I truly hope to you get your billing worked out.

You are wrong about free sites. Nothing wrong with making them look better that the masses. Besides, the quality of traffic to your target is much more productive. Now if you are trying to expand your traffic ego, stay with galleries.

Oh, I don't doubt that people *can* make unique and profitable free sites besides a messy-as-hell ad-filled page with "gallery 1" and "gallery 2" links. The few ideas I have for free sites would actually involve some time or shooting special content for them, since I do my best to not make things I consider to be tacky net clutter.

While I don't do free sites, I imagine that they're like any other genre in this business. Some are nicely done, others are not. Also, much like galleries or paysites; the prettiest ones may not always be the best sellers.

Ive had that page up for at least 3 years that I can remember :) Actually need to update it as a bunch of those sites have taken down their stuff and replaced it with advertising

As far as free sites - there should not be any ad clutter on the sites that get accepted by Linklists - most have a rule about how many ads/links per page and are limited to 3 normally - and they are extremely targetted traffic sources.
A normal comparison for you would be that a gallery would expect to convert about 1:1200 to 1:5000 dependant on the type of TGP its listed on (thats clicks sent to the sponsor) while a free site on a link list that has good sources of SE traffic should convert in the 1:50 to 1:800 range (normally)
Would seem to me in my experience that the cost benefit analysis norms would show free sites as a much superior option - I know the sponsors that have really delved into the hosted free site game have increased revenues substantially :)