Linkster, wouldn't it be great if there was an organization that focused on growing and protecting the business? It's difficult but not impossible.

I think its very possible especially if you give the perks due the traffic generators and ensure the sponsors realize that the traffic doesnt come cheap like they do in the mainstream world already.
Have you noticed the amount of sponsors that have sprung up in the last year because they realize that traffic is almost free from us?
There are many benefits for a WM that could be put in that organization, as long as the overall path is to the promotion of the biz long term and not just for one companies benefit like so many of the splinter organizations that exist out there today.

I don't Tommy's fantasy was to change the entire biz model.
I read it to mean that he visioned charging a small 'surfing fee'. Therefore, the content for his site would still come from submitters and free hosted stuff. If he was planning otherwise, he might as well turn the site into a 'pay site', providing his own content.

How do you figure that you been screwing yourself? In return for your traffic, sponsors and/or submitters provide you free content for you site. And if anyone got screwed with the advent of the "free hosted craze", it was the submitters. It was like a manufactor going to direct sales and cutting out the merchants.

The sponsors are not getting a free ride, they are paying 50+% of their gross for your traffic either to you or your submitter.

The 'bottom line' is this is a three way street - sponsor = provider of goods/service, LL and TGP owners = provider of media, much like radio, tv, print and submitters=provider of adverting copy, a kin to ad agencies. We all need each other. |shake|

bah... I wish that were true. But the way I see it is somewhere down the line we're all connected to the US laws in some way or another. If it isn't the webmaster living in US, it's the processing company, if it's not the processing company its the host, if its not the host, its something else. True you could have a company that used all non-US resources but as it stands right now, I say about 75% of online webmasters are connected to the US in some way or another. They would either have to really switch up how they do business, or comply to the rules.

My being in Canada just means I know all too well what this saying means "When the elephants dance, the mice get stomped" |pink

You are right on GG...When we did the experiement, there were several other tgps involved - most of them cj/tgp type sites.

Our site and one other had clean gallery links with a couple of semi blind links - "click here for more tgp galleries" or "visit our other tgp for more galleries" type of thing that many "clean" tgps use.

In general, the cleaner the site, the better the conversions. We primarily focused on the niche/hardcore nature of the protected galleries. We charged $10.00/month.

I agree with the sentiments expressed by several regarding the fact that competition will drive things to the lowest common denominator - free porn. But, by gaining trust of your surfers and providing them higher quality, high res galleries featuring hardcore porn in a non hassle environment, money can be made.

From a submitters standpoint, all I can say is that the hardcore galleries in the protected area converted at a rate I have not seen since we dropped the project.

It was only a three month project with about 5 or 6 tgps participating, but the results were encoraging.

How stoned were you when you came up with this idea? J/K

Though, a good linklist has enough content on it to where it is worth a subscription.

Making it member based would stop SE spiders in their tracks though.

Wow... definitely something to think about - I mean, just look at all the responses and tangent ideas posted already in this thread (plus the ones everyone is keeping secretly for themselves ATM - lol).

An idea that inspiring is definitely worth a try... would love to cover a story on an experiment like this and see what happens!

|thumb

There is a way to introduce this type of idea gradually to surfers, without killing traffic.

We've developed a way of charging the surfer a few cents for each link he follows, rather than asking him to pay for your whole TGP by subscription.

Here's a demonstration TGP site that shows the kind of thing I'm talking about :

http://www.demotgp.com

The block of thumbs in the middle are all charged at 10c each. You can come down to 1c. Look at the url, and you'll see that the link is encrypted. But pay 10c (or whatever) and you're taken to the gallery.

If you tried to do this on your main TGP, of course the surfer would run a mile. But you could think about charging the surfer to follow links in your archive. Or make "specially recommended" links 5c each.

The surfer has to get a PayAsYouClick.com account to follow these links, and that's of course the barrier. But once the surfer sees that there is a now huge amount of content available from 1c to $2, they do sign up pretty well. There's some other examples on that page of how to charge him for content - do some clicking and you'll see what I mean.

Coming back to your TGP, you and your submitters know that the only people following those paid links (even at 1c) have proved they're able and willing to spend. So suddenly you've got fantastically qualified traffic going to those galleries. No sensible sponsor is going to begrudge you charging the surfer 1c per click for listing his gallery like that.

The real icing on the cake is that when you introduce surfers and they sign up for an account, you receive 50% commission (after processing) of everything he spends on ANY sites, EVER. So just exposing the surfer to this on your TGP is a new revenue stream, even if he doesn't fancy paying for links yet.

We've got more than 100 live sites using this now, so surfers are going to come across it more and more. If the TGPs get behind this, they have the power to make this a reality.

I'd be grateful for your feedback on this idea.

Regards

Danny

You know, this does bring up a question - can you legally charge for access to other peoples sites/galleries?

If I had a program that had hosted galleries & free sites & someone was charging people to look at them, I think I might have to call my lawyer.

Of course, that would hold true whether you are charging for access to the whole TGP, or charging for the individual links.

I wouldn't suggest for a moment that you'd charge for individual links without making it part of your own submit terms, so that everyone was happy with it.

But remember that as a sponsor, the traffic coming to you from that kind of link would be from surfers who had been prefiltered. So the bandwidth bill goes down, and the conversions go up.

That sponsor could also charge for extra clips etc on that gallery page, knowing that the surfers that hit the gallery can make payments of up to $2 with one click. Effectively these would be preveiwing the subscription content - exactly what they're doing now for free, but able to charge say 20c per clip.

Remember also that what you are charging for is access to your "directory". The page you're linking to is freely available - you're not selling their content.

