Members-only password protected areas can sound like a good idea. You can sell access to ‘premium’^* content, for example. They’re certainly doable on our sites. The problem is that you’ve got a choice: put a password on material which is the same for everyone (and so if it gets posted somewhere else, everyone can access it) or give / sell people accounts on your site.

The latter can be limited in what they can do (such as only see stuff that non-members cannot) but WordPress has an unfortunate history of allowing such accounts to gain, through various dubious means, total control over the site. Currently, there are no known ways to do that, but there’s been at least one or so a year in the nine years since the WordPress project started and I would not want to bet that there will not be another one.

So if you’ve got content to sell, I suggest^** that you hold your nose and use AW. In any case, my recommendation^*** is that you do not go down the ‘accounts on your site’ route.

* _{Marketing speak for ‘expensive’ :)}

** _{Consultant speak for ‘have a very good reason for not doing it this way’ :)}

*** _{Consultant speak for ‘do it this way or else’ :)}

Stealing other people’s pictures has long been annoyingly common – we can advice on ‘watermarking’ photos so that your site or other info appears on them. Services like Tineye help detect this: you upload a picture and they tell you where it can find copies or very similar images online.

People also steal text. It’s worth using a search engine to look for particular but uncommon phrases from your site and look for other ‘hits’. Sometimes other uses are coincidence or compliments (one sign a campaign is working is when people start quoting its messages at you, without necessarily realising the source), but other times, people are stealing your marketing effort.

Now, it’s becoming more common for people to use programs to steal text, altering it just enough to avoid simple detection. The results are like translating something from English to French and back again, but what is actually being done is certain words and phrases are recognised and substitutions found from a thesaurus.

Sometimes, it’s done to show ads to people attracted via search engines. Here’s the (Australian) Daily Telegraph’s original story on the acquittal of an escort agency owner:

A SYDNEY woman who owned an upmarket London escort agency was found not guilty of controlling prostitution for her profit.

Larissa Miesnieks, 39, who was born in Paddington, Sydney, and lived in Kensington, west London, faced up to two years in prison on charges of controlling prostitution and acquiring criminal property.

A jury of nine men and three women took less than 40 minutes to reach their verdict at London’s Southwark Crown Court.

Leaving court last night, Ms Miesnieks said she felt “amazing” and added that she needed a drink to help process the result.

“The worst time in my life has just become the best moment of my life,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

Her friend, who wished not to be named, said Ms Miesnieks had “held it together” during the 18 months of the case.

“She’s been meditating, doing yoga, she’s been doing really well until this week.,” she said.

Using the pseudonym ‘Lisa’, Ms Miesnieks ran the escort websites Atlantic Companions and Pure Brit, targeting rich city bankers in their lunchtimes.

Between January 2006 and June 2010, Ms Miesnieks, who was also an escort and took 30 per cent commission from the girls on her books, made about 300,000 pounds (AUS $442,800), the court heard.

In evidence presented during to court, Ms Miesnieks was accused of laundering money into a bank account in Dubai, where she claimed she was preparing to relocate.

In his closing argument, prosecutor Lawrence Aiolfi told the jury Ms Miesnieks was in a “position of influence and power” over the escorts.

In a document titled ‘Information for New Girls’, Ms Miesnieks indicated the type of underwear the girls on her books should wear and instructed them to call her within 10 minutes to inform her that money had been taken from a client, Mr Aiolfi said.

However Ms Miesnieks argued that she “cared for her girls” and was not controlling their prostitution for her profit.

The defence barrister Mark Seymour said his client denied the charges and had started her agency as a “co-operative”, operating it “for the girls” and giving them control over what jobs they took.

On a trip to Sydney, Ms Miesnieks once sent flowers to one of her escorts and would go to drinks and coffee with them, he said.

“She generally cares for them and is looking out for them and wants to help them,” he said.

“When you look at all of it, it is the complete opposite to power and control.”

Sitting in the dock, Ms Miesnieks often became emotional.

She told the court her prostitution ring had been her “little secret” and she did not want her family to find out.

Prostitution and operating an escort agency are legal in the UK, but it is illegal to control prostitution and gain from that control.

And here is TheNewsInLondon.co.uk’s version, with changes in bold:

A SYDNEY lady who owned an upmarket London chaperon group was found not guilty of determining harlotry for her profit.

Larissa Miesnieks, 39, who was innate in Paddington, Sydney, and lived in Kensington, west London, faced adult to dual years in jail on charges of determining harlotry and appropriation rapist property.

