An Open Letter To All Affiliate Programs That Offer / Plan To Offer Hosted Free Sites
 

Dear Affiliate Program,

If you currently offer Hosted Free Sites (HFS) or you plan on offering them in the future, you really need to read thru this thread:
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=15875

But there are a couple of things that, being a Link List (LL) owner, I've seen pop up in the past few months that have made me scratch my head.

Designers: 1st off, when you pick a designer, do not just assume that because they make Hosted Galleries (HG) that they can also make HFS's. HG designers have a very simple process: they make up a template with general sales text & they reuse that template by inserting different sets of content into them This does not work for HFS's. So if your HG company says they can make HFS's, make them prove it to you 1st by showing you Free Sites (FS) that they have built & submitted to LL's on their own that are actually listed. Make them prove to you that the FS domain is owned by them, that they submitted it to a couple of LL's & where it's listed on those LL's. If they can not show you personal sites that they have gotten listed, run away from them. They do not know how to make a FS & have no business offering people HFS's services.

Titles: HFS's each have a different title. The title is not the name of the paysite. FS's are basically very small sites, but they are stand alone sites none-the-less. They have a theme & the title of the site reflects that theme. These are all HFS's for Local Foxes, a site that AFDollar's has:
Frisky Redhead http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/...edhead/?581222
Leggy Latina http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/...latina/?581222
Little Red Thong http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/..._thong/?581222
Nature Lover http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/..._lover/?581222
Ready For Action http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/...action/?581222
Squeaky Clean http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/..._clean/?581222
Starting Without You http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/without_you/?581222
Sexy Black Lace http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/...k_lace/?581222
She's No Angel http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/..._angel/?581222
Spread & Ready http://www.localfoxes.com/freesites/..._ready/?581222
You'll notice that they all promote Local Foxes, yet the paysite's name is nowhere to be found in the site title & each site title reflects the content of the FS.

Also, while I'm on the subject of FS titles, the title should cover the entire site & not just one of the galleries. For some insane reason that is way beyond my comprehension, some programs are creating titles for their FS's based on the content in the 1st gallery. I've actually seen one that's promoting an amateur paysite that has 2 galleries of pics - one is a blonde amateur sucking cock & the 2nd is a brunette amateur getting ass fucked. The title of this site was something along the lines of "Blonde Wife Gives Head" WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Content on the galleries: If you make a FS using 2 galleries of content from the same shoot, make sure that the 2nd gallery starts where the 1st gallery left off as far as the order of the pics. The order of the content on the site should start with the 1st pic on gallery 1 & end with the last pic on gallery 2. This problem happens a lot when you use 2 existing HG's from the same shoot. If you have 20 pics on the FS & gallery 1 has the odd numbered pics & gallery 2 has the even numbered pics, you're going to run into problems with people listing the HFS because the pics are not in order.

Descriptions: you don't have to offer them, as a lot of LL owners write up their own, but if you do offer them, just like the site title, make it actually match the content on the site. Please! :)

Marketing: Each FS should have a theme to it (see the "title" section above) and the marketing text should reflect this theme. Don't use the same ads/templates/banners/text on each site. Mix it up a bit, even if it's just a little. Your goal here is to make the surfer think that the paysite is an extension of the FS, so word your ads as such.

Meta Tags: LL owners could care less about the meta tags, but if you feel the need to put them in there, for the love of Buddy Christ, please don't try to slip in off topic keywords or even borderline keywords that attract the wrong type of surfer.

Auto Generated HFS's: Don't even bother offering them - no one will use them. Trust me on this.

Rotating content: if for some reason you think that putting random content on the HFS's galleries is a good idea, please see my rant on titles. Rotating content might be fine on HG's for TGP's, but they are useless for HFS's.

Downloadable Free Sites: If you offer FS's that webmasters can download, put on their servers & submit to LL's, please remember that LL owners HATE this & the odds of your program getting a bad rep for the ever popular "over used content" decline reason are very high.

All of this is just advice - it's your program & you can do what you want with it. But if you choose to not take these suggestions into consideration, then you have no right to get upset when no one uses them & you get bashed on this board & maybe a few others. Plus, it's a waste of money & time IMHO.

Thank you for your time,
Greenguy

I second GG's statement without hesitation. Do them right or don't do them at all.

