Now you missunderstood me.

What I meant was for ANY given day, there's ~X (give or take a few) amount of sales that all the pornpeddlers out there will share.

Fair enough, but everyday that number grows and if your traffic grows with it (thru traffic trades and skimming) then you're signups will also increase.

Wouldn't you rather have a larger amount of those on your site than smaller amount.

More visitors on your site, more potential customers. I *really* don't understand why you have such difficulties grasping this.

To the simple question "More visitors is of course better?" I would of course say yes.
But thoose IN visitors comes at a price -- sending away visitors OUT. That makes the issue complex.
Your OUT is tgpB's IN who thinks exactly like you. (hey, more skim, more $).

And if both you and the guys you're trading with are Gaining sales from thoose trades, it's like $$$ is created out of thin air from trading. $$$ that shouldn't have been there if the trading wasn't there. I think that's the fact I have a hard time grasping.

Yes you still think im still rambling from the global perspective (and more about sales then traffic) but the global perspective is just made up by all the single units (applying your same rules of logic to all).

I do see your points, so you dont need to explain more.

But maybe it's not so complicated. Maybe sales Are created cause of trading. Sharing common traffic exposes the surfers to more TGPs and he'll find something on tgpB that he didn't find on the tgpA. And if the tgpA hadn't traded away that surfer he would had put his CC back in the wallet and went to sleep. Meaning the trade actually "created" a sale.


When I start to trade I'll hit you up on ICQ for a gothrough. Maybe I can teach you som SEO hah :winkwink:

Argh.. Sales are NOT created from thin air. Trading does NOT create sales. TRAFFIC creates sales. More traffic = more sales

Now, as for traffic coming in at a price. The principal of trading is that your trades make YOUR site grow. So a hit you send out, you should get more back (it doesn't always work like this but it should). IF that was not the case then there wouldn't be a point in trading.. but the WHOLE point of it is to get more visitors.

There was a thread on that earlier that i saw.

trading creates traffic (makes your site grow)

traffic creates sales.

..but trading doesn't create sales?

it's been going on for years.

do I think it's right NO.

Lazy asswipes.

Thanks man i love you so much.

yep I know. that alone should be bad enough 2 loose his hosting.

come on man!!! :1orglaugh

You most likely WOULD see more sales since you are showing the surfer more options. Maybe he comes to your site and it features small tits mostly.. he doesn't like small tits, maybe the next site he gets skimmed to has a great big tits gallery that catches his eye?

Sponsors could always ask tgp's that use trade scripts to kindly not use their galleries; I am sure that more than a handful of others would go out of their way to make up for the empty real estate.

Comparing trading to stealing, as I read in this thread earlier, is insane if you ask me. Most of the surfers that are skimmed, at least in the larger networks, are not forced into any pop up hell or fraudulent conditions. They can easily backout and reclick the thumb.

I understand your point Elli and it isn't the first time I have seen it posted by someone such as yourself. I just think you have to look at it from a little more logical perspective: it is a part of the business hiearchy now, and it is not going away anytime soon. There are far enough sponsors, sites and what not that would gladly take the place of those that did not want to be placced on sites that trade. A lot of large sites trade.

Just my 2 cents however, certainly not calling you out because I do understand how it may appear....

See you in Florida :winkwink:

wow I'm truly amazed that their are just as many people on GFY that are out of the loop in how TGP's work..

I think one of the biggest things some of the people calling wolf here are missing is this...

Say I have a site that is set at 70% skim as my sites are. I send 70% of my hits to galleries and 30% to traffic trades. What I believe some of you unaware of how TGP's work are missing. Is most guys open the galleries and trades in a new window. So just because you do send a surfer to another page, doesn't mean you lost him.

He may click around on your trade and come back and click more on your site, therefore giving you twice the benefit of more traffic and clicks to galleries. On top of this, TGP surfers know that if they click a thumb and get a trade, they can continue to click that thumb and they will eventually get to that gallery. It's not like the thumb is 100% blind clicks, the surfer will see the gallery if he clicks the thumb a few times.. So calling this content theft is way off..

I skim traffic and I play with google a bit on my TGPs.. I will give you a example of both sources of traffic across one of my sites..

I pull roughly 3k a day to this one site via SE traffic, that traffic is generally has a productivity of around 3.5-4.0% meaning that traffic produces 12k a day to either trades or galleries (if you take out 30% sent to trades that's somewhere around 9k day going to galleries from my SE traffic)..

Now on that very site I traffic trade, it's not a big site but has roughly 25k a day in traffic trades.. which has a rough estimate of 2.0- 2.5% productivity. Meaning that 25k turns into 50k in clicks to both galleries and trades. If you then take out the 30% as above for trades that leaves me with 35k going to galleries and potential sales.

