Shortly before I got into this biz, I bought my one and only non-biz related membership to a porn site. I had seen these galleries on a TGP over some time, they were nicely put together, the content was high quality pictures, was hot chicks an hot hardcore action in the niche I enjoy. The gallery just had a few lines of text, but they had 1 banner on it with an awesome babe enticing you to fuck her tits. After seeing those galleries over some time, I really wanted to get into the pay site to get more of it... The paysite was crap inside with very few of the pics I had seen, but I ended up staying for months simply because I couldn't be bothered to cancel... That experience taught me what I needed to know about marketing porn to surfers.
In my opinion, the majority of galleries (FHGs as well) are crap these days. They're into either just pumping out hundreds of them and "hoping shit sticks to the wall", or they're sooooo pretty and filled with graphics that they don't have a chance to actually sell to the consumer. The worst ones are the ones that don't even have woman appropiate for the niche.. i.e. skiny chicks for fat/bbw, small tit girls for big tit sites etc. At the end of the day though, it's the content IN the galleries that gets a surfer to buy. If the content you're presenting to the surfer is crap, don't expect many signups.
But it's not just the galleries.. Banners and FPAs can also sell well if used properly. But a lot of those are crap as well... I was picking some out tonight and with one company, few of the banners actually featured really good examples of women for the niche of the site, and few even had the name of the site... Sometimes I wonder what the average IQ is of people in this biz.
