There are hundreds of ‘escort directories’ out there. Some are free to use, some want paying for ads, and some are somewhere in between, with both free and ‘premium’ (the marketing word meaning ‘expensive’) listings available.
But what they nearly all have in common is that they want you to have a link back to them on your site. It’s a crowded market for the wannabes – there are very few really successful directories, and lots of people who would like to make money off someone else’s sex work – so there’s intense competition for high rankings on search engines and ever since Google came along, links have helped with that.
For free listings, I can understand this. It’s a lot dodgier for people you pay to demand it too. As part of a previous job, I used to buy ad space in papers and magazines. They didn’t expect us to advertise them in return, any more than the advertising in the local newsagent’s window means you have to stick a card in your window advertising them!
The directories also tend to insist on having the banner on the ‘front page’ of the escort’s site. Given the awful clashing flashing banners that many of them want, all it does is result in front pages that are horrible to look at, especially as there’s no consistent size for them. Everyone except the search engines skip over them quickly.
It also doesn’t help that they want different HTML code to display them. Some want you to upload the graphics to your site, while others want you to link to images on their site (which means they can find out how many visitors you have!). Some want a graphic and a line of text.
It would be lovely if escorts could insist on a standard format for directory banners. This would include insisting on them being one size, not animated, with simple HTML to display it. People should also have the choice to have the graphics on their site.
Is there any chance of it happening? Not as long as directories keep being able to have people believe, wrongly, that escorts need them more than they need escorts…
Adding a Punterlink banner
Their banners are on the /stats/submit-pages/add-ban.htm page of the punterlink.co.uk website.
We’re going to be doing one of the small ones on the top. Doing one of the larger ‘other punterlink banners’ would be easier, but the banners are even nastier.
Right click on one of them – the right hand one is (to my eyes) the least horrible one. On Firefox or Chrome, on the menu that pops up what you want is ‘save image as..’ (It’s ‘save linked content as..’ on Opera and I don’t know what Internet Explorer calls it.)
This then offers to save a copy of the image file, called 1st1.gif somewhere on your computer. Save it.
Next, log in to your website and go to the Pages menu. This lists the six or so pages you have. We want this banner on the front page and that’s usually called Home.
Click on Home or, when the mouse goes near that, the ‘edit’ menu that appears.
Right, here’s where there are two different ways of doing things…
Off to the top right of the box that has the text of the page are two tabs: ‘Visual’ and ‘HTML’. The former tries to be like a word processor and show you how things will appear when someone views them, the latter shows what’s really going on. Although it’s possible to do this sort of banner in the former, for many banners, you need the latter so click on that.
Click at the bottom of the text – you may need to press the return key a couple of times to give a blank line between your text and where the cursor is.
Now click on the ‘Upload / Insert’ on the same level as the Visual/HTML tabs, just above the ‘B I link b-quote..’ menu bar.
Up pops an ‘Add media’ box. Click on the ‘select files’ button. Find the file saved above (Firefox remembers where that was, as the last file saved, so that can be easy.)
Change the ‘Link URL’ to ‘http://punterlink.co.uk’ (without the quotes) and then press the ‘insert into post’ button.
The Add media box disappears and in the box with your text is now something like:
<a href="http://punterlink.co.uk"><img src="http://yourescortsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/1st1.gif" alt="" title="1st1" width="160" height="60" class="alignone size-full wp-image-40" /></a>.. where the cursor was.
The first <> bit says ‘it’s a link, when clicked on, go here’ (the Link URL). The second <> bit says ‘show a picture, here’s where to find the picture to display, here’s how to show it. The final <> bit says ‘that’s the end of the link’.
Click the big blue ‘Update’ button on the right and check how it looks at your site. Done!
Adding a banner for almost everyone else
Find their banner code, if they have any. It’ll look something like the
<a href...in the previous comment.
Do they have that?
Yes, they have it!
Copy it to your computer’s ‘clipboard’ by selecting it with your mouse and doing one of..
1. Right clicking, then select ‘copy’
2. Selecting the Edit-Paste menu item
3. Press Ctrl-C (Cmd-C if you’re using an Apple computer)
Log in to your website and go to the Pages menu. This lists the six or so pages you have. We want this banner on the front page and that’s usually called Home.
Click on Home or, when the mouse goes near that, the ‘edit’ menu that appears.
This time, you have to use Text mode. Off to the top right of the box that has the text of the page are two tabs: ‘Visual’ and ‘Text’ – click on the latter.
Click at the bottom of the text or wherever else you want the banner to go – you may need to press the return key a couple of times to give a blank line between your text and where the cursor is.
Paste the code from the clipboard by doing one of..
1. Right clicking, then select ‘paste’
2. Selecting the browser’s Edit-Paste menu item
3. Press Ctrl-V (Cmd-V if you’re using an Apple computer)
Click the big blue ‘Update’ button on the right and check how it looks at your site. Done!
No, they don’t
Follow the instructions in the previous comment, except replace punterlink.co.uk in the Link URL to whatever site the banner is for.
The authors of WordPress have changed at least one thing in the latest version, 3.5 – what was called the ‘HTML’ tab* is now called the ‘Text’ tab**
They also might have changed how to get your pictures, such as directory banners, to link to another site, such as the directory that’s expecting you to link to it. Sigh.
Previous comment updated accordingly.
* Because what it displayed was HypterText Markup Language, more usually known as HTML – what the viewer’s browser uses to decide what to display and how
** Because, erm, well I suppose it’s all text…