Don't blame the newbies! Your thoughts?

[sarettah]

Who the fuck do you think put up all the free porn?!??!
the fucking newbies!!! that's who! all the idiots who jumped in after the gold rush was over so they could run cool sites with free porn for their chat buddies!!
do you see anyone on oprano talking about how many free movies they can put in their tgp sites?!!?!??! or asking for 'gallery critique'?!??!?!

>>"When the amount of free porn is reduced, sales will go up"

duh, the problem with newbies is stating the blatantly obvious, while building a tgp with the other hand and ADDING to the problem.

As pretty much a newbie (A year and a half since I built my first site) I felt that I should go ahead, jump in and get my ass kicked...err...I mean state my opinion on this....

Yes, the problem is too much free porn, but newbies did not create this problem and for many newbies (don't know about majority, but I do know about the ones coming out of vnwr) we are trying hard not to contribute to the problem.

I build "Webmaster Friendly Sites" whenever possible....
http://www.vnwr.com/linkwfa/listrules.html

The WFA guidelines promote "herding the cattle to the sponsor" more than giving away the candy store. I build with the softest pics I can find in a set. I make my thumbs small, my big pics no more than 500 on the long side and place the emphasis on the sponsor more than on the pics I am showing. If I could, I would have 1 picture to every 3 sponsor links... Unfortunately, I can't.

The first thing a newbie learns is that to make a sale they have to get traffic. To get traffic, they have to get into the SEs, the Linklists and if they choose to do TGP, the TGP lists... (I have done very little TGPing as I don't think I can afford the BW and I firmly believe the current TGP model contributes to the problem) with getting into the Linklists being the real key to getting traffic quickly...

The Linklists have been around for a while, so most of them are not run by newbies. The linklists set the rules for what will get listed. More and more, the linklists are becoming more "surfer friendly" with their rules.

The trend on the linklists is More pics, better quality pics and less consoles and links to sponsors.....

Just using 3 of the ones I am listed at as examples (I am not ragging on them, but the rest tend to follow the biggies..I love the traffic they send me btw..)

At Richards... for Free sites.... Minimum 20 pics, no more than 3 banners/lnks to sponsors per page, No exit consoles or excessive use of other consoles, No AVS, No poor quality pics, No "images courtesy of" (sponsor provided free sets), No Blind links, No FPAS between the warning and main page.

At Greenguys... Minimum 20 pics, minimum 10 per page. No Popups... (rest of the rules very similar to Richards)

At PK... Minimum 30 pics, No Popups, 1 FPA allowed, No Blind links...

And in my opinion, these 3 are 3 of the more webmaster friendly lists out there these days...

If I could, I would build my sites using nothing but censored, sponsor provided content... I would have a popunder as they came in and I would banish every surfer that did not click through to the sponsor to popup hell... I would have each picture on an html page by itself with at least 3 links to sponsors, I would have an FPA going to each big pic and an FPA coming from each pic... I would CJ each and every surfer out there until their head spins and they click on the sponsor.........

Unfortunately, I would not get listed anywhere, I would not get any really good targetted traffic and I would get less sales than I do now (which would be hard to do...lol)

A very disturbing trend (imo) is the "free hosted galleries" being provided by the sponsors.... These add to the problem of too much free porn out there... I went and checked last night at freehostedgalleries.com and they list over 25,000 galleries that you can put up just by clicking on the button... Hell they even embed the referral codes in the gallery for you...

Another bad trend is the increasing quality of the free content being offered by sponsors... better quality and less restrictions on the use of it....

And last (for now..lol) but not least in contributing to the problem is the lowering of content prices by the content providers... I have spent about $1500.00 on content so far (not a lot of money by any means). A few years ago when I started watching the industry, the amount of content I have at the quality I have would have run me about $10,000.00... For $20.00 nowadays I can buy sets of 100+ pics at paysite quality.... If I am using these for my freesite building and the surfer clicks to the sponsor and sees the same quality of pics he saw for free he is going to end up canceling... No reason to spend his money...which is why I purposely go with the soft stuff, over compress on purpose, etc.... I want the paysite quality to appear much better than my free site quality... Unfortunately, this can cost me listings...

