question about promo tools

[GeorgeTH]

Originally posted by whitey
Following is what seems to work for me:

1. Free Hosted Galleries: Make sure that the thumbs are decent sized, the galleries sell the site, and the pics are of decent resolution (I never get conversions from galleries with shitty pics). Also, do not 404 redirect the galleries to anyhting other than a blank page or figure out a way to carry my affiliate code over to that page. When you do static galleries (much more important than rotating galleries IMO), do not change them. We put them in a db with specific descriptions. If they change all the time, we simply delete them from our db as it is too much work to manage constant changes (in content, urls, codes, etc)

I agree!
AND: don't use old content on hosted or downloadable galleries - can't sell a site with content found on TGPs for a year or more!

Originally posted by whitey
2. Downloadabe Galleries: If you don't offer FHG, downloadable galleries are ok too. If you do offer both, don't use the same content on both and vary the templates a little. Otherwise, the same suggestions apply here that apply to FHGs

3. Free Content: Make the sets decent sized (16 to 20 pics), make certain they are 800x600 at least (larger is better), and make sure that you use at least some different content than is being listed on your FHGs. If you offer FHGs and free content, there is very little to be gained by having the same content in both areas. If I list your FHGs, there is no reason for me to list either submitted galleries with your content or make my own. For niche sites where I am listing everything out there, offering both FHGs and content that are identical does not optimize your exposure. .

I agree! Most webmasters will re-size and re-compress content as they see fit, and I rather start from a 1024 px pic then a grainy 800 px pic. And for postings at thumb tgps I need a clear picture to get a decent thumb done.

Personally I prefer larger sets of free content (but am satisfied with -let's say- 40 pictures!) for 2 reasons: if you use it for a free (linklist) site you need at least 24 pictures, and it gives me the opportunity to pick out a personal set which, combined with my own lay-out, might look completely different to what somebody else is making from the same set. I used to be rather sucessful doing this with Sunnydollar's larger sets.

Originally posted by whitey
4. Good Artwork: give me logos, selling bullets with logos, and standard sized banners. Logos and basic artwork make gallery/site building a breeze and are easy to create and offer. Standard sized banners are critical for people who use banner serrvers and rotate ads. 468x60 and 468x80 are key. But also standard vertical sizes and blocks are good too..

I agree!
I repeat this all the time: we need logos! Even information on fonts used in graphics would be helpful! I often waste hours trying to re-create the feel of a particular tour in my galleries. With logos and the correct font it would be done in minutes (and I could make another 2 gallery templates in the same time).

Originally posted by whitey
5. Free Hosted Sites: They serve a different traffic market.

6. Give me a good preview prior to signing up with your program. The most egregious I have found will claim to have FHG's and offer one rotating gallery per site. I want to see examples of all of your tools. Otherwise, I will sign up, be disappointed by the tools, and never promote the proggie.

7. Understand your market and where the traffic comes from. Most of us in the biz awhile make more money with less raw traffic than some of the less experienced folk because we know how to target traffic. Make sure you understand the niche you are in and how it is promoted in the biz. For example, I do alot of soft fetish, and people who like babes in stockings are different than people who like milf's panythose. Yet, I see one major sponsor who just rotated all the content on their hosted galleries in this niche without regard to micro-niche. Hey, it caused me to reconsider the sponsor, look closely at conversions on page views rather than clicks, and realize this sponsor really didn't understand their niche although they had a ton of sites in it. Conversions per page view were crap and all their promo tools got deleted from my dbs. Understand your niches, the traffic structure, and build targeted tools.

Whatever you do, emphasize the quality and uniqueness of your sites. High quality tools result in high quality presentations result in better conversions. I would take 10 well done galleries over 200 shit galleries any day, and sell a hell of alot more memberships that way too! .

I agree!
another thing I like to add: keep your tools- and stats pages simple! You impress us webmasters more with decent conversions than with flash and terrible navigation on a webmaster page! (Yes - Silvercash comes to mind)
By example: I still like to download/save all relavant link codes at once, so that I have fast and easy access to them when I'm offline. During summer I might be actually making galleries on a Notebook away from my desk - and still need codes to finish my work...

[GunnCat]

Originally posted by whitey
Following is what seems to work for me:

1. Free Hosted Galleries: Make sure that the thumbs are decent sized, the galleries sell the site, and the pics are of decent resolution (I never get conversions from galleries with shitty pics). Also, do not 404 redirect the galleries to anyhting other than a blank page or figure out a way to carry my affiliate code over to that page. When you do static galleries (much more important than rotating galleries IMO), do not change them. We put them in a db with specific descriptions. If they change all the time, we simply delete them from our db as it is too much work to manage constant changes (in content, urls, codes, etc)

2. Downloadabe Galleries: If you don't offer FHG, downloadable galleries are ok too. If you do offer both, don't use the same content on both and vary the templates a little. Otherwise, the same suggestions apply here that apply to FHGs.

