Food For Thought for LL owners

Carrie · 2006-05-16, 02:33 AM

Okay guys and gals. Not trying to start a firestorm. Just tossing out some food for thought.

- If your submissions are closed, could you please put this at the TOP of the submission page rather than make us spend 20 minutes reading through your rules, hopping to another page to get your recips, going back to the submission page only to get to the bottom and find out that submissions are closed?

- It would also help if the (quickly growing) list of "sponsors who aren't accepted" was at the top of the page - perhaps in a sidebar? This way we'd know right off whether to keep reading or move on.

- The niche recips were a good idea once upon a time until Google caught on and is now penalizing for A-B recips. Isn't there a way we could still do the "keyword in the link" recip without linking directly to the page we're being listed on? Like linking to the page with the categories listing? (The keyword in the link will then still be found in the category listing and description, yet won't be a direct Page A to Page B directly back to Page A link.)

- Two (or more) links per every recip, and demanding to be listed with X number of other LLs... did you ever stop to think that each of these multi-link recips makes our page look like a link farm to the SEs and further devalues the weight of the recip (not to mention the whole A-B issue again)?
It's just frustrating to see that all of this is being done for SE weight yet the methods being used are actually things that will get both the webmaster's domain and the LL's domain penalized. (Or at the least make the link absolutely worthless so all of the trouble gone through by both the LL owner and the webmaster to use the recips is for naught.)

- I've seen a lot of LLs rules lately saying that they won't accept sponsor content at all anymore. What do we do if we promote solo girls or sites with exclusive content? It's not like we can just go to Matrix and grab some content that will sufficiently represent the site we're trying to send the surfer to. A note added onto the end of that rule saying what we do if we're promoting solo or exclusive sites would be most appreciated.

- This one is more of a question... with so many LL owners using link-checking bots now, why the "your site will be listed for 3 months" or "6 months" thing? The bot will find sites that go down or redirect, so why just drop them? Don't you want extra archive pages for advertising and SE spider food? I honestly need help understanding this one?

- I understand that an easy way to check on cheaters is to look at domain registration info, but isn't there some other way that we can do this that doesn't compromise a webmaster's privacy? Some webmasters NEED that privacy.
Plus it's not real kosher when your LL domain's information is private but you're telling the submitters they must have their info out in the open. Isn't their family's need for security and privacy just as valid as yours?

- Since when did a 200-pixel wide table of text with three rows become a "button"? (I've seen LLs referring to these as "buttons", seriously.)
Okay so that one is more of just a head-scratching gripe than anything constructive.

- Please take into consideration the width of your required recip when your rules also state that our sites must be 800x600 compliant.. please, please, please. Add to this that most LLs say they must be listed with X number of other sites and suddenly we've got an entire screenful of 200+ pixel width recips at that resolution. For an 800-width resolution you really have about 750 pixels wide to work with (accounting for scrollbar and margin) so you can't even fit 4 of today's common "recips" onto a row. Then we move into the height of the recips (most are three lines of text now, many are more) and at three recips per row we're getting a pretty long recip table.

If a standard could be agreed upon, say 150 pixels, that would be SO nice. (Plus at 150 we could get more onto a row, making the page much more presentable and not have a recip table that takes up an entire screen from top to bottom.)

- Isn't it time that we consider dropping the 800x600 rule? We're building sites for a small minority of surfers. Most sponsors now offer videos that are bigger than 800x600 and pics are usually 1024 on the SHORT side, yet we're supposed to convince a surfer they can get this high resolution stuff at the sponsor when our sites are only 750 pixels wide? Seriously, it's like having a salesman trying to sell you a Cadillac but he'll only give you a test drive in an Escort. I can't think of any business that would restrict/punish 80+% of their customers and limit the business' own opportunities for less than 20% of the people that come through the door.

For those LL owners who say "I surf at 800x600"... please bump your resolution up to 1024x768 and surf around the sites on your LL for an hour, and see how ridiculously TINY the sites look. That's how most surfers are seeing the sites on your LL. It makes the sites, and your LL, look really *dated*. Like they're stuck in 1999 and not keeping up with technology.

It's also a bit contradictory when the minimum pixels on the long side of a photo have gone from 450 to 600+, which admits that there's a consensus (by number of LL rules increasing their photo size requirements) that surfers' resolutions have gotten bigger, yet we're still building sites at the same size we were when the minimum width/length of the long side of a photo was 450 pixels.

For a compromise, you could try adding a "high resolution" section where the sites are all built for at least a 1024 width resolution. Test it out for a while, see how much traffic it gets, how many of your normal bookmarkers go into that section. It won't hurt anything, it'll give you more pages to advertise on, and you'll get to really see with your own traffic how many people *want* to look at sites at that resolution rather than just assuming something based on what your AWStats "browser" section tells you. Or hell, you could put up a poll or send out an email to your mailing list asking your surfers if they'd like to see sites built for wider screens. It never hurts to try, or to ask.

Like I said, just some food for thought. For every issue I brought up I *tried* to think of a compromise or suggestion, so that it wasn't just a gripe session.
Hopefully it'll spur some ideas.

