Hi everybody, I?m working as a gallery submitter now since ~5 years, and during the last years I also started to run
updates.advancedsubmitter.com and
PartnerRequester.com, so I hope to know a bit about this area of the adult business
I always wanted to write a Tutorial about gallery submitting, and since I?ve recently hired a full-time employee I thought this might be the right moment to just write down what I had to teach him, and to use it as a guide for other beginners too. Since it would take to much time to go into every detail about TGP (Thumbnail Gallery Post) and MGP (Movie Gallery Post) submitting, I?ll start with a rather basic Tutorial.
Please let me know if I?ve forgotten about anything, or if you have any questions, I?m available at ICQ 344688791 or tutorial(at)adultsponsortest.com
Step 1: Choosing the right Sponsor
Obviously before you can start your work you?d have to choose a good sponsor. Spend at least 1 day for your research, and try to find a Sponsor that?s not overused. I personally don?t care much about the payout, as long as it?s reasonable, I focus more on the quality of free content they can provide, cause that?s important to get our galleries listed, and that will be the most important factor to get sales. When I?m looking for a new sponsor I just visit the bigger TGPs and MGPs (sextracker.com), and look around what they?ve listed right now. Most big sites sell their top spots, and since the webmasters that buy these spots want to get a good ROI it?s very likely that the actual site they?re promoting converts well, so that?s a very good start to pre-select. After you?ve found a few good sponsors, take a look at their top sites, and try to estimate if they?re actually overpromoted (alexa.com). If you select a sponsor with ton?s of free hosted galleries you?ll not get listed very often, since every TGP/MGP would just list the FHGs with their own linking code. So we?re looking for a sponsor with good content, that?s not overpromoted (i.e. lower alexa rank) and without FHGs that everybody and his mother uses. Please also take your time for this research, that can easily take up to 1 workday.
Step 2: Hosting
Only go with paid hosting, and if possible with your own dedicated server since virtual accounts would get too expensive rather soon. To start I?d say a dedicated server with ~1000GB data transfer/month should be enough for the first months, as you?ll need some time to get started anyway. At best your hosting plan should be expandable, as you?ll need more bandwidth after a few months. Something like that is available for $100 per month or even less these days. Just ask on the WM Boards and you?ll get some offers.
Step 3: Domains
The domain for galleries isn?t so important at all IMHO, it doesn?t hurt if it suit?s to the niche of your galleries content somehow, and you should be able to use an email like webmaster(at)yourdomain.com
Step 4: Stats Program
Many people underestimate the value of a good stats program, at best use a webserver based stats program (like urchin.com), a image counter like sextracker.com should only be a temp. solution since it?ll never be as accurate as a counter with access to your server logs, and that?s especially important if you want to dig a bit into SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) later on.
Step 5: Build your galleries
I?m not a designer, so I?ve never given too much about fancy graphics on my galleries, it?s more important to have good content IMHO. Before you start you?d have to select a Picture or Movie Set. At best choose one with a girl (or guy) that?s actually featured on the front page of the paysite you?re promoting. Many people click through to the actual gallery because they want to see more of that content, so you should give them a bit more on the main page, and hope that they wipe out their credit card to see even more inside the members area.
For a TGP gallery I?m always using 16 Thumbs, the fullsize pictures should have between 40-100kb, and should have at least 600 pix on the short side. For MGP galleries the common standard is 3 Movies, with ~20sec runtime each, and ~1.5-3MB Filesize. You can also use 4 or 5 Movies, that will actually give you the chance to submit to more sites, and doesn?t have a too big effect on your bandwidth bill, since most surfers only download 1-2 Movies anyway.
The actual thumbnails on your gallery should be as good as possible, don?t use any automated tool to create them, make them by hand in Photoshop, crop them to at least 100 pix on the short side (better more), and adjust their colour balance, and brightness.
Take care that the general layout of your gallery looks clean, don?t mix up landscape and portrait format, if you have to, do it in a way that it actually suits the gallery layout.
And I never use more than 2 outgoing links to my Sponsor, cause some sites have a very harsh limit upon these, and if your content is good enough the surfer will look for a way to get more anyway, you can?t force him to signup with more or blind links.
As links I personally always use text links, try to talk directly to the surfer, and tell him why the site you?re promoting is the one he should signup for. If you can?t come up with a good reason you should choose another Site to promote
Stay away from banners, cause most galleries look rather crappy with them.
A 2257 link would be also good for your galleries, I?m not from the US either, but it doesn?t hurt, and many site owners require it.
I also put lot?s of SEO work into my galleries, although a gallery is pretty much the worst thing to optimise for Search Engines it pays of, and I get ~30% of my long term sales from SE Traffic. But how to do that would be enough to write for a separate Tutorial.
To be continued...