How to build a successful gallery
By Magnatique
First
of, let me start by saying this is no the absolute guide on how to build a
gallery. Hell! I'm not even making that many signups, I don't have the high 5
digits checks to prove it... There's tons of Gurus out there, and I gathered a
lot of information from these peoples. Also, I might say stuff like "is the
girl turning the guy on". See the girl as either a girl or a guy,
depending on the content used, and the guy being turned on as the Viewer.
It could well be a lesbian behind the screen, or a girl looking at guys, etc...
But for ease of writing, bear with me please!
I really hope this can help a few of us out there. I'm not doing all I say in here, hell, I inspired myself writing this and found new stuff I should do! Best thing to do is to learn, so I'm still looking for new tips and tricks. So, if you don't agree with this at all, if you got something else to say, I'll be happy to hear your comments! send them to magnatique@freenudegalleries.com Also... If what I wrote helps you out, let me know! always cool to have feedbacks.
On
another note, I'd like to thank the people that helped me gather all that
info!
First of, Thanks to Steven From Hi-Octane, he's been my Yoda with galleries.
Thanks to Ken for his kick ass article, from which
I have taken LOTS of tricks and How-To's (unfortunately, the Faq
is no longer online)
Thanks to Shap for helping me out along the run.
Thanks to Pam From TgpMadness.com
Thanks for Timbos from TimbosThumbs and Netpond.com/tgp
Thanks
to Collin at Buildinganempire.com for his kick ass articles, always good to give
you a boost!
And all the other people I talk to for the little
bits of help here and there.
So,
before we start, please bare with my English, it might be poor at times.
I'm only a poor frenchy that speaks 2 languages ;-)
1. Look and Learn
One of the most important things while doing
galleries is to acquire knowledge. You have got to look around regularly
and see what's hot. What do surfers look for , what do tgp Owners accept,
what webmasters use as design tools, where they buy their content, etc.
The more you know about your surfer, the better you can sell to him... The more
you know what Tgp Owners want, the better you get listed. The more you
look at other people's galleries, the more info you get.
Once a buddy told me he heard this from a Big Shot in the Industry.
"There's
people in this world that Have Ideas. I'm not one of them. What I'm
good at is at spotting a good idea. I've been called a thousand times a
Cheater, I've been told I copied their ideas... But it's not the case.
What I do is I take the good ideas, and I make them better. That's how
I've became so successful."
This is exactly what you should have in mind.
DO NOT EVER COPY SOMEONE. First of, by copying someone you will be called
a cheater, you will loose your so-very important reputation, and people will
refuse to help you if you ask them for help. Instead, learn from them...
Learn from good ideas. Evolve.
When I started in this business, I had a
couple sites opened at the same time as I was doing my pages... I still do.
Seeing other people's work is a good way to base your work. Once you have
the foundations, throw them down, and build your own over them. Let
yourself loose, and you will be successful.
Not only should you look at other people's work,
but your own also! always keep your galleries, and come back to them later
on. See what worked for you, what was doing well on those galleries, and
try to implement that with what works well at the moment... Trust me, there's
always room for improvement.
Also, talk with people. Knowledge is gold in this business. Find
people you can trust, and talk with them. Share knowledge. Share
ideas, you will benefit from it
2. Put yourself into
the Surfer's shoes.
Now that you are filled with Ideas, and New
knowledge, let yourself loose and try making some galleries. The best
advice I can give you when you are designing a new gallery is to put yourself
into the Surfer's shoes. So, if you are totally disgusted by Big Boobs,
Anal, or say Gay content, then DON'T DO IT! You will not be able to put
yourself into the Surfer's shoes, and it will result in you not being able to
know what he wants, therefore leaving you unable to deliver the merchandise
properly. My best advice is for you to do whatever turns you on, or
whatever you feel comfortable with.
I personally have a soft spot for Teens, and
that's been my best seller. I personally can't stand Scat, Golden Showers,
Animalism, Fetishism and the likes, therefore I can't make any galleries with
those. Finally, although I do not receive any sexual arousal from looking at
gays or men, I can make galleries of those, not as well as with teens since I do
not know 100% what turns them on, But I can still try and put myself into the
guy/girl's shoes. Plus, a bonus is I do not get disturbed by the guy's
looks, something that can happen with some hot momas :-)
3. Pictures
3.1 Choose the
pictures carefully
As I said earlier, if the surfer loves what he
sees, he'll be more likely to buy. Therefore, choose the pictures
carefully. Two major points arise:
A- is the content gonna turn the guy on enough
to take out his credit card?
it should be a definite YES. Usually, I don't take low quality pictures.
