Bluewave Media

Should I advertise my premium rate services online or in print?

How much time do you have and how much effort do you want to put in?

If you are looking for an investment that pretty much looks after itself and you just make the initial funding, then go for the print advertising. If you are looking for something to get into and work on, then web advertising will be harder work but may end up being cheaper and returning a revenue for a longer period of time, albeit with a slower increase in revenue from month to month.

Another thing to consider is how much money you have to put into advertising your services. If you have a large budget, then the print advertising can be really appealing as you can make more money very quickly. If you have limited funds but more time and effort, you can still make really good money from getting online and advertising your services there.

If you have no expertise or experience in either, I’d suggest starting in print advertising. If you have a large advertising budget for your premium rate numbers, then go for the glossy magazines or national newspapers, if your budget is much smaller, then go for the smaller local newspapers and advertisers, if they’ll take adult adverts.

Get in contact with some magazines and newspapers direct, for up to date information on advert pricing and packages. If you’re advertising premium rate numbers with an adult content, then go for the lad magazine types and men’s lifestyle magazines like Nuts, FHM, GQ, and Bizarre, these will take adverts of an adult nature but be aware that advertising in these magazines will be expensive, if they have any space at all. Sometimes certain companies will block book the space and basically price you out of the market, that’s why, in some cases it is cheaper to go through an advertising agency that already have a block of space booked that they them sell on to clients like you.

Both print advertising and web advertising is tried and tested and they both work, however print advertising can bring a return back quicker than setting up a new website. If you want to advertise online and can get your numbers onto an existing website with good traffic, then this might be a cheaper way of advertising your numbers.  Please bear in mind that advertising is not an exact science and sometimes it goes wrong, it cannot be guaranteed that an advert will work, even if a similar one has, there are so many variables to consider when advertising. The first thing to do is try to get a good deal from your advertising agency or the publication you are advertising with, thus meaning you have less far to go to break even.

If you have experience in advertising online, building or promoting websites or SEO, then I’d just advertise online as it seems to work out cheaper, with less risk and you can still make a lot of money. The down side to working online is you have to put the hours in. The more you advertise and promote your online numbers or portfolio, the more money you are going to make. It is a long old road to getting the big bucks from advertising online but once you’re there, you’re there and the money keeps rolling in pretty much regardless of whether you put in any more work onto the websites.

So, in conclusion, what are you the most comfortable with? They both work, just in different ways, do some research, make a few calls and try to speak to someone who is already advertising premium rate telephone services. Ask the questions and just try different things out, that’s the best way to find out for sure if something work or not.

Bluewave Media is on hand to offer advice and guidance on any of these issues. Contact us for more details.

Examples of adult premium rate telephone services

There are so many premium rate services on the market, it wouldn’t be practical to list all of them here, but to give you an idea of what’s on offer, we have picked some of the main ones to outline for you.

Adult Live 121 Premium Rate Services

This type of service is a live service and the caller gets to speak to a real person in a 121 set up. After a short recorded introduction to the service (required by law) the caller will be connect to an operator where they can chat for up to 20mins. These services are arguably the most popular and can have really good hold times. Also with the live 121 services, callers are able to build up a rapport with their favourite operators and can initiate many repeat calls.

Adult Recorded Premium Rate Services

These are mainly recorded sex stories, where the caller just listens to the recorded story. These are really popular and can sometimes give better payouts than the live services.

Chat and Date or Virtual Chat Premium Rate Services

These are interactive communication services, where people call and record a message. They listen to other people message and decide if they like the sound of that person. They can then leave messages for that person and contact them.

Interactive Premium Rate Services

These are services where the caller can select from a choice of options. For example, they can select an option to make a recorded story change direction, or select from a library of stories.

Of course, you are only limited by your imagination when creating new services. If you have a good idea for a premium rate service, its always worth talking to an experienced company with knowledge of setting up custom services.

Bluaewave Media has setup various custom services for its clients and has advanced platforms to help put your ideas into reality. Contact us for more details.

