In one way or another we are all in 'sales’. Politicians pitch their policies for votes, academics present their ideas for grant funding, and models market their looks for covers. Thus it is the mission of every successful model to be seen and to maximize her exposure, albeit to varying degrees. As has been the fashion of the past decade, emerging models have sought to emulate their icons by establishing their own presence on the Internet. The advantages of creating a personal website are clear, but the question remains as to whether maintaining such a hub is the most cost-effective form of Internet marketing. After all, some leading ladies seem to have accumulated tens of thousands of links without having one. Icqurimage delves deeper to uncover the marketing secrets of the Internet’s top models.
The secret of their success
Most leading models choose to maintain spectacular personal websites as they allow them not only to display image galleries, sell merchandise & advertise their availability, but they also serve as hubs for their online marketing activities. Today, most professional models maintain sites that contain complex flash imagery, videos, galleries, schedules and booking forms. By drawing traffic from the many thousands of links which lead to her personal website, a model may convert her fan base into paid subscriptions that run towards $30 a month. A model would thus require only a thousand fans paying such a subscription to generate an annual income of $360,000 and make a healthy living. Attractive as this goal might appear, top models spend many years building up their ‘brand’ name and fan base. The chart presented below shows the Internet statistics of some of the leading model sites, the number of links they have accumulated, their traffic rankings, and the subscription rates they command. Some premiere models have risen to the top of the rankings through Internet marketing, for example Denise Milani who has gained over 60,000 links. In contrast, others such as Pam Rodriguez, have relied primarily upon magazine exposure and viral marketing, having acquired relatively few links to date.
So how much does a typical model site cost to put together? We asked a few talented design companies that specialize in producing such sites for a quote ...
All issues considered, generating links to your website is still a worthwhile exercise, even though their apparent value has declined. However, if you perform a detailed study of your site statistics you will observe that the majority of the visitors to your site do not derive from search engines, but rather from directories and ‘viral’ marketing (i.e. business cards, word-of-mouth recommendations, and web links sent in promotional Emails). This is why some leading models such as Shyla Stylez & Pam Rodriguez lie to the left of the curve and have a higher traffic ranking than would otherwise be expected from the number of links to their websites, while other models have a weaker traffic ranking despite having accumulated a larger number of links.