Just wondering what little tips or things have you found that really works well on small / free / avs sites?
Are there anything that you found makes a big difference?
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
[QUOTE=gaydemon;18257]Just wondering what little tips or things have you found that really works well on small / free / avs sites?
Are there anything that you found makes a big difference?[/QUOTE]
I bet Michael will have some good tidbits here… and I’m positive that Lloyd does. 
So let’s hear 'em guys…
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
What Basschick said about keeping text links simple works. I have simple one at the very bottom of the gallery “click here for more (whatever)” and that seems to get really nice clicks.
Michael told me to have my thumbs all the same size and have a bigger pic to slow their eye down… sales increased when I did that.
I like to have some nice feet/ankles shots in there and I think showing some variety helps too. I had been told to keep all the guys the same but Ive come to the conclusion that you increase your chance of them loving one particular guy (and buying to see more) if you show slightly different guys, within niche of course.
I will still argue that a cumshot helps make the sale, but not too much, also showing pics where the condom is not too obvious seems to help.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
Forget $30 PPS sponsors, everyone’s doing them, so I have much better luck with revshare sites, smaller sites, and underexposed sites.
Write good descriptions. “40 pics of naked hairy bear” is pretty boring, but “Nasty hairy bear pumps his big dick and creams his big belly” is definitely better.
I always link to two other freesites and my main freesite hub at the bottom of the galleries index page. It keeps the traffic flowing. When I link to the other two freesites I always link to the warning page so LLs get another crack at the surfer.
And I’d say come up with a nice template. Really spend some time on it. My template has round-cornered boxes around the different elements and I spend time making a graphic for each guy. I write some descriptive text for the warning page and I write unique text links for all the pages. It’s more work, but the effort really seems to pay off. If your freesite looks slapped together then surfers don’t seem to care about it either. Make sure your thumbs are the same size, make sure they’re aligned.
Think about the surfers eye flow. Many webmasters just throw up galleries with a bunch of thumbs in the center of the page. It was really easy to start at the top of the page and have your eye fall to the bottom really quickly, almost without seeing anything. I try to break up my gallery page so there are natural stops, allowing the eye to rest on things. The eye has to work a bit harder to get through the page, which I think is better. Some galleries are set up so the surfer gets into a rhythm of 1, 2, 3 … click next … 1, 2, 3 … click next. And they’re just moving through stuff at a breakneck speed just devouring porn but not really looking. So try and slow them down so they stay on your site. It’s a challenge because you still want it to look good.
Michael
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
first off, using the same templates again and again lowers the effectiveness of a freesite, gallery or avs site, so using multiple alternating templates is more effective. and variety on pages makes things stand out - say 2 sizes of text, using more than one colors within a paragraph, underlining only some words. and having a 2 line text links is more effective - note that both lines would be linked and could be used in between 2 rows of thumbs or at the page bottom:
[SIZE=5] Horny men with great big cocks[/SIZE]
[B][SIZE=4]- Click for Site Name -
[/SIZE][/B][LEFT]or like
[CENTER][SIZE=5][SIZE=4]19 Year Old Twinks at Site Name[/SIZE][/SIZE][U][SIZE=5]
See them dripping in cum - click here!
[/SIZE][/U]and something i’ve always found VERY effective on galleries that might be worth trying on a free site would be
a description of the gallery in a normal but quite readable font size that is 100 pixels narrower on each side
than the thumbs with very hot text and then at the end has a not too big text link like this one following this text!
[SIZE=3][B][U] Click to download the entire video
[/U][/B][SIZE=2]that last one might be put between 2 rows of 6 or 8 pics on a page. there could be a second text link at the bottom or not. [/SIZE][/SIZE]
[/LEFT]
[/CENTER]
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
This is absolutely not my experience. I have been using the same template on Universal Bear (an AVS hub) for several years, and I remain one of Mancheck’s highest producing webmasters.
I have also been using the same freesite template for about a year now and I’m still pulling in the sales.
