About to launch new male celebrity paysite, need advice / suggestions.

I’m looking to get some feedback from folks in-the-know about a new paysite we’re about to launch. I’m NOT trying to spam the board, I just looking for advice on the tour and ad tools. We haven’t announced this site yet as we never have webmasters start pushing a site until we’re confident on the conversions.

While we’re an established program in the celeb space this is our first foray into the gay market. Regardless of how many gay folks I hang out with, being straight I’m not going to assume I know the market. We’ve tapped the one gay guy we’ve got on the team heavily during the development process but regardless of sexual preference everyone has their own personal likes and dislikes so I’m hoping I can get some feedback from a wider audience of industry folks :slight_smile:

Please, heh, don’t be shy. If you feel something sucks ass, tell me! I’m not fragile :wink: So on to the site in question:

[SIZE=“5”]SexyMaleCelebrities.com[/SIZE]

Tour:

Like our other sites, the first page of the tour features right below the header the “Latest Scandal Widget” which we update at least once a week. Then we’ve got “episodes” for each celebrity and between the episodes we highlight additional celebs that are in the members area.

Whenever you click the thumbs on any of the celebs to go to the join page you’ll see we’ve customized the join page to feature that particular celeb. So for instance if you click on David Beckham you get this page. You’ll see a large thumb with a “play” button over it. Click the play button the image is “greyed out” with an overlay saying the clip is available for members only and points them to the right where the signup form is :slight_smile:

Ad Tools: (view demo page here)

We’ve got the regular compliment of animated gif banners where we’ve tried to feature the more popular celebrities while keeping them relatively tame and lacking in obnoxious, over-the-top animation. See them all here.

More importantly, we’ve got our Special Ad Tools like the Filmstrip Ads which can be customized from the Ad Tools section with the WYSIWYG editor to change the background and font colors, the font style, and the text of the text links. Scope an example here.

We’ve also got the Interactive Tube Banners setup for the site. These I’m particularly proud of (probably b/c I made them all by myself, heh). These auto-rotate thumbs which are like the preview thumbs on a tube so when the surfer mouses over them they animate like a preview of the video. These banners use our celeb-specific linking so every thumb links directly to the celeb’s “episode” on the tour. We’ve got these available in many dimensions and you can view them all here.

Of course we’ve also got the standards like HPA’s / FPA’s, Page Peels, IMAds and a handful more special ad tools like the Auto-Updated News Slider and Video Slider ads.

Lastly, of course there’s the trusty FHG. Here are some examples:

Video FHGS:
Scottich sex machine Ewan McGregor flips his dick out and rapes his slut rough in the dark
Edward Norton is cornered in the showers and ass raped by a group of naked men
Daniel Radcliffe brandishes his bouncing dick onstage in Equus
Hot Irish item Colin Farrell skinny dips with a chick and has sex afterwards
Gorgeous hunk Christian Bale does his morning routine in tight, dick-hugging white briefs
TV hunk Chris Meloni is asking for a prison rape with his cock and bubble ass constantly exposed
Hunky TV actor Antonio Sabato Jr. recalls the naked and intimate moments with his hot boyfriend
Sexy Latino Antonio Banderas has rough anal sex for the first time with a guy
Alan Cumming sits alone naked in the bathtub with his dick out
True Blood beau Alexander Skarsgard buries his face in his buddy’s ass and licks him wildly

Picture FHGS:
Jared Hasselhoff Drops Pants
James Lafferty Shirtless
Hugh Jackman Sexy Beefcake
Frank Lampard Gets A Blowjob
Fabio Cannavaro Gets Naked
Channing Tatum’s Tight Sexy Abs
Leonardo DiCaprio Is The Stuff Of Wet Dreams
Gerard Butler Was Right To Lead 300 Naked Men
Heath Ledger Keeps The Heat On
Cristiano Ronaldo’s Smoldering Rock Hard Abs

So that’s about it. What do you folks think? Suggestions? Complaints? Do’s we’re not doing and Don’ts we are doing?

Re: About to launch new male celebrity paysite, need advice / suggestions.

It looks interesting but personally i think the design and tour is far too busy. Busy pages can be good if done right but this one just feels a bit messy and unfocused. There are lots of different small elements but also some very heavy graphical elements like chains, stars and a hard solid grey background plus flashing gifs.

It’s very easy to go overboard with web design, the rule is… Strip away anything that’s not needed, then remove half of what’s left. For example I’m 99.9% sure no one will real all the white text blocks. Less is definitely more even on a tour. I think a part of the problem might also be that there several different boxes or elements that are all different width, making it maybe look more messy than it is.

I would also have preferred to see a transparent tour, rather than all links going to a join page with a clip.

And if I had started a Male Celeb site I would have designed it as a glossy magazine, just like any gossip paper you would find in the shop.

Re: About to launch new male celebrity paysite, need advice / suggestions.

“heavy graphical elements like chains, stars and a hard solid grey background plus flashing gifs.”

The chain element is only in the header though. Think it kinda helps set the mood. Flashing gifs. Heh, so MANY elements to remember to bring a site live. I actually axed those a few weeks ago. Didn’t even notice they were still live. Good catch, I’ll have those removed!

As for the text this one is a bit of a gamble. We’re hoping we can catch some of the female surfer market and our research shows the very small handful of sites targeting them in this niche always feature a lot of text on the tours. Hell more than 1/2 the male celeb sites targeting male surfers are LOADED with text. But for sure it’s something we’re going with a test and see approach. On ALL our female surfer targeted sites we found that stripping off all text blobs resulted in better conversions.

" several different boxes or elements that are all different width" I’m not super-stoked about that either. Pretty much everything is the same width except the blocks with multiple celebs between the “episodes”. Just couldn’t get it to look right taking up the same width as everything else. Would have had to choose between either very large or very small thumbs or thumbs that were far wider than tall which are a bitch to make as you wind up just with headshots and fluff background imagery.

Did you get a chance to look at the ad tools?

Re: About to launch new male celebrity paysite, need advice / suggestions.

Not looked at the tools no, sorry.

I think aiming for both women and gay men is a good idea. That’s why the suggestion of a more glossy magazine look.

Re: About to launch new male celebrity paysite, need advice / suggestions.

I do like the glossy gossip mag idea. Would fit nicely with GossipKings, right? Heh. Might work that into the next site but for now got enough into this design gonna stick with it before scrapping it.

We have done some ad buys and thrown traffic at it and so far we’re doing 1/257 which is fucking great, heh. Of course that’s on a smaller scale so have to wait and see how it plays out when we launch it and get webmasters promoting it.