3. Free Content: Make the sets decent sized (16 to 20 pics), make certain they are 800x600 at least (larger is better), and make sure that you use at least some different content than is being listed on your FHGs. If you offer FHGs and free content, there is very little to be gained by having the same content in both areas. If I list your FHGs, there is no reason for me to list either submitted galleries with your content or make my own. For niche sites where I am listing everything out there, offering both FHGs and content that are identical does not optimize your exposure.

4. Good Artwork: give me logos, selling bullets with logos, and standard sized banners. Logos and basic artwork make gallery/site building a breeze and are easy to create and offer. Standard sized banners are critical for people who use banner serrvers and rotate ads. 468x60 and 468x80 are key. But also standard vertical sizes and blocks are good too.

5. Free Hosted Sites: They server a different traffic market.

6. Give me a good preview prior to signing up with your program. The most egregious I have found will claim to have FHG's and offer one rotating gallery per site. I want to see examples of all of your tools. Otherwise, I will sign up, be disappointed by the tools, and never promote the proggie.

7. Understand your market and where the traffic comes from. Most of us in the biz awhile make more money with less raw traffic than some of the less experienced folk because we know how to target traffic. Make sure you understand the niche you are in and how it is promoted in the biz. For example, I do alot of soft fetish, and people who like babes in stockings are different than people who like milf's panythose. Yet, I see one major sponsor who just rotated all the content on their hosted galleries in this niche without regard to micro-niche. Hey, it caused me to reconsider the sponsor, look closely at conversions on page views rather than clicks, and realize this sponsor really didn't understand their niche although they had a ton of sites in it. Conversions per page view were crap and all their promo tools got deleted from my dbs. Understand your niches, the traffic structure, and build targeted tools.

Whatever you do, emphasize the quality and uniqueness of your sites. High quality tools result in high quality presentations result in better conversions. I would take 10 well done galleries over 200 shit galleries any day, and sell a hell of alot more memberships that way too!

Great reply.

[Mishi]

Picking and choosing from whitey's great post:

4. Good Artwork: give me logos, selling bullets with logos, and standard sized banners. Logos and basic artwork make gallery/site building a breeze and are easy to create and offer. Standard sized banners are critical for people who use banner serrvers and rotate ads. 468x60 and 468x80 are key. But also standard vertical sizes and blocks are good too.

YES! Word on whole word bread with a side of word. I've been filling up my banner ads program and it just boggles my mind how many sponsors have few, if any, standard-sized ads. Most frustrating is running into a batch of ads, say, 470 x 80. Yes, they look about the same, but my program doesn't care. It wants standards, dammit! You simply must offer 120x60, 468x60 and 468x80. 200x300 is nice, too - those fit handily in sidebars.

And like George TH said, simply naming the fonts used in logos would be brilliant. I'm a bit anal about trying to at least mimic, if not mirror, the site I'm promoting. I will not confess how much time I've spend searching for just the right font. (Of course, fonts are like crack to me, so it's not the worst thing to have to do, but still...)

5. Free Hosted Sites: They server a different traffic market.

Yes, please.

I will add: Softcore banners, please. Especially with the new 2257 regs still up in the air. Yes, you can promote hardcore sites with softcore banners! You've hired a creative team; demand a little creativity! Example: Cumshot site. Show me a pretty, fresh face with some text along the lines of "How'd you like to see her covered in your cum?" *CLICK* Reality sites: I don't need to see the final frame in the banner. Try a little teasing, for cryin' out loud.

Forgive the rant - I've been revamping my banner database and I'm just boggled by how many sites simply have NO softcore banners. None, zero, zed, zilch, nada. While others have a plethora. To those of you who do: Thank you a bazillion times.

Another thing - somewhere in your promo tools, please provide a quick, concise paragraph describing your sites' focus. (MaxCash used to be really good about this.) Maybe you have three teen sites. Teen Sex, Teen Babes, and Teen Hotties, for example. Maybe Teen Sex is actually an amateur site, Teen Babes is hardcore teens, and Teen Hotties is, I dunno, let's say sorority girls. Please don't make me guess. Tell me. No, I'm not stupid - I'm busy. I'm not asking you to write my descriptions for me (although that WOULD be nice...) but please, at least give me something to go on.

Finally, again following on something George TH said - I don't care how slick and fancy your webmaster interface is, if I can't easily get what I need. Several big sites are using programs that force you to drill down to the exact, specific niche, site, and banner you want. I would much rather have at least the OPTION of looking at all the banners for any given site and downloading them at my leisure.

And...I think that's enough ranting for now. Data entry has warped my tender little brain.

[Celine]

Wow, all this is soooo interesting! I wish I could have had this conversation earlier... All your suggestions will be taken into account!