Well said GG :)

Yep, in complete agreement here too |thumb

|thumb

Great points GreenGuy :0) Taking notes

Funny you should mention this one in particular, I just listed it or something extremely similiar to this last Friday, but I think I changed the title on my list to better reflect the content, of course now it doesn't match the text on the site. |loony|

I just added a half dozen more if anyone cares to critique. I've been following a lot of the advices offered here. :-)

http://sites.bikinivoyeur.com/bike_w...t/?affilid=518
http://sites.nudebeachmovies.com/nud...py?affilid=518
http://sites.nudebeachmovies.com/hid...am?affilid=518
http://sites.partygirlupskirts.com/u...s/?affilid=518
http://sites.xrayhunter.com/xray_vision?affilid=518
http://sites.xrayhunter.com/xray_see...on?affilid=518

Cheers,
BV

http://sites.xrayhunter.com/xray_vision?affilid=518 - the pics are out of order on both galleries, but other than that, the HFS's are fine.

Hell, you might want to throw a couple more ads/text on the warning pages, as some seem a bit empty.

Some great tips here. I've been working on some HFS for the past few weeks and the help and advice I've received here is priceless! Thanks for posting this Greenguy.

Thanks for the input. I can put more ads no problem. I agree without all the recips you normally see on a normal warning page, some of mine do look empty.

That one xray gallery you mentioned with the out of sequence pics, I knew I would catch hell for that one. I should of fixed it when I first caught it but I didn't have my groove on at the time so I said fuck it. My bad. |violin| My file renamer sort of fuxored that one for from the start.

BTW: I tried to make these as SEO friendly as possible as far as title tags and image and page names. If anyone has any input that i could implement in that dept jlmk.

Cheers,
BV

[BV] - one other thing - on a couple of those URL's you're missing the / before the ? which causes a redirect. Example:
http://sites.xrayhunter.com/xray_see...on?affilid=518
should be:
http://sites.xrayhunter.com/xray_see...n/?affilid=518

I hear ya GG. We've gone thru several designers that feel they can do freesites without a hitch. For me, I prefer specific or niche orientated sales text on all galleries. I can't stand when I'm looking at a gallery, and reading text about something that has nothing to do with what I'm looking at. Obviously you know that the text came from another gallery. Common sales text "one liners" can still be set up niche specific with a little effort.
Anyways...you know we have the "Ace" freesite maker over here. Mr. Spookyx! Go on Spookyx's...tell em.

Hey GG, I see what you are saying. When you copy these urls from our admin none of them will have the trailing slash. The reason some do here in my above post is the result of me copying some of these links from our admin and some from my browser address bar after opening the url (your browser adds it for you)

My programmer said this is a minor http issue and will not cause any problems, but the next site I add I will see if the script will allow me to add the slash when I add the gallery names, if not we'll have to rewrite a little code so our script adds it for me.

Cheers,
BV

The big problem would be when people run link checks, as it'll kick these back as 302's (and some link checkers automatically remove 302's, so your links would be pulled)

Hey GG
great post. this is exactly the kind of advice I was looking for.

I've done TGP for about 2 years but am new to freesites.

Thanks
*taking notes*

I have resolved this issue, all fixed, thanks again for pointing it out GG

Great advice GG. I am thinking about all these things and BAM you make a post about it! GREAT! I recently made a bunch of HFS too. I suppose I should tweak them some more befor posting them! ALOHA

Thanks for all those tips GG. We just relaunched our affiliate program in NATS and have been working on adding free sites. Nice to see we were on mark with most of your suggestions but also gave me the chance to correct somethings before they are released.

When Greenie talks people listen, hahaha:D

You know, I've always wondered if sponsors get special treatment when they submit their stuff. Nice to see that they don't :) gives us "little people" the same chance.

One of the owners, |greenguy| , of hfslinks.com is anal when it comes to hosted free sites.

This really doesn't have anything to do with sponsor's submitting sites - but I will say that they are bound by the same rules everyone else is if they submit to me :)

Unfortunately there are still a few programs out there that are paying good money to someone (looking at the product Id have to say outsourcing) for a bunch of shit sites - and I dont normally name names - but since Ive emailed them and icq'd them a few times to try to help them - deecash - you need to fire whoever is doing your hosted free sites.
Inserting random content inside the same template every day and not changing anything else (especially when there isnt much to start with) is a waste of your good money - might as well just go to a casino and drop it in a slot machine for what youre getting back from them

Please read over this thread and the one referenced at the beginning that was written some time ago - and help your affiliates make you some money :)

Thanks GreenGuy!
 

GreenGuy has been very patient with me and extremely helpful with me over a couple year period and with two different companies. So when I see a post like this.... pure gold advice..... it gets e mailed around to anyone and everyone i am working with to make sure we are getting it right.

The two things I am sure of is;

They probably are not perfect yet

We will keep working on them until they are

To GreenGuy and everyone else who takes the time to reply to a post asking for feedback or who offers me and others advice on how to best fine tune our tools I have to say a Great Big Thank You. It really has a much bigger positive impact then I think you 'help-givers' realize and i am sure a lot of programs really appreciate the guidance.


spaz