Perhaps incompetence is too strong a word, but it’s the one that always comes to my mind when I find myself in these situations. What situations? I won’t get into specifics, but they’re bound to come up. And when they do, it’s important that you just take a deep breath, and roll with it. If you expect incompetence, then when it occurs you won’t have a meltdown. And when it doesn’t, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I had a porn star friend who was trying to put together a website. He’d hire someone, tell them what he wanted, and then actually expect to get it. And when they didn’t meet the deadline, or got something wrong, or had some broken images, he’d freak out, scrap the whole project, and start all over with someone else. He did this like three or four times! It’s was crazy. He had all these half finished websites, but nothing online.

The lesson he needed to learn was to expect incompetence, and not freak out when the people he’s working with screw up. Deal with it and move on. Don’t get all frustrated and worked up. Don’t freak out. Don’t do and say a bunch of shit you’ll regret.

He ended up retiring to New Jersey, with a woman no less. Considering he couldn’t deal with incompetence, in this industry it’s probably for the best.

Search engines often use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the factors for determining that website’s search engine ranking. For example, Google’s PageRank algorithm uses backlinks to help determine a site’s rank. Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web. It is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. In theory, off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings. Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results. Indeed, some search engines require at least one or more links coming to a web site, otherwise they will drop it from their index.

Submit Your Site To GaySexList.org

All PR’s start the same way, and so should yours. Type “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” in all caps, followed by your contact info.

The next, and some might argue the most important, element of a press release is the headline. You want something that’s short, but that catches the eye and is also informative. Most people will only see the headline, so I think it’s always good to try to include your website name. For instance, instead of:

We’re Giving Away $1000 A Month!

I’d use something like…

GayWebmasters.com Launches $1000 Monthly Giveaway!

This way, they get the news even if they don’t read the body.

Next comes the body of the PR. You should begin with your location, and the date. If you’d rather not use your town, or if the PR is a joint release between two companies in separate locations, you can use “Cyberspace” as your town. Some editors may frown on this, but it’s commonly done.

The first paragraph of the release should simply state the news or announcement you’re making. Be short and to the point. You should ALWAYS write in 3rd person, as if you were a reporter writing a story about yourself. I know it feels weird, but that’s how it’s done. You want to sound professional, so don’t go overboard with adjectives, or sound too “sales pitchy”. For instance…

Webmaster resource site and community GayWebmasters.com announced today that it will be holding a series of $1000 giveaways. To become eligible, you simply need to register for your free account and post at least one entry to the site.

Next, elaborate a little bit, and/or talk about your company.

GayWebmasters.com is for webmasters that are gay, webmasters of gay themed sites, and those with products and services for them. If you meet one of those three requirements, then you’re invited to join GayWebmasters.com and become eligible for the giveaway.

The site, founded by long time gay webmaster Dick Hunter, consists of four sections - a blog, forums, a resource directory, and news feeds. Members can submit articles, commentary, and tutorials to the blog, discuss and network in the forums, and post their services and products in the resource directory. One thing that makes GayWebmasters.com unique is that, though created by an adult webmaster, the site targets the broader mainstream market as well. With three different “views” available, visitors can choose to see the content related to adult webmasters, mainstream webmasters, or both.

I always like to include at least one quote, usually talking about how excited I am about something or other:

“I’m very excited about this contest,” remarked site founder Dick Hunter.  “The same person can even win multiple months, so it should be a lot of fun.”

Wrap things up with any “fine print” you feel you should include. Then type “For More Information:” and follow it with your contact info.

After that, hit return a few times, and then put three pound signs:

###

This tells the reader that the press release is over.

Be sure to spell and grammar check everything! Proof read it several times. I find that if I read something out loud I often catch mistakes I missed before. Or even better, have someone else proof read it for you!

Now that you’ve got your PR written, you need to submit it to news outlets. Here are several links you may find helpful:

Submit Your PR To GayWebmasters.com
Submit Adult PR’s To XBIZ Newscaster
Submit Mainstream PR’s to Gaywire
Run Your Mainstream Press Release on MarketWire
Run Your Mainstream Press Release on BusinessWire

Here is our finished PR that you may use as an example:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:
Dick Hunter
GayWebmasters.com
Ph. 415.513.5697
Fax. 415.513.5805
http://www.gaywebmasters.com

GayWebmasters.com Launches $1000 Monthly Giveaway!

Webmaster resource site and community GayWebmasters.com announced today that it will be holding a series of $1000 giveaways. To become eligible, you simply need to register for your free account and post at least one entry to the site.

GayWebmasters.com is for webmasters that are gay, webmasters of gay themed sites, and those with products and services for them. If you meet one of those three requirements, then you’re invited to join GayWebmasters.com and become eligible for the giveaway.

The site, founded by long time gay webmaster Dick Hunter, consists of four sections - a blog, forums, a resource directory, and news feeds. Members can submit articles, commentary, and tutorials to the blog, discuss and network in the forums, and post their services and products in the resource directory. One thing that makes GayWebmasters.com unique is that, though created by an adult webmaster, the site targets the broader mainstream market as well. With three different “views” available, visitors can choose to see the content related to adult webmasters, mainstream webmasters, or both.

“I’m very excited about this contest,” remarked site founder Dick Hunter.  “The same person can even win multiple months, so it should be a lot of fun.”

