well, that article is not retarded, but obviously written for a TGP owner, meaning by that an absolute lack of perspective.
Explaining it better:
1-
hosted galleries don't convert (or they convert but you will never know because you're under high shave mode). An example of this is I was converting less than 1:50 with 2 different sponsors in the same niche. They started hosted galleries, and conversions were worse than 1:1000. Changed to another sponsor (same niche) with no hosted galleries: conversions were more or less back to normal. Coincidence?
We're running for 2 months in a row a test sending 30-40k a day to sponsor hosted galleries in different niches. 6 sales TOTAL. (That's 1 sale every 10 days/300-400k traffic) Represented most of the biggest sponsors and paysites, as well as the little ones
2-
TGP owners are losing money: if you don't believe it refer to the above test. It's more profitable to have 5-10 galleries well done (way more profitable) than 200 sponsor hosted. If in doubt, run the same test. Or take a look to this--> 400k= 1 sale How many sales would you make with 400,000 uniques to a gallery? Some TGP owners know it (not surprisingly, biggest TGP don't list sponsor hosted galleries at all. Or they're newbies, or they know something most little guys don't know
)
SleazyDream, even when biased, is quite right. But still you'll need converting and original galleries, those you won't find at sponsors pool (remember that once that gallery is listed at 1000 TGP, it's simply free content, nothing else). And then, the gallery maker's business will be not dead, but more important ever day. The way TGP owners will probably go is to hire gallery makers to make hundreds of good galleries to list (and I keep what I also imagine because I've some evil plans for it
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