Templated sites not selling well is a myth. If you have a good template, it will sell. I think webmasters are often looking for reasons why their sites aren’t selling and so they’ll pull out the “surfers don’t like templates” thing when perhaps there may be other design problems with their sites.
I also feel that a good template helps “brand” your stuff with the surfers. When they see one of my freesites they know they’re getting good stuff. They’re not going to be jerked around and lied to. I’ve got a lot of bookmarkers on my freesite hub and I think that’s a part of the reason. I think when a surfer finds a templated site they like they often think, "Oh these sites, I like this guy’s stuff.
Recently with one round of freesites for the same sponsor I did about 6 templated freesites and sold 25 memberships in about three weeks, so it definitely still works.
Michael
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
first off, i’m speaking of freesites, avs sites and galleries to promote a variety of sponsor sites. bjorn doesn’t own a premium avs or paysite. and you say you have similar results with sponsor sites - were all 6 of those freesites the same template? i ask because i realize that different people get different results, but i’ve always done better mixing up my templates, and so have almost all the folks i’ve talked to. it seems you may be an exceptional template maker - do you ever make templates for clients?
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
Yes, the exact same template.
The problem I see with most templates is that they lack the attention to detail and crispness that I think is important.
I’ll give you a couple of examples. When I look at warning pages with 35 recip thumbs in all different sizes, flashing and static, and I just think, “God, that looks like a dog’s breakfast.” If I think that, what does the surfer think. It immediately reflects on what the surfer can expect inside. So, I make recip text tables that look neater and they’re easily to read. And marcjacob says he gets nice traffic from my recips, so I guess they work alright.
I looked at a template the other day. The webmaster had put a few rows of thumbs on a page and then off on the right he slapped up a couple of odd sized banners for the sponsor. There was no rhyme or reason, no thought put into how it looked or if it matched the rest of the page. They were just there looking odd.
As I said before, I think that the problem most people have with their templates is that they’re not designed very well. And I really wonder if the bad results people are getting are because surfers don’t like templates, or they don’t feel like surfing ugly ones. FHGs and blogs all follow a template, so do paysites for that matter. So to say that surfers don’t like templates is a bit erroneous. I think surfers don’t like bad design. I’d love to see the templates that some of these naysayers are using. I’m not going to take anyone’s word on anything until I see what they’re using. I see a lot of crap submitted every day to Gay Porn Pig and I’m not surprised if surfers aren’t buying off those templates.
I don’t design templates for other webmasters, or I haven’t anyway. I think my templates require a bit more work than most webmasters are willing to put into a freesite. I create on average 8 custom graphics for each freesite, then prep the photos and create the thumbs, then write some text, and customize the links. Most don’t seem to do that much.
Now, I don’t get 25 sales in three weeks for every freesite I create. There are plenty that just don’t do that well. But I think it has more to do with the content than the template. The super seller has excellent content, nice big pictures, hot guys, and lots of big dicks. And the surfers seem to like this particular site. I used the same template for Blake Mason and got a couple of sales. In Blake Mason’s case I think it’s the screen grab content that is the problem. I’ve used Pride Bucks content with mediocre to good results, but I think that’s because they pay PPS and are heavily promoted so they’re everywhere. I can sell Men Over 30 and Extra Big Dicks using that template, but I couldn’t sell Circle Jerk Boys to save my life. I do alright with UK Naked Men, too. Not amazing, but enough that it’s worth the effort. I tried a bareback sponsor and initial results were sluggish, but the final result was great. I tried Hot House, which has great content and got nothing. I wouldn’t dream of putting freesites for Men at Play or any Gunz Blazing program … beautiful sites and content, but I get hundreds of galleries and freesites for these guys every month. One webmaster submits about 10 MAP sites a day.
I’ve tried two tests with my super seller and both times I got the same results. About 6 - 8 freesites netted me about 25 sales in a three week period. I’m just about to try another round, but I’m confident I’ll get the same results.
