“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.Let’s say you want to open a bookstore in your local community, and you have your eye on two possible locations. Spot A is located at the local mall, right next to Victoria’s Secret, and there are plenty of shoppers walking past it every day. The people who frequent this mall have plenty of disposable income, and they are generally well educated and likely to buy books. Spot B, on the other hand, is located on a downtown backstreet with few successful businesses nearby. In fact, the street where Spot B can be found is downright barren, complete with the occasional passing tumbleweed and a rain cloud which seems permanently fixed right over the building. Despite the glum environment, a bum named Gerry can be seen on the street corner from dusk until dawn.

Your choice is obvious, right?

Not so fast. I forgot to mention that you don’t have very much money to use in getting started. Spot A comes with a price tag of $10,000 per month rent, and the mall owners want you to spend an additional $5000 on a sign before you even open your doors. There are also a number of insurance requirements that you will have to meet before opening, they seem somewhat overkill to anyone but the mall’s attorneys. Your store fixtures and decorations will need to be top notch too. Did I mention that they also want a three year lease, and that there’s the biggest, nicest Borders Bookstore you’ve ever seen on the other end of the mall?

Spot B, however, wants only $500 per month for rent. The landlord doesn’t even care if you make your own sign with a wooden board and paint. The insurance requirements are reasonable, and there are no restrictions on how you can set up your store.

Sure, most people would rather open a new store in grand fashion right next to Victoria’s Secret at the local mall. And yes, opening a store on a deserted street where few people roam will probably mean minimal revenue when the doors first open. Yet few people have a lot of money to invest when they’re first getting started with a new business; even for those who do have a lot of money to invest, spending it recklessly before knowing the ins and outs of a new business is never a good idea.

Opening at the mall will cost a lot of money, and if you’re unable to do a lot of business right from the start then you’re going to be losing money every month until you figure out what you’re doing wrong. You could be out of business before you make amends. Opening in the less desirable location will give you some time to get to know your business, with less pressure on immediate results – your potential for profits will be reduced, but you can probably survive quite a while on a little bit of business if you keep your operational expenses to a minimum.

A reasonable plan then could be to get started at Spot B, then spend some time refining your business. Learn to avoid pitfalls, get to know your community, and build up your store’s stock, furniture, fixtures and equipment. Find out what works from a marketing standpoint. Save your money greedily. Then, once you have everything down to an art, start looking for a new location. Break a few new advertising eggs to make a better marketing omelet. Or maybe – and here’s the interesting possibility – just maybe your store can help lure more people to that formerly deserted street and you won’t have to move after all. Maybe those new people will then lure new businesses. Maybe you won’t need that spot next to Victoria’s Secret, if the bills and stress that come with it.

What on earth does any of this have to do with adult websites, or even the Internet? Quite a lot. I have met a lot of people with an interest in starting an adult website business, but few of them had a lot of money to spend. Of those few who did have a lot of money to spend, I can’t think of any who knew where to spend it. Those who did spend freely right from the start soon found themselves out of business entirely.

The wise entrepreneur will approach a new venture into adult websites much like one might approach the opening of a bookstore at Spot B – spend time rather than money. Spend as little money as possible on startup and operational expenses, but spend as much time as possible on learning your craft. Are you a patient person? If so, you might consider spending an entire year doing little more than experimenting and learning – with no expectations for profits. For about $50 per month, you can spend your first year simply building up that dusty, tumbleweed infested backstreet into a new bustling marketplace on the Internet. You can and should focus not on lofty profit margins, but on simply attracting people to your corner of the Internet.

We refer to the flow of people on the Internet as traffic. Traffic is fluid, since website surfers will move from website to website, from webpage to webpage. Traffic is a bit like water, and you need it if you expect the seeds you plant in the Internet soil to grow. Traffic, together with content, will ultimately decide your fate in the adult website business. If you can attract visitors, then profit is likely only a matter of time.

So my suggestion to the would-be adult webmaster is to think of your first step as building a new marketplace out of Spot B. In this task your goal is simply to attract traffic for the sake of traffic, not for the sake of profits. How do you do this? Generally speaking, you do this by building websites that people want to see without letting a concern for profits diminish the attractiveness of your website to surfers. You are of course not limited to free adult picture websites. The limit is your imagination. Do you write well? You might consider starting off with a simple blog. You might want to start a “porn reviews” website, or a “best adult websites on the Internet” list. Gossip or news sites are often a draw. Build anything and everything that you think might grab some of that adult traffic.

Now let’s look at Spot B. It’s no longer an empty street, but still only $500 per month for rent. You own not just your bookstore, but every other business on this street. In fact, you own the street itself. When you’ve reached this point, now it’s time to start thinking about putting up some billboards and making some money. Maybe it’s also time to think about ramping up the profits from the stores themselves. That, however, is a topic for another day. Right now, you have a marketplace to build.