Feedback on freesite

[flowersgone]

It's my third free site, but I think I am still new enough at this to learn from feedback if anyone on the board is willing to give their opinion.

The URL is: http://www.toosxxx4.com/mature-cutie-variety/

I tried to think about the site from an advertising perspective.

I noticed some other documentation I though was helpful for thinking about free sites from an advertising point of view but would be interested in anything similar that readers here could suggest.

An older thread from this board: http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=33747
A web page that looked helpful: http://www.spoonfeddesign.com/10-pri...ve-advertising

Thanks all,
fg

[Greenguy]

Try to remember that those skyscraper banners are meant to fit into places, as opposed to you building around them.

Index was good. Main page confused me - why not link the thumbs & the text to the gallery?

[The Epic]

I am pretty new to this myself as I've only been doing this for about a year, but here are a few things I do differently than yours. I'm sure people do things way different than me and maybe even have better results, but this is just based on my minimal experience.

1. You don't need an exit link on the front page. I make sure any links on my page either link to a link list, one of my sponsors, one of my other sites, or of course the content listed.

2. I agree with Greenie about linking the thumbs and text to the galleries.

3. I don't normally use black, just a personal preference, but any teacher I've ever had in web design always seems to frown on black. I honestly base my template colors somewhat on the color scheme of the paysite I'm promoting. I honestly don't know if this works well or not, but my hopes is it will flow better.

4. Because I'm a lazy bastard I only use one line recips on my index page. It also makes the process quicking IMO.

This is one of my best converting pages I've had. Don't truly know what in particular makes it work, but I've made some good sales from this.

http://jaxfreeporn.com/Carmella_Bing/index.htm

Of course mixed galleries only seem acceptable in TPG, but you get the point I guess.

Just remember I'm still pretty new at all this, but I think I'm getting a little better so you can try experimenting with this stuff and hopefully all goes well. Good luck.

[pc]

@The Epic, your URL is a gallery not freesite they are talking about here, just bad example for flowersgone.
Other thing is that that mixed pics/movies content also is accepted at many linklist's nowadays.

[The Epic]

Here is my freesite version of this

http://jaxfreeporn.com/ChunkyCumDumpsters/index.htm

[flowersgone]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Main page confused me - why not link the thumbs & the text to the gallery?

I think that I can understand that the old main page was too complicated and have put in a new, updated, version that I feel is simpler and links the thumbs and text to the galleries

Originally Posted by Greenie

Try to remember that those skyscraper banners are meant to fit into places, as opposed to you building around them.

I am having more trouble with this comment about my approach to design. You are certainly right about my designing the pages around the advertising links but I am having trouble seeing why that is bad. Could you please elaborate a bit on why my use of the skyscraper banners causes trouble? This time I was focusing more on the freesite as an advertising document and it seems to make sense to me to build the pages, for that reason, around the links to the advertiser.

Thanks for looking at the site,
fg

[Greenguy]

It's weird, but I can tell as soon as I look at a page with skyscraper banners if the page was built around them or if they just fit empty space on the page. Especially if there's one stuck right in the middle of the page - it's really hard to work around that, especially with 3 gallery links. It just doesn't seem right to me.

What you could try is 2 - 1 on each side with the gallery links/thumbs in between.

But it wasn't a slap at your design skills

[flowersgone]

Originally Posted by Greenie

What you could try is 2 - 1 on each side with the gallery links/thumbs in between.

OK - I did an example as Mr. Greenie recommended here: http://www.toosxxx4.com/mature-cutie.../main-new.html

I understand that this new version is "simpler" in some ways but still like my previous one, http://www.toosxxx4.com/mature-cutie-variety/main.html, better. Any further thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks again,
fg

[LD]

Originally Posted by flowersgone

I understand that this new version is "simpler" in some ways but still like my previous one

To me it is not simpler, but does look better without the skyscraper ad on the middle of the page.

The design is like a smorgasbord with no real predominant link. And that is not a bad thing at all, but I like to draw immediate attention to the sponsor's paysite, especially on the main page. Once they get there, you know you’ve got their attention. I really want to get them to the sponsor at that point.

[flowersgone]

Originally Posted by LD

...but I like to draw immediate attention to the sponsor's paysite, especially on the main page. Once they get there, you know you’ve got their attention. I really want to get them to the sponsor at that point.

So I came up with a new variant of the main page here http://www.toosxxx4.com/mature-cutie...ain-new-2.html. Any takers on making a comparison to previous versions or just commenting on this latest version?

