Please Someone Shed Some Light <question><rant>

[gobgook2]

Ok, Im just getting a little frustrated here in snowy Illinois. Let's set the stage...

We opened up a review site 1-2 months ago, and it's doing rather well (much better than owning a TGP ever did for me!). So now I'm expanding into other methods of link exchanges and traffic generation for it. Somehow I ended up at AdultChamber looking through their Directories and Search Engines lists. |badidea| 10% useful. So a few questions arose in my quest...

1) Do LL/DIR owners pretty much want "traditional freesites", paysites, AVS and NOTHING ELSE? (I think most freesites I've seen (i don't play the freesite game myself) are mostly ugly and cluttered. I don't like the structure / layout etc of a "traditional freesite", so I don't get into it. But nobody has really jumped on the bandwagon and added a category for Review Sites from what few sites I checked out...)

2) What is the fascination with making bigass table-structured recips and then REQUIRING everyone to use them and ONLY them (ie, I can't just make up a good ol' text link!?). I mean, I understand wanting to make it stand out, but...

Here's my issue with (2). I would like to get some exposure for my review site, which I'm trying to keep as clutter-free and clean as possible. To that end, in addition to the "Friends" list that appears across the site which I plan to keep as a small select group, I've started adding link trades to the Entry/Warning page. Stay with me here... Let's say I intend to put 25 links on my entry page. Now --

IF LL/DIR owners DEMAND that recips appear ABOVE the "Enter/Exit" links
AND
IF LL/DIR owners DEMAND those table recips...

Here's what we come up with => www.gob-gook.com/wtf.html
(Note: Not trying to piss on anyone here, or get on anyone's shitlist. I just took 5-6 of these recips at random from that adult chamber list. I then re-used them over and over for the sake of my not wasting half the day making a simple example to (perhaps) over-exaggerate my point. LOL If you're one of the guys that I used a recip from for my example, it's simply because you're listed at adult chamber... no other reason Some of them DID allow you to use either their table recip OR a text link, but not many...)

So... I don't think I have to even say it in print that my example looks like a clusterfuck and would probably drive a good % of surfers off quickly.

That said, you can see the way I'd much rather set the links up at www.pornsitereport.com (and yeah, they're UNDER the enter/exit links... for now at least...) I'm completely open to suggestions here! I mean, I assume entry page link trades are more for the benefit of SE/PR and link popularity than actual traffic...? I'm really just trying to avoid plastering loads of links all over the actual site itself, I guess. And if anybody wants to set up a link trade, entry to entry or whatever, I'm willing to discuss!

Thanks for taking the time to read my lengthy drivel.
Happy Sunday!
</rant>