I take hi quality pictures, and I choose ONLY the 9/10 and 10/10 :-) WHY? being
Hi-Res, I have enough space to crop on only a part of the model's body for
cropping (I'll come to cropping further on). 9-10/10 because, as I put
myself in the surfer's shoes, I'll be watching a lot of galleries, so I'll only
take my credit card out once, and it'll be for the chick that turned me on the
most... chances are a 9-10/10 for me is gonna be a 10/10 for more people than
one that's 8/10 for me...
B- Am I turning the guy on too much?
It should be a No. Say you are once more the surfer... you are being
turned on by this gallery's chick... you start whacking harder to her... now,
you only have 16 pictures on that page, and chances are in the last 3 mins,
you've seen them too many times, and you need more of her... or more of another
chick of the same quality... so you'll join hoping to see more...
--EVERY-- buyer is looking for something more than he saw... whether it's more
pictures of the girl, more girl, or movies, etc... Now it's your job to offer
him More as I'll say later on, but it's your primary job not to give him enough
for him to Cum.. Right? he'll close the page right away... So you have to
carefully choose your pics, and the number of pictures for that matter, not to
show him too much... You should always keep the picture count between 12-20
thumbs... find your own lucky number... Some people work only with 20, others
with 12... but keep in mind all external factors like Tgp Owner requests,
Content Use (will need to buy more using everyday 20 than everyday 12),
bandwidth used, etc. Finally, it's a good idea to tease the guy rather
than reveal too much... As far as the content left allows me, I try not to show
too much tits, and definitely not too much pussy so the guy has to buy to see
more of those. Once again, find your sweet spot... see what tgps
allow you (this is not on rules, but rather with experience as to the frequency
you get listed with the nudity %)
3.2 - Cropping
One of the most overlooked design tip while doing
galleries is probably the Thumbnails. This is what makes the page look
good or not, sell or not. Take an example of a magazine. How often
are you going to read a magazine, see a publicity and have to look carefully to
see what they are selling. for example, say they are selling a watch. You
are shown a couple, happy, having fun outside in the sun. But notice
how the wrist area is CLEAR, SHARP, and how the watch is BIG. You Need to
keep the same idea while doing your page.
If you want to have a killer page, you SHOULD
ABSOLUTELY take all the hi-res pictures you previously chose, and open them up
in photoshop or a similar tool. Then watch the pictures, and find what is
"special" about that picture. Once you find it, try to Crop the
picture in such a way as this area will come clear according to your thumb size
(depending on your design, 100X100, 100X130, 115X150, 100X300, 350X200, etc)
You have to see right away that "special" feature on the thumb.
Best thing to do is this:
Crop at fullsize around the "special"
area in the shape of your desired thumb (say it's a square, crop in a square
shape, if it's rectangular, rectangular shape etc.) Then, reduce that picture to
the size you want, keeping the 1:1 aspect ratio. you'll most certainly
have a side bigger than the desired one.. Say you look for 115X150, you might
have something like 132X150 What you'll then want to do is to use a
"canvas tool" to reduce the bigger size to what you are looking
for. For example, in photoshop, the canvas tool looks something like this:
You can specify the new desired side on the
number areas, and you can specify on what sides it should expand or reduce with
the Anchor. Default is on all direction, meaning if you specify 130 as the
new width, it will reduce the image of 1 pixel on the left and on the right.
Say you only want to take pixels from the left, you'd have to select the right
anchor. Basically, what it does is it shows the one anchor where all the
modifications will be done, the one point that won't move. Try and play
with it, it comes really handy to get the exact sizes you want.
Now, if you are pleased with what you see, then
it's time to move to the next step.. if not though, you should learn to play
with your history, and come back to the hi-res cropped version, and crop it once
more, but focusing more on that "special" area, in order to have a
clearer image when thumbed.
3.4 Making it sharp and clear
Finally, the last step is to have a sharp thumb. This can easily be done
by using a sharpen tool. It's common to see pictures loose sharpness when
reduced. We have to sharpen them to have a better look... My rule of thumb
is to give them a sharpen from photoshop on each of my thumb, and another one if
needed... you can also play with the "fade sharpen" option in
photoshop, once it's been sharpened to reduce the intensity...
3.5 Saving
Now with saving, you should save to a relatively high resolution...
There's nothing worse than having a clear thumb, with the distortion of a badly
saved thumb. I'd advice you to use anything between 70-85 as the JPG
quality. Play with it, see what works well for you. I try to keep
between 75-150KB for the total thumbnails size. That usually give me a
good load time for the page. It has to load fast for the surfer not to get
bored, but sometimes bigger thumbs( hence bigger KB size) might result in a
better sales page.