2006-05-16, 02:33 AM	#1
Carrie Are you sure you're an accredited and honored pornographer? Join Date: Aug 2003 Posts: 68	Food For Thought for LL owners Okay guys and gals. Not trying to start a firestorm. Just tossing out some food for thought. - If your submissions are closed, could you please put this at the TOP of the submission page rather than make us spend 20 minutes reading through your rules, hopping to another page to get your recips, going back to the submission page only to get to the bottom and find out that submissions are closed? - It would also help if the (quickly growing) list of "sponsors who aren't accepted" was at the top of the page - perhaps in a sidebar? This way we'd know right off whether to keep reading or move on. - The niche recips were a good idea once upon a time until Google caught on and is now penalizing for A-B recips. Isn't there a way we could still do the "keyword in the link" recip without linking directly to the page we're being listed on? Like linking to the page with the categories listing? (The keyword in the link will then still be found in the category listing and description, yet won't be a direct Page A to Page B directly back to Page A link.) - Two (or more) links per every recip, and demanding to be listed with X number of other LLs... did you ever stop to think that each of these multi-link recips makes our page look like a link farm to the SEs and further devalues the weight of the recip (not to mention the whole A-B issue again)? It's just frustrating to see that all of this is being done for SE weight yet the methods being used are actually things that will get both the webmaster's domain and the LL's domain penalized. (Or at the least make the link absolutely worthless so all of the trouble gone through by both the LL owner and the webmaster to use the recips is for naught.) - I've seen a lot of LLs rules lately saying that they won't accept sponsor content at all anymore. What do we do if we promote solo girls or sites with exclusive content? It's not like we can just go to Matrix and grab some content that will sufficiently represent the site we're trying to send the surfer to. A note added onto the end of that rule saying what we do if we're promoting solo or exclusive sites would be most appreciated. - This one is more of a question... with so many LL owners using link-checking bots now, why the "your site will be listed for 3 months" or "6 months" thing? The bot will find sites that go down or redirect, so why just drop them? Don't you want extra archive pages for advertising and SE spider food? I honestly need help understanding this one? - I understand that an easy way to check on cheaters is to look at domain registration info, but isn't there some other way that we can do this that doesn't compromise a webmaster's privacy? Some webmasters NEED that privacy. Plus it's not real kosher when your LL domain's information is private but you're telling the submitters they must have their info out in the open. Isn't their family's need for security and privacy just as valid as yours? - Since when did a 200-pixel wide table of text with three rows become a "button"? (I've seen LLs referring to these as "buttons", seriously.) Okay so that one is more of just a head-scratching gripe than anything constructive. - Please take into consideration the width of your required recip when your rules also state that our sites must be 800x600 compliant.. please, please, please. Add to this that most LLs say they must be listed with X number of other sites and suddenly we've got an entire screenful of 200+ pixel width recips at that resolution. For an 800-width resolution you really have about 750 pixels wide to work with (accounting for scrollbar and margin) so you can't even fit 4 of today's common "recips" onto a row. Then we move into the height of the recips (most are three lines of text now, many are more) and at three recips per row we're getting a pretty long recip table. If a standard could be agreed upon, say 150 pixels, that would be SO nice. (Plus at 150 we could get more onto a row, making the page much more presentable and not have a recip table that takes up an entire screen from top to bottom.) - Isn't it time that we consider dropping the 800x600 rule? We're building sites for a small minority of surfers. Most sponsors now offer videos that are bigger than 800x600 and pics are usually 1024 on the SHORT side, yet we're supposed to convince a surfer they can get this high resolution stuff at the sponsor when our sites are only 750 pixels wide? Seriously, it's like having a salesman trying to sell you a Cadillac but he'll only give you a test drive in an Escort. I can't think of any business that would restrict/punish 80+% of their customers and limit the business' own opportunities for less than 20% of the people that come through the door. For those LL owners who say "I surf at 800x600"... please bump your resolution up to 1024x768 and surf around the sites on your LL for an hour, and see how ridiculously TINY the sites look. That's how most surfers are seeing the sites on your LL. It makes the sites, and your LL, look really dated. Like they're stuck in 1999 and not keeping up with technology. It's also a bit contradictory when the minimum pixels on the long side of a photo have gone from 450 to 600+, which admits that there's a consensus (by number of LL rules increasing their photo size requirements) that surfers' resolutions have gotten bigger, yet we're still building sites at the same size we were when the minimum width/length of the long side of a photo was 450 pixels. For a compromise, you could try adding a "high resolution" section where the sites are all built for at least a 1024 width resolution. Test it out for a while, see how much traffic it gets, how many of your normal bookmarkers go into that section. It won't hurt anything, it'll give you more pages to advertise on, and you'll get to really see with your own traffic how many people want to look at sites at that resolution rather than just assuming something based on what your AWStats "browser" section tells you. Or hell, you could put up a poll or send out an email to your mailing list asking your surfers if they'd like to see sites built for wider screens. It never hurts to try, or to ask. Like I said, just some food for thought. For every issue I brought up I tried to think of a compromise or suggestion, so that it wasn't just a gripe session. Hopefully it'll spur some ideas.