Concentrate on Building Websites or Galleries?

[Satan420]

Up till now I had been concentrating on trying to build an entire website. When it occurred to me at work today that maybe I am wasting my time and should concentrate on hand building gallery pages and start submitting those instead of the automated crappy looking ones I have thus far caused to come into this world via JAlbum that never seem to be approved. All the reading I have done on Cozy never really spelled this out, or maybe I just missed this entirely. So should I forget about trying to build an entire website until I get more experience? THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS! Thank you.

[balls_deep]

Originally posted by Satan420
THERE ARE NO STUPID QUESTIONS! Thank you.

Just stupid people.

seriously though, regardless of what you do you need a plan and you need to stick to it. Galleries can generate a lot of traffic to a single sponsor, but if done incorrectly can waste a ton of bandwith.

maybe try a free site, I recently started to create these and it seems to be producing some solid traffic. They only take 4 pages of html.

I think you would need to post your galleries to find out why they are not getting accepted.

I think a blog might be a good way for you to start, and will teach you how to create a successful design which will prepare you for other types of sites as you build your blog.

Good luck, whatever you do pick a direction and go with it, post your sites in the critics forum and everyone will tell you what does and doesn't work.

[King Porn]

Don't bother with galleries unless you plan on paying for partner accounts. Start a few blogs. If you want to be a submitter, submit free sites to link lists. You could build all the sites you want but unless you have a plan to fuel those sites with traffic then you are just wasting your time.

[joehoya]

Actually, IMHO, its a good idea to get started with galleries without partner accounts if you use an autosubmitter like chameleonsubmitter or advancedsubmitter. You will make some money but wont waste as much money initially.

If you submit one or two galleries every day in a few weeks you should start to see sales. If you don't then post your gallery in the cozy critics section for some feedback. My personal experience has been that it is better to submit to free tgps as opposed to buying partner accounts AT FIRST so you can learn what gallery layout/content/sponsor/niche sells best for you.

Then once you have that info you can buy a partner account for the niche or niches that do best for you. You will already know how to design galleries that make money and what you ratios are. It will give you a much better idea of which partner accounts work best for you and which aren't worth the trouble. IMHO I've found some partner accounts to be great deals (almost steals) while others are terribly overpriced for the traffic they give you.

Once you have some good partner accounts for the niches you work in, you will probably stop using the autosubmitters. I stopped using them because just one partner account was giving me as much or more sales than submitting through chameleon. Submitting via chameleon took 20-30 minutes per gallery and was mind numbingly boring, while a partner account submission only took 15 seconds and brought back as much (usually more) money. So 2 or 3 good partner accounts can make you 3-4 times as much money net as a submitter and save you 30 min for every gallery you create.

Hope this helps,

Joehoya

[porn punk]

I get decent sign ups off of galleries with only free partner accounts and only sponser content. whenever I set up a new domain the first thing I do is start submitting galleries for traffic and once I have enough galleries I start linking them back to my main domain page or a hallway page - PRESTO, you have a website!

[theviking]

Originally posted by porn punk
I get decent sign ups off of galleries with only free partner accounts and only sponser content. whenever I set up a new domain the first thing I do is start submitting galleries for traffic and once I have enough galleries I start linking them back to my main domain page or a hallway page - PRESTO, you have a website!

In most cases you then have a fake tgp surviving off of 404 traffic (freeloaders) from other sites' traffic. Not actually a money making site..

When you build something, why are you building it? Simply to gain most traffic out of that page/site for the short time a gallery/freesite is alive, or do you build it to comply with you're plan.

Plan? Yes. Have you thought about what you will be doing in this buiseness 2-3-4-5 years from now on? Do you still submit your galleries, your freesites and write those blogposts to get your daily dose of traffic so you can survive from other peoples traffic one more week? Or do you have a plan incuding a site that will run off of itself?

Be it a TGP, a Linklist, a picpost, a blognetwork, a paysite, a searchengine....whatever. You should make up your mind on what site is your main goal, an for every page you build, keep in mind that you will allso try to generate something for that site.

Just to build galleries and freesites (and blogs?) for throwing them out there, gathering a few sign up's without any plan on what you are doing is plain stupid.

Ask yourself... what am i doing in this industry 3 years from now?

[porn punk]

Originally posted by theviking


Ask yourself... what am i doing in this industry 3 years from now?

To tell the truth I don't like planning that far ahead. You're just setting yourself up for a world of heart ache

[Satan420]

I've made a goal not 3 years out but....To be able to pay for my awesome Hosting that is provided by Host Gator that only costs $14.95 per month and has 99.9% uptime, or to be able to buy a T-Shirt within the next 6 months by doing this. 3 years out is kinda tough for me to make goals for, I really just want to have couple extra bucks rolling in every month. Honestly I think that if anyone sticks it out for a year or so they should see some sort of success, as long as they are willing to evolve. I have only been working at this for a few months and it has payed me very well but only with what it has helped me to learn. I appreciate the answers to my question even them being a little conflicted as always the truth or answer is some where in the middle.

[porn punk]

Originally posted by Satan420
I've made a goal not 3 years out but....To be able to pay for my awesome Hosting that is provided by Host Gator that only costs $14.95 per month and has 99.9% uptime, or to be able to buy a T-Shirt within the next 6 months by doing this. 3 years out is kinda tough for me to make goals for, I really just want to have couple extra bucks rolling in every month. Honestly I think that if anyone sticks it out for a year or so they should see some sort of success, as long as they are willing to evolve. I have only been working at this for a few months and it has payed me very well but only with what it has helped me to learn. I appreciate the answers to my question even them being a little conflicted as always the truth or answer is some where in the middle.

I was simply stating that you have to start somewhere to generate your traffic so maybe I misunderstood and you were referring to free sites when you said "entire web site".

Why some people think galleries don't get search engine traffic is beyond me since I have search engine data in most of my sponser stats from galleries I've submitted a year ago or longer.

In my opinion galleries are the simpliest way to start building a site because of the number you can submit in a day with different niches and sponsers and the number of places out there to submit them too...

After that of course you have to find things that work specifically for you or you're just catching the crumbs that fall off the table. I don't think there's any one way, but I'm willing to listen to anyone who has an armored truck taking their money to the bank of course.

I'd like to do everything but there are time constraints and rules you're made to follow so I dabble in the other things as results dictate...