Thanks,
fg

[flowersgone]

Originally Posted by LD

... but I like to draw immediate attention to the sponsor's paysite, especially on the main page. Once they get there, you know you’ve got their attention. I really want to get them to the sponsor at that point.

OK, so my main-new-2.html got no response and maybe wasn't that good. I think it was too dark on top. I have now put up a main-new-3.html, http://www.toosxxx4.com/mature-cutie...ain-new-3.html, which is a small change from one of the earlier versions, but I think it makes a substantial positive difference in the direction LD recommended. I am still hoping someone will comment helping me, and who knows maybe someone else, build a better freesite in the the future. If not I would probably start submitting with this last one.

fg

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by flowersgone

OK, so my main-new-2.html got no response ...

Don't worry about that - you posted late Friday & a lot of us slack off on the weekends I actually like 2 better than 3 - it's more symmetrical.

One thing I did notice, the thumbs don't match the girls in the galleries.

[flowersgone]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Don't worry about that - you posted late Friday & a lot of us slack off on the weekends I actually like 2 better than 3 - it's more symmetrical.

OK - I'll try submitting with 2 then.

Originally Posted by Greenie

One thing I did notice, the thumbs don't match the girls in the galleries.

The girls on the index page, the main page, and the galleries are all a bit different. I don't have any photos of the girls in the galleries, beyond those used there, that would work on the other pages. I certainly couldn't come up with photos of the gallery girls for the index page that could keep the warning page PG-21/25/whatever. So for the main page, I had a choice between reusing a photo from the gallery or using another photo for the gallery category that I thought was interesting. Would anyone want to argue that boring but more honest looking would be better or have some other good suggestion?

Thanks again to all for looking,
fg

[Greenguy]

Well, the main reason you link a thumb to the gallery is because it's an example of the pics in the gallery.

[flowersgone]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Well, the main reason you link a thumb to the gallery is because it's an example of the pics in the gallery.

But ... but ... but ... Greenie ...

In your first reply to my question you said:

Originally Posted by Greenie

why not link the thumbs & the text to the gallery?

because in the first version with the skyscraper in the middle they weren't linked. I am not trying to bug people to debug my debug my site, but since you still have a complaint I came up with a new variation that is similar to the one you said you liked better here: http://www.toosxxx4.com/mature-cutie...ain-new-4.html.

Does this new version adequately address the concern of thumbs not matching gallery girls? Thank you so very much for your advice but it is not clear to me whether I should pull the thumbs, try a variation like the one referred to above, or just leave it.

By the way, even though the start of this message appears to make it addressed to Greenie, I am not trying to eat up his valuable time and think someone else could answer as well.

I am interested in views on a solution but maybe it's time to just build some other sites instead of endlessly tweaking this one.

fg

[LD]

I like that last one the best.

If it were me, I would lose the third gallery, make the border on the top prominent link go all the way around the link, use css hover on the links, get rid of the space between the text+banner links, and use some design element (background, border, etc) to make the skyscraper columns look a little different than the main section in the middle.

[flowersgone]

Thanks so much to everyone for their input but at this point I have actually put a few weeks into this one site. I understand that with experience one should be able to do a few sites a day. A comment on how long one should spend on a site when learning might be of some interest.

I decided to follow Greenie's hint about using thumbs from the galleries and tried to do some creative cropping to make the reuse of one image seem less dull. My result is now here http://www.toosxxx4.com/mature-cutie-variety/main.html, integrated into the site.

Originally Posted by LD

If it were me, I would lose the third gallery

AFAIK I need that third gallery to qualify for Persian Kitty.

Originally Posted by LD

use css hover on the links

I use css hover on the links on the other pages. The problem on the main page is that the links are too close together and, when I tried adding link hovers, the page seemed to flash on every little mouse move and felt like it was fighting back.

Thanks again,
fg

[The Epic]

It looks pretty good to me although I do agree with LD about the border going around the link the whole way. Besides that I think it is nice.

I do believe you are right about needing the 3rd gallery for PK. Since your galleries are 12 pictures each you need the third. I think they require a min of 30 photos or videos per site.

[Voltar]

Always use the KISS principle when building free sites (Keep It Simple Stupid = KISS)

and just make your galleries 15 pics, its pretty standard that way ..and you can get listed at PK, mine do..

[Greenguy]

Originally Posted by flowersgone

But ... but ... but ... Greenie ...

In your first reply to my question you said:

When I said that, I didn't notice that the thumbs didn't match the gallery

4, aside from the broken image, is more like it.