Making Thumbs

[jayeff]

Hand-cropping thumbs is going to get you more galleries listed and more clicks to those galleries. Whether that translates into $$$ is another question entirely.

From my experience, the more you crop and optimize thumbs, the higher the level of expectation you introduce among surfers. And the problem is that at some point you have to expose them to the reality of the actual content that you and/or the sponsor are offering.

Some, mainly softcore, sponsors do offer genuinely high-quality content for both their members and affiliates. But there is an increasingly high proportion of TGP's, MGP's and gallery submitters who have turned their thumbs into near-blind links, since the content to which the thumbs lead is of dramatically poorer quality.

It's a problem, because the sites to which you submit don't care about you making money: only about their own sites looking good. And as more submitters do hand-prepare thumbs (well), "regular" thumbs won't get as many clicks. But if, as you should be, you are concerned about your income and not just clicks, you might find it pays best to strike a balance.