More Advice But It Should be done with caution
say after 2 or 3 months you still have dead recips and you know your not going to get listed with tommy or RR or Pr or others then i would say it is ok to drop a recip or two thats if you have time to do it and you dont have any better things to do because i have done it and came out good as a result..
and i know that having dead recips suck its a small small leak but you should really just go on to the next design
hell the first couple sites i done had 9 recips on it with 3 or 4 giving some traffic
and also a free site is just a 4 page sample site to get the surfer to the sponsor
it should not be a site to impress other webmasters how good you can make it look fancy with pretty shit on it and the more shit you do to it the more chance there is for mistakes keep it simple and you will get listed and have your index Kept light for fast loading
also on sponsor content i used a lot of it and got lucky) but you must use sence like watch when they give new - dont use a nich that is over used and use sponsor content or join a sponsor that only has the content or they always update it