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Gallery Building Tips
Common misconceptions, strategies, differing opininions.
1. It's not all about the pretty graphics.
True: Many people make a lot of money putting nothing up but 3 rows of 5 pics and 3 text links on a white background.
False: Same can be said for people who make pretty galleries. Sometimes a pretty gallery will cause you to stand out among 1,000 other submitters that day.
2. Text links pull better than banners.
True: Generally this is true in pretty much all cases.
False: However you shouldn't necessarily arrive on just the one. Sometimes a flashing banner/gif grabs their attention follow it with a small line of text underneath to close the sale.
3. PIcture Placement Is Not Important.
True: As said previously there are many peopl who make a ton of money putting up 3 rows of 5 pics.
False: The flow of the gallery can easily determine your chances of increasing or decreasing your CTR's.
Example: If you use a unique layout with sales text being put into tables next to the pics it would be better to finish off with the text on the right hand side.
People read from left to right and scan. Put key text that you want to catch their eyes in highlighted colors on the right hand side and you just may see an increase in ctr.
4. Commanding Text is/is not important.
Example: "click here to get instant access."
True: (is) Start the sell with the nasty talk, or by chatting up the benefits of the site but eventually call them to action. Announce in no uncertain terms that this is a link to gain access to the site.
False: (is not) Click here...Join Now...etc..can get over used. Trick is find new text that calls the surfer to action. You need it on at least 1 of your text links, I feel that it improves your ctrs.
5. Thumbs are not important.
True: As in all cases there is the exception to every rule. There are peope who mass batch thumbs in Arles and still generate mad traffic, mad money.
False: What are you trying to do? You are trying to sell sex, not give it away. Crop the thumbs fand show the interesting parts, or keep the interesting parts just out of view so they have to click to the larger picture.
If a surfer opens up your page and can scan every pic they might not find anything interesting enough to keep them there and move onto the next gallery.
So keep them interested. Keep them clicking back and forth between thumbs and larger images.
Why?
This increases more page views on your gallery by one set of eyes which in turns put the ads in front of that set of eyes more often.
Would you rather they click one thumb see your ad copy once and then move on?
Or bounce back and forth between 10-15 thumbs/pics and see your ad copy that many more times?
To sum it up. This is an ever evolving business. What works today does not work tomorrow, so grow, learn tweak your work in small increments so you can monitor the outcome of those changes.
Good luck.
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