If you’re interested in making your own porn site, then you’re in the right place. The steps I tell you in brief detail encompass the basics and enough to get you started. While I can’t divulge in the full secrets of the porn industry all in one article, this will at least get your site up and running. To put it lightly, making your own porn site is easy, but doing it right takes careful effort.

You can do one of two things at this point – 1) continue to read to learn the basics of how to start your own porn site, or 2) contract me for a fixed price to build the site for you and show you how it works.

You could spend the next month trying to figure it out on your own, or you could invest in professional to build it for you – why waste your time trying to learn on your own when you can get a tax deduction by hiring me?

If you’ve made it this far and still want to learn on your own, then here’s the steps you need to follow.

Chose a niche. What do you like? Anal sex, babes, pornstars, blowjobs, hardcore, big tits? Everything? Chose the content that you will enjoy working with. If you like it all, that’s ok.

Chose a domain. Your domain should be relative to your niche, easy to remember for branding, spelled correctly, without hyphens, etc. If your surfers can’t remember how to spell your domain because it’s spelled incorrectly, or its a stupid made up word that makes no sense, then I can’t promise you that your domain will be worth buying. You can try, but you may lose some traffic. Finding a domain may be the hardest uphill battle because there’s not many good domains left without looking. I’ve spent up to three hours just searching for a domain that was less than two words, relevant, without hyphens, and spelled correctly – but it’s worth the time in the long run. Domains cost about $9.99. Domains that are already owned, but for sale, can be sold by any price the seller is willing to sell them for. I’ve spent $2,000 on a domain that was well worth the psychological research put into it.

Chose a type of site. Your options are tube site, blog, plug trade site, paysite, review site, tgp/mgp, or something else that you think of on your own. Think about what you will enjoy working on every day and the type of updating you won’t mind doing…or outsourcing.

Chose your software. The type of site you run depends on the software you will need. Some software is cheaper than others, while some will cost you $500. WordPress for blogs are free. KatCMS for plug trade sites is $500. TGP scripts range from $89 to $250 depending on which you use. I can refer you to scripts that are well worth using. My main advice about script chosing is to not ever use a free traffic trading script that takes 1-2% of your traffic as you will lose much more money and traffic in the long run and it is very worth it to purchase the paid versions of the scripts.

Chose a host. Check your scripts for server requirements and make sure your host can provide that. Most hosts that I’ve encountered have been able to provide everything I need. Chances are you can start on a small shared hosting account that costs about $20 per month. Right now I spend over $1,000.00 to host about 30 websites spread out on six servers. You shouldn’t need to spend that much unless you’re running this many websites and hosting your own videos.

Design your website. Your design depends on the type of site you’re running. Look at similar style sites and follow the current trends. If you’re not able to design, slice in photoshop, and code html/css, then you should hire a designer/coder who is capable. Some designers cannot code, and some html/css specialists cannot design. It’s ok if you need to hire someone different for each job. Every designer and coder will range in their abilities. Sometimes you have to mix and match to get the perfect fit. I have different people for different tasks who all specialize in what I hire/outsource them for.

Install your software and apply your layout to your scripts.

Register for sponsor programs who offer content in the niche you’ve chosen.

Add content from your sponsor. If you’re a tgp/mgp, then import galleries and run your gallery scanner to crop thumbs and fix the bad thumbs manually. If you’re a plug trade site, then add 30 hosted videos using sponsor embedded videos. If you’re a tube site or a blog, then add 30 videos or blog entries. You want to have enough content for a month so that your site looks established and webmasters you trade with (if you trade) have content to chose from. If you try presenting a site with 2 videos, then the surfer probably won’t come back to your site,  and the webmasters you trade with will likely tell you that your site is incomplete and you need more content before they send to you.

Add other ads. Banners, pay per click, cpm – whatever you think matches well with your site to generate extra income from other programs.

Search for trades. Look for sites of similar style, niche, and availability. You want to match your content and thumbs/text to your trade partners so that quality is good. You certainly don’t want to trade with any site that has more than one popunder or illegal material. Look for quality sites only.

Manage your trades. You should be able to manage trades via your trade script or cms if you’re a trade site, or Google Analytics if you’re a tube site. If you see a site sends you 1000 hits per day to your plug trade site, but it only generates 300 clicks to trades, then that site is only 30% productive and NOT worth keeping. You want your productivity on trade sites to remain over 100% (pending all links on your site are trackable; if not, you’ll have an overall average to go by). You want your tube site to generate several pageviews per user. If the surfers from a site aren’t making it past page one, then they aren’t worth keeping.

Find link trades. Trade links with similar sites.

Talk with other adult webmasters. Webmasters generally chat about web stuff and work together to customize trades to make trades more productive for each other.