Now my math may be off just a bit but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that 35k to galleries is better than 9k.. we are talking almost 4 times the amount of traffic per day produced, by skimming on my site. Now I will agree SE traffic is of course better than traffic traded on TGP's but face the facts, their is a limited amount of search traffic out there and a small percentage of guys have that wired up. However traffic coming from traffic trading is almost an endless supply.

bump so more people can get frustrated :)

:1orglaugh

Jebus, is this an amusing thread. I actually thought that most people here knew how trading worked.

The 2004 surfer is perfectly used to trades, and being rediected to other sites. It's all good as long as they are CLEAN sites.

Surfer can always back out and go back where they came from!

Now LOOK, let's take the averages of the above statement:
If that is the case (meaning surfer comes back to me), the productivity of that surfer on the other TGP will be 0 and I won't be getting anyone in return (since productivity is 0), because he likes my TGP more, and he stays here!
BUT if he likes the other TGP more, I get credited for productivity and get a productive surfer(s) back! The better productivity, the more surfers I get back in return.

It's a god damn win-win situation that both improves traffic and gives you quality surfers in return!

And if a sponsor is stupid and doesn't realize that, and doesn't like me using a thumb to send more traffic to them, I can find another one :thumbsup

You hit the nail here :) (it was about time ;))

so when the sponsor complains he's a fool or doesn't know the game or is a newbie or whatever name, because it's too hard to understand that TGP Owner is looking to make money from sponsor's effort without something in exchange (at least secure, all hypothetical theories are another discussion, I'm arguing with just simple plain facts). btw, I had linklists and TGPs since 1997, I'm also a program owner, so I hope I can express an opinion ;)

I think this thread has taken some good points in consideration. Plus, I'm sure that right now there are some sponsors or content producers going behind big thumbs TGPs, after all this one at GG board may have no TOS, but 99.99% of sponsors I know have very clear TOS, and of those, at least 90% say "content cannot be cropped or altered, only resized" "content can be used only to promote our site" and/or "you cannot use this content in other domain but ours".

As for the "everybody's doing it, so it's OK" argument, try to explain that to a judge. Same said spammers fined with multimillion dollars, or RJB Telcom (maxcash) when fined by FTC, and they lost big time. The fact that MadThumbs started this trend doesn't means it's OK, legal or not subject to discussion/revision, it only means they started the trend. Nothing more. Nothing less. All other concepts is plain subjectivism, and if you ever had something with lawyers or courts, you'll know by now that subjectivism is the mother or losses.

I've a lot more considerations on this, but for now let's see how this goes. I'm just pointing this to help people find a solution to an eventual matter, else there's a quite big possibility you'll find another Acacia. And who will lose? The honest and well intended, the usual players who knows all the tricks cannot even be located or they've enough money to answer back.

As for Crockett's initial post, it seems like what you think is so clear is not shared by a lot of people on at least 2 boards :winkwink:

btw, if you want to send traffic to us using our content, I'll gladly give you an express consent to do it so you are sure you'll avoid future trouble :)

interesting, never thought about this :helpme

Damn... I never realized so many people didn't like money.

harvey you are right it's truly amazing that people still don't get the benefit this is for all involved, I guess a lot of people still live in 1998... however as much as you can try to justify what you are trying to say. There is one simple clear fact.. with this topic on 3 boards that I know of.. I haven't seen a single sponsor other than the one the orginal post was started by, come out and tell TGP's whom skim traffic with thumbs, to not send them hits because they are cheaters or content thief's..

In fact several have posted in the various topics to send them your traffic if the other sponsors don't want it.. So all in all I think that should clear it up for everyone as the sponsors are the ones that send the checks. So you can wink and call it illegal or what ever but the sponsors just don't seem to mind the traffic :winkwink:

Ok, read the first page of the GG thread, and several replies here in this thread. So I'm ready to jump right in a give my opinion, here goes.

First, skimming is obviously a method that tgp's and other sites use to trade traffic between themselves.

As it pertains to a sponsor hosted gallery, or sponsor provided content is where theres potential issues. That is to say that if a sponsor allows you to use their content for the explicit purpose of promoting their site it means you may *not* skim traffic from one of their thumbs. Simple as that. Do many sponsors overlook it? Perhaps, thats besides the point though :)

I do not think that a domain should have been nuked for it however as I see that as pretty harsh. Probably an email to the affiliate would have cleared it up (as I did in one run on sentance).

As a personal side note, I really despise skimming because it doesn't make common sense if the goal is to get repeat surfers. But thats neither here nor there.

Bottom line for me: The sponsor was within their rights unquestionably, but perhaps went about it harshly if skimming is all that was involved. The host could have sent an email, instant message, or phone call (I know mine would have).

Carry on :glugglug