I still get requests to add the usual “free sites” to Adult Everything. I’m looking at these sites and I begin thinking like Google thinks. How does this site improve my index? What is this site providing that is unique? Frankly 99% of the submissions are the same old same old kind of site. Free sites don’t update, it’s just build and forget. The main purpose is just to send the surfer off to the sponsor. While this method used to make money, it’s not going to work anymore. TGP’s are good because they have categories (unless they’re already niche tgp’s) and they update with new galleries daily. This keeps people coming back for more. Blogs are great and Google loves them. Even link lists have their place, but only if they list quality instead of quantity. So in closing, create quality sites that update and gain loyal visitors. Your main goal should be to get people to subscribe to your rss feed or to bookmark your site.

So what kind of free site is okay? Well there is still room for a free site market, but you’ve got to have more content than that. First, forget the warning page. Your main page is the most important page, both for surfers and for search engines. On this page you should have thumbs which lead to galleries you host and a short paragraph (a review perhaps). So something like 5-10 pages, 20 images per page. This means lots more work but at least nobody can say this is not a quality site that adds something to the web. The days of creating a page full of ads and getting traffic are long gone.

The free site model is dead and has been dead for years already. Maybe in 1999 this may have been a good idea. But this whole format of a warning page followed by a main page which has a link to 2 galleries, with each one having 10-20 images. It is completely predictable and quite boring. There’s no need to have a warning page and main page, surfers are only looking for the gallery pages after all. This concept was a bad idea right from the start.

I see many folks talking about not getting sales and not making money in this business and it’s not hard to see why.

Here’s just one example. I had some one submit a Rope Bondage free site and they submitted it to the Bondage category, even though there is a Rope Bondage Category. Which is going to be more targeted traffic and more likely to make sales? Well duh. Plus the Rope Bondage category is just a couple choices down, not like it’s that hard to find or takes any longer to get it right.

It’s not that difficult, it’s not rocket science.

Target, target, target.

Otherwise your wasting your time and every body else’s.

Couple of boards have had some recent major drama about a new free site model. Actually the most drama I’ve seen in a while, kind of entertaining. In reality the new model a certain person or two has brought up, solves none of the link list and free site woes. Woes? It’s pretty evident the LL model has been suffering for probably a good year now, I’m not the only one that can show up proof for that one.

In my opinion, the only really concusion that can be drawn is the linking strategy LL’s have been using, is what has put them behind the eight ball. It’s been said many times that free sites are not very useful to the LL’s as linkbacks, for several reasons. Thats my take on it.

It is also my opinion that the Big Guys have not suffered as much of the bad fate as the little guys for a couple reasons. For one, they have tremendous linking power. Most importantly, they have more root domain linkbacks. They can command it, because they are the big guys.

Again in my opinion, no matter the model, I doubt a new one will address or correct the problem. There will always be mirrors (how can any one be sure there isn’t without some serious staff or resources?). Even if there were no mirrors, free site’s are and always will be built many to a domain, are those not still mirrors?

The bigger problem, will any free site builder update their free sites? Sorry to say, my guess is very few. Not trying to knock these builders, just what I’ve seen from past experience.

The only possible solution, as I said possible, because no one works inside G, is for free site builders to maybe use a mini blog/free site model, something that is easy to update. Updating is a major key if you ask me.

One last point, a number of people have said to build things by hand and with unique content. I’ve been trying to get that across with blogging for a long time, but it seems to fall on deaf ears and I looking like a raving lunatic. I say passionate, but ehh..

You can blame people for waiting to make more money with less work, I tend to jump in that boat more often than I’d like to admit. Then again, the same work put into something that will latter out do any great number of free sites, can be a good plan, for those that have the patience.

People don’t want to wait. From what I’ve seen, first hand, it’s a good three months for a blog to really take off and provide consistent traffic. But I guess a blog that does 1k-1.5k a day later isn’t as good as a handful of free sites that die off after three months. hhmm…