A Year In The Life of TDW: A Cautionary Tale

[ponygirl]

this is a very interesting thread, thanks Preacher

I am in the middle of a major redesign myself, (which is why I haven't been around the last couple of days) and have been surfing around to other LLs to get some ideas. The only thing I really see is that everyone is different lol.

I have had the LL up for about a year now, and to be honest, I haven't really kept track of the particulars, mostly concentrating on freesites and whatnot. I just notice the traffic going up, so now I'm ready to bring the LL to the next level - spending some time with it, buying some traffic & doing more trades once the redesign is done.

So I'm just going to do what feels good to me (like always hehe ) and see where it goes.

anyway, my point was - let's keep this thread going, it's great to see comments from others & toss around the ideas

[Preacher]

Originally Posted by ponygirl

this is a very interesting thread, thanks Preacher ...
...So I'm just going to do what feels good to me (like always hehe ) and see where it goes.

Isn't she just the sweetest thing. |love| - Wow that's a really gay smilie.

Anyway I thought of a few more things I should bring to the discussion.

1) A recomendation for new linklists, be careful what you spend your time on. For example, PHPAdsnew is a great advertising tool and when I first set it up I spent literally days filling it up with every banner from every site I liked of every sponsor I had. Again, this ties in with that shotgun approach.

Use PHPAdsnew, but use it wisely. Limit the banners to a handful that you really want to send traffic to and ignore the rest of the paysites you could link to regardless of how pretty or effective their banners look. You can always add more banners down the line.

2) In a similiar vain, start out with a limited selection of categories that you believe you can get filled up. I have several that don't really move but I'll give a perfect example because I can pick on myself.

I began with a Hardcore Category which I intended to be more like Greenie's Rough Sex cat and a Straight Sex cat which I intended to be more couple porn, like a vivid set etc. No one really ever submitted to the Straight Sex category. I threw in some sites that seemed to fill that niche, but the traffic just isn't there.

Lucky for me, there are no trades on that page so during this template update I will be merging that category with the hardcore cat.

3) I'm not doubting ynuahayt's success at all, so this is by no means an implication of that. However, I believe his success is the exception to the rule because I can think of at least three linklists that began last summer that have now gone under. I can think of another 1 which just wants to be sold and it's barely staying alive. And I can think of several older lists that have closed down submissions or just aren't reviewing anymore. IMO, if it were as easy as adding $1 pay trials to the top of a site I wouldn't think this many linklists would be failing.

[ponygirl]

Originally Posted by Preacher

1) A recomendation for new linklists, be careful what you spend your time on. For example, PHPAdsnew is a great advertising tool and when I first set it up I spent literally days filling it up with every banner from every site I liked of every sponsor I had. Again, this ties in with that shotgun approach.

Use PHPAdsnew, but use it wisely. Limit the banners to a handful that you really want to send traffic to and ignore the rest of the paysites you could link to regardless of how pretty or effective their banners look. You can always add more banners down the line.

thanks for this tidbit too. I just set it up but the cron thingie isn't working right & have to get that fixed. Now that I read this tho, it's a bit lower on my list of to do right now lol.

Originally Posted by Preacher

Isn't she just the sweetest thing.

awww you're so sweet |blowkiss|

Oh by the way Preacher, you've got a pm coming your way

let 'em think about THAT for awhile LOL