What the hell is going on?
 

It's not very often that I ask for help on GFY.
However, this is driving me insane.

http://www.hqbang.com

I have been working on my TGP day in and day out, but I just can't seem to get a hold of it.
My traffic seems to hover somewhere around 6k nowadays and I just can't grow it. However, that is not the problem.
The productivity is very, very, very poor. Even though quite a few of my traders say I have decent prod (200-300) I'm just not getting any real good returns, all the high returns I have always have low prod, and the small trades that I grow initially have good prod, but as I grow them the prod decreases and the return decreases.
I can't find one trade to return anything more than 95% to me.

I'm getting extremely frustrated.
Everytime I try to grow a trade, it doesn't keep up (which I am assuming is because they are returning based on prod).

Just checked my stats.
0.71 Prod.!!!!!

What is causing this?
I spent all day yesterday tweaking my templates for maximum prod, and doing everything I can.
As far as I can tell, the thumbs are good and the layout is clean and simple.
I can't think of one reason why I would have such low prod.

Garett has been very helpful to me so far, and I thank him for every second of his help, but I don't know what's going on.

I'm not talking about internal prod (even though that is the same) I'm talking about incoming prod.
This is driving me crazy.

Sorry if I'm not making any sense. I'm tired and very frustrated!

Someone, help me out. I have no idea why this is happening!
I'm not one to beg. But times call for it.

I'm no helpless noob, I did all the research I could, asked questioned and learned a lot. I'm still learning a lot. This is just pissing me off to no end.

I would really appreciate any comment/suggestions that you may have. You can also contact me on icq @97400700

The site is http://www.hqbang.com

Thank You.

Weird, I see your skim is yet pretty high, (which is good for bookmarkers, but not for trades), yet I went to a trade on each of the first 6 clicks I made. They may have been starving... but, the point is, it is hard to get people to stay and click if they are treated like you don't want them there.

Thumb TGPs are a dime a dozen now days, and though you have a clean layout, maybe it is too clean... nothing really there that says "I want to stay and / or come back to this site". Not insulting, just giving my opinion.

I think I would all ditch all the tittie and ab shots and replace them w/ faces.

Finally, check your trades... may be getting hitbotted.

boring? same ole same ole.:2 cents:

Your site loads really slowly for me ......perhaps you could optimize your images, use browser compression, or something else?

click on a few of your thumbs, you will see why.

well - when we trade with you before - your prod been halfdead.

your thumbs - very big - size in kb i mean

etc.

If I cant see a few back to back gallerys and I leave im sure others do the same.

Thank you for your sound advice, I really appreciate it!
The skim is incremental as you go down the page from 90%-60%. I'm not sure why you would go to trades everytime you clicked. I have only 2 forces setup now, and they are only of 10/hour each, so there would be no reason you should get booted to trades everytime. I will have to investigate this.

It is true that it is clean layout, maybe too-clean in fact. I have thought of hiring a designer upon multimple occassions, but have opted not to everytime. The reason I do this is because there are quite a few dialup users out there, and usually closing a page outweighs waiting for it, in these kind of cases imo. It is true that it heavily reduces the orignality and uniqueness of the site, and that very well may be a reason for low bookmark traffic. However, I am still undecided as far as going with a designer.

As far as the thumbs, a few of my partners and I have all noticed that "action-thumbs" as I like to call them, get more clicks. I have found that face thumbs usually bore the surfer unless it is a very hot girl. Then again, who am I to say what does good? :(

I will be checking my trades, but because I am using a free script TTT (eventually going to purchase TM3) I am limited on the anti-cheat features. This very well may be the case, and If so then I am in-debted to you. :)

I appreciate your advice Lycanthrope, thank you.

Now this is bizzare.
I see quite a few posts about not being directed to galleries, but trades instead.
I will have to investigate this...
Thank you all for this note.

Unfortunatly my server does not support GZip compression, however I could compress my thumbs more....
Thank you for the advice.

yah

As far as the page loading slow, does anyone have any suggestions for a decent thumb size?
Right now most are between 3k-6k which I thought was an acceptable size. I may be wrong.

this is an adult webmaster board. i recommend getting used to these types of topics as they may popup once or twice a day here.

hm

3.5kb - it TOO much for these thumbs size

yea

Depends how many you have....you need to count total pagesize.

However, for a quick example, I took one of your thumbnails, put it in Fireworks and came out with an image half the size, without any noticeable difference to the human eye. This means you could cut your pagesize in half easily =)

What would be a reasonable JPEG Compression % (I'm using Comus) in your opinion?
Thank you

This should be fixed now.
Thanks :)

hm

dont have idea - never use it.

75% enought in usual scripts.

Thank you for the advice :)

quick update
I made a couple changes that you guys have informed me about, and prod is increasing slowly. :thumbsup

You know, traffic trading is a lot more complicating than most newbies think :2 cents:
No wonder there is no such thing as a traffic trading tutorial....:winkwink:

Thanks for your help so far guys :)