Hey everyone, Wanted a quick opinion before I spend a few hours of my life sorting a gallery page out!
Does anyone still use Free Hosted Gallerys?? If you do how well do they convert for you? I know I tried getting into this before and didn’t get a whole lot of luck myself but I didn’t go full steam ahead at the time…
Your thoughts on a postcard if you will… (or just a reply will do)
Thanks Dan
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
No, not seeing much people using it anymore. I think it’s a bit difficult now with Google and unique content. The larger still surviving TGPs and gallery sites host their own content.
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
If you are doing a blog, it doesn’t hurt to put a link to both the tour and to a Sponsor’s free hosted gallery if there is one available for the scene you are blogging about. Do a final call to action line like: Check Out The Gallery and then go Download the Video.
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
I do use them but I never actually see our affiliates using them. I just think they are super convenient to promote a certain scene. This is partially based on some problems with the interface on our membership sites though.
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
I used to think this was a good idea, but I’ve had a few sponsors crap out on these. Some sites were bought by another program and all the deep linking I had done was dead, I had to go through my jump script and change dozen upon dozens of links. Another couple programs just dropped the FHG deep links altogether because they weren’t selling and another couple of sites left a program and again I was left changing dozens of links that no longer existed.
If you’re going to do it, make sure you’re using a jump script. But I don’t bother deep linking much anymore. Everyone thought it was a good thing, but it didn’t seem to pan out.
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
mmm… good point~! I’ve been doing feed posts for a sponsor so using the tour and gallery links has become “standard” in the work I’m doing, and I didn’t think about the loss of deep links when a program is absorbed into another one.
So is this the type of Jump Script you’re referencing? And it’d have to be updated every time you added a new link?
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
I don’t know the specifics of how the jump script works. If you remember a Brit named Simon who ran a bunch of twink sites, he did it for me.
However, it works like this:
So, let’s take Men Over 30 as an example because I promoted them heavily for a long time. I ended up having 80 or 100 or so deep links to specific scene page in my jump script and I also had various other tour links like revshare or PPS or no trials.
When the site was absorbed by Buddy Profits, the deep links no longer worked, so I had to open each of those 80 to 100 deep links in my jump script and input a generic tour code because with the new sponsor there was no deep-link option. (I don’t remember if the then defunct deep links actually went to the site or just didn’t work.)
Having to change 80 links in the jump script was a lot easier than having to open up 80 blog posts and changing several jump script ID numbers. But now I’m stuck with hundreds of links all over my blogs that say, “Watch the free video of John sucking Mark’s big dick.” Bec: remember back when I was starting my AVS hub and you gave me shit for “click here for a preview” but just sent them to the join page? So the call to actions bug me, but I have better ways to spend my time, so I’m not fixing them.
After experiencing this with three or four different sites or programs, I gave up on deep linking. I think I only use them on MEN.com posts.
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
Yes, I remember. I said to actually give them a bigger picture to see first before sending them to the tour …and it paid off $$$$ - literally. But I think what you’re calling a jump script is also what I already use where I have TALS set up. (an Affiliate Link System)
I create links that “hide” the actual url, and if need be, I can edit the link and send it to another place entirely. That auto updates that link in every instance on every site I have it on. TALS (originally created and sold by bigdotmedia) isn’t available now, but Thirsty Affiliates would be a close second. (That link is an example of what I create with TALS.)
I totally get the pain in trying to clean up 10 years of old crap off your websites. I’m at the point where anything that stopped making money due to hacks and/or shitloads of crappy links is not being renewed and I’m concentrating now on a couple newer sites that I have the TALS links system, Wordfence security, with a responsive design, and I’m just putting all the porn flavors (niches) onto one or two blogs. It’s not a new idea, but if something changes in the future, I can probably take care of it in under an hour regarding mega site links, and probably handle any site attacks or upgrades in a matter of minutes.
And using InfiniteWP just saves me more time overall. I keep up to date with any and all updates for the WordPress, plugins and themes in a matter of a few minutes. I soooo wish I’d had a program like that when I first got started with blogs. Goddess knows I spent a lot of time on the search engines trying to find something that would let me control all of the blogs from one panel.
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
I use Affiliate Ninja for WordPress… would that be the jump script yes or is it something differant?
Re: Use of Free Hosted Gallerys
If you are talking about Ninja Affiliate that Pawan wrote … yes. It functions pretty much the same, with some different features. That was originally released under MaxBlogPress with a bunch of other scripts he created. Some of us tried it out, but found it to be pretty intense with server loads and eventually moved onto lighter scripts. I don’t know if he has re-written and improved on his scripts or not. He has redesigned his site, so maybe that’s a good indication he’s staying on top of his products.
There is a post on WPMayor, it’s a year old, but it does show most of the better affiliate link management scripts/plugins.