I may have a fundamental misunderstanding about free sites.
 

My question is purely from the pov of a free site submitter. I have no problems with the rules that have evolved from the experience of LL owners.

Is the purpose of the site to make sales for the paysite promoted on the galleries? If so, why do people recommend that traffic is sent to the warning page rather than the index page when there is a choice?

The alternative is to try to make sales from the warning and index pages and risk losing the surfer before he gets to the primary sponsor selling galleries.

You can promote the same sponsor on index and main as on the galleries. You have 3 ads on each page.
Pics are just a requirement to get into the LL's, pics in itself doesn't sell, the ads do :)

There are people who believe that if you can't sell the surfer on the index, you aren't going to sell them on the main or gallery pages either.

The index serves multiple purposes. It's a warning of sorts, your first attempt at the sale, and a traffic trade. If traffic isn't sent past the recips you could bet that traffic would suffer. Each recip produces very few hits per site, if any, but over thousands of sites, traffic builds. Take those recips away and stop that flow of traffic from list to list and you'll see the amount of traffic being sent to your sites drop off. So, what I am trying to convince you is, in the big picture, recips are good for both list owner and the submitter. Cherish the reciprocal link. ;) Don't treat it like a traffic leak.

It's not the recips that are the problem. They could be on the index page. I'm not quite sure why a warning page is useful on a sub-directory that is trading with other adult sites. I can see that surfers that are used to the free site structure will expect to work through a couple of pages to get to the pictures, so that gives you an extra sales page. I guess it's comments that were made to me outside this board suggesting that a tgp should send traffic to the warning page that made me wonder about the structure of free sites. Do many surfers give up and not make it to the picture pages?

Head Boy - what exactly do you define as an "index" page anyway?

Probably index was the wrong word. My understanding is that free sites consist of a warning, main (sort of index) and two or more galleries, it was the main page that I was thinking of as an index.

Apologies if I seem to be questioning the structure here. I'm quite happy to conform to the established rules, but I'm trying to understand the morality and the method behind them. I think I need to start planning the whole structure rather than relying on some sales chat on the gallery pages.

You get two whole pages where you can try to sell them something before they even get to the free content. Why would you want to give up one of those pages?

Also the entrance page is a place to stick your recips on.

Entrance page is for the recips, some ads, and where you setup the theme of the site.

Main page is a place to stick a HPA and gallery links.

Galleries are your sample pics and another chance to sell the surfer.

index -> main -> galleries

Thanks for all the answers, and I guess you've convinced me. :)

I think the problem for me may have started when I looked at some badly designed warning pages.

I get over 60% of my free site sales from warning and main page clicks :)

Me too, the most of sales come form main page.

How do you know which page your sales are coming from? Are you only using sponsors that track referring pages or are you guys psychic as well?

Most of the sponsors I build free sites for track the page the sale came from, and I'll agree as stated, most sales come from the mainpage.

I'm always amazed by the sources of sales. I've just got a sale from this "site", and what you see is all that's there. It's a domain that I intend to build sometime, but so far I've done nothing with it.

http://www.blackhero.com/

Guess there's something to be said for giving the surfer limited options :D

UW:I know where they come from based on sponsor stats. Since I see about the same thing from all the sponsors I use that track ref pages, I feel comfortable believing that it's pretty much the same across the board.

Remember, your goal should always be to get your surfer off your page and onto the paysite as fast as you can. I think that the reason we tend to link to the warning page is so that the "warning" itself can be seen and thus the laws are not broken

Wrong
They are coming from my link lists or some kind of porn page, no warning needed.

It should be called the entrance page and is a place to setup the theme of the site, to place your ads, and to place your recips.

Sorry Cleo but I still thought that was the reason for having a warning page :(

It was suppose to be a warning page at one time but IMO in real life it has become something else.

I would say that the index at the root of a domain is the only real legal warning we give. The indexes of free sites are another animal completely. I like to think of them as the big ugly pages where all of the recips are stored.

Anyway, why do we need a warning page when there is a content meta tag. Don't all good browsers filter on that? :)

Yes, I only use sponsors reffering stats, and I noticed that about 40% sales come from warning page.

My top selling pages are in the following order: index, main, galleries

But my main focus is just within one type of several niches. It's different within other types of niches.

So who ever comes up with taking away the warning page, I'm going to kick their ass ;)

Has anyone got any stats on the sales generated by direct links to galleries (say from tgps), and sales generated from warning/main pages? I know these will be difficult to interpret because LL traffic seems to be better quality than TGP. :)

most of the sponsors I've used have either shown the referring page or allow for tags or campaigns you can setup for each page (pain in the ass) if you are that anal about stats, which I am :)