An Open Letter To All Affiliate Programs That Offer / Plan To Offer Hosted Free Sites

[Useless]

Originally Posted by [BV]

Excuse me for trying to think outside of the box and try something a little different instead of the same ole thing day in and day out. IMO these are very basic simple designs.

In my "shock & awe" post above, I wasn't referring to your HFSs at all and I hope you didn't take offense by it. The big old powerhouse programs are the ones who tend to massively over design their HFSs.

I/we certainly understand why you'd want to place as much marketing as possible on the warning page - and we WANT you to. My advice would be to use multiple blocks/tables of different sized text mixed with graphics, rather than creating a single large fpa. When the surfer hits a warning page, he's searching for the enter link and a solitary fpa is easily passed by as an obvious ad. If you break it up a bit, you are forcing the surfer to slow down his visual scan of the page because the enter link could be in there somewhere between the ad blocks.

BTW, ditto what GG just said about us checking HFS errors. Hell, I've completely forgotten to link my text and banners to a paysite tour on my own free sites in the past. There's nothing quite like having a free site listed at the L-O-R, DD's, and SG and wondering why the sponsor's stats show no hits. Oh, that's right - my links all say <a href="#">

[[BV]]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

In my "shock & awe" post above, I wasn't referring to your HFSs at all and I hope you didn't take offense by it. The big old powerhouse programs are the ones who tend to massively over design their HFSs.

I/we certainly understand why you'd want to place as much marketing as possible on the warning page - and we WANT you to. My advice would be to use multiple blocks/tables of different sized text mixed with graphics, rather than creating a single large fpa. When the surfer hits a warning page, he's searching for the enter link and a solitary fpa is easily passed by as an obvious ad. If you break it up a bit, you are forcing the surfer to slow down his visual scan of the page because the enter link could be in there somewhere between the ad blocks.

BTW, ditto what GG just said about us checking HFS errors. Hell, I've completely forgotten to link my text and banners to a paysite tour on my own free sites in the past. There's nothing quite like having a free site listed at the L-O-R, DD's, and SG and wondering why the sponsor's stats show no hits. Oh, that's right - my links all say <a href="#">

Sorry, and thank you for this post. I take note and understand your point about the surfer passing up scanning too fast. This info will be incorporated and will help me greatly on the next HFS I design.

[Linkster]

BV - yeah I defintiely do check every one of the sponsors - just an old habit It comes from having once made HFS's for sponsors a few years ago and the need to make sure they were passing through aff's as it seems everyone uses different coding. And I would agree as has been posted - my statements werent aimed at you - it was really a general statement as there are sponsors that have come looking for help and we freely give it - then they disappear and never implement it or at least try it
In your case - there is nothing wrong with thinking outside the box and trying things - it is something I wish more people would try - the only reason I noted some things is that your interpretation of thinking outside the box is something a few others have tried when they were thinking outside the box as well over the years - to you its a "new idea" and thats great - to me its something that 5 other sponsors have tried and it didnt work so I just try to use a little experience and pass on some of the knowledge Ive picked up - which is what I think you will find with a lot of the "older people" here (although I think that there are two of us here that are really old!)
And again it was a bad assumption to use my bv cash id - that one slipped by

[[BV]]

Originally Posted by Linkster

BV - yeah I defintiely do check every one of the sponsors - just an old habit It comes from having once made HFS's for sponsors a few years ago and the need to make sure they were passing through aff's as it seems everyone uses different coding. And I would agree as has been posted - my statements werent aimed at you - it was really a general statement as there are sponsors that have come looking for help and we freely give it - then they disappear and never implement it or at least try it
In your case - there is nothing wrong with thinking outside the box and trying things - it is something I wish more people would try - the only reason I noted some things is that your interpretation of thinking outside the box is something a few others have tried when they were thinking outside the box as well over the years - to you its a "new idea" and thats great - to me its something that 5 other sponsors have tried and it didnt work so I just try to use a little experience and pass on some of the knowledge Ive picked up - which is what I think you will find with a lot of the "older people" here (although I think that there are two of us here that are really old!)
And again it was a bad assumption to use my bv cash id - that one slipped by

It's all good.

I just hit the big 40 myself.