4. The Design
4.1.1 The Flow
Let's get back to that imagery I made, about the Wrist and the Watch.
Notice how you see all those details, but the main point, in the centre of the
page, is the Actual Product they are trying to sale. This is what you have
to keep in mind while you make your page. You Have to Be able to give all
you need to give mainly in the middle. The conventional one ad at top, one
at bottom should, in my honest opinion, be left over valorizing a More uniform
layout: You need to have a good flow.
What I mean by good flow is that the surfer needs to see only one thing, your
FULL PAGE AD. In order to do this, you need not to have big empty space.
Your Surfer needs to see, From the moment your ad starts till the end, a
continuity.
and once you get that continuity, you HAVE to choose spots where you will put
the ads.
4.1.2 Ad Placement
Really, the ad placement 100% goes with your design. You simply have to find the best places in your pages where you believe it will do best, with knowledge, aesthetic and... Luck ! One thing you should look for though is to be sure that the Links you put on STAND OUT of the page. It Must be highly visible, it must be bigger, etc. Also, you have to find your sweet spot as to make the link In between Blind, and Non-blind. That is mainly done to prevent Tgps not linking you, Surfers being pissed, or you not getting any hits to the signup page!
Let me explain this. Say you put up a link
that says join now to 100,000 pictures for 30$/month. Chances are you'll
get LESS hits to the sponsor, and chances are your ratio will be low. But
if you put something like ENTER FOR FREE PICS, you'll get a Low ratio, with High
hits. You have to find the sweet spot for you in between those two, for 2
reasons. first one being most tgps won't list you if you are too blind,
and 2 because of statistics.
I read on www.buildinganempire.com
about how to predict, using statistics, how many signups you could get,
according to the Poisson Distribution. I won't go in details over this,
but it came out to something similar to this. if you believe you'll get 2
signup with 200 hits.... there was 37% chance you'd get 0 signup, 37% chance
you'd get 1, and 18% chance you'd get 2 signups, and finally 8% chance you'd get
over 2 signups. Having taken a class with statistical analysis, I learned
the simple fact that these statistics, although being correct, will not always
stay true, but will most likely be close to reality with bigger pool of data.
Therefore, It would be correct to suggest that the more traffic you get, the
better are your chances of falling within that category.
For example, if you believe that your traffic converts at 1/500 using a Mostly
blind link, and that you send in 3000 hits, there is about 1/400 chance that
you'll get 0 signups. Now I might be taking this statistical analysis a
bit wrongfully, but from personal experience Whenever I could pump a few more
hit by changing the design of the links, I mostly always went higher in signups,
or kept a better average.
it's really a trying game.
4.2 Colours and
Background
A lot of people over the web have been claiming
that they do better with white Background, or with Black backgrounds, or pastel
etc. Personally, I never did too well with white background. But I
got friends that made over 30 signups/day using white background. While
talking with someone, we came up to this conclusion. Background has
nothing to do with conversion.
What does affect the conversion is the way you
design the overall page. It has to look good. It has to stand out of
the crowd. Thinking about it, it's true. The surfer does look at
over 10 galleries every day in average, therefore you need to catch him before
he jumps to another one... That's where the proper use of colors come in handy.
I probably do better with dark colors because my limited design skills allow me
to better design a page using a dark background. This is something only
yourself can find through some testing. One thing my mentor said could
have been one of my strong point was the use of color. he said that most
of my pages made the important text stand out, and especially the links.
You also gotta find some compatible colors. It has to look good to the
eye.
4.3 Thumbnail
distribution
This is the hardest part. I've asked soooo
many people what was the best way to put your thumbnails, without one single
same answer. Some use the conventional 4X4 or 4X5 gallery, and sales pitch
at the top and bottom. Personally, it never did well for me. I
prefer making my page DIFFERENT from everyone. I'd rather go on and crop
my pictures first, and then decide about the thumbnail distribution. Say I
find 4 pretty good pictures in the number I chose... I might make those
different from the other thumbs, just so people notice them, and notice they are
kick ass. If they notice your page, they'll read your sales pitch.
Try to go wild. Don't worry about being conventional, it can only do you
good. There's no real teaching that can be made here... you can try 4
rows, with text in between... or 2X4 rows, then 2X3 rows, then 2X2 rows, etc...
or a big rectangle of thumbs, with text in the middle, or whatever you feel like
doing. The stuff I just said are not necessarily what works, but just some
Ideas I came up with at this moment. Be Imaginative, it's the key here. But try, as I said
earlier, to design the page so that the text fits the image, the design.
