[hazel]

Okay Everyone, grab a beer and settle down in your fave comfy chair. This is going to be a long moan

Ten years ago there might have been about 1000 adult WMs. Everyone knew [or knew abot] everyone. Today there appear to be millions of the little f'ers. They're everywhere. They produce freebie sites and galleries by the truck-load

Why can't many Link List owners cope, and TGP owners can? It beats the 'Donald Duck' out of me

The main reason I ask is because there seems to be a growing culture amongst LLs to include a piece of text on their submit/rools pages which states something to the effect of "no emails are sent to sites which are declined/not accepted". Some are well known and [maybe once] revered. Hey! That's fine. They're busy - Right?

Well. With the exception of the few [like Richard's or Tommy's - maybe PK too] there aren't too many sites that get more than 150-200 submits per day. And there are fewer who list more than perhaps 50 'free sites', or sites plus galleries on any given day [otherwise they'd all have a gazillion links since 1994]

At the same time places like The Hun, World Sex, and other bigger TGPs routinely sift through 1000, 1200 or more galleries each day; only including between 50 and 150 of those offerings. The difference seems to be that the TGP sites will almost always mail you as to why you didn't make it, whereas the LLs don't even bother their bahukies. Why?

Is it because if they don't respond you may think that they are behind with their reviews? Some sites may be a whole month behind [like Richard's just now]. It happens. But not may sites let you know they are 'lagging' behind in dealing with your request

If they don't want to list your site and don't respond, perhaps you'll think that they ARE behind. Then you'll forget all about their recip link, and not remove it. Meanwhile they still get a small trickle of traffic from the links of a 100, 200, 500 rejected sites. Then, of course, there's the extra search engine ranking, which equals traffic from being listed on the same page as Richard or Tommy

You mail them after a fortnight. No response. You email again. Just the same. You take down the link, and you get blacklisted for taking down the link. Wait a minute! That site wasn't listed!? It hasn't happened to me - YET! - but I know two people who it has happened to

What has happened to me is that by submitting my effort to around thirty sites, I never know if it has been accepted by more than maybe eight or ten LLs. When you throw four or five sites in each week, how the f**k are you supposed to keep track? Are these people still accepting sites, or just listing their own stuff? They seem to be awake, but when you call there's nobody home

Wet Place [bless him/her/them] may take a week to review, and then do all your sites at once. That's cool. There's even the odd email saying 'You missed this' or 'No alt tag on recip'. That's good too. We all get it wrong from time to time, and they 'advise' you of the fact. Kinda personal touch

I still do everything 'by hand' because I don't have more than about 10-12 subs a day, but I respond to them all and give them personal attention and chatter. TGPs that get hundreds of subs can do it too. Why not some LLs?

It must seem so much more attractive to many newer WMs that TGP, even though it's so much poorer in converting, is a better way of controlling submission strategies than LLs

Is there an answer to all this? I could slim my fave subs list down to a very few 'trusted' sites that I know will communicate. But will they grow so big that they too get 'f-u' fever? It doesn't matter how much traffic you could swing their way, if you can't be arsed to talk to people they can't be arsed to put your link up

What experiences have you had with this?