An Open Letter To All Affiliate Programs That Offer / Plan To Offer Hosted Free Sites

[Greenguy]

spazlabz - I have to admit that I am really backed up right now with work, so I haven't had a chance to go thru your last batch of HFS's, but I'll let you know if I see anything that can be improved.

And just let me also say that's it's great working with sponsors that are actually glad to get free advice (as opposed to a couple other who either ignore you or think that there's nothing wrong with their hosted free sites - lol)

[Greenguy]

The BV Cash HFS posts have been moved to a thread of their own

http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=36455

[SC Albert]

This is good advice. I am sending this to our design team as well.

[Useless]

Originally Posted by SC Albert

This is good advice. I am sending this to our design team as well.

Frankly, that's often the problem. Programs are using professional graphic designers to build their free sites. They shouldn't. Free sites shouldn't be so graphically heavily and visually awe-inspring. I'm not saying that they should be ugly, but I am saying that ugly doesn't hurt. Pro designers enjoy showing their skills in every project. Keep them designing tours - that's where the awe factor should be - not on free sites and galleries. When a surfer clicks thru to a paysite tour, they should be stunned and impressed by the pure gorgeousness of the site. But if everyone puts the same level of graphic design into every gallery and every free site, the awe factor of a grand tour is diminished and, I believe, it hurts conversions.

[Linkster]

Bravo UW - you need to cross post this in the other thread as well- I dont think paysite owners get this - galleries and free sites that are done by graphic designers are getting to the point where they are fancier than the tour - and that hurts conversions in my book.

One thing that I remember from the old days - and it obviously still works today based on a few submitters I have that consistently make great ratios - UGLY DOES WORK - quite well as a matter of fact - text leads to sales - graphics enhances the closing part of the sale - if you are running a paysite you better know the sales game better than your local used car dealer cause thats all it is

For those paysite owners that think that putting up a bigger than FPA size graphic on a warning page helps sales - they are sadly mistaken - but then I guess thats less competition for me

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Frankly, that's often the problem. Programs are using professional graphic designers to build their free sites. They shouldn't. Free sites shouldn't be so graphically heavily and visually awe-inspring. I'm not saying that they should be ugly, but I am saying that ugly doesn't hurt. Pro designers enjoy showing their skills in every project. Keep them designing tours - that's where the awe factor should be - not on free sites and galleries. When a surfer clicks thru to a paysite tour, they should be stunned and impressed by the pure gorgeousness of the site. But if everyone puts the same level of graphic design into every gallery and every free site, the awe factor of a grand tour is diminished and, I believe, it hurts conversions.

Originally Posted by Greenie

...Designers: 1st off, when you pick a designer, do not just assume that because they make Hosted Galleries (HG) that they can also make HFS's. HG designers have a very simple process: they make up a template with general sales text & they reuse that template by inserting different sets of content into them This does not work for HFS's. So if your HG company says they can make HFS's, make them prove it to you 1st by showing you Free Sites (FS) that they have built & submitted to LL's on their own that are actually listed. Make them prove to you that the FS domain is owned by them, that they submitted it to a couple of LL's & where it's listed on those LL's. If they can not show you personal sites that they have gotten listed, run away from them. They do not know how to make a FS & have no business offering people HFS's services...

If any sponsors would like us to review any Free Sites that a design company shows you, we'd be more than happy to help

Please go to the Link List & Getting Listed Forum & start a new thread (otherwise, it'll be a mess in here)

[Linkster]

Greenie - unfortunately - while we always offer to do these things - and we make our suggestions based on years of experience in the free site game - most sponsors brush it off as "they know more than we do" about their own paysites - so Ive decided that Im certainly not going to offer to do that anymore. Ive obviously been wasting my time making suggestions

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by Linkster

Greenie - unfortunately - while we always offer to do these things - and we make our suggestions based on years of experience in the free site game - most sponsors brush it off as "they know more than we do" about their own paysites - so Ive decided that Im certainly not going to offer to do that anymore. Ive obviously been wasting my time making suggestions

I'm in the same boat, because I'm sick of telling sponsors that their HFS's suck (the last one I rudely tried to help kept mentioning how good their galleries are)

I'm just throwing that out there for sponsors that read this thread & then come here & seek advice - I think any sponsor that actually did that (like BV Cash) would get a tremendous amount of help.

[Greenguy]

Don't post help requests in this thread, please go to the Link List & Getting Listed Forum & start a new thread (otherwise, it'll be a mess in here)

Smith - your post is now here:
http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=36506

[[BV]]

I do everything myself. I shoot the content as well as do all the designs myself. On this last couple of free sites (which are not for BVCash BTW they are for my other new program BeachModel Ent.) I wanted to try something a little different.

First thing is I'm tired of designing my pages for 800x600 and decided to widen things up a bit. Second thing I didn't like was how sparse my warning pages looked since there were no recips or anything to other sites. This is why I opted to fill up the warning page a bit more to take up some space. I honestly did not think that it was too awe inspiring. Just an over sized logo with a little sales text on it that you can click on instead of having banners.

For the rest of the HFS I basically laid them out how I did my others for BVCash which are listed and making great sales conversions on many link lists including Link o rama. The only thing I did a little different was making a over sized banner at the top and bottom that matched the content from the free site but showed a little bit more explicit shots for the purpose of enticing a click.

I feel that these new free site designs will work great. but if you guys don't think so and want to assume that they will not without actually testing them, then that leaves me no choice but to go back to the old way of doing things because they will never convert if they don't get listed.

Excuse me for trying to think outside of the box and try something a little different instead of the same ole thing day in and day out. IMO these are very basic simple designs.