It's most important.
4.4.1 The sales
pitch: Selling the girl
There are two main ways of selling a membership.
One of them is by selling the girl. If you find the girl is beautiful
enough, then go for it. But once again, remember that you have to offer
them something more. Don't simply say she is beautiful, she's so sexy...
DO THAT, but do more :-) Tell them how much she loves to fuck, how she's
dirty in bed, etc. The Point here is to turn the guy on so he needs more
of her to whack off. Don't be afraid of being too dirty. A lot of men
will love to be talked dirty. so DO IT. that's one of the thing I didn't
do at first, then my mentor showed me the way, it worked like a charm. You
might put a bit of selling the site itself here, but you definitely need to find
the one aspect of the sale you are going to center on. So In resume, when
selling the girl, you talk dirty and you make him horny!
4.4.2 The Sales
Pitch: Selling the Site
Here you are going to center on all the good feature the site has. And don't stop to just saying they have 100,000 pics.... Hell, the guy can get more than he needs to all over for free. Instead, focus on what's MORE than a ton of pictures.
4.4.3 The Sales
Pitch: Overall view
Don't go too fast on the sales pitch... common mistake. One time, I spent 2 hours finding the right stuff. and believe me, it paid off. But some days, you'll spend time, and it won't pay. Don't get discouraged, you will do better next time. Sales pitch is what makes the page sell in my opinion. Take a look at all those Nike Ads, or any other big companies. They pay millions of dollars for the right sales pitch... put pictures, and a link saying Buy a membership to XXXX.com, and you'll get a terrible conversion. but turn the people on, or make them hungry for more and you'll sell good.
This is something I've seen a lot of people contradict. Some say you could put blablablabla as the text, and as long as it looks good, it'll sell.. Some say it's trivial... I don't have the answer. Experiment and see for yourself. All I can say is I saw a lot of good galleries, and the best ones definitely had good selling techniques.
4.5 Compatibility
If you use a WYSIWYG editor such as frontpage or macromedia's, you should ALWAYS check the page before you publish it to see if
it is displayed correctly in both browsers.
Another compatibility has to be the compatibility
with the TGPS. Follow every god damn rules they put. Some might be
Too restrictive... Then let them be, and don't post there. The worst thing
you don't wanna get into is getting banned. Some webmasters out there
share banlists. and what tells you you won't change your design later, and
you won't want to have that highly productive traffic? Also, try to post
according to what they seek. For example, my buddy at www.bigbreastlovers.com
Will probably seek big breasts... right? then be sure a big tit page will
convert well there... and chances are a small tits girls will not be what the
owner will be looking for. Finally, Contact the owners as much as
possible. Knowing the people you deal with will give you a better
knowledge of what they want, and will probably result in better listings if they
do the review... Anyways, more knowledge can only be good!
5. Choosing a
sponsor
This is also an overlooked factor. It's
important to choose a sponsor you trust, but most importantly, you need a
sponsor that fits your content! it's easy to know that fetish needs a
fetish sponsor, that watersport needs a watersport sponsor... But when you come
to softcore, with Babes... Lots of people get tempted to choose blindly a Teen
sponsor. Although you see tons of teens all over the web, it's not always
wise to choose such a sponsor. For example, I was doing wonders with one
teen sponsor on other galleries. So I made this New gallery with this
REALLY HOT chick. Guess what, 0 signups in 3000 hits. Then it hit
me, she was everything but a teen. She could be a babe, a big tit girl,
but not a teen. The next day I changed the sponsor, got good signups!
it's up to you to choose whether you want to use
recurring sponsors or per signup ones. My advice is never to use
clickthrough sponsors. Why? because , unless you really don't get how
galleries are made, you will get good signups. For example, a blind
clickthrough sponsor can pay you up to 4¢/click. you'd need 750 clicks to get
30$. this means you will ONLY make more money than with a Per signup of
30$ when you'll convert less than 1/750, which should be an indication to you
that you'd need to try another sponsor...
Between Recurring and per signup now... hard
question. Obviously, per signup is for the quick buck, while recurring
takes a couple months to really kick in... But most people claim that recurring
makes them more money in the long run.
For example, you'll get 30$/signup from a per signup sponsor. It is a well
known fact that you do not get paid for EVERY signup you produce with per
signups, for the simple fact that they couldn't pay. I'm not going to go
in details here, but you'll get less signups with per signups compared to
recurring. But you'll get paid your 30$ or so for every signup they track.
