UW I think He's asking whats best - A Nice graphical design or Amateur shitty design as most freesites tend to be the latter.
I'm currently making a mixture of both and seeing what happens. Many people say that crappy designs that are more text and plain html orientated tend to convert better.
Just look at the major LLs to see that they are not very heavy on design and graphics. It was mentioned on the netpond show yesterday that ugly sites tend to sell better. It is also known that thumb TGPs (which also tend to have better design) tend to convert worse than text TGPs.
Graphics or no graphics I think you still need to keep your site neat, presentable and easy to navigate to get accepted at LLs.
I'm personally trying a mix at the moment. Compare:
http://www.paradisebikinis.com/sexy-bikini-girl/ with
http://www.paradisebikinis.com/panty-girls/
A couple of reasons why more amateur designs may be better:
1. If the site the surfer on looks and feels good they feel like they are already getting good quality. If it looks shit and they go to a nice looking paysite then they feel the paysite really is worth paying for.
2. Less images mean the surfer may tend to focus a little more on the text which tends to spark his imagination a bit more than pictures.