want a good laugh? welcome to 1998
 

sorry Lensman I normally wouldn't post a link to another message board, but I think people should read this..


This guy is getting called a cheater by a sponsor because he trades traffic by skimming, just like 90% of the TGP's out there. He is getting called a cheater because the preview thumbs don't go to the sponsor hosted gallery 100% of the time.. So the sponsor is calling him a content thief.

welcome to 1998

truly amazing that guy's that have been in this industry as long as some of the ones posting is that topic, and they have no clue about how 90% of todays TGP's work. Simply Amazing if you want a good laugh read some of the responses..

BTW an added note the sponser is trying or did get his site shut down because he used the hosted galleries on a TGP that skims traffic...

should be a warning not to use that host or sponser

Wow, there are a lot of clueless people in that thread, especially Torn.

yea, there was a thread on here earlier about it aswell.....

worst part, GreenGuy or whoever, is whole heartedly defending the sponsor.... lmao

yea that's what truly amazes me, that and the fact the host pulled his site.. truly unbelievable. Every sponser I've ever signed up for I've used a TGP site with skimed traffic as my example site, never had a single one complain yet.

i would have done the same. I'd be feeling, "sheesh, my thumb is there, it gets clicked, it goes to popup hell, or sonsoles or worse off a site trying to intall bullshit" Also, it's considered profiting from someone else's content. Do it froma text link, fine, do it from a copyrighted image, uh oh.


traffic trades on thumbs is a nono. Always has been but now with 1000000 people doing it, it's now "ok" becuase everyone else does it. ell it's NOT alright.


that has always been a pet peve of mine when I used to submit galleries. TGPs were sending traffic to questionable places based on my work and a thumb I let them use.


that's just my opinion.

I didn't even know that people did that. If someone clicks on my image, I fully expect them to get to my gallery or my site. To redirect them is screwing the surfer around and turning a qualified hit into an unhappy, unqualified hit. And worse, the surfer may blame my site for the redirection! What the heck?

guess i'll have to put katcash on my blacklist. how do people get by in this industry without knowing how things work? calling the guy a cheater and getting his domain dropped from the host. that calls for a lawsuit.

which is why any thumb tgp I have ever built had NO trade script. it's just wrong. it's like clicking a pic in a gallery and getting sent to a competitors paysite. Same difference.


Sure tgp owners think they have to do this to build up traffic. Lazy ones yes. Work the page, promote it inhouse, do smart link exchanges, build book markers and voila, with enough hard WORK anyone can have a 300k TGP. I'm too lazy to work it that hard (because I got too much on my own plate work wise already and not enough hours in a day to do a 300k tgp), so I don't do it at all, hnce why I sold my site. I just don't have time and refuse to fuck people. I'm not about to jerk content companies, sponsors and gallery submitters around for my own gain.

u must be kidding, are u gonna tell me that a site like say madthumbs has your gallery thumb and rederects every 3rd click but the other 2 go to your sponsor u will complain?

dont be a hypocryte.

I'm not being a hypocryte.

I never said I would complain. I just don't think it's right, but I won't do anything about it.


However. if I OWNED the content and it was being misused in a cj/hell then I would be doing something about it.

the ppoint is, and you all know it, ia that these fucking cj/hell tgp's skim 99 percent to their own sites full of popups and other bullshit.


THAT is what the big stink is.


if it's just madthumbs doing it on a 50/50 skim, I don't fucking like it... i think it's wrong and deceptive, but if it gets me some traffic, so be it I'll swallow my opinions on it and forget about it.

well did you ever take into consideration that the site just might be able to send your galleries a hell of a lot more traffic because of the fact they are skimming traffic? That's the whole point you know?

How many 100k a day TGP sites would be around today with out traffic skimming? If you don't like the traffic from sites that skim why do you submit galleries to them? I mean really if you follow the logic that traffic trading with hosted galleries is cheating.. Then if you use sponser provided content, and submit to sites that skim then you yourself are cheating..

poor guy :(

are you crazy? the most I've ever seen skimed on a TGP is 50% and I will agree that's a bit too much but I think most are in the 60%-70% (that means 30-40% go to trades not 99%) range and that's 60%-70% of traffic that the sponser would never get if the TGP wasn't sending it, so where is the beef?