With Recurring, you will have ALL signups
tracked, meaning more signups... BUT, those signups will only give you a couple
$ being trials. Then a % will stay, say 30%, and will become your members.
you will get paid for each of them for as long as they'd stay... so for example,
say you would get a conversion of 30%, and overall retention of 6 months... on
the 6th month for 50 signups/month, you would receive a check of 90 recurring
members... which would make you a bigger check than with the 30$/signup... so
the potential is there for you to make more, you just have to find the right
sponsor.
In conclusion, when choosing a sponsor, you find
what suits you best, and you go for it. if you need the fast cash, find a
good per signup. If you still want to receive "gifts" after 1
year, well go for recurring.
6. Submitting
6.1 Building
templates
Being highly structured on some stuff and having
good science backgrounds, I always try to design my pages in the most efficient
way. This is why, when I submit my galleries, I'll have templates I use on
ALL my submissions ready, and modified in 2 mins with my newly cooked up page.
This is why I advice you to build yourself a
method to quickly append your new page to pre-written templates in order to
quickly have new html files ready to submit with everybody's recips on.
One method is to have your templates made of a <body> tag, a
<title></title> tag, and a <page> tag for example. you
then go on and build the top part with the recips buttons and links, and save as
different templates for every group of tgps you'll post to. Then, you can
EASILY modify the above tags with a mass page modifier. it'll take you
only a few mins, and it'll be efficient.
6.2 Choosing TGPS.
There's a couple views on choosing tgps. I
know a few people that submit to a minimal amount of tgps, and make a killing.
Others submit to ALL they can find and make a killing as well. I, On my
side, submit to a good amount of people.... But I'm going to run a series of
tests in the upcoming weeks to lower that amount to the lowest possible number.
Thing is, there are tons of tgps that actually do NOT convert for me.
Therefore, I could still make the same amount of money using only the productive
sponsors, and save on the bandwidth bill.
Therefore, only you can see which ones make you
the money. Try to setup your pages for a good tracking of signups.
But to start testing, you need to start posting. A good idea to start off
is to go around and check out http://netpond.com/webmaster/tgpboard/
. You'll learn some good stuff there... but don't post too much, it's good
to learn, but it's also a good way to loose your productive time. Be
careful :-) Once you're on that page, take the TOP TGP on the top to the
right. That's a good start. Then, You can check over on www.sextracker.com
for some high traffic sites to post to. Finally, check out the sites'
suggestions you get on the webmaster pages of the sites you posted your
galleries already. There's a good chance these will be good quality tgps,
and will be from someone the big guys trust.
6.3 Posting to Tgps
It would be a good idea for you to build yourself
a page with all the links to every submit page of the tgps you'll post to.
it's faster that way, and any way to save time is good. Also, keep
somewhere a file with all the info such as how many pics required, how many
times a week you can post, e-mail, etc. Always good to have anything you need in
hand. Always use the same username and e-mail, because if some reviewers
know you have good shit, they'll link you higher and such...
7 After-Posts Work
7.1 Monitor sales
This part is really important. You really
have to monitor how your pages sell. If you believe the sponsor is not
doing too good, then HURRY UP and change to another one for the next day... try
different things... But nothing too drastic, or the tgps won't like it... Also,
try to pin down what worked well on some galleries, and try to use that back in
your future ones. Always look at how much you make at the end of the week
to compare between sponsors... I mean, days fluctuate, weeks too, but it's a
better approximation. Also, don't give too much importance to the ratios, but
rather to the numbers next to the $ sign, that's what counts. some might
track less but make you more. It's also a good idea to use sponsor that
track from where the signups come from... that way, you can monitor which tgps
have converted for you at least 1 signup the last month, and you can then clean
your posting list for better efficiency and to save time.
7.2 Monitor the hits
It's a good idea to have a tracking tool of some
sort, whether it's server side or through hitbox or sextracker. That way,
track who lists you, who doesn't... try to find why they don't. try to fix
that. Also, watch that way who never lists you so you can ask him what's
up or plain drop him to save you time.
8. Conclusion
In conclusion, I'd like to say be happy with any
signups you get. Hell, think of it this way... a good gallery can take me
3hours overall. say I get a minimal 3signups at 30$, it's 30$ an hour,
still a pretty good salary! Most will do over 5signups... Even if I'd make
only 30$, 2 of those, and it pays my set! that leaves me with a paid set,
and the possibility to benefit from that set through Avs, Paysite, etc...
Just be happy with every penny you make, you'll
keep the flame up. Be disappointed too often, and you'll loose faith.