hey LL owners

[bluebrit]

I like this idea so I will do my best to be here

[Buncha]

I'm not a LL owner, but I'd like to suggest a topic.

It seems to me that one of the big problems is the shrinking number of FS submitters. Lots of people have left the business, and there's nothing you can do about that. Many of the old FS submitters have moved to other aspects of the industry. And the newbies that are coming into the business are pushed towards other methods of promotion (blogs/tubes/ect).

I think that if LL owners worked together and made an effort to reach out to possible FS submitters, it would really help. Here's a few suggestions:

Write up an easy step-by-step tutorial of how to build and submit a freesite. That's how I learned. Unfortunately, many of those old tutorials are gone or out-of-date. If you show newbies how easy it is, they'll give it a try.

Get word out on other forums about the benefits of freesites. I never see people talking about FS (besides here on GG&J). Remind everyone that it's very inexpensive. All you need is a domain and cheap basic hosting. It doesn't require any advanced sitebuilding skills. And it's a good way to learn the basics.

Encourage old FS builders to start submitting again. I've seen a lot of people say, "I should try submitting freesites again". Let them know that LL aren't dead. There's still good traffic. FS are also a good way to push traffic to your other projects. And many of the new rules have made it even easier to build/submit sites.

Anyways, maybe I'm completely off, but I just wanted to put it out there.

[Bill]

Yeah, there's some logic to that.

We did start talking about freesites in the chat - and just about then I got pulled away with tricky emails and my wife getting antsy.

But the point I was going to make was something about freesite builders consolidating, pretty similar to the point you were making.

I've been distracted from building freesites myself - I need to re-create my system to reflect the realities of our current era.

As I expect do all we freesite builders - make our building more efficient, and consolidate our support of traffic sources.

[Cleo]

I know from hanging out on other boards that many webmasters discount the value of free sites and don't feel it is worth their time to build and submit them. Plus they think that LL owners are rule Nazis, which at one time we were.

For me at least free sites convert about the same per click as TGP galleries but don't require a paid partner account and although the traffic is far less it does last for months or more unlike a TGP gallery which usually dies out very quickly.

I've let all my paid TGP accounts go except for Shemp because the ROI just wasn't worth it unless I was doing massive amounts of galleries each day which would leave me no time to do other things.

Part of the problem is our own doing from back in the days when we would get overwhelmed with crap submits and our rules keep on getting stricter and stricter. Most webmasters don't realize that LL rules have become more relaxed than most TGPs and have also become pretty standardized. Plus the old category recips were a real pain in the ass to use and now all of us are fine with a simple text link to our root.

So I would say we need to get the word out that today's free site submitter has relaxed and standardized rules that makes doing free sites easy to do.

[Pusher]

I really like this idea and I'll be there if I can...

[Cleo]

Originally Posted by Pusher

I really like this idea and I'll be there if I can...

We are archiving the shows plus have opened a forum for discussing both the upcoming and past shows so everyone participate.