Thumb preview sites vs text sites
 

I posted it on my board the other day and it gathered some nice input, let's see how GFY views this.

While the initial argument for running thumb sites was that they grew a lot quicker than text sites, I am unsure about this still holding water. With every webmaster and his mother running thumb sites, you simply no longer hold an advantage, compared to your trades.

Now, many have argued that thumb site traffic converts poorer that text site traffic. While I do not have a 100% explanation to this, I can provide some speculation and somewhat qualified opinions.

First things first. Put it any way you want, there's no way in hell a thumb site would ever pull in the same amount of search engine traffic that a text site would. Search engines like text, not pictures.

While this directly affects conversions, the significant lack of search engine traffic in the "trading circle", meaning your trades get just as little SE traffic as you do, make for very little influx of fresh traffic. In return this leads to the traffic getting jerked, recyled and inbred a lot more. Kind of logical that it starts buying less, eh?

Aside from the conversion issue, it also affects the sites in the circle in another way. As I've stated on previous occasions, trading traffic is a zero-sum game. Meaning what you gain, another will lose. Well, when it came to text sites, this wasn't so obvious, since every site had its fair share of fresh traffic coming in, mainly from search engines. When it comes to thumb sites, this is no longer the case. So, with new sites popping up every day, the circle of sites trading with each other expands more and more every day. Meaning the spread gets thinner and the traffic shittier, more sites will lose at the same time as a few will gain.

Another thing that I suspec has contributed to poor conversions is the fact that the surfer actually gets spoiled with choices. Of course, a text site will offer more links, compared to a thumb site. But it will also offer more excitement to the surfer, as it's really not always clear what the gallery offers. A picture says a thousand words, therfore a good thumb will get clicked a lot while a shitty one not at all. The surfer now has active choices to make, instead of "guessing" choices, when it comes to a text site. So it's much easier to locate what he wants, rub one out and leave. Whereas with a text site, the links oftentimes tend to get clicked sequentially, the surfer searching for something to get him off. Much easier to actually get hot on a paysite and join. The thumbs also remove the curiousity aspect. And help you burn more bandwidth, of course. :)

I'm not saying everyone should switch back to text sites now. Although I'd love to see that. But I think you should keep the above in mind. Might help you increase your profits and decrease your costs quite nicely. :)

I for one am gonna set up a few niche thumb sites, for starters, after which I will be focusing on getting back to running text sites. Should happen in about a month or so.

Do you really think GFY users can comprehend a post like t his? Come on

As long as they can comprehend money and profit, they can comprehend a post like this. All it takes is will. :)

just found this thread on second page with 0 reply about his thoughts, so lets bump it to test GFY users once again.

You expecting a different result ?

It IS a great post.

:thumbsup

theres the 3rd option which you're not talking about and which I think
its the most convenient for both the webmasters and surfers.
That is mixed tgp, thumb/text plus alt,title tags for thumbs which
will still be picked up by SEs.

Cant understand why more TGPs dont do this.

They don't use descriptions in ALT Tag because the sponsors don't always provide descriptions with the hosted galleries ;)

Anyway, it is a good post and I share the view from DamageX. I just wonder what future will be. What will the next big thing be as now it seems obvious the thumbs sites are everywhere and everyone can create one in less than a day :/

I can't say why...becasue I can't articulate the reason...but sites that are 100% thumbs bore my eyes.

Damagex
Interesting post, rare on here these days.

The bookshop owner says - Those without the ability to pay stand flicking through the picture books.

nice post. I vote for mixed. perhaps there is a way to test which sites one converts best with a tn sell vs. a text upsell. Also a factor is when you get that organic seo traffic are you getting the traffic that converts? some traffic like "free pic..yada yada" can be real crappy traffic even if you get it for free from the se's.

I do this on my MGP and the se's love me :)

Yep, I'm down with that.

STFOO noob

Alt tags really don't add that much more SE traffic.. Honestly about the only SE traffic they might add is "image.search" traffic. I run Alt tags on all my sites mainly because I run both thumb and text pages. And the thumb pages barely pick up any SE traffic compared to the text pages.

you might not get a lot of traffic for the alt keywords
but you get ranked better for the text you have on the site if you
have alts.

Ok but did you see any text tgp or mgp growing from nothing to ( for example ) 50k unique day this year or last year? ( i'm not talking about this multi cats tgps ).

Nope. Meaning the market for it is currently underfed. :Graucho

i do mixed.. just looks better with both text.

Last couple of days I've been brainstorming a particular layout. I decided to try something different because all tgp/mgp all pretty much have the same layout & similarities, so I ended up with creating something very unique.

Unfortunately, I think eventually there will be people who copy the layout :mad:

But for se purposes, text is 100% the way to go.
the hun is all text & he has boatloads of traffic from various sources, but mostly bookmarkers, & that means surfers like the text. well, at least hun surfers do.

Truly.



2hp

bump for a great post

mixed is the way to go. :)

Nice thread...

Still not sure about that. Depends on your layout though, I suppose.

Let's see if GFY is asleep. :)

Why is everybody saying this is brilliant when it is kicking in an open door and something every person should know?

The only brilliance here is that DamageX dares to follow his vision.

Thumb and text TGP
 

This TGP has got thumbs with text - http://thumbrecon.com/tgp/index.php
Don't know how much SE traffic he gets though, since there not full descriptions.

Don't overestimate the aggregated thinking power of GFY.