LOL

i agree with you :winkwink:

to a competitors paysite? it gets sent to another free site which sends traffic back and enables the site to grow, thus sending more traffic to the sponsor.

its a cj/tgp. i dont have any thumb tgp's myself but why would a sponsor not allow a thumb from one of their hosted galleries on a thumb tgp? you're not promoting another site. what gg says about using the content for personal gain makes sense, but then the sponsor wouldn't get any traffic from the site.

nevermind whether you think thumb tgps are right or wrong, the surfer is getting porn for free. its like a fpa on a free site, commercials on tv, etc. if the surfer wants to stop the bs, pay for a fucking membership(but unfortunately even when a surfer pays for a membership they still get dicked around, but thats a whole other story)

Sending clicks to another site does not get the submitter more traffic at all. If there was no skimming and everything was hardlinked and done properly there would be 100% of clicks going to the gallery. On skimming, and don't lie here guys, there are only 2 for every 10 clicks making it to the galleries on average. It all evens out with the lower traffic numbers the tgp itself gets with no skimming trades. This has been proven 1000's of times. I would get 20 times the traffic from small hardlinked tgps than huge skimmed tgps

if there was no skimming, there would be just as many 100k a day tgps. the lazy webmasters would not have tgps, the ones with time would build up 100k a day tgps and we'd have better quality traffic, less deceptions and more trust from surfers.

That's all besides the point.


My point is this.


Why is it ok to use someone else's content to send traffic to another tgp? it's not ok. Just becuase the whole skimmed tgp model relies on it doesn't make it right. however, submitters have to submit to them if they want any traffic at all because more and more webmasters are becomeing lazy or just don't have time to build upon a legal and properly done tgp model. it's a catch-22 that there is no real solution to.


--------

it's my opinion and that's that. If you people don't agree, then don't agree. but don't call me a hypocrite because I know what's right and wrong. I would still submit to skimmed tgp's. it's traffic, what choice would I have when there are only 10 hardlinked thumb tgps left that arent charging 500 dollars per listing. However, I would never, personally, use content I produced to do such a thing. if sponsors want to sit idly and let it happen to their content, then so be it, it's their choice to make and I appreciate them letting submitters use their content for such uses. it's still wrong though. This doesn't make me a hypocrite.

That IS pretty odd.. sounds like a sponsor that doesn't know very much and the rest of the people are just bandwagon jumpers. :2 cents:

Edit: Its funny reading further down the page that Greenguy doesn't understand how skimming works.. things that make you go hmmm.

Oh come on, I'm not stupid. I was using the paysite as comparison.

you haven't hit the MASSIVE pocket of cj traps then. 99 percent of skimming tgps fall into this category.


Start at sexocean.com and surf the trades for 3 hours and tell me your findings.

This is a very interesting debate. I don't have a defined opinion on this matter, but this specific situation brought some questions to my head.

First: let's say the traffic trading part is all cool, but this guy was loading viruses, which he never denied (he simply evaded an answer on that).

Second: Let's say we don't want to hurt people's feelings and we call it "spyware". Now, why somebody would want to install spyware in their surfers' computers? To make something good? :Graucho And back to the sponsor point of view, what if the installed spyware is the kind that steals signups? Then my content would be used not to promote my site, but to avoid that the surfer EVER signups to my site.

Third: Traffic costs money. Let's say a 100k thumb TGP gets 30,000 clicks to their trades per day, 900,000 a month. With very inexpensive GOOD traffic, that would be at least 3k per month, paid by sponsors content, with no reward at all

Fourth: If surfers click on my thumb is because they wanted to see my content, right? But then they see that the thumb with my content is just a blind, making him click another thumb or go to the new TGP where he was redirected. This way, the thumb TGP owner is actively working to steal traffic (hence a possibliity of sales which by the way means money for the TGP owner) from me at the same time he makes profit (see third point)

Fifth: why the TGP owner simply doesn't buy a couple sets and use only thumbs from those sets and everybody happy?

