Basic Site Concept--What Sells?
Before you can build a site, you need to decide what will be the content or theme of your site. The days of just throwing up some pictures and then cashing the checks are over. A successful webmaster needs to consider the content for his or her site carefully.
The general guidance here is go niche. Large mega sites such as Cybererotica and Purehardcore have the financial and manpower backing to put up thousands of softcore or hardcore pictures on their sites. The small home webmaster usually does not have this ability nor the expertise to compete with them for those high search engine rankings. I met one home webmaster who spent the last six months making a 5000 picture site. Meanwhile, he generated no income over these six months, and he made a nice site, but one which is not as good as most of the mega sites.
But there is plenty of room in the niche markets. Make a site on one small aspect of sexuality. Foot fetish, bizarre, anal, big boobs, teen, fat girls, hairy girls, older guys, bald men, shaved pussies, and such are examples of how to narrow down your site and market to a specific niche. With a narrow content, you may be limiting your market, true, but it is much easier to generate higher search engine rankings, get more hits from banners, and more importantly, convert more sales.
Also, do not limit yourself to one niche. Try others. Read more about this in the Shotgun Approach Section.
If you are doing this as a fun diversion, then make a site on what interests you. But if you are doing this as a business, do not let your own interests interfere with you making money. You do not have to be gay to put up a gay site. You do not have to like fat girls to put up a BBW (Big Beautiful Women) site. Remember, it is more important to learn what your surfer likes, not what you like.
Currently, it seems the more bizarre, the better the payoff. Golden showers are working well right now, but the trick is to try and be in the vanguard for the next weird niche. Be one of the first. You can do this by stretching your imagination and doing this on your own, or keep in contact with other webmasters and jump on the bandwagon.
The most profitable niche right now is child pornography (at least in the short term until the authorities catch up to you). But there is a reason for this. If you live in the US or most other countries, child pornography is expressly against the law, and this is actively prosecuted. Even if you live in another country where it is legal, by putting it in the internet, you are making it available to places where it is illegal. Then, if you have any assets in that country, they can be seized, and if you ever travel to that country, you are not only liable for arrest, but you will most likely get arrested. In the US, even showing a picture which fakes child pornography while the model is actually over 18 years old is against the law. Besides making a moral statement here ( I am personally strongly against child pornography), I strongly recommend that anyone, regardless of your country, steer well clear of anything even hinting at child pornography. It is not good for the children, it is not good for you, and it is not good for the industry.
A more gray area concerns subjects such as bestiality, fisting, scat (human excrement), rape, and a few others. The US has held that obscenity is a community-held standard. These topics may be held illegal in certain areas of the country (bestiality, for example, is legal in Arizona but is a Class D Felony, whatever that is, in Delaware), or a prosecutor may be easily able to convince a jury in Nashville, for example, that scat is obscene. This will affect you even if you do not live in Nashville but in LA. Read the Legal Section for more on this. So while prosecutions for obscenity concerning these subjects may not be occurring now, the webmaster must understand that this could certainly happen should the winds of public opinion shift in the future.
On additional point to consider is what content is available. If you have a collection of Asian pictures that you have taken, then go with that for your first site. But if you cannot get pictures of girls in the snow, even if that may be a good idea, than forget it and go to a site you can make.
To sum up, pick a niche and focus your site on that. Go as strange and bizarre as possible, but consider any possible legal ramifications.