Thing is, brilliant or not, it's neither new nor revolutionizing. However, it's NOT common practice (running text sites i.e.). So everyone here KNOWS text sites make more money. But no one dares start them again, because THEY WILL LOSE TRAFFIC. Or at least that's what they think.

Thing is, they don't realize that traffic doesn't always equal profits and having lower costs will help make their business more flexible. So everyone is waiting for the next guy to start a text site, so another one can follow suit, so they can follow suit eventually.

It was the same thing with thumb sites. First people were scared about the (then) huge hosting costs, until they realized the profits greatly outweighed the costs. Then more and more people started running thmb sites, then me and other site builders stopped growing text sites because it wasn't viable anymore, which in turn helped accelerate the process. What people never realized was that when I, and other builders, chose to focus on thumb sites, it wasn't because they made more money. It was because they were easier to grow and we only provided the traffic growing service to clients, not the sales service. The result, in public, was that everyone started thinking "hey, if the pros do it, then they must know something!" Again, not saying thumb sites don't make money, they do. But this whole industry followed the thumb site craze like sheep and many people today are struggling to make a buck because of it. And what's even worse, they don't have the brains or the cojones to break away from this downward leading spiral, because THEY'LL LOSE TRAFFIC. :1orglaugh

I went with thumbs

Very well put. I aggree with that as a part time surfer myself :)

Yeah i've noticed this aswell. Harldly any se traffic to the main page because of the alt tags, but I do get plenty of image searches.

thumbs are good as long as the page has enough text!

Yeah i've seen the hun on a few pretty competitive se spots for certain niches. Didn't last long though ofcourse.

I personally think it helps a bit more then alt tags. If he maybe had 'pictures', 'movies' or 'gallery' beside it, i'm sure it would help a lot more with se hits.

That's not correct, as Search Engines do not index the WHOLE page, but instead the top part. Usually the sites that DO have text below the thumb tables, it doesn't really help much as it's not being indexed by search engines. If you flipped it and put the text on top and thumbs on the bottom, then it would be more helpful, but then again, people would start complaining about their prod and not take this route.

You have a board now?

I dont think he's even trying, as he gets more than enough traffic by the word of mouth.

For all the submissions he gets, it would rock if he required people to link back using a text link instead of the small buttons.

Yes, I do. ICQ me if you want to stop by, don't wanna offend GFY by posting the URL here.

Just watch out for CraK and his dancing bananas... :Oh crap :1orglaugh

Dancing bananas are awesome :winkwink:

damn right :thumbsup

There are some smart people here as well :winkwink:

GREAT stuff!!!
Informative etc, yet not ultimate.
I am pretty new at all this, and have a Web Site etc, based in Norway. (Yeah, I know... Norway!)
Anyway, Norway's capital, Oslo has an entire population of nearly 500,000 people, meaning that any Web Site over here is going to be under ridiculous percentage results regardless of what you do.

I mean, to make money over here, you have to sell this stuff just as a regular Hot-Dog stand etc, and that's NOT gonna happen!

At the same time, I do sit in a unique situation, whereby I run the erotic fair over here, known as Sexhibition, and hence I have stacks of traffic compared to anything else over here!

The strange thing is, that the results over here are real weird, and may be useable to see a bit clearer what is happening and how people work.

My Web Site offers all sorts of services, ranging from SMS-Chat, MMS Downloads, TeleSEX, TeleCHAT, Members Galleries, Forums, Web-Shop and recently Porn-Stream.
So from all those services it is easy to see what people want etc, and see how each is being presented, and hence compare them.

The Porn Stream is pretty new, and things take time here, but the sales are really SLOW!!!
Whereas the SMS stuff is super great, and the Telephone stuff (the sex one).
Members Galleries too does great!

But the porn-stream and MMS is really bad at the moment.

I have built the entire Site myself from scratch, and from not knowing dick to actually getting things online is for me a huge achievement.

But, perhaps I might change the Streaming presentation as a result of this article!
I'll let you know what happens...
Thanks again.

yep this are my thougths. :thumbsup

hmm
 

Yeah, I heard this too... I gotta get some Meta Tags in place...

Only someone full of self-doubt and uncertainty post stuff like this :1orglaugh

Unfortunate when people expose their weaknesses on message boards

DamageX, awesome post, man.

Thanks Gene. :)

Awesome post...

I tend to agree with you. However, 95% of the people in the business don't really know what they're doing and that's what makes the TGPs "suck".. Unless you're one of the "big guys", you'll only have a succesful text TGP if you write "good" text (along with content the surfer actually wants to see). What words do the surfers "like" and makes them click more? (i.e. do they click more on links that use the word pussy, cu nt, twat or???) What text gets them turned on enough to click on more links? Is the text vague enough that they HAVE to click to see what's there?

Now apply that to thumb TGPs. Almost every one I look at has thumbs that shows practically all the action or clear shots of the girl so the surfer knows who she is. So if they've already seen that gallery or that girl, there's no reason to click. Now if you were to think "tease" and be "vague" when you create your thumbs, you'd probably get more clicks. But even with that you need to test it.. Does the surfer click on more of the ass shot thumbs? face shot? pentration shots????

Having said that, I've only ever run text TGPs. I'm about to try a thumb one though so we'll see how I make out with it.

If you're good at text sites, why dabble into thumb sites? If I were you I'd rather keep building more text sites. :winkwink: