[Useless]

Yes, traffic from link lists is higher quality due to where it originates. Link list traffic is from search engines and from other link lists. Most TGP traffic is circle-jerked and therefore a much lower quality. You'd see a lot more traffic from TGPs, but it's mostly crap. There still are a few good TGPs though, that do not script their traffic trades or at least keep the skim down to a respectable level.

Really, how you choose to proceed will come down to your ability to convert traffic. Successful gallery builders have well-honed sales text and can produce sales from a single page. I was always awful at that. I chose free sites because it gave me more opportunity to employ different text strategies and banners on a single site (and much more of them). I tend to be a "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" type of builder.