GayWebmasters.com is a service of Abstract Random Productions. Complete giveaway rules can be found at http://www.gaywebmasters.com/giveaway.

For more information:
Please visit http://www.gaywebmasters.com, email dh@arp.us, or call 415.513.5697.

###

Now, in case that’s got any of you folks running in a panic to your ISPs, it should be noted that it’s not the end of the world or anything. Apparently today’s Internet protocol version 4 (IPv4) will run out of addresses by about 2014, which gives adult webmasters plenty of time to profit off their content. But it is estimated that sometime within the next 15 to 20 years, there will need to be a massive change-over to the mobile-based IPv6. which will make it much easier for telecommunication providers to offer custome services like ring tones and television.

According to a story published at TechWeb.com, all federal networks will need to be IPv6-compatible by mid 2008, but only 30 percent of ISPs will support it by 2010. That means that there could be stormy waters up ahead for webmasters looking to share content via telecommunications devices.

I’ve always wondered how much space there really is available online, and evidently it’s not an endless supply of real estate. Companies will need to build transition strategies to accomodate IPv6. And while some equipment manufacturers will provide the transition to the IPv6 protocol in routine upgrades, others could possibly charge for the upgrades.

Exactly how this might affect webmasters remains to be seen, but it certainly gives us something to think about in the meantime.

Oh, as a preliminary comment before hand - none of these sites are linked to any affiliate link of mine. In this case if you decide to purchase aeDating, please mention my site http://www.daddiesandcubs.com. They offer a $100 commission on each new sale so it would be greatly appreciated if you mention me.

Aeweb (affectionately called “weirdworks” by some) has been around for quite some time and apparently set the standard and inspired many new companies to provide dating software. Aewebs product is based on PHP/MySQL, is not encrypted, and has a large selection of templates that can be customized. Unfortunately there are no gay templates available at this time, but if you are somewhat familiar with HTML customizations can be made. I have taken their original and previously leading template and customized it for http://www.daddiesandcubs.com. The process was relatively simple albeit time consuming.

I believe that they offer a lot of features with their software and the price is definitely fair based on current market values. Some other software providers advertise a slightly lower rate for their package but charge additional fees to add features such as blogs, galleries, etc. My experience has been that those additional fees either increase the actual rate of the software to what aeWebworks charges, or exceeds it.

aeWebworks offers free lifetime support with their product – but don’t always expect that free support over night. A year ago they underwent a major internal problem with programmers and resolved the matter (presumably by firing them). Their package today is full of features such as a Shoutbox (allows members online to instantly broadcast a message to all), Blogs, and a gallery function that allows members to upload hundreds of pics based on the settings set by the administrator.

When I have been unable to resolve a problem and submitted a report on their private customer forum they have eventually responded and have usually just gone in and corrected the matter. Sometimes that has been the same day, other times my wait has been up to two weeks.

If you are going to get aeWebworks (also known as aeDating) I would suggest that you allow 3-4 weeks to get the initial bugs worked out. Install it, set up several test user accounts and fully test the system. When you encounter a bug, report it to aeWeb through the private customer forum. Give them up to two weeks to respond. I have had the fastest response when I have posted the temporary FTP/MySQL access information and two test user accounts in that same message. 

I wasn’t sure what to expect. It sure sounded since, but it also seemed too good to be true. This kind of thing only happens on TV, right?

Me and my friend proceded to the 53rd floor, just under the famous “Sky Bar”, and opened the door to our suite. Holy crap! Here’s some pics, judge for yourself.

IMG_7021.jpg IMG_7016.jpg IMG_7017.jpg IMG_7018.jpg IMG_7019.jpg

Thanks Palms! You rule! If you’re ever in Vegas, you should check this place out.

http://www.palms.com

Happy New Year everybody! It’s Midnight, January 1st, 2006 and GayWebmasters.com has officially launched! And no, I’m not really sitting here at my computer at New Years. I’ve written this entry ahead of time and scheduled it to go live at midnight. 

So how does the fact that we’ve officially launched change things? It doesn’t. We’ve been in BETA for a week, and we’re still in BETA because I’m not quite comfortable saying the site is bug free. Not to mention there’s still a few features that are disabled. It’s more of a symbolic thing I guess. And what better day and time for a symbolic launch then Midnight, January 1st? And what better way for me to start my year then by launching GayWebmasters.com?

I’ve worked very hard building the foundation for this webmaster community. Over the past week it’s been so exciting to watch the site start to come to life, as the member list grows and the forum posts and directory listings start to multiply. I held off on developing this website until I thought I had the time, skills, and resources to make it as good as it’s domain name deserves. Now, here in 2006, I believe that, with the help of the gay webmaster community, I’m there.

Here’s to 2006 and GayWebmasters.com! May they both be full of success!

The site is almost fully functional. You can register for your free account right now and you’ll be eligible to for the giveaway as long as you post at least one blog entry, forum post, or directory listing before midnight on January 31st. Then every month until June you’ll have a chance to win $1000! Click here for official rules.

You’re encouraged to participate in the final stages of development. I’d love your feedback on categories for the blog and directory, forums topics, etc. I’ll be posting several topics in the development forums so check them out. Also, please post and bugs or error messages you receive to the bug forum.

Well, I guess I’m going to take a much needed break. Enjoy the Holiday!