similarity between your own sites: good or not?

Some of my sites share a similar theme: smooth (shaved) guys; smooth muscular men, and muscular men of any type. There are other crossovers, too. Should I try to make each site look as completely different than the others? (In all ways, including the design). Of course, I'll have links to my other sites on most all of my sites.

For example, I have a WP theme I use for all of them, but I'm trying to use different styles, colors.... Still you can tell they are sort of related. Not sure if this is a plus or minus.

Also one part of my sites, especially the shaved guy site, is writing posts on related topics: how to, tips on shaving, skin care, health tips, not to mention writing about how this affects how hot a guy looks. I'm finding I could easily put some of this on my other sites. They're pretty involved articles, are just what they are, so rewriting them to look different would look silly.

I wonder if any similarities would be annoying (or good). Like you've seen one, you've seen them all disappointing feeling, even though the visual content (pics, trailer clips) would be different. (But then, even some of those could be used on both sites.) What do you think?

I think it depends on the type of site, free site, paysite, tgp gallery, etc, etc and also how those sites are getting traffic.

For example, free sites and galleries which are submitted to the same traffic sources, can quickly become stale in the eyes of the surfer so switching things up a little is definitely a good thing, plus some link list and TGP owners im noticing these days, do not like to see the same template styles being submitted again and again.

When it comes to paysites and AVS/AEN sites, i dont really think it matters when it comes to the design elements as much as it does the content, the chances are for example, you could have 10 niche paysites, ebony, asian, white guys, twinks, jocks, bears, uncut guys, military guys, tattooed men and solo guys and you could use the exact same page layout on all of them as a surfer who is interested in black guys, probably isnt going to click on a link taking him to a site featuring white guys and a surfer looking at twink sites, isnt going to be looking at a site featuring bears, so long as the content matches the niche on paysites, design elements can be exact replicas of each other.

Ultimately, rather than design element, concern yourself more with content, that is what will sell a membership, get a bookmark surfer and get your site recognized in the eye of the surfer just so long as the design aspect isnt confusing.

For example, if you want to use your shaving articles on other niche blogs, id look at including them on solo guy or twink related blogs, maybe even an ebony or mature guy blog, that kind of content is somewhat interchangable between those niches and the added benefit is, if you change specific keywords in your blog post, you are going to be able to attract a lot more niche specific traffic also :)

One other thing to remember, that isnt really applicable to you as yet, is that affiliates are the ones who you have to please when it comes to site design, surfers will buy anything so long as the models in use are hot, affiliates are the ones you need to constantly appease, they think they know what surfers want but in reality, they really dont, do a good job of keeping them passified and you have already won more than half the battle.

Regards,

Lee

Thanks, Lee. BTW, my sites are free blogs. Some of the sites will promote the some of the same companies, among others. But the same exact content (specific shoots of particular models, videos) will be on one site and not the others, or will not be posted the same day/week on all sites. If the latter, different shots will be used for each site to promote the same video, and the description will be worded differently.

Well I have 3 crossdresser/sissy sites, plus some shemale sites. All of them use the same theme and color. A few I changed the color. I figure the traffic I get to one will never see the others so it makes no difference.

I also even copy the same post to each one. I know many say duplicate content on sites is a no no. But I see no penalties from google yet. In fact they all can be found on the first or second page of google for the same key words. So I say don't worry about it.

I agree that it depends on the type of sites you're talking about.

Generally it's not a good idea to have a bunch of sites that are the same on a program with multiple paysites.

if you have blogs with different content that are cross linked - or blogs that aren't cross linked by are getting traffic from the same sources - i'd use different designs rather than similar ones.

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Originally Posted by basschick

if you have blogs with different content that are cross linked - or blogs that aren't cross linked by are getting traffic from the same sources - i'd use different designs rather than similar ones.

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That I'll do. Thanks, also to everyone else. I'd like to put the sites up for critique here when it comes time...but that won't be for a quite awhile. :shades:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by basschick

if you have blogs with different content that are cross linked - or blogs that aren't cross linked by are getting traffic from the same sources - i'd use different designs rather than similar ones.

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I disagree to some extent, the blogs i have using Blogs Organizer all use the EXACT same template, just with different color schemes and the amount of traffic they get from the places i submit them to really hasnt altered between the first 1 i submitted and the last 1 i submitted, they all get a boost of initial traffic on submission and slowly that traffic level drops over the course of a month to a sustained level of hits each and every day.

I really do not think that when it comes to blogs and free sites, the design really matters a whole lot, if it did, all those adult Wordpress blogs would not be using the same themes.

Regards,

Lee