How many sponsors to promote in a freesite
 

How many sponsors do you think it is best to promote in a freesite?

If it just one and really try to sell it throughout the freesite or is offering a choice a better idea?

One is best IMO.

Why confuse the surfer by saying this site is the greatest site on the net on one page then say the same thing about another site on a different page?

Thats what I was thinking and I would probably agree with you....but it appears (although its early days) that most of the sales come from the warning page. So maybe if they wern't interested in it the first time round they wont be when they see the ad on the 3 other pages so maybe try a different approach??

Use one sponsor, then use one of your allowed links to link to your hub. Offer other choices there.

That's the difference between making sites with an occasional sale and making sites with lots of sales. You have to be able to get a good sales pitch on the index page, a better pitch on the main, a great pitch on the first gallery and a KILLER pitch on the last gallery.

But then what do I know?

Although I agree with all of the above, you do not know exactly what type of site your surfer is looking for (only the niche) so a method I use is this:

"If you want the best in (this niche) porn, My favourite site is xxxx.com." This leads to a major paysite.
"But if you just want (this niche) videos I use yyy.com." This leads to a PPV video site such as AEBN
"Or if you prefer (this niche) AVS clubs where you get entry to thousands of (this niche) sites and loads more, try zzz.com" This goes to one of my AVS sites.
I usually also have a "catch all" link for people not really interested in (this niche), who came to my site by accident or boredom. That either leads to a sponsor who has a page offering membership to all their sites for one price, or an AVS page of mine showing sites in all niches, all on the same AVS company (I.E. a "one sign up gets all" deal).

Of course all these links are not usually on the same page, I tend to lead them through things ie "Try this" and if they don't buy on that page "Try this instead" and so on.

Also, obviously it does not have to be Paysite to PPV video to AVS site, I also experiment with other things (such as free email programs).

I find this gets slightly better sign ups than just pushing one site, but I have never tried any serious analysis, so I could be wrong.

Surfn is giving you good advice here. |thumb

I definitely vote for the single sponsor approach. Here's why...

On our hosted free sites, we do get 47% of sales from the index page. But then we get 26% more from the main page. And here's an interesting data point...while only 3% come from gallery one locations, we do pick up the other 24% of signups from gallery two. So, yeah, I'd tell you to make a good strong pitch for one sponsor all the way through each free site. And try to be sure each gallery can sell your sponsor all on its own if it needs to.

Simon

There some useful stats - thanks :)

Simon, by "index page" I take it you mean the one with the "Enter" link, and by "main" you mean the one with the site menu on it? Or do you mean the other way round?

Are you kidding?

Nope, I automatically assumed that by "index page" Simon means his enter page, however the figures he quotes are sort of what I would expect if by "index page" he means what I would call the main page (ie. the one with the site index on it).

Now if both of us mean the same thing by "index page" then I have got to radically rethink the way I design free sites, but I want to make absolutely sure we are both singing from the same hymn book before I spend a lot of time (and some money) testing to see if the figures he quotes work the same for me.

Sorry, I could have put that more simply by asking:

Simon, are you saying you get almost twice as many sign ups from the page with the "you must be over eighteen" warning on it than you do from the page with the site menu on it?

I was using what I think of as standard terminology for basic free site construction. I learned that here, so I thought it would be clear enough. ;) But since it wasn't, here's some clarification.

Yes, the page with the "Enter" link would be the "index.html" page in most cases, particularly if you want to submit the free site to link lists.

What I called the "main" page is the one that many builders actually name "main.html" and yes, it is the one with the site menu, meaning the links to the gallery one and gallery two pages.

I hope that helps clarify what I meant, and which page is which. And, yes, to your follow-up post, we do get twice the sales from the "warning" page, which is why thinking of it only as a warning page can be a big mistake.

Simon

P.S. All of that said, I almost never use pages named "main.html," or "gallery1.html," or "gallery2.html" in our sites. Those page names are only for reference here. Using those generic names would be a big waste of what can be more good spider food, and a waste of another chance to influence the surfer to make the decision you want made. I usually don't name the photos "pic1.jpg" and "pic2.jpg" either, for the same reasons.

Its quite normal - so may surfers wont even get past the warning page. They will be distracted by the sponsor and the recip links and click and go somewhere else. Or just simply close the window because they dont see pictures straight away or your enter link.

Have a look in your stats. Hopefully it should tell you the entry and exit numbers of a certain page. It does in Awstats anyway and you can get that for free. You'll see a huge percentage of your surfers disapear at the first page and hopefully most went to your sponsor.

Vast majority of my freesite sales come from the index page too, for what it's worth, with mainpage giving me the second best amount of sales.

Simon - Thanks for the info. I now have some work ahead of me testing my own outgoing links. BTW, as Surfn inferred you were using "standard terminology" and you were clear. I asked because the stats you gave were the opposite to what I believed them to be I wanted to make sure we were both talking about the same thing before I started testing my sites to see if this worked for me.

neveremail and Jel - Thanks also, I now got a lot of work ahead of me as none of my sites are set up to test exits to sponsors on my index page, because up to now I have always assumed surfers just hunt for the "Enter" link and ignore anything else on that page.

I guess this is the most useful thread I have read in a long time because (assuming my stats turn out to be the same as Simon's, Jel's and Nevermail's) I have been throwing away about 47% of my possible sales for years - shit.

one sponsor - one free site, tested