Thumb TPGs vs Link TGPs - which do you prefer?
 

From a surfer persepctive - if you are visiting a TGP or MGP do you prefer the thumb preview style or traditional link style?

This is for a moviepost so surfers are expecting longer load times etc.

Personally I like thumb previews better.

Thumb preview all the way. Bandwidth is cheaper, consumer links are faster. Why would a surfer with cable or DSL want to spend time repeatedly clicking on text descriptions that often lead to girls he is not interested in?

As a surfer, I prefer thumbs, sure. But as a webmaster, HELL NO! Unfortunately having a thumb preview makes it so that only the webmasters who have the hottest girls on their galleries (which often means the most expensive content) get alot of traffic and those who buy cheaper content don't get much. That's pretty bad because it means webmasters have to give away paysite quality pics to leeching surfers for free, giving them just one more reason NOT to buy. At least if a surfer clicks my text link and my girl is not so hot, maybe he'll think the the girl in my ads IS hot and he'll get his bandwidth eating ass the hell off my gallery and onto my sponsor. :thumbsup

tootie - when you say 'webmaster' you mean someone who builds galleries, rather than someone who runs a TGP...?

most do both

Agreed, I find sometimes I have a better chance of getting listed at my own tgp.

thanks for the input - I guess you favor thumb tgps eh Sleazy LOL

Does anyone prefer link style?

What about having a description under the thumb preview - is that needed or is that overkill?

How large do you like the thumb previews small or large?

perhaps some fresh thoughts on this today?

Thumbs all round.

From the surfers point of view - they can see which galleries interest them.

From the webmasters view - they get less useless clicks to galleries.

From the TGP owners view - increases the chances of better galleries from webmasters to get the click throughs and bookmark traffic from surfers.

You list my gallerys, I'll list yours here
http://www.bubbashouse.net/TGP/index.html
[email protected]

Lots of thumbs are great cos you can hotlink em from terra

I have no idea which is best because I'm still using links. But I think there is a fair bit of myth-building going on...

Some thumb galleries use "regular" thumbs that show a complete pic from the gallery. But the majority are cropped to the girl's face (sometimes her tits, butt or whatever). Sure that tells you a little about the model, but contrary to what some of you are suggesting, it tells you less about what the whole gallery is going to show than a reasonable description does.

For relatively few galleries you are also talking a lot more bandwidth and therefore a slower loading page.

I'm building a thumb TGP right now to test, but meanwhile I'm sceptical this may be one of those "cool" things webmasters tend to like more than surfers do.

:1orglaugh

Me too until recently when I rejected my own galleries and put up sponsor hosted ones.

but when adult webmasters are surfing porn in their leisure time and they prefer thumb tgps does that still make their opinion biased?

Wait until you get done, you'll be suprised at the overall productivity that a thumb tgp creates as compared to a text tgp.

:2 cents:

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

If you rely on selling gallery spots, then thumb links are probably the way to go. You pick up a lot of bookmarkers (freeloaders) looking to get in and out quick. Drives up traffic numbers.

If you rely on the TGP making money off surfers and not other webmasters, text links are good because they are not getting exactly what they want when they want it...... Making them more inclined to buy.

...although high productivity often doesn't equate to $$$. Another problem can be that the higher productivity goes up on my own site, the lower it falls on trade partner sites.

The best balance I found to date is an index page with thumbs to categories and then straight text links on the category pages. That pulls around 400%. If thumbs-only does better, of course I shall be happy. Time will tell.