Well - after reading this I think its time for a "Linkster Special Tips" day on free sites
1. Get yourself to the point where you have 30 templates - now when we say templates in the free site world we mean - design templates - the arrangement of the pics, the look of the index page etc - not color differences.
2. As part of your original business plan - you would have decided what niches you plan to attack - so duplicating the templates for each niche into different folders is the second part of this little organizational pow-wow with yourself - don't build completely new templates - just copy the original 30 into a new folder and name it niche2 or whatever.
3. At this point you should (based on old sage advice I received) have around 90 templates streched over 3 niche folders.
Now is the time to add color and change text based on the niche - get the templates to the point where all you have to do is change the paysites name or banner on your templates in the future.
4. Niche recips come next - obviously the arrangement you use for doorways drives how you set up the sub-folders for each set of Linklists - but again - its just a matter of getting the templates duplicated and add the niche recip tables ahead of time.
5. Adding pictures - as you buy each set of pics - set them up with groups of 20 or 30 - whatever you decide(of course if you are also making tgp gallery submits this will weigh into that decision) - and put them in sub-folders of the niche template folder they belong to.
6. Advertising - take the time to really read the tour pages of the paysite you are submitting to - note the colors of the pages, the types of words and phrases they use, etc. This should drive how you write the advertising for that niches' templates - and decide how many templates you want to use for that sponsor. Then it's just a matter of changing text to match the paysite as well as the color of the template and banners (if used)
7. At this point you have all of the 90 templates ready for the submitting game - the content should be ready to drop in to the templates (thumbs already made, fullsize pictures at the right size etc.)
8. Now we are ready to submit for the first day - just go to the first template - drop in the pics and thumbs, upload to the server and go look at each and every page you are going to submit - check the recips, the titles, click on every thumb, recheck your mouseovers on paysite links, check you have your affiliate code in the links - and dont just check the first doorway - check them all - its amazing how many sites get declined because the submitter didnt do these quick checks - it is also important to make sure you clear your cache before you do this so you are really looking at what is on the server and not what is on your computer
This step should take around 30 minutes.
9. Submit doorways - this step takes from 10 min to 30 min dependant on if you do the submits all by hand or use a robo form filler, and how many LLs you submit to.
10. Repeat the next day - max one hour a day for submits for the next 88 days.
And rotate through the niches - dont send 10 free sites in a row advertising the same sponsor in the same niche - mix them up every day - for the link lists that have bookmarkers - the surfers will recognize the "style and sponsor" and just close out and move on
11. This is the most important part of the free site game - watch your server stats and clicks/sales at the sponsor. This will give you the two most important pieces of info you will need in the future - first - are you being listed? Of course - keep in mind that LLs can take anywhere from 3 days to 3 months to list free sites with a few that are within the first day.
Read your emails - Linklists ask for your email address so that if there is a problem with the site they can email you
If you do not see your sites being listed, based on server stats, and you have waited
at least 3 days then come over here and post questions.
Sponsor stats - keep in mind different sponsors record hits differently - some use the raws to the first page, some uniques, some uniques to the second page etc. - This is key information you need to know up front - you cant calculate how much you are really making per hit to sponsor if you dont know how they track hits.
For the first month don't get too hung up on making sales right off - although there are Linklists I can tell you that you will make on average $10 per submit - it is an average and taken over a months worth of submits.
The reason for watching all of the statistics on your free sites is trying to figure out if there is something inherently wrong with the template design - or something that needs to be changed in the advertising text - or more importantly - if there is a problem with the sponosr and you just need a different site to promote - but as always - there is a rule of thumb for when to start worrying about conversion rates
With free sites listed on good linklists with plenty of search engine niche traffic - my recommendation is to send at least 5k unique hits before making a decision that a sponsor is working or not for that niche - some say 10k but that I think would be for more general traffic.
If you find the right combination - you will know it after the first month - and make sure that you write down or keep the stats in a spreadsheet (dont rely on "Ill remember that one forever" - it doesnt work)
12. Finally - the time to go back and start tweaking - since you have all this free time now - and youve got good stats after at least a month - look at what pages did sell - your sponsors stats should tell you what pages sent the sales - and then make sure that all of your pages are optimized to those pages that are making sales and change the ones that dont
13. Review your niches after 3 months - did you make the right decisions for niches? Are the sponsors selling?
14. With the answers to 13 above - start making changes to the templates.
15. Repeat