[MadMax]

Relative newbie LL owner's opinion on the downside of branding regarding freesites:

Just about anyone will tell you that fresh, new sites convert better on link list traffic. That's because the surfers haven't seen it advertised ad infinitum, after which the market starts to become saturated by that pay site and it almost becomes the "same old thing" and no longer as tantalizing.

Hence, the more similar free sites promoting a pay site look, the worse they will convert.

Tons of flashy graphics are all well and good on a paysite tour to close the sale or in the member's area, but they can easily be overdone on freesites. Those of us who live on broadband forget that most of the world still surfs at 28.8k, primarily in more rural areas where the internet is a larger percentage of the overall access to porn. Decent looking graphics (with good sales text attached) that load quickly and some nice tables or css to keep everything looking clean work best for me. Quality thumbs that aren't too big and full size pics that aren't overcompressed. NO VID CAPS.

One thing that irritates me most about sponsor hosted free sites: Changing the background and text colors do not give you a new template...and as GG said, it's best to keep the word "template" out of it altogether.

Another is that sponsors seem to want to use their crappier content (often poorly lit, poorly shot) as the stuff they give away for free so they can keep the good stuff in the member's area. I suggest taking content from the best quality content (since you're only taking 20-30 pics after all) and using that, since it will be more likely to make Joe Average the surfer want to see more.

Regarding the long URLs, if you can just do mouseovers that still show the surfer the paysite name (which is what most of us do).

In the end you should probably build a handful of sites and post them here for review...that way you can get some effective and precise feedback before getting too far down the road.

Just one webmaster's opinion.