Tips for advertising premium rate services on the web

1.    Ensure you have all the correct terms and conditions advertised with your number. To comply with PhonepayPlus (formerly ICSTIS) regulations you are required to include certain information with your advertisements. This is very important and getting it wrong can result in a fine being levied by the regulators.

3.    If you are just putting together an advert to put on another site, then make sure it stands out and your number is really clear. Include a call to action with the number like call this number! Or call now! Again, ensure that all PhonepayPlus guidelines are adhered too.

4.    Write unique content for your web page or advert, don’t just copy someone else. It makes a difference.

5.    Make sure your web page has META keywords and a META description; this will enable the search engine spiders that crawl the sites to define your site and index it more quickly.

6.    Use good pictures and make your pages easy to navigate. People want to be turned on enough to call the number and then come back o your site or advert for round two. Why not try to get them to put the number in their mobile or make a note for them to write it down somewhere.

7.    Generally, the dirtier the better when it comes to advertising adult premium rate services on the web. People will come back if you have good content, good pictures and an easy to use website.

8.    Links, links, links. When it comes to promoting your website, you will need to spend some time link building, ideally go for sites that are directly related to yours, or one the same theme. If you are promoting an adult phonesex site for example, why not start submitting your website to adult directories, there thousands out there, so get your site listed on all of them. It will take time and effort and can be quite a boring job but it is well worth it in terms of your website promotion.

Get Distracted by Shiny New Things? How to Stay Focused

If you are anything like me, you know what its like to get distracted from your goals and current direction by the “next big thing”, the next new product, or the next new opportunity.

Staying focused and having clearly defined goals is one of the most beneficial traits an entrepreneur can have. However, it is also one of the most difficult to maintain (in my humble experience).

Here is a great post from onstartups.com on this subject, which many internet entrepreneurs will be more than familiar with.

http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/6739//Entrepreneurs-and-Hey-There-s-A-Shiny-New-Thing.aspx

9 Tips for promoting premium rate numbers using adult websites

1. The first thing to do once you have decided that an adult themed website advertising premium rate telephone numbers is the one for you, is design and build it. If you have web skills, you should do this yourself as it costs no money and you have total control over everything from design to content. If you do not have any web skills, there are many web designers out there who can help you, just provide them with a brief of what you want and get it built.
2. If you have purchased your premium rate telephone numbers through a company, then they may have website packages or website templates you can use, make sure you ask them at the time of purchase. (TIP: Bluewave Media has an extensive portfolio of website templates and ready-made sites available to its clients)
3. Target the right keywords. Do your keyword research and find out what people are searching for. This will help you optimise your website for the most appropriate search terms which in turn should get you better and more targeted traffic (ultimately resulting in more calls to your numbers). We strongly recommend signing up for www.wordtracker.com for this purpose.
4. Write original content for your website; make it interesting and relative to your website or website niche page. It will be better for your viewers and better for your ranking with each search engine. The worst thing you can do is copy content from another site. Just sit down and make it up, once you get into it, it’s quite fun.
5. Site layout issues. Make your site easy to use and ensure the numbers stand out from the rest of the page. Use a call to action, like “call this number now!” Or “call me now!”
6. Once your site is up and running and looking good, you will need to start link building. I suggest starting with the adult directories, then moving onto sites that have ‘submit URL’ or ‘exchange link’ pages. Just do a search for ‘adult submit URL’ or ‘phonesex submit URL’ or similar. Your goal here is to get as many inbound links to your site as possible. Keep them relevant and decent.  Start with inks to your index page. Then try to get links to every single page on your site. This will help get each page indexed in the search engine and ultimately get you more traffic.
7. Keep updating! Google loves fresh content and will reward active, quality sites. Add new content to your site and improve it when you can. The search engines like to see websites growing organically, so write articles, add stories and new images. Add new pages and sections that are relevant and interesting for your viewers. Continue link building month after month to see organic growth in your sites popularity.
8. Keep a diary of the work you do and the time you spend on your website and on promoting it. It is always handy as you can keep a list of your linking partners and then use it for other sites. This way you can tally up your time verses your profits over a period of time and see how well you are doing.
9. Once your site is up and running, attracting traffic and generating a revenue, you can look to build or purchase a new one and get that one making money for you too!