A jury of 9 group and 3 women took reduction than 40 mins to strech their outcome during London’s Southwark Crown Court.

Leaving justice final night, Ms Miesnieks pronounced she felt “amazing” and combined that she indispensable a splash to assistance routine a result.

“The misfortune time in my life has only turn a best impulse of my life,” she told The Daily Telegraph.

Her friend, who wished not to be named, pronounced Ms Miesnieks had “held it together” during a 18 months of a case.

“She’s been meditating, doing yoga, she’s been doing unequivocally good until this week.,” she said.

Using a pseudonym ‘Lisa’, Ms Miesnieks ran a chaperon websites Atlantic Companions and Pure Brit, targeting abounding city bankers in their lunchtimes.

Between Jan 2006 and Jun 2010, Ms Miesnieks, who was also an chaperon and took 30 per cent elect from a girls on her books, done about 300,000 pounds (AUS $442,800), a justice heard.

In justification presented during to court, Ms Miesnieks was indicted of laundering income into a bank comment in Dubai, where she claimed she was scheming to relocate.

In his shutting argument, prosecutor Lawrence Aiolfi told a jury Ms Miesnieks was in a “position of change and power” over a escorts.

In a request patrician ‘Information for New Girls’, Ms Miesnieks indicated a form of underwear a girls on her books should wear and educated them to call her within 10 mins to surprise her that income had been taken from a client, Mr Aiolfi said.

However Ms Miesnieks argued that she “cared for her girls” and was not determining their harlotry for her profit.

The counterclaim attorney Mark Seymour pronounced his customer denied a charges and had started her group as a “co-operative”, handling it “for a girls” and giving them control over what jobs they took.

On a outing to Sydney, Ms Miesnieks once sent flowers to one of her escorts and would go to drinks and coffee with them, he said.

“She generally cares for them and is looking out for them and wants to assistance them,” he said.

“When we demeanour during all of it, it is a finish conflicting to energy and control.”

Sitting in a dock, Ms Miesnieks mostly became emotional.

She told a justice her harlotry ring had been her “little secret” and she did not wish her family to find out.

Prostitution and handling an chaperon group are authorised in a UK, though it is bootleg to control harlotry and benefit from that control.

Some of the automated changes are simple (‘nine’ to ‘9’), some it shows words taken in the wrong context (bank ‘account’ to ‘comment’), but some of it is just weird: ‘document’ to ‘request patrician’?? The result is unlikely to be found by a search for any of the distinctive phrases in the original (it came up for me when looking for her name).

Here’s a word for The News in London’s automated thesaurus: plagiarism.

Short version: YES site owners needn’t worry about the ‘web cookie law’.

Longer version, starting with ‘what are cookies anyway??’

In this context, it’s not the biscuits (triple chocolate, please) but the computer variety.

These are small bits of text that are sent by many websites to visitors’ computers and which are stored on them for anything between ‘until the web browser is closed down’ to ‘many years into the future’.

The reason for them is that, by design, web browsing is normally ‘stateless’. When you talk to someone, you know what’s been said between you earlier in the conversation – that’s the ‘state’ before each thing you say. Without that, it would be like talking to someone with a bad case of Alzheimer’s:

‘Hello Your Escort Site, I’d like to buy a really great escort website.’

‘Yes, we do those!’

‘Do you do them in red?’

‘Do what in red?’

For web servers, this can work very well (and it certainly makes writing web servers easier) but sometimes you need to know more than just what was the latest thing said.

There are other ways around this problem, but what has worked best is to arrange for the website to send the browser a small bit of text which the browser then sends to the website every time it looks at that site again. Computer programmers being what they are, it got given the name ‘cookie’.

The equivalent conversation then becomes something like:

Hello Your Escort Site, I’d like to buy a really great escort website.

Yes, we do those! Have this bit of paper saying you’re looking for a really great escort website.

Do you do them in red? Here’s the paper you gave me earlier.

(Reads paper.) Ah, yes, really great escort websites! Yes, you can have them in any colour you like!

When using a web discussion forum like the one on SAAFE.info, cookies enable the website to know that it’s the person who gave the password to the account that’s now posting the helpful comment: when they logged in, their browser was sent a cookie to say ‘I’m this user, and here’s continuing proof of that.’ Similarly, shopping sites use them to maintain your shopping basket (this was their original use).

That’s the good side of cookies. Of course, there’s also a dark side.

Advertisers love them, because ‘third party cookies’ mean an ad provider with ads on multiple sites can detect which of them you’ve visited. Browsers can be set to not accept these and, because virtually every site will work properly without them, it’s a recommended setting which, annoyingly, is not the default in any major browser.

