the keywords you have chosen, then look at your entire page (as well as the site) to determine whether your keywords represent your content. If the only time you use a keyword is in the meta tag, the spider that is indexing your page will decide it really isn’t very important to your site at all. The more keywords you use, the less important each one will look. So if you have an enormous list of keywords, hardly any of which appear in the page content, Google will think at best that only the ones that are repeated on the page count. At worst, you may be tagged as a cheater and your domain sandboxed.

Other ways to cheat badly: using the same keyword over and over again in the meta tag.

<meta name=”keywords” content=”sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex” />

Cheating!

Another way to get yourself sandboxed is to put a huge list of words and phrases in tiny or invisible font the same color as the page background. They can tell you are doing that. Really. You’re out of there. I see this all over Niteflirt, and half the time the keywords include at least one tos violation. So you are taking the risk of hurting Niteflirt on Google while getting yourself suspended. Not smart. Read up on SEO. There are tons of tutorials out there.

So you’ve got a website. What’s it doing for you? How do you know?

There are 2 different kinds of optimization I’m going to write about here and in upcoming articles.

1. Search engine optimization (SEO), making your site friendly to search engines, so they will present it to searchers;
2. User optimization, or making your site as easy for your user to find what he’s looking for as possible.

There’s a ton of stuff out there to read about search engine optimization. Getting your site seen on Page 1 of search engines is better than advertising in a lot of ways. While companies do pay good money for specialists to perform this service for them, it is possible for someone with a small site to learn to do it themselves. If you do it yourself, that is free advertising.

There is less information out there about user optimization. The deal is, if you pay for advertising or put a lot of work into getting searchers to visit your site, do you know what to do to maximize the chances of them finding what they were looking for?

So right now I want to talk a bit about making your site user-friendly.

The most important rule in designing a website is that your users should be able to find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. They should be able to see immediately what the purpose of the page they have landed on is, and they should be able to see where they can go from there without scrolling around or clicking. Then, when they click the link that looks like it is going to take them where they want to go, they should end up exactly where they expected to be.

If surfers don’t see what they are looking for within a few seconds, they will click away and find some other site to look at.

Example: If you have a phone sex site, you may have a warning page the surfer will have to click past before getting to your main page. Is there any content on it that gives the surfer a reason to keep going, or is there a scroll box with legalistic mumbo-jumbo? Look at it critically. Does your main page have XXX rated photos on it? No? Then get rid of that warning page. Make the photos on the entry page R-rated and provide enough information on it so that anyone landing on it will know what they have found, so they can either leave or continue.

Making the user click past a pointless entry page is causing your site to lose customers before they even find your content.

Now, open your main page. Close your eyes. Now open them again. What is the most noticeable element on your main page? Is it clear without reading anything that it is probably a phone sex website they have landed on and are about to enter?

Is there anything that has been added to the page that distracts from that idea? Is there a big block of dense text talking about…something? Move it to its own page.

Presumably you have links to other pages. There might be a “gallery” page, “about me”, “blog”, “news”, “links”. How easy is it for the visitor to find the links to navigate to those other pages? Is there an obvious navigation bar, or are there some links or buttons here or there?

Once there, how easy is it for the visitor to get back or visit another page?

Is anything cluttered? There are sitebuilders out there that make it easy for users to randomly jam odds and ends into their pages. Resist the temptation. Don’t do it.

Where do you have a “call to action”, telling the visitor what to do, ie, “call me!”? On every page?

You need to think about all these things, because your visitor does not intend to spend any time thinking at all. Think about it.

If you need to clean up your website, get to it!