Are TGPs on the way out?

Hey guys,

I'm noticing a startling number of posts on other boards asking about AVS sites and if they're still in business and can a webmaster still make money using them. Board Tracker picks up at least one of these posts every day on a board somewhere. I'm just wondering what all the interest is about suddenly and the only thing I can come up with is the love affair with TGP free porn is waning.

TGPs have always had a reputation of lots of traffic and few sales, but I'm wondering if the sales are getting even smaller and all the prep and submitting work isn't worth it.

So what do you think, are TGPs dying? If so, what's going to replace them as the next big trend?

Will you miss TGPs if they're disappearing?

Cheers
Dzinerbear

I don't think they are, and if they are then good. It's about time.

If sales are winding down I don't see why anyone should even be surprised. They give the farm away and then wonder why nobody's buying? :boo:

And what's with all the free content sponsors are giving away? Which a lot of times even includes cumshots!!!! :nerd:

I've seen stuff on TGPs that just make my head shake.

once, I saw a complete full length scene, broken down into 20-1 minnute clips and posted in four consecutive galleries.

Just plain dumb.

Going to a TGP will generally give out all the jackoff material the average surfer needs, and why bother to buy after that?

I tried in vain for months to make TGP galleries turn any kind of useful sales, but for the most part, the traffic to the galleries was huge, the traffic to my sponsor was tepid and the sales were abysmal. And rebills were much lower than for free and AVS sites.

so... I won't cry to see them go.

psting galleries to tgps can make fine sales - it's just a different type of marketing. a lot of people have trouble understanding that gallery content and text are more guerrilla marketing than free or avs sites marketing. you need to give 'em good pics, not too many, and the text has to feel immediate - brief, to the point, keyword rich. also the text should be very easy to see, and accurate.

of course, the guys who put up 20 minutes of video or 35 pics on one gallery are not exactly knowledgeable professional posters. they are people who are gonna have a big bandwidth bill ;)

At one point, TGP's were the shit for people looking for specific niche sites that weren't in abundance on the internet. As far as vanilla porn, I've never looked at any non-fetish/non-niche TGP for more than a minute, ever.
With really unique content, it didn't matter if your surfer jerked off to the TGP pics. He'd go "finally i found what gets me hot" and if he didn't buy a membership right away, he would bookmark the tgp, and eventually give in.

As a preview to something hot that the surfer has been looking for and not finding, TGP works great. So of course TGP will be less popular and make less sales as it becomes easier and easier for people to find the wierd shit that turns them on without digging up a paysite or a credit card.

One needs to wonder.... Does Randy Blue have gazillions of sales daily altough I've seen over 30 of his models and I'm not slightly interested in becoming a member....

I never understood what was the whole point of TGP. I mean ... any TGP surfer/visitor is mostly looking for free porn and there's lots of free porn on all those TGP's... so I wonder... why even join any paysite... Or if they join.. how long do they stay? 3 day trial? Month?

Anyway... I sure would be glad to see them gone... you know... porn should not be free... I mean previews ok, but giving out half of your exclusive set is just plain stupid (but could actually work)...

Traffic is such a funny thing.... you can get ten thousand of hits one day and make 2 sales, while the next day you might get only 3 thousand visits to a site and make 20 sales...

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Originally Posted by dalimili

One needs to wonder.... Does Randy Blue have gazillions of sales daily altough I've seen over 30 of his models and I'm not slightly interested in becoming a member....

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Hey don't pick on Randy, I've seen over 30 of his models too, and I'm interested in becoming his pool boy :P You can't tell me he dosn't have some really good taste in eye candy. I think the only thing he's guilty of is trying to appeal to everyone. I don't think most people could pull off a site that vanilla, but he does, and extremely well. Supposedly his niche is "hot jocks" but i'd say it's more like just "hot."

His photography skills and taste make all the Randy Blue content speak for itself, and I'll take that over half-assed "reality" concept sites any day.

i post for several sites with wonderful exclusive content. i let the surfer know that they can see the video from these pics, plus all the rest of the pics - and lots more content like the pics on the gallery. also i might let them know the FULL sized pics are inside the member area. it all depends on the gallery.

sure, i phrase it a lot better, but that's the message that makes them pull out their credit cards - if you want more than 15 pics and you love the model and the niche, click here to get tons more of it.

on the other hand, i'm not half as successful with general stuff like randyblue. i know people who do well with it on gallery traffic, but i can't find the hook - and in a world of niche content, i am just as happy selling a niche or fetish rather than just a site.

right but how many surfers actually