The problem with this discussion is that there are so many variables in selling on a freesite.
If you have a good or bad template, but write a lousy description …
Is your template attractive?
Is the sponsor over exposed or heavily promoted?
Is your come-on text good enough?
Do you craftily word your enter link on your warning page so one whips the surfer off to the site and the other gets him into the content? Deception doesn’t always work like you think it will.
What’s the quality of the content?
What happens when he surfer gets to the site?
When I first started doing freesites I went crazy. I designed a template and promoted Muscle Hunks because they had great content. I didn’t get a single sale for six weeks. I was driving Lloyd crazy … ask him. When I changed sponsors I started seeing sales. I think I tried UK Naked Men next and did well. They really kept me in the freesite game because my Muscle Hunk experience was sending me to the door to find something else to do.
The other thing to remember is that the marketplace is constantly shifting and changing. Remember AVS when you could put ONE picture on a page and say, “Buy this.” There are still webmasters out there who are only willing to do that much work to make an AVS sale and then when they don’t they say, “AVS is dead.” Same thing with freesites. Maybe templates didn’t work four years, maybe they work better now, but they won’t work tomorrow. Too many webmaster get caught in what didn’t work once when they tried it, or what used to work and doesn’t anymore, and then they spout off about it every time the subject comes up. (I’m just speaking generally here, not to basschick specifically.) Then people start believing what they’re saying.
I have been one of those people. I can’t sell a TGP membership to save my life. I’ve tried, I’ve given it a six month go. Nothing I did worked. I don’t know why. TGPs just do not sell in my experience. But plenty of people are making money on them. But if you listened to me you might miss out on some good money.
All you can do is experiment.
Michael
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
I agree that a good template and a good free site will “brand” you in the surfers mind as a site they actually want to enter. When I surf free sites, I actually look at the warning page and nine out of ten times, just by looking at the warning page, I can tell if I want to enter. The HARD part about the same template is some link lists get real bitch about them. I would do one template per domain. For example, if I created free sites on amateurjoe.co, I would use the same template and try and “brand amateurjoe”. Where the same template really helps is when you have all the sites linked together and you want the surfer to start visiting the sites. If it’s a good template, they will visit the sites until they find something they like.
The other thing is the use of banners. Banners are good the brand the site. That’s not bad in your free site. Brand it with banners and use killer text links to make the sale. For example, if you have a 20 pic gallery and they view 10 pics, they see the site’s name 10 times. Then on the page they see the text. It makes the text all the more powerful. Studies have shown that you can brand a site very quickly. A surfer may never of heard of a site before, see your banner 10-15 times, then when they get to the text link, say, “I heard that name before.” Duh!
Also, don’t be afraid to actually brand yourself and talk to the surfer. Say something like,
“Ok. This guy may not be for everyone, but I think he’s cute. But if you don’t like him, the last time I was in XYZ’s member’s area (which was earlier today), I saw over 300 hot steamy guys. Only had time to watch one video. One down 350 to go. Anyways, it wont hurt you to check out all the hot steamy guys on the tour. Go bust a nut. - Amateur Joe”
Always bring the surfer back to your surfer trap (hub). If the sponsor allows, upsell something else as well. VOD, live shows, hub, blog, etc.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
One very basic tip, that I think Patti shared with me many moons ago … do your design/layout so there is always a clickable link viewable as the surfer scrolls the gallery page. In other words, there shouldn’t be a place where I can fill the monitor with just thumb images and not see a link out to the sponsor either above, below or to the side of those thumbs, in the form of a text link, or banner.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
Design above the fold…
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
Yes and it’s more important that ever since the “above the fold” is getting so big with larger monitors.
Michael
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
Just remember, when you design “above the fold”, you are designing for the least common demoninator.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
You might want to elaborate a bit with an example for those reading here that don’t understand terms like “above the fold” or “designing for the least common denominator” just yet.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
It’s what you see of the page without scrolling. Which means it differs monitor to monitor.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
Above the fold means basically what you said - You want important elements so all can see them. For example, in a free site, you want visitors to see a link to the sponsor on the page. No matter how the scroll, you want them to always see a link to a sponsor.