As a link list owner you can legally copyright your links. So if you can do that why couldn't you charge surfers to use them.

Danny

GG is right.
The submitter provides content, hosting, banwidth, and his time and work expecting traffic from linklist/TGP. Making money out of that for free is not a good idea.
Neo

One of the problems I see is the Visa thing. They might not like the idea of all the freesites/galleries not being on "your" domain.


|waves|

For free?

There's a lot of work behind a LL. The charge would be for reviewing and providing links to the best porn out there and some other goodies. A submitter is never forced to submit to a LL/TGP. They can either submit to LL A and get 5000 mixed hits, or submit to LL B and get less traffic, but pre-approved. I know that I would take both ;)

But the legal issue is interesting. It's the submitter that hosts the content, and he's not charging anything. It's the LL webmaster that only has a link to the free site that is charging. Common sense says that it's all good, since the person that is using the content doesn't charge anything.

Absolutely. That's why it is such a good idea. The sponsor gets adult-filtered traffic that's ready to make payments with one click.

Nobody's suggesting the TGPs should make money at the sponsors' expense - whether you charge for the links individually or by getting the surfer to buy a subscription to the TGP. That would be an unsustainable business model, and I think we've had enough of those already!

PayAsYouClick can also be used to (for example) charge the surfer 20c (say) for 24 hours to reach your archive / premium links page, ie a short-duration subscription to a particular part of your TGP.

Think you are correct. Most contain a copyright notice. Of course you can contract for anything legal, so the terms and conditions for the LLs/TGPs would have to be rewritten to cover the legalities.

Then of course as a submitter you`d have to wonder about the benefit of being listed at a ll or tgp as such. Would it be like the internet that once surfers pay for access they believe everything else is or should be free? Therefore not being very productive or finding another place to surf after thier needs are not exactly met. Like prepaying to be presented a sponsor. I know I would hate to pay to be advertised to.

But it might improve your shopping experience and be worth the small 'surfing' fee- guarantee no popups, blind links and BS like that. Sort of like paying a small fee to get rid of a high-powered used car salesman.

I think its all about perceived value. If you tell the surfer that this site is so good he's going to have to pay you to even be told where it is, it sets an expectation in his mind that the site is something special, or that you've had to work hard on his behalf to find it for him - however you want to sell it.

When we launched everyone said surfers wouldn't pay a cent each to view pictures because they're free everywhere else. That was just plain wrong. We watch surfers all the time click 300 pictures in an evening at 5c each, then come back for more the next day.

The same COULD be true for links if they're marketed right, and you guys sure have got the traffic to make that pay if you get it right.

But I don't pretend to know for sure what the best way of doing that is. We're just providing the tools for you to do it whatever way you can make it work.

Danny

actuall I find this a very good idea, thugh I think how thinks are running atm it will not happen. everybody who runs a tgp or linklist must join this idea.

maybe it will have to be like your idea one day because of legal issues, maybe free access to adult related material will be prohibited...

just my thoughts I want to share with you all. time will show us

think this should be possible. remember, you offer a service and why should you not be allowed to charge a fee for it. actually I would love to get my freesites (if I had some) listed on your linklist thugh you charge a fee for you visitors ;)

there are possibilities to make such areas accessable, stuff I have already been doing in the past

I really have no doubt you could make a few bucks on the idea. I think what everyone wonders is "how much?". But it sounds like a great plan should the law decide to really clamp down on unprotected content!

I think it could even work in the current climate given real value to surfers and promoted right. Hell what have`nt we sold yet?!

I have no doubt that this would work. Especially if you catered to a very specific niche.

Whether you choose to charge surfers a subscription-style price to view a section of your links, or charge him for each link he follows, the real power lies in what you do with him then.

Let's say the idea moves ahead a few steps, and you have TGPs charging surfers to view their links with PayAsYouClick accounts.

An increasing number of surfers are persuaded to get an account, so those surfers are hitting sites able to make a payment of up to $2 with one click on a payment link. No big decision, no worries about anonymity or scams etc, just click on the thumb and that 2 minute clip is yours for a dollar.

The rest of the industry won't just ignore this, nor will they reach for their lawyers, they'll move to take advantage of it. So the sponsors will start to build galleries with a few free clips like now, but links to a load more of their content priced at 20c a clips etc. This is irresitable for surfers. Its like a Las Vegas slot machine - every extra payment is so tiny, there's no reason to stop. That's how we get surfers spending $20 in an evening, never mind a month. Of course if the surfer really likes what he's found, he'll stop paying per-click and buy a full subscription.

But this is the important bit. The way our system is set up, the TGP owner or submitter will earn around half of everything their traffic spends on those sponsor sites.

The sponsor's happy because he's getting pre-filtered traffic that ready to spend. And the TGP owner is happy because by driving the surfers to the best sites, he's going to make a hefty percentage of everything that surfer spends.

This isn't a dream for us, this is what we've got going right now. We've got webmasters of all shapes and sizes buliding sites with videos, niche pictures etc, and converting traffic better than they did on subscriptions. And now, we've got sponsors building pay-per-click versions of their sites, having already tested the idea and found that it converts new surfers without reducing signups.

What we haven't yet got is the mainstream TGPs and Link Lists. I hope that by offering this as a model, you'll see that we've got something worth looking at.

It'll only take one sponsor to call a lawyer to put an end to it. I really don;t see how you can charge for access to someone else's site.

This issue is an old one - remember back when AVS sites were very popular? A lot of sponsors would not let you use their free content on AVS sites because you were selling access to their material.

Same thing applies here.