Let me say ahead of time that I don't mean for this post to offend anyone... but I do have a gripe.
I've been a webmaster for 6+ years on the adult web. I run my wife's paysite (Mona's Place), and I do most of the promotion. I pretty much promote our site only, when it comes to free sites and tgp stuff.
In that 6+ years of time, I have never added popups, redirected a site, etc. We buy content that's not crap, and whether or not they are the most imaginative, I build clean sites that don't try and trick the surfer. I build them by hand, and endeavor to not make them TOO similar, including making logos and buttons quite often.
Despite this - my email is on the ban list for 'templating' and so are a number of our domains. And I have to say, it's discouraging.
Here's an example of sites on a banned domain:
http://www.touchyourmonkey.com/babeshave/
http://www.touchyourmonkey.com/blondetatas/
http://www.touchyourmonkey.com/hotpussy/
Sure, not the Mona Lisa. But they're clean, I NEVER change my sites. Never, never, never. I have free sites that I built 6 years ago, and they sit on their respective domain(s) and either get traffic or gather dust.
I run a linksite as well, and I am swamped with morons submitting multiple sites under different identities, hiding their enter links, using the same content every DAY, etc, etc, etc. In a day and age when more and more link lists are having to battle this BS, I would think that an ethical webmaster who doesn't use a script to build his sites, and doesn't try and cheat the lists would have some value.
About a year and a half ago, our income just dived. Crashola. Turned out that all of our sites had been removed from a prominent link list. Why? Templating. I got it removed, and proceeded to build EVERY site we submitted with hand designed graphics and logos. Banned again.
This will probably fall on deaf ears, and as I said, I don't mean to offend anyone -but I think linklist owners might want to review this practice a little. I'm not saying my sh*t doesn't stink, but damn - I've been an ethical submitter, trying to turn an honest buck, and I feel continually penalized.
Anyway, just wanted to get my 2 cents in.
Cody