So. The least common demoinator would be 800 x 600 pixel. So, if you design “above the fold” and want 100% of your surfers to see your link, then Every 550ish pixels you would have a link to the sponsor.
For example,
http://allstr8boys.com/19-year-old-college-wrestler-jacks-off/gallery1.html/
If that site really wanted to design above the fold, you would see a link somewhere between the gallery pics. On my 1440 by 900 monitor, I am seeing just gallery pics and no sales text. I am not that picky on design above the fold, but that is pretty much what it is. The reasoning goes that no matter how and where a surfer scrolls on a page they will see a “join” link.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
That’s a really conservative least common denominator. I just checked two sites - mine which is pretty wide and a friend’s that’s narrower. I was just under 3% for 800x600, he was at 3.5%.
I’d say the least common denominator would be 1024x768…
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
wow, thank certainly a lot of things to go through.
My main concern is the template feeling, because I’m testing out a database driven system all sites would have the same elements and then the difference would be based on what CSS file i use for it.
For example:
Gallery using CSS file 1,
http://www.pornisation.com/sites/men_with_very_hairy_chests/
Gallery using CSS file 2
http://www.pornisation.com/sites/silver_daddy_bears/
Gallery using CSS file 3,
http://www.pornisation.com/sites/muscular_latin_teen_jerks/
So im sort of restricted in what i can do as you can see. Each site have exactly the same data, just different look. And I want to make sure they dont look all too similiar. At least not too obvious.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
[QUOTE=rawTOP;18305]That’s a really conservative least common denominator. I just checked two sites - mine which is pretty wide and a friend’s that’s narrower. I was just under 3% for 800x600, he was at 3.5%.
I’d say the least common denominator would be 1024x768…[/QUOTE]
It’s the typical debate.
Sites I have that are 1024x768 have a lower % surfing at 800 x 600 than sites that I have that are 800 x 600. If your site is optimized for 1024 x 768, then obviously you will have a higher % that use that. Kind of like having a bar with a ceiling 5’5" high. Anyone taller will have to duck to walk around, so they will either leave or a small % will come in.
The least common demoninator will vary from webmaster to webmaster. On my blogs that are 800 x 600, I have upwards of 10% that are 800 x 600. On my 1024 blogs, it’s much less.
That’s even assuming that surfers surf with a maximized browser.
but, at the end of the day, I am not all that concerned about designing above the fold anymore. One of the main reasons it was so important in the past was because of dial up. A paysite in the past really wanted join links to show up as the page loaded. It gave them something important to click.
I think as long as one doesn’t bury the important links, then they are ok.
Least common demoninator is a very subjective term when it comes to web design.
One domain I have has 12% at 800 x 600. I am not sure if i would feel comfortable putting my nav bar on the right hand side past 800 pixels.
Re: best tips for creating a free site?
You might think of assigning themes - so a bear site probably won’t do well with a frilly look (like #2), but different content might work really well with that look and feel. And the theme could be a property you store in your database with a default generic theme in case you forget to assign one.
[QUOTE=gaydemon;18307]wow, thank certainly a lot of things to go through.
My main concern is the template feeling, because I’m testing out a database driven system all sites would have the same elements and then the difference would be based on what CSS file i use for it.
For example:
Gallery using CSS file 1,
http://www.pornisation.com/sites/men_with_very_hairy_chests/
Gallery using CSS file 2
http://www.pornisation.com/sites/silver_daddy_bears/
Gallery using CSS file 3,
http://www.pornisation.com/sites/muscular_latin_teen_jerks/
So im sort of restricted in what i can do as you can see. Each site have exactly the same data, just different look. And I want to make sure they dont look all too similiar. At least not too obvious.[/QUOTE]