TGP what sells & how to sell it in 2004 - Part I & II

TGP what sells & how to sell it in 2004 - Part I - by _LB_

Article thanks to _LB_

Ok this is gonna be a long post so grab a rum & coke, put your feet up and grab a place of biscuits.

Newbies usually start on TGP, making galleries for a fast traffic and spend around 3-12 months making a couple of sales, trying different sponsors, and trying to work out what sort of designs work. I am going to try and save you all a lot of time and wasted effort with a little 'how to do tgp in 2004'.

Before I start, i know many on here do make good sales on TGP and may not agree with my methods. Thats fine ... and feel free to disregard my thoughts and advice. If there is one thing I have learnt in this business its - if you have something that works for you then don't change it too much, just try to improve on it.

There are many new faces on the Netpond newbie board, and most of you probably don't know me because I haven't been posting as much as I should. I have had a lot of experience with TGP, and until recent times I have earned 80%+ of my income from TGP gallery posting, so I really hope a few of my tips and how-to's work for you aswell, and can give you the financial freedom that I am enjoying ... and with the same hard work you all deserve aswell.

=== What to sell? ===

Everything sells on tgp. With that being said, not everything sells well on tgp, and most often its the presentation of a tour that really affects your sales and conversion ratios. The good news is that most programs are now being designed with tour options that cater to TGP surfers. Generally you want a professional, high impact, clear, and hyped up tour page. TGP surfers are VERY different to surfers from Search Engines, and the TGP surfers want something a little different, something that really catches their interest.

Now I have never used these sponsor sites before but they are good examples of what I feel would sell well on tgp ....

http://link.siccash.com/cgi-bin/wel....cgi/raw_3710/A
http://www.backdoortwinks.com/index4_no.html(Warning GAY)
http://borderbangers.com/tour.html?s=14&w=100231&p=1

Generally you will notice the designs have a lot of fake tgp like thumbs. They also have a 'reality' porn flare to them. Reality sites really took off in 2002 onwards, and continue to sell well.

DONT sell sites that have old tours, especially with outdated or old looking content. Maxcash is a classic example ... their sites are old and dated and just don't work on tgp for most people! They still do really well with SE traffic, but were not talking about SE traffic now

=== Content ===

Most sponsors have good free content for you to use that works well with their sites. Download a few sets of picture content, and use a batch program to resize them so that they are at least 600 pixels on the long side and between 25 and 35kb. If you have bandwidth to spare then try 700-800 on the long side and between 40-60kb to maximise your accepts. There are a lot of quality tgps now with good traffic that demand 40kb min size for images.

Get them into series groups of 15, naming them 1.jpg, 2.jpg etc, and then create the thumbs. The best way to create thumbs is to have square 120+ x 120+ zoomed thumbs. You simply crop out the outside of the picture. They tend to perform better than normal non-zoomed thumbs on tgp for some reason. Name the thumbs 1t.jpg, 2t.jpg etc.

You now have 15 pics with thumbnails ready to go.

=== Submitter ===

DONT manually submit. I don't care what someone tells you about how handsubmitting is better! Not using a submitter is a gross waste of your time. I am not going to go into it and justify the use of a submitter program, but if you want to know why, then ask me and I will give you all 10000 reasons

Submitters to look at :

Chameleon Submitter
Russian submitter
Gallery Submitter (havent used it too much but for those with a little more experience with servers and tech stuff, its a good submitter!)

I use Chameleon submitter and still do whenever I submit.

Ok I will push post before my computer dies or something happens and I lose everything I have typed !

Click Here To Discuss This Or Ask Questions On The Netpond Message Board!

Article thanks to _LB_

=== How to design your galleries ===

I am not an expert or leading gallery designer by any means. There are people who can design galleries that rake in hundreds of sales and they keep their design secrets to themselves. Most newbies would be happy to make a couple of sales per gallery submit, and that is quite easy if you really put some time into your gallery template design.

I will also try to give some examples of good galleries, of course not to be copied !

A template is something that you should use over and over. When you design a gallery template that gets sales, you need to keep submitting it until the TGP surfers become hardened to your template (and sales drop). When testing out a gallery template submit it at least 4-5 times, and wait at least a week or two before throwing it in the trash can. sometimes it can take a while for tgp's to actually list your gallery.

