I posted it on my board the other day and it gathered some nice input, let's see how GFY views this.
While the initial argument for running thumb sites was that they grew a lot quicker than text sites, I am unsure about this still holding water. With every webmaster and his mother running thumb sites, you simply no longer hold an advantage, compared to your trades.
Now, many have argued that thumb site traffic converts poorer that text site traffic. While I do not have a 100% explanation to this, I can provide some speculation and somewhat qualified opinions.
First things first. Put it any way you want, there's no way in hell a thumb site would ever pull in the same amount of search engine traffic that a text site would. Search engines like text, not pictures.
While this directly affects conversions, the significant lack of search engine traffic in the "trading circle", meaning your trades get just as little SE traffic as you do, make for very little influx of fresh traffic. In return this leads to the traffic getting jerked, recyled and inbred a lot more. Kind of logical that it starts buying less, eh?
Aside from the conversion issue, it also affects the sites in the circle in another way. As I've stated on previous occasions, trading traffic is a zero-sum game. Meaning what you gain, another will lose. Well, when it came to text sites, this wasn't so obvious, since every site had its fair share of fresh traffic coming in, mainly from search engines. When it comes to thumb sites, this is no longer the case. So, with new sites popping up every day, the circle of sites trading with each other expands more and more every day. Meaning the spread gets thinner and the traffic shittier, more sites will lose at the same time as a few will gain.
Another thing that I suspec has contributed to poor conversions is the fact that the surfer actually gets spoiled with choices. Of course, a text site will offer more links, compared to a thumb site. But it will also offer more excitement to the surfer, as it's really not always clear what the gallery offers. A picture says a thousand words, therfore a good thumb will get clicked a lot while a shitty one not at all. The surfer now has active choices to make, instead of "guessing" choices, when it comes to a text site. So it's much easier to locate what he wants, rub one out and leave. Whereas with a text site, the links oftentimes tend to get clicked sequentially, the surfer searching for something to get him off. Much easier to actually get hot on a paysite and join. The thumbs also remove the curiousity aspect. And help you burn more bandwidth, of course.
I'm not saying everyone should switch back to text sites now. Although I'd love to see that. But I think you should keep the above in mind. Might help you increase your profits and decrease your costs quite nicely.
I for one am gonna set up a few niche thumb sites, for starters, after which I will be focusing on getting back to running text sites. Should happen in about a month or so.
While the initial argument for running thumb sites was that they grew a lot quicker than text sites, I am unsure about this still holding water. With every webmaster and his mother running thumb sites, you simply no longer hold an advantage, compared to your trades.
Now, many have argued that thumb site traffic converts poorer that text site traffic. While I do not have a 100% explanation to this, I can provide some speculation and somewhat qualified opinions.
First things first. Put it any way you want, there's no way in hell a thumb site would ever pull in the same amount of search engine traffic that a text site would. Search engines like text, not pictures.
While this directly affects conversions, the significant lack of search engine traffic in the "trading circle", meaning your trades get just as little SE traffic as you do, make for very little influx of fresh traffic. In return this leads to the traffic getting jerked, recyled and inbred a lot more. Kind of logical that it starts buying less, eh?
Aside from the conversion issue, it also affects the sites in the circle in another way. As I've stated on previous occasions, trading traffic is a zero-sum game. Meaning what you gain, another will lose. Well, when it came to text sites, this wasn't so obvious, since every site had its fair share of fresh traffic coming in, mainly from search engines. When it comes to thumb sites, this is no longer the case. So, with new sites popping up every day, the circle of sites trading with each other expands more and more every day. Meaning the spread gets thinner and the traffic shittier, more sites will lose at the same time as a few will gain.
Another thing that I suspec has contributed to poor conversions is the fact that the surfer actually gets spoiled with choices. Of course, a text site will offer more links, compared to a thumb site. But it will also offer more excitement to the surfer, as it's really not always clear what the gallery offers. A picture says a thousand words, therfore a good thumb will get clicked a lot while a shitty one not at all. The surfer now has active choices to make, instead of "guessing" choices, when it comes to a text site. So it's much easier to locate what he wants, rub one out and leave. Whereas with a text site, the links oftentimes tend to get clicked sequentially, the surfer searching for something to get him off. Much easier to actually get hot on a paysite and join. The thumbs also remove the curiousity aspect. And help you burn more bandwidth, of course.
I'm not saying everyone should switch back to text sites now. Although I'd love to see that. But I think you should keep the above in mind. Might help you increase your profits and decrease your costs quite nicely.
I for one am gonna set up a few niche thumb sites, for starters, after which I will be focusing on getting back to running text sites. Should happen in about a month or so.
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