Let's start with an overview of the major segments of the online adult industry, and how they'll figure into your potential career as an adult webmaster.

Content Producers and Providers

Content producers are the top of the pyramid in the online adult industry. These are the people who hire the models, arrange the shoots, produce the content and handle the legal paperwork. Some content producers shoot exclusive content for their own websites, or for clients' sites. Others create non-exclusive content for license to other webmasters. Most do a combination of the above.

Some content providers offer "plug-in" content that can be integrated into a pay site. These are updated and maintained by the content provider, and can including streaming video feeds, webcams and photo galleries.

As a pay site owner, you can buy or lease content to supplement the content that you shoot. You can also license content to start a pay site without having to deal with the expense of shooting your own. In fact, many pay sites are composed entirely of licensed content. There's also the option of having a photographer or content producer shoot exclusive content for your site, but this can be expensive.

Even if you don't own a pay site, you can buy content to get fresh material for your free sites and galleries, or for building AVS/AEN sites. But as an affiliate webmaster (see below), you won't need to worry about buying content, at least for now.

Pay Sites/Sponsors and Affiliate Programs

Pay sites (also called sponsors) are the nexus around which the online adult world revolves. The primary job of a pay site owner is to get visitors to sign up for a membership. This requires marketing the site to potential members through banner and link exchanges, toplists, TGPs, free sites, blogs and other promotional methods you'll soon learn about.

Fortunately for us adult webmasters, one of the most effective marketing tools available is the affiliate program. Here's how an affiliate program works: An adult webmaster signs up to promote the sponsor's pay site(s). The affiliate is assigned a unique tracking code or URL which is used to track visitors to a pay site's promotional tour. The affiliate will market the sponsor's site using banner ads, galleries, free sites or other promotional methods.

When a visitor clicks on a link with the affiliate's tracking code and signs up for a membership, the affiliate gets paid – either a flat fee (Pay Per Signup or PPS) or a percentage of the sale (Revenue Sharing or Revshare). A Pay Per Signup can range from $25 to $50 or more. These are one-time payments, payable to the affiliate when the member first signs up. Revshare generally pays around 50% of the membership fee, and the affiliate is paid everytime the member is billed for the life of the membership.

The choice between PPS and Revshare is mainly a matter of preference. PPS guarantees a large upfront payment, even if the member only signs up for a trial membership. Revshare payments are typically smaller, but can generate more income over a longer period of time. At 50% revshare, a member paying $30 a month for a membership over a period of 6 months will generate a total of $90 in affiliate income.

Generally, go with PPS if a sponsor is offering cheap trial memberships or large payments for PPS signups. Otherwise, going with Revshare will guarantee a modest but steady income. Note that some sponsors do not offer a PPS option.

A sponsor's affiliate program can promote just one site or a network of dozens spanning many niches. Small sites will generally process affiliate payments through a third party processor such as CCBill, while larger sponsors will process affiliate payments in-house using affiliate software such as NATS. Roni's Paradise, for example, is a single-girl mature amateur site that runs their payment processing and affiliate program through CCBill. Top Bucks, on the other hand, promotes over 80 sites in various niches and has a dedicated marketing staff and affiliate portal.

All sponsors have a minimum payout. This can range from $25 for CCBill affiliates to $100 or more for some sponsors. That means that you have to make a certain amount in sales before you'll receive a check. Be sure that you'll be able to make enough sales to get paid in a timely manner before promoting a sponsor. Almost all sponsors pay by check, sent by mail weekly or bi-monthly. You also generally have the option to get paid through ePassporte (a popular online payment system, similar to Paypal), wire transfer or other payment methods.

Many sponsors offer downloadable content to their affiliates for use in building galleries, free sites, and other promotional uses. Some sponsors will even offer exclusive content to top affiliates. Small sponsors may allow affiliates to access the member's area to obtain content, if you ask.

Most sponsors also offer free hosted galleries (FHGs) to their affiliates. These are professionally designed TGP galleries that are hosted by the sponsor on their servers. An affiliate code in the gallery URL is used to track signups. You'll see FHGs used a lot on thumbnail gallery posts (TGPs) as filler content.

Affiliate Webmasters

This is likely where you'll be starting out – promoting sponsors' websites in exchange for affiliate payments. Go to your favorite thumbnail gallery post, link list or wherever it is you go to find free porn. Those "amateur-looking" free sites and galleries you'll see were all created by affiliate webmasters trying to make a buck. (The professional-looking ones you see all the time are probably sponsor FHGs). The TGPs and link lists themselves are run by webmasters trying to make a buck.

This entire segment of the online adult industry is largely responsible for providing all of the free porn out there. It may seem contrary – what with all the free porn out there, how does anyone make money? But the fact is that enough people do sign up for pay site memberships to make it profitable for many of the adult webmasters providing free porn.