"quality, diversity, speed & simplicity"

One question that comes to my mind: would you be interesting in having a building system allowing you to create your own tools, a "gallery building system", for instance, where to choose your template and pics to build your own customed galleries and/or sites?

[Surfn]

No

[Linkster]

Celine - my opinion of course - but dont have a "building system" as it just leads to cheaters that use that to build their submits - and they all get declined. For the WMs that build everyday - the other things like logos, premade free sites and galleries and simple to use interfaces for linking codes and banners (with the option to buld download definitely) are much more important to the WMs that are going to make you money

[Celine]

Thank you for your precious answers & suggestions!

[finnbear]

Talking about free content, I wish the minimum of pics in one set is 20.

We who build only free sites, no galleries, can't use 16 pics set.

I have many times used two sets, 10 pics of each and got listed, but sets with 20 pics is much better.

Also, if set have 30 or 50 pics or even more webmasters can choose the 20 they want and so more webmasters get listed with pics of same set.

[Greenguy]

Originally posted by finnbear
Talking about free content, I wish the minimum of pics in one set is 20.

And have the content all the same width & height - nothing makes building a free site or gallery harder than having the 1st pic at 640x480, the next 3 at 480x640, the next 4 at 640x480......

[urb]

Celine,

My apologies.

It seems that ICQ / AOL are having server side issues, which is the reason I couldn't contact you or Richard yesterday.

[GeorgeTH]

Originally posted by Greenguy
And have the content all the same width & height - nothing makes building a free site or gallery harder than having the 1st pic at 640x480, the next 3 at 480x640, the next 4 at 640x480......

Great point! - it saves at least the tedious work of making thumbs manually to get around this problem (like with square thumbs). All these little things some sponsors don't know about... LOL!

[Greenguy]

This will be announced int he news tomorrow, but Celine wanted me to give all of you a head start
********


Subject : FHG script export available at Totemcash

"Further several discussions with webmasters, we developped a script to allow you to export a full list of FHG in a few clicks (nearly 400 galleries available)...

The script we built includes the URL, # pics, short description, long description & model name.
It simply creates a .txt file to save on your computer.
You can find it in the "hosted photo galleries" section of our marketing tools.

We also launched a new gallery template to reinforce conversion ratios... what do you think of it?
http://banners.toteme.com/Galleries_....php?ids=20645

Any comments or suggestions?

Celine

[Far-L]

This is an amazing eye opener and plenty of great suggestions. We will get this going for Homegrown asap too.

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[Nige]

Any hosted movie galleries?

[Carly]

This is so great. It could not have come at a better time for me as I am in the middle of re-doing my program. I have asked some of my affiliates what they want/need and it is always the same blank stare. This is really good information, thank you!

[murray]

Originally posted by Nige
Any hosted movie galleries?

We at Outbackcash offer at the moment

200 movie galleries
200 tgp galleries
120 tgp2 galleries
170 HFS

every week new stuff is getting added, and if there is something missing and you want it we will work at getting it out there.

[Celine]

Originally posted by Nige
Any hosted movie galleries?

Yes, soon - we are working on

[GeorgeTH]

Originally posted by whitey
4. Good Artwork: give me logos, selling bullets with logos, and standard sized banners. Logos and basic artwork make gallery/site building a breeze and are easy to create and offer. Standard sized banners are critical for people who use banner serrvers and rotate ads. 468x60 and 468x80 are key. But also standard vertical sizes and blocks are good too.

Are there any sponsors who now offer logos and the like?
I'm pushing this for years - none of mine does...
If you know of any please post (w or w/o referring code) - cheers!

edit: only after I posted the reply I noticed that this is the re-birth of an old(er) thread - sorry - GRIN

[Tommy]

what whitey said

[Ramster]

Originally posted by GeorgeTH
Are there any sponsors who now offer logos and the like?
I'm pushing this for years - none of mine does...
If you know of any please post (w or w/o referring code) - cheers!

NSCash.com offers psd files for logos and some of the pornstars. Not sure how many as I haven't looked lately but they do offer them.

[murray]

Originally posted by GeorgeTH
Are there any sponsors who now offer logos and the like?
I'm pushing this for years - none of mine does...
If you know of any please post (w or w/o referring code) - cheers!

We at outbackcash always had logos up that anyone can use, after reading threw this thread I went and revamped the area, the zips now include the fonts used in the logo design. hope this helps some.

[Mishi]

Originally posted by murray
We at outbackcash always had logos up that anyone can use, after reading threw this thread I went and revamped the area, the zips now include the fonts used in the logo design. hope this helps some.

I've been meaning to sign up with you guys for a while. This may be just the bump I need. Thank you for listening!

[Frank]

Hi Celine.

Without a doubt each sponsor has their different promo tools.
I have some that have everything one may ever need,
and some that has few.

The best that I would say is to find those that meet your needs.
And for those that may have little promo tools... make your own. :-)