I’m interested in learning more and testing how TGP galleries work using other people submitting their galleries… the standard sort of TGP setup.
Could somone explain real brief and simple so I can understand? What’s the basics for running a TGP and accepting / trading submissions?
For example, do you have to submit to others or would you just accept submissions?
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
The TGPs that accept submissions charge a monthly fee to submitters for a partner account which allows them to post a limited number of galleries per day. Some TGPs also offer free partner accounts.
Each gallery submitted to your TGP must contain a reciprocal link to your site.
As the TGP owner, you can display your own fhg’s and banners from sponsors alongside the submitted galleries.
Your site will grow in traffic by trading with other TGPs via a trade script. And you’ll also get a small amount of incoming traffic from the reciprocal links in the submitted galleries.
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
TGPs have changed over the years too. It used to be that TGP sites relied on gallery submitters for fresh content daily, which is what brought the surfers back. They made money mainly on banners/links on the TGP site and listing their own galleries.
Then there was a move to partner submits only. This was caused by so many regular submitters removing galleries or redirecting clicks.
Then FHGs became common so now, most TGP sites load up with FHGs and will reluctantly accept free partner submits only, or will charge for a submitter pass.
As for trades, TGPs do this in many forms through trade scripts. You can setup a trade script to only run trades from a “toplist” (surfers must specifically click on the other site’s name to go to it), but not many do that as it doesn’t grow traffic that fast. Most are setup to redirect the surfer after so many clicks, like the first two thumb clicks actually go to the gallery, while the 3rd goes to a trade partner’s TGP site instead. The thoughts here are that if the surfer doesn’t join and make money right away, trade him to a different site and maybe the surfer that you get back from that other site’s trade will join a paysite via your links instead.
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
The HARD part is trading traffic. That is an art and a science all in itself.
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
I see, thanks for the explenation! Simon also explained it a bit to me on ICQ.
So it’s 2 very different things.
From the sound of it, accepting submitters won’t give you much traffic compared to trading for traffic? or?
Does TGPX include a traffic trading function or would you have to get another script to deal with that?
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
accepting submitters won’t send that much traffic, but it will give you fresh content every day, and that equals more return traffic. also, the variety of gallery page designs seem to keep more surfers, as does offering content that isn’t the same FHGs all the other tgps offer.
the perfect solution is to offer your own exclusive galleries in addition to listing FHGs, and to use lots of different templates. of course, this is bandwidth intensive, but it does keep checking galleries out of the equation. by the time i dropped by tgp, we were spending hours every day editing and deleting submitted galleries.
btw, there are some tgps out there that don’t skim any traffic at all to trades. they do have toplists, and they do push traffic back and forth, but those tgps tend to be aiming at converting fresh search engine surfers into returning regulars. these sites grow more slowly than the ones using skims to trade, but they’re steadier, too.
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
[QUOTE=gaydemon;61930]
Does TGPX include a traffic trading function or would you have to get another script to deal with that?[/QUOTE]
You would need another script. Jeremy is actually making one and it’s in beta right now.
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
Bjorn, I highly recommend you to use Smart Thumbs (content management) together with Trade pulse (trade script). This combination will save you a lot of time and effort plus the trade script is the best one out there atm.
[QUOTE=basschick;61931]
the perfect solution is to offer your own exclusive galleries in addition to listing FHGs, and to use lots of different templates. [/QUOTE]
This does only make sense if you don’t trade a lot of traffic. If you have very good content which is exclusive or very up to date and your trade partner don’t have such nice content then your outgoing prod will suck. You need to find a good balance between incoming prod (from your trades on your site) and outgoing prod (how much your surfers click around on your trade partner’s site).
If you use FHG’s with frequent updates plus some submitted galleries you should do well, if you use content that is high end and which is exclusive your site won’t grow by trades but more by bookmarkers. You can and should mix some custom galleries into your pool of course but not too many. You’ll need a lot of SE traffic for this strategy. I had to drop some trades lately because one webmaster was switching to exclusive content only and his outgoing prod was aweful after that.
If you use old FHG’s only your trade partners will oversend you a lot but your internal prod will suck. it’s all about the balance of content and finding good trade partners that fit to your site and have quality traffic.
Growing TGP’s from scratch is pretty hard these days but you have quite a lot traffic to feed it on gaydemon so you should be able to grow your site by trading.
Btw. if you wanna accept submissions you should charge a little fee for partner accounts because you will make a lot less money from FHG’s (obviously). Traffic from recips is pretty low these days…
If you only use FHG’s you’ll need to focus on updates.
I hope this helps 
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
Btw. if you need a skilled JV partner for growing a TGP you know where to find me
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
I would like to refer you back to my thread on the neverending blog post collage. I realize that blogs and TGPs (and freesites) are completely different models. But if surfers seem to prefer the neverending collage over clicking thumbnails to get larger images, is it not possible that a part of the TGPs demise as an effective sales tool is because of the requirement to click thumbnails several times on one gallery to see all of the pictures? Certain the emergence of tube sites had a greater impact on TGPs, but I’m sure the blog format has as well.
Add to that that a great deal of what is available on TGPs in sponsor FHGs, and I wouldn’t waste my time with them.
And Bjorn, if you’re disappointed with the offerings of submitters to your link list, wait until you see what you get from TGP submitters. I ran a TGP for a few months and got out … for me, it was a huge waste of time.
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
Thanks again for all the info.
I can’t see myself accepting submissions, it would be to build up more traffic really that’s different from other traffic I have. But it does seem very complicated so I might just try it on a small site and see how it goes.
Re: Can someone explain TPGs (brief version…)
The problem is that you won’t get enough traffic from recips. Assuming your submitters would add 4 recips to each gallery (including yours) and each recip would have a CR of 0,2% (which I think is realistic unless you use blinky buttons with explicit stuff on them) then you would receive 10 clicks from a 5k gallery. 100 active galleries with that amount of traffic would mean 1000 clicks. That’s a waste of time, with 1000 clicks per day you can’t grow a TGP, you’ll need 5-10k of non-traded traffic to reach a size of e.g. 30-40k by trading.
Recips used to help a lot to climb up the google SERP’s because of hundreds of backlinks but lately that model doesn’t work very well anymore, I have a shemale TGP where I accept galleries and it has a database of about 5k submitted galleries but is only about 3k per day in total.
The problem is that most big TGP’s don’t accept (unpaid) submissions anymore so traffic on those galleries is very low and mostly noobs are submitting them so 50% of those galleries are crap and use old content so it won’t even help your internal prod.