I had more question, but for now I think this is the more important aspects I could find

i think we're all getting off topic here.

from illegal use of content to right or wrongs of skimming thumbs


it's funny.



bottom line is. If you let an affiliate use ad materials to sell fords at the corner and he ended up selling a chevy every second customer, wouldn't you be quite upset


just becuase everyone skims sponsor thumbs doesn't make it legal.


I could care less if people stopped doing it anymore, i just know what I feel is right and wrong and know that if I ever produced content or paid for exclussive content that i would not allow it to be used for affiliates gain beyond making sales with me... that is just my opinion. Anyone care to prosecute me for it?

If you start in the crap heap you'll stay stuck in crap. There are plenty of clean, skimming thumb preview TGPs. Your figure of 99% is absolute BS.

From my signup page:

- Clean TGPs only - no consoles or anything illegal in the USA.
- Your TGP must have at least 50% to content, and you must trade with clean sites (no CJ feeders).


sexocean is a CJ feeder.

you're using very bad examples. doesn't seem like you really understand how skimming works...

I think most of you are arguing over the wrong thing - a thumbnail doesnt belong to the original owner of the photograph, so nothing was stolen - the tgp can do what ever he wants with the thumbnail he made.

http://www.out-law.com/php/page.php?...77&area=n ews

Also the point of a company going out of its way to attract tgp owners by building free hosted galleries for them to promote and them canning their account when they promote them the way the vast majority of tgp's do is just insane - if this is such an issue they should leave the tgp game altogether or get a new sales rep who knows what they are talking about.

The business practices that are "acceptable" by the industry as a community never cease to amaze me.

:thumbsup

Aww Elli, not you too! How can you compare skimming - a trading method that GROWS traffic and ultimately results in MORE clicks to the gallery even with skimming - with more questionable business practices?

Remember we are talking about tiny images here: 88x88 or 90x120. It's not like someone is using a full sized image and linking it to a completely different sponsor. When a click is skimmed it goes to another _TGP_, not another _sponsor_.

I know how skimming works. I made nothing but text cj sites when i first started in the biz.... and I'm using legit examples.

You can use skimming responsibly.. sending say every 8th-10th click to another site I don't think is terrible.

I actually prefer the new skimming where every x'th click by that same surfer (the script tracks it) goes to a trade.

Might as well put the freeloaders that view 5 or 6 galleries in a row to use.

you missed nor_the_image_owner :winkwink:

Say I pick up a dirty magazine. I see an ad "Call this number for hot anal phone sex." So I call it because I'm feeling like some anal phone sex. But I'm that magical caller who gets put through to another call center. They ask me what I want? So I have to choose again from possibly a different menu. I feel jerked around and confused.

How likely is this client to call that number again?

someone who knows what they're talking about.

OK, let's define thumbnail. Am I too offbase if I define it like a tiny image that is linked to an URI related to that image (usually the linked URI is the original image for which purpose the thumbnail is that image only that reduced)? Do you agree to that? If not tell me a better definition, otherwise I'd use any logo or image and as long as I make it smaller, it's legal :Graucho

Welcome to the year 2000 - only 4 more years to go and KatCash will be ready to start scouring the web for thumbs.

Just to make 100% sure that everyone understands how skimming works, I'll repeat my example here..

Load up www.picminer.com/tgp.html

Pick a thumb and click on that same thumb 5 times. Chances are you will see the gallery 3-4 times, but the other times you will be 'jerked' to a trade.

Trades are other TGPs. Traffic is never skimmed to another sponsor. You will only get the gallery, or another TGP.

This method of trading is very effective at growing sites. It is relatively easy to grow a skimming site to 50k without needing much (or any) feeder traffic... you just need to find the right trades. To grow a skimfree site to the same size would take a lot of time and expensive feeder traffic.

Remember, since skimming is now the norm for TGPs, surfers are accustomed to seeing other trades occasionally. Even new surfers will quickly work it out.

then maybe they won't go back to the tgp

or, they'll just close the new browser that popped up with the link trade and click another gallery with a more likely chance(in some cases) of actually going to a gallery.