Building Links with Directory Submissions

Republished Article. (Original Article Written by Scott Van Achte from StepForth Web Marketing Inc.)

A few months ago I wrote an article about 13 ways a webmaster can go about building links to their site. One of these ways was through the use of directory submissions.

There are many reasons why you may consider a directory submission. You could be trying to build your brand, focused on links for organic rankings, or simply want to drive traffic to your site. Below we will focus on the link building and organic ranking aspect of directory submissions.

There are countless directories out there these days, some are free, some are paid, and many are garbage. If you decide to build links to your site using online directories, there are some things you will want to consider before spending your hard earned money.

Page Rank
Check the Google Page Rank. The visible page rank is only a very slight indication of a page’s strength, but a PR 6 still represents a site of more value than a PR 2. Do not discount a site solely based on PR, but know that a higher PR site, if relevant, will give you more value.

Outbound Links
Check the number of outbound links on the category page you would submit to. If the page has more than 100 outbound links, then chances are it will help you very little but there are of course some exceptions to the rule. Let’s say that the page in question has a few sites listed that are organically ranking in the top 10. The page also has a Google PR of 6/10, and the page is highly relevant to your industry. In this situation, even if there were as many as 150 or 200 outbound links, you would probably still want to get your site listed.

The same holds true for DMOZ. We know that DMOZ is a great place to get your site listed, and while listing your site on a page with the fewest links will give you the most value. In the case of DMOZ, even if the relevant category for your listing exceeded 100 outbound links, I would not hesitate to continue with a listing submission.

Category Pages
Check the number of pages per category. If your main category has 10 pages of listings, you may want to forget it as the deeper you dive into these pages, the less value they will hold – they also add the risk of the directory being downgraded due to spam etc. If you still want to be listed, what page will your listing appear on? If you can’t get the first page, you will probably want to walk away.

Are listings alphabetical? Are new listings added to the top or the bottom of the list? If they are added to the top, you should know that in time, as more people submit, your site will get bumped down to the subsequent pages, reducing its value with every new bump.

Success of Other Listings
Take a look at other listings in the directory. Are any of these sites ranking for related top phrases? Try to assess if other sites in your category are benefiting from a link at this directory, especially if it’s a paid directory.

Anchor Text
Does the particular directory allow you to determine the anchor text used, or does it simply link you URL. If you can choose the anchor text, the link will be far more valuable as it will allow more value to be passed on due to the relevance of the anchor text and the target phrase for your site.

Indexed in Google?
Are the directory and your preferred category sub page both indexed in Google and the other major engines? If it is a paid directory and they are not indexed, don’t waste your money. If the directory is well indexed including your preferred category, and has a fairly recent last cache date, then it is worth considering.

Price
Prices for directory listings can range from free to hundreds of dollars, so you have to ask yourself “is it worth it”. If you find that the directory is in good standing, other competing sites in your industry are ranking organically and listed here, and the page has a decent visible PR, this may warrant paying a higher premium to be listed. Be sure to consider if the billing is a one time or recurring expense.

If you have only a $300 annual budget the $299 a year for Yahoo may make sense, however if you break that up into 10 listings in other top directories for $30 a year each, this may be a better investment – it all depends on what is available for your industry, how high its quality is, and at what price.

Can Google See the Link?
If your focus is on search engine rankings, then you definitely want to ensure that both your link, and the page your link resides on, are both fully spiderable by Google. Ensure that the rel=nofollow attribute is not used on your link, or on the pages that link to the directory page; also ensure that the page is not being blocked by a robots Meta tag or within the robots.txt file. The best indication that a page is seen by Google is if there is a recent cache of it within the Google index. If this page is also noted as a back link for others sites listed, it’s a pretty safe bet that yours will be seen also.

SPAM
Ensure that the directory you are submitting to is totally on the up and up. If you find that they are doing anything shady turn the other way. This could be in the form of hidden text or links, or abusive pop-ups, etc. If they are promoting some software or anything that may include adware or malware, you definitely do not want to be associated with this site.