It's also a good idea to measure the CTR (Click through rate) of your gallery. If you are getting a ratio of 1:100 but only getting a CTR of .3%, then you really need to look at your design and tweak it so that more people are clicking through on your adverts!

Ok I will try to walk you through good gallery design .....

===Layout===

Your layout is important, and a good layout ensures the surfer sees your adverts and that your adverts stand out.

- A perfect layout would have every thumb bordering a high impact advert. As a minimum, no matter where the surfer is on your gallery page they should be able to see an advert and a place to click.

- Every gallery should start with a heading and finish with somewhere to click, so leave space at the top and bottom.

- The top left is a good place for an advert and the bottom right is also a good place for an advert. The top left is often where they look first, and the bottom right is where they look last.

- Go to a gallery that is more than one page long. Work your way through the gallery and while you are reading/looking take a note of where your mousepointer is. Most of you will notice your mouse pointer is on the right side near the scroll bar. That is a great place to have links because believe it or not the surfer is more likely to click a link closer to their mouse pointer resting location.

- Don't scatter your thumbs too much. Only have max of 3-4 blocks where you place groups of thumbnails. Also make sure your thumbnails are not all oddsized. Having 15 thumbs of all different shapes and sizes won't really affect your conversions too much, but will result in you being listed less.

- Try to layout your page so that when you step back and look at it, it doesn't just look like one massive advert. The advertising should be catchy and dominant, but having 3/4 of the page filled with adverts is going to kill your chance of being listed.

- 3-4 advertising spots maximum. Any less makes it almost imposible to get a good ctr, and any more means you get listed less.

=== Adverts ===

Now what sort of adverts to have? As a general rule you don't want it to be all graphical (although many would disagree with me), and you don't want nothing but line after line of text. You definitely need something on the page that catches the eye, and that can be either a very high impact text advert, or an incredible looking piece of ass.

- Use Hook Text. Hook text is the short and catchy text link that grabs their attention. If you have a paragraph of promo text you should always include a good one line 'Hook' phrase. Something short, bold, and punchy. To get them reading more of your advert always employ your hook text!

- Eye contact gets clicks on your picture adverts.

- Header - your heading sets the tone for the rest of the gallery. A good method to employ is to have a good bold line of high impact text above your first row of thumbs. On a 56k modem the text will load instantly, and the surfer will have to look at the text for the 5 seconds the thumbs take to load. That will force him to view the gallery in the context you want him to. You can preprogram his interpretation of what he sees in your content.

- Footer - At the bottom a simple bold text link or flashing gif text link with "Click here for instant access!" always pulls good clicks. You can experiment but remember to use a 'call to action' phrase like 'click here!'

- Don't waffle. Don't explain the world to them, just get their interest up and try to summarise more than elobarate. TGP surfers will not dig through a long paragraph of promo text on a tgp page. They will click through if you get their interest and they want to see more.

- Avoid mentioning the price of the site unless its Free or in some cases $1.

- Don't use Times new roman as a font. Impact, all the Arial fonts work pretty well in most cases.

- Avoid standard sized banners.

- Match the color of the gallery to the sponsor's. Ensure that the feel is the same, so that when they land on the sponsors site after clicking an advert, they feel as though they have landed on the right page.

***TEXT LINKS***

How hard are text links! Some people just cant seem to get it, and I will give you a method of improving your text links by learning off others.

Get a list of good looking high impact galleries from tgps in the niche of your choice. Copy and paste all the text links they use that look simple, clear, and likely to draw clicks. Paste them triple spaced on your notepad. Once you have say 50 or so, go through and under each one write your own text link so that :

1. It has the same feel and message as the text above
2. It is a similar length to the text above
3. It is totally different from the text above

After you have done that, go through your list of 50 and read through it deleting the ones that you don't like. If you put some good effort into the exercise you should end up with at least 25 good text links you can save and pull out at any stage. Eventually you will learn to just write your own text links without having to jog your imagination by looking at others.

Never copy! Do your own work, and try to learn by working at it.