Cheers,
BV

PS: Linkster you're not wasting your time giving me advice. Don't feel that way. However you were wasting your time trying to see if your codes followed thru to the sign up page. Do you do that to everyone? Did I ever do anything to make you think I was out to cheat my affiliates? I'd appreciate it next time if you are unsure of something like that to just PM, ICQ, or email me instead of doing what you did and giving me and my sites a negative image for the rest of the readers that might not be able to understand that you screwed up.

Cheers,
BV

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by [BV]

...PS: Linkster you're not wasting your time giving me advice. Don't feel that way. However you were wasting your time trying to see if your codes followed thru to the sign up page. Do you do that to everyone? Did I ever do anything to make you think I was out to cheat my affiliates? I'd appreciate it next time if you are unsure of something like that to just PM, ICQ, or email me instead of doing what you did and giving me and my sites a negative image for the rest of the readers that might not be able to understand that you screwed up....

Don't take that too personally - there are a lot of webmaster (myself included) that do this with every sponsor. We look at as much as we can - hosted materials & the tours being the most important.

Part of it is past shady sponsors, but mostly it's checking for coding errors, because we know how easy it is to fuck up the coding on a HFS

[Useless]

Originally Posted by [BV]

Excuse me for trying to think outside of the box and try something a little different instead of the same ole thing day in and day out. IMO these are very basic simple designs.

In my "shock & awe" post above, I wasn't referring to your HFSs at all and I hope you didn't take offense by it. The big old powerhouse programs are the ones who tend to massively over design their HFSs.

I/we certainly understand why you'd want to place as much marketing as possible on the warning page - and we WANT you to. My advice would be to use multiple blocks/tables of different sized text mixed with graphics, rather than creating a single large fpa. When the surfer hits a warning page, he's searching for the enter link and a solitary fpa is easily passed by as an obvious ad. If you break it up a bit, you are forcing the surfer to slow down his visual scan of the page because the enter link could be in there somewhere between the ad blocks.

BTW, ditto what GG just said about us checking HFS errors. Hell, I've completely forgotten to link my text and banners to a paysite tour on my own free sites in the past. There's nothing quite like having a free site listed at the L-O-R, DD's, and SG and wondering why the sponsor's stats show no hits. Oh, that's right - my links all say <a href="#">

[[BV]]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Don't take that too personally - there are a lot of webmaster (myself included) that do this with every sponsor. We look at as much as we can - hosted materials & the tours being the most important.

Part of it is past shady sponsors, but mostly it's checking for coding errors, because we know how easy it is to fuck up the coding on a HFS

No worries, I would encourage that practise also.

My concerns are for other less tech savvy readers and potential affiliates that may have gotten a negative image from reading his posts and may just pass me over because they might not figure out Linkster was using the wrong CCBill affiliate ID for the site in question.

Some sensitive issues such as this are best discussed privately until you are 100% sure, then by all means call me out.

[[BV]]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

In my "shock & awe" post above, I wasn't referring to your HFSs at all and I hope you didn't take offense by it. The big old powerhouse programs are the ones who tend to massively over design their HFSs.

I/we certainly understand why you'd want to place as much marketing as possible on the warning page - and we WANT you to. My advice would be to use multiple blocks/tables of different sized text mixed with graphics, rather than creating a single large fpa. When the surfer hits a warning page, he's searching for the enter link and a solitary fpa is easily passed by as an obvious ad. If you break it up a bit, you are forcing the surfer to slow down his visual scan of the page because the enter link could be in there somewhere between the ad blocks.

BTW, ditto what GG just said about us checking HFS errors. Hell, I've completely forgotten to link my text and banners to a paysite tour on my own free sites in the past. There's nothing quite like having a free site listed at the L-O-R, DD's, and SG and wondering why the sponsor's stats show no hits. Oh, that's right - my links all say <a href="#">

Sorry, and thank you for this post. I take note and understand your point about the surfer passing up scanning too fast. This info will be incorporated and will help me greatly on the next HFS I design.

[Linkster]

BV - yeah I defintiely do check every one of the sponsors - just an old habit It comes from having once made HFS's for sponsors a few years ago and the need to make sure they were passing through aff's as it seems everyone uses different coding. And I would agree as has been posted - my statements werent aimed at you - it was really a general statement as there are sponsors that have come looking for help and we freely give it - then they disappear and never implement it or at least try it
In your case - there is nothing wrong with thinking outside the box and trying things - it is something I wish more people would try - the only reason I noted some things is that your interpretation of thinking outside the box is something a few others have tried when they were thinking outside the box as well over the years - to you its a "new idea" and thats great - to me its something that 5 other sponsors have tried and it didnt work so I just try to use a little experience and pass on some of the knowledge Ive picked up - which is what I think you will find with a lot of the "older people" here (although I think that there are two of us here that are really old!)
And again it was a bad assumption to use my bv cash id - that one slipped by

[[BV]]

Originally Posted by Linkster

BV - yeah I defintiely do check every one of the sponsors - just an old habit It comes from having once made HFS's for sponsors a few years ago and the need to make sure they were passing through aff's as it seems everyone uses different coding. And I would agree as has been posted - my statements werent aimed at you - it was really a general statement as there are sponsors that have come looking for help and we freely give it - then they disappear and never implement it or at least try it
In your case - there is nothing wrong with thinking outside the box and trying things - it is something I wish more people would try - the only reason I noted some things is that your interpretation of thinking outside the box is something a few others have tried when they were thinking outside the box as well over the years - to you its a "new idea" and thats great - to me its something that 5 other sponsors have tried and it didnt work so I just try to use a little experience and pass on some of the knowledge Ive picked up - which is what I think you will find with a lot of the "older people" here (although I think that there are two of us here that are really old!)
And again it was a bad assumption to use my bv cash id - that one slipped by

It's all good.

I just hit the big 40 myself.