If the site is free and without an approval process, you may as well forget it. It will (if not already) end up littered to no end with irrelevant links which will drastically downgrade the value of the link to as low as zero. While Free-for-All sites can be a quick source for links, the links will actually be useless, so avoid them.

There are many ways to build links for a site, and directory submissions are just one of them. By having your site listed in a number of relevant directories you can help your sites overall link reputation to grow. It is important to remember though, that directory links are usually not enough on their own, they are just one piece of the big picture.

By Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO

Updated Premium Rate Service Agreement

All customers should be aware that our standard premium rate service agreement has recently been updated. Please use the link below to download the latest service agreement:

Premium Rate Telephony Service Agreement Ver.2.160508  

This agreement applies to all past and current customers who have purchased and promote premium rate services from Bluewave Media Ltd.

Fraud Traffic and AIT Definitions

What is Fraud Traffic?

Our definition of “Fraud Traffic”, as detailed in our standard premium rate contract, is as follows:

1.1. ‘Fraud Traffic’ – any traffic which British Telecommunications (“BT”) plc or any telecommunication carrier that transmits traffic to Bluewave Media or BT plc is unable to bill or collect, or where;
1.1.1. there is a reasonable expectation that the End User is not likely to pay their telephone bill because the calls are disputed as not originating from the telephone line for which the respective end user is responsible.

1.1.2. calls are being made to inflate payments due from Bluewave Media, (known as Artificially Inflated Traffic, or AIT).

1.1.3. the income received by Bluewave Media is less than the rate given to the Customer, (this would not apply should this be caused by a pricing error).

1.1.4. there is repeated calling from the same number, by repeated the parties mean continual or sporadic, or habitual, where it is proven there is a repeated pattern of an origination number dialling a premium rate number.

1.1.5. any traffic which is electronically generated by a computer or some other electronic software, or continually dialled from a human operated call centre.

Fraud Traffic Procedure

Where we, our suppliers, or the networks suspect that your account is generating revenue through Fraud Traffic or shows signs of AIT (artificially inflated traffic), your account will be flagged for review and you will be asked to provide evidence that your traffic is genuine. During this time all revenue will be withheld.  Examples of evidence could be:

• Publication invoices (proving that your advert was placed and in the public domain when your traffic was generated)
• Copies of specific publications containing your advertisement
• Contracts with publishers

Please also note that when providing proof of promotion, that we, or our partners may contact the publications in question to confirm your advertisment placement.

Generally speaking, if the traffic in your account is genuine, then it will never be flagged for review in the first place. AIT and fraud traffic tends to be very easy to spot and we work pro-actively to keep scamsters out of our systems.

Regards,

Bluewave Media

List of Ping Services For Blog Marketers

With more and more people continuing to use blog software such as Wordpress to promote their products and services, it is increasingly important to optomise your blog as much as possible. One way to do this is through your blog’s “ping” list.

Ping services allow you to automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated. The more services that your ping list contains, the higher the chances of your blog posts receiving traffic from those sources. Please feel free to take the list below, which we use on our own blogs, and use it for your own blogs.

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

 If anybody has anything to add to this list, please leave a comment.

PhonepayPlus to apply Code of Practice to 0871 numbers

PhonepayPlus, the phone-paid services regulator (formerly ICSTIS), has today published a Statement of Application setting out how it proposes to apply its Code of Practice to services offered on 0871 numbers, which it will assume regulatory responsibility for in 2008. PhonepayPlus believes that its proposals will boost consumer confidence in the use of 0871 numbers by setting clear rules governing price transparency.

To view the full Statement, please visit www.phonepayplus.org.uk/news/consultation_papers/statementsfollowing.asp.
Click here to view the accompanying media release: www.phonepayplus.org.uk/news/media_releases/default.asp.

Bluewave Media is committed to providing responsible and compliant services. We can provide all our telephony and SMS customers with free advice and guidance on all compliance issues.