Quite the thread here, a nice mix of drama and business
Haven't been submitting for quite a few weeks now (way too busy with other projects and life in general), but I still consider myself "a submitter", so here's my 2 cents.
Yes, I think the freesite model could use some fresh ideas and thinking. No, I don't think the 1.5 model as kit outlines it addresses the core issues that I'd like to see addressed.
I would like to see more room for creativity. I'd like to see more flexibility rather than sticking to the usual 4 pages format. More specifically -
1. I'd like to see room for freesites that have more than one type of content. A mix of stories, pics and movies.
2. I'd like to see room for freesites with more galleries and fewer pics/movies per gallery.
3. I'd like to be able to have more than 3 outgoing links on a gallery page, or on any page for that matter. I'm not talking about banner farms or even link farms with some content at the bottom of the page. I'm talking about being able to highlight words in the text (in positions and context where they won't be blind links) and have some more leeway with text links, while retaining 3 blocks of ads per page (3 blocks but not 3 links).
4. I'd like to see freesites where some of the pages can have full-sized images and/or embedded flash movies rather than thumbnails.
5. Last but not least, I'd love to see more flexibility in recirocal linking. Could be links back from the root of the domain or from a links page in the FS, but not necessarily on the main or index page. If that links page was linked to from every page on the FS, for example, it may get just as much link juice and traffic as a table on the index page, and it would mean we don't do direct reciprocals either. Just a thought, and we might be able to come up with more creative ways.
I think as a surfer, I would have liked to see linklists that truly link to good quality free sites and not just freesites.
When I started in adult web publishing, I didn't even know there was a difference. I heard people mention they were making freesites and assumed there was some missing space there and they meant "free sites", i.e. sites where some amount of free porn is provided in order to lure the surfers into the paid sites.
I've only been doing adult for about two years, and I can only imagine how the FS format evolved (though I'd love to get educated there!). I guess the strict format evolved as a result of webmasters trying to spam LL's with banner farms and sites full of more links and spam than actual content.
I won't even say "as a linklist owner", because I don't consider XLEF.com to be a linklist in that sense. It's a directory to me, because it lists much more than the regular format of freesites. Anything which I feel to be of value to surfers, while not giving away too much free porn, will get listed, and recips don't even have to come from the site itself.
Which brings me to the last point - trusted submitters. I don't even have a submit page, I only take submissions via PM or emails from people I know from the board. My point being, that thinking about the amount of spam and junk the big LL's have to deal with makes me shudder. Having to review sites that don't even have a fixed format would have to be a total nightmare. So maybe the flexibility in formats should be limited to trusted submitters only?
And can't do without some samples
So here are some sites which are free sites but not freesites and I would list them (well, ok, they're mine, but I hope it gets the point across).
Black Sluts
Hottie Wives