So, while some newbies may be contributing to the problem as CJ stated by putting up "free sites for their chat buddies", many of us are trying to not be part of the problem. Unfortunately, we do not set the rules, we can only follow them. The veterans of the industry are setting the rules and they are unfortunately exacerbating the problem rather than trying to solve it.

just imho of course..... Let the bashing begin.......

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by sarettah

The veterans of the industry are setting the rules and they are unfortunately exacerbating the problem rather than trying to solve it.

This is a 4 year old

[Forest]

i have to agree with the original post

free post has killed thr golden goose

but i dont see any way to get rid of free porn with big tgps being worth as much as they are

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by Forest

i have to agree with the original post

free post has killed thr golden goose

but i dont see any way to get rid of free porn with big tgps being worth as much as they are

TGPs are yesterdays news.

[Jace]

tgp's are devaluing in size and price every day

in the past week alone I have had 3 HUGE tgp guys come to me and talk about how they are needing to diversify because tgp sales and traffic keep spiraling down

these aren't your newbie submitters either, these are guys that spend upwards of $2k a week on spots

[SabrinaDeep]

This is so far the best thread i have ever read in any forums. And thumbs up to you guys for your out of the chorus and straight to the point statements.

Free content is definetely and obviously a problem. Unfortunately, few sponsors would have the courage to do something about it. I might be one of those cutting free content very soon, but this is another matter. Not here to talk about me.

But i would like to add my silly contribution to the discussion, if you don't mind. Given that the amount of free content around is a huge problem, i would not underestimate something that in my opinion is a bigger problem: free downloadable content.

Since we are all aware of the fact that it is practically impossible to go backwords to the times when free content was limited, i think that we could well do something about not making it downloadable. You can see a pic or a video at that website, but you cannot download it. If you want to download it, you pay a little fee for each piece you download, like you do on legit mp3 sites. This wouldn' t cut off the torrents, the cheaters and stuff of course, but if the big TGPs, the sponsors, the NATS and CCBills would start adopting this trend, i am sure that there would be much more money for everybody by the day. And it would be very very easy to implement, with no crazy investment for rethinking the system. Two lines of code on each web page with free content and a buy-it-now button on the big picture or video page for the pages where the content is and a new payment option for buying a 10 cents pic or a 20 cents promo video by the payment processors.

Maybe i just woke up hangover, but i think that this could be a good medication, althought not the cure for sure.

[gonzo]

Originally Posted by SabrinaDeep

This is so far the best thread i have ever read in any forums. And thumbs up to you guys for your out of the chorus and straight to the point statements.

Free content is definetely and obviously a problem. Unfortunately, few sponsors would have the courage to do something about it. I might be one of those cutting free content very soon, but this is another matter. Not here to talk about me.

But i would like to add my silly contribution to the discussion, if you don't mind. Given that the amount of free content around is a huge problem, i would not underestimate something that in my opinion is a bigger problem: free downloadable content.

Since we are all aware of the fact that it is practically impossible to go backwords to the times when free content was limited, i think that we could well do something about not making it downloadable. You can see a pic or a video at that website, but you cannot download it. If you want to download it, you pay a little fee for each piece you download, like you do on legit mp3 sites. This wouldn' t cut off the torrents, the cheaters and stuff of course, but if the big TGPs, the sponsors, the NATS and CCBills would start adopting this trend, i am sure that there would be much more money for everybody by the day. And it would be very very easy to implement, with no crazy investment for rethinking the system. Two lines of code on each web page with free content and a buy-it-now button on the big picture or video page for the pages where the content is and a new payment option for buying a 10 cents pic or a 20 cents promo video by the payment processors.

Maybe i just woke up hangover, but i think that this could be a good medication, althought not the cure for sure.

Sabrina. If you have content on the web and they want to download it they will find a way to steal it. Spiders, scrapers etc. Ive heard many Russian surfers state if its on the web then its meant to be stolen.

The "tokens" or micro transaction idea has been tested several times over not done very well.