This is also a primary reason why there are so many credit card payment processors who have tailored their services to provide adult credit card processing. It’s a burgeoning industry that has carved and maintained its own niche on the internet, and one where a lot of enterprising webmasters are seeking to get a piece of the pie, and maybe even the lion’s share of the adult credit processing accounts.



Being as large as it is, however, means the adult industry has necessarily followed the letter of the law, as no moneymaking industry can operate freely for long if it is steeped in illegality. Most, if not all, the successful adult websites do follow the rules and legalities set by the law, primarily to keep from having to get penalized by the authorities and to maintain the legal status being enjoyed by their websites.

If you are planning on building and running an adult pay site, or if you already have a website, here are some tips on how to keep out of trouble while running and earning from it.

Provide a warning. The landing page of your adult content website should have a disclaimer where visitors immediately see it. Be sure that the warning "this site contains adult material and should not be viewed by anyone under 21 years of age" is clearly seen. You should also warn visitors that viewing adult content is prohibited by the law in some states. These warnings do not hurt your website, they show you are an educated, law-abiding webmaster doing legitimate business.

Use an Age Verification System. Assuming you did put a warning that you have adult content on your landing page, this will not guarantee that minors will not sneak a peek at your goods, quite the opposite, truth be told. The way to fix this (and ensure you don’t get busted for allowing minors into your site) is to use an age verification system. This is a system that asks for proof of legal age through a credit card checking system. This system, however, is limited by the fact that even 18 year old visitors with a credit card can still browse through the site, as they are already old enough to have a credit card.

Keep the obscenity to a minimum. Yes, you are running an adult website, that’s why your payment processor is called an adult credit card processing service, but that doesn’t mean you can let all the obscenity hang out for you to sell and for all to see. Certain niches of the adult industry are not as accepted as mainstream adult content. These include incest, rape, bestiality, and child pornography. You can also check with the companies that provide adult credit card merchant account services, they are quite particular about these things. They will not provide their adult credit card merchant account processing services to websites that feature illegal content.

Fake it. In case you’re wondering why some sites remain on the internet despite claims they feature child pornography, rape, and other content that could get them banned, you should know that there is a good chance they are faking it. The Federal Bureau of Investigations is very stringent about its guidelines on what content websites can show, and those who claim they got by these guidelines are definitely fibbing about it. You may be able to show illegal content for a while, but you will get discovered, and your IP will get banned if you do feature illegal content.

Include non-adult content. You really don’t need to fill every portion and viewable content of your website with adult material. You could always include something else for variety. This is to answer a particular test used to measure the obscenity level of a web site, called the . This test evaluates the website to see if the entirety of the website lacks artistic, literary, scientific, or cultural merit. If it does, then it is deemed obscene, and thus illegal. Throwing in some items of human interest such as articles, maybe some non-adult related advertisements could just make your adult website meet some of the criteria needed to make it pass the Miller Test.

State the age of your models. states that records documenting the legal age verification of each model depicted in a manner that is considered sexually explicit must be kept. This law ensures that all models that appear on websites with adult content are of legal age, which is 18 and above. This particular law covers all the models and their images that is shown on the website. In case you like to “borrow” images from other websites or sources, do not assume that the models that appear in the images are indeed of legal age, be sure to check for yourself. If you are unsure of their age, you would better off not using their image.