But in the context of escorting, it’s the way that cookies leave evidence about what sites have been visited that can be the most problematic. Do your clients want it to be discovered (quite easily by anyone with access to their browser) that they’ve been to prostitution sites? Do you want any queries wondering why someone’s been looking at your site? In either case, probably not.

In any case, a European Union regulation adopted into UK law last year mean that each visitor’s consent is required to set cookies on their browser that are not strictly necessary (because of being used to implement a shopping cart, for example).

So you’ll be glad to know that, as set up, websites created by YourEscortSite do not set any cookies for visitors. (It does use them with you, when you log into your site.)

Note: this site uses cookies – if you look in your browser’s collection (see its help for how, because it varies from version to version, never mind between browsers) you will see some from here.

We use them to get information about how visitors move around the site. They don’t collect information that identifies a visitor and it is only used to improve how the site works. If you’d like to opt out of having them, then every major browser enables you to delete cookies and/or to decline to have any from any particular site. (Again, you need to see your browser’s help to see how.) You can also go to yourescortsite.com/piwik/index.php?module=CoreAdminHome&action=optOut&language=en – this will send a cookie that says ‘please ignore visits from this browser’.

Or, ‘If I were evil, I would be rich’.

We would all love to be on the first page of Google* search results for every conceivable search, but with the default settings, only ten can be. Google won’t let you advertise “websites promoting escort services or related content”** via its AdWords any more either. So this creates a market for ‘search engine optimization’*** or SEO for short. In exchange for your hard earned money, they sort of promise that they’ll do their best to get you a better result. Perhaps.. maybe.. no guarantees..

Some recent posts on the SAAFE message board have highlighted both the cost of these services and what they’ve done for the money. One woman was charged £250 for a year’s SEO service. What that bunch seems to have done is put two lines of possible search terms in her page and add a link to themselves (the more links you have to your site, the better Google likes you). It’s not clear that they made any links to her site anywhere, but their terms and conditions did forbid her from making any changes to it without their written permission. When she wanted to change her domain, they didn’t reply to her.

Another was persuaded by the people who created her website to sign up for a £150 a month SEO service. Although she was soon concerned this was a waste of money (and those concerns looked justified), she was worried that stopping it would lead to them making unauthorised alterations to her site.

Part of the problem is that it is virtually impossible to get (and keep) a front page ranking for searches like ‘London escort’. Even some directories have problems – one of the big ones aimed at the gay market for male escorts has spent years alternating from being in the top half of the front page and nowhere as Google change the rules or effectively ban them for using naughty methods to try to beat their competitors.

The two solutions are getting listed on the directories that do feature people like you (most of them are free) and coming up with content that people like. The multitude of links to them are why the directories dominate the top pages for the basic searches. In the big cities, it will be difficult to match them for the basic searches, but you can do it for something more personal to what you’re offering.

The four things that you want are content, content, content, and links.

Dealing with the first three first, a site that says ‘Hi, I am an escort, I will do these things, I look like this, seeing me will cost that, and you can contact me by…’ is competing for attention with thousands of others. So you need more: write stuff!

You will have a blog for example, use it! Not only does it mean more people link to you, but potential clients can go ‘Oh, they like [something they like] too…’ which makes them much more likely to book you.

Links to your site can come from ‘link swaps’ with other escorts (they link to you, you link to them), or making sure that whenever you are mentioned, there’s a link to your site.

But the SAAFE posts did get me looking at who are the top listings for ‘escort SEO’ at the moment. Do you really want to pay hundreds of pounds to people who write this about building a website with WordPress:

You are going to be glad regarding the word press site, and you will feel too challenging to generate a site, it’s simple to build a internet site with wordpress. All you need to search the tutorials available to develop a internet site with wordpress. Right after that you simply need to follow the required things to develop a site with wordpress. But in complete you should understand you will need c panel to construct a website with wordpress.

(First paragraph of a blog article on Adult SEO Service website, currently in the top Google spot!)

Now I sort of understand what they’re saying – cPanel is a program for controlling a server – but it gets even worse later on: “In case you have several domains of you, you can’t get them within the key search engines”, anyone?) I wonder if it’s automated plagiarism. For more on that, see here.

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* Other search engines exist, and if Google keeps trying to be evil, some of them may get more popular, but at the moment, Google still dominates.

** This includes us, annoyingly. It does look like they’ll let you promote porn (‘adult’) website design though.

*** Or ‘search engine optimisation’, depending on your spelling checker settings.