What size images on a Hosted Gallery?
 

I've just been having a look around our competition's FHG's and noticed in general that many keep the image sizes pretty small; for example nubiles typically use 762x507

We always keep the images on our Hosted Gals at the size they are in members area (1752x1220 or larger) - theory being if a surfer looks at a gallery he is more likely to be swayed by seeing them full size then cut down versions.

Feedback from members shows they like big images.

For example a typical TeenDreams Hosted Gallery: http://www.teendreams.com/tgp/20/julia/

What do you think, are we wasting bandwidth, or do you think its better to keep the Hi-resolution images?

the big images do look nice. Maybe try doing a test to see if it appears to make a significant difference in conversions.

we use 1200hx1024w on our FHG's

yeah, the big pictures look way better

You don't really need that big pictures. Keep in mind that you have a selling point in telling the surfer he can get access to the fullsize hq pics in the members area.
Most surfers have 1280x1024 anyway, so something like 600x800/800x600 and like 60-70kb should work just as well as anything bigger - and save you a lot of bw.

Great point. We still need to just bait the surfer and get them to join the site. If we give the farm away then there is no need to join a site.

Exactly! Make it a selling point that those are sample images and the hi-res, high quality images are available only in the memebrs area of the site.

600x500 maximums with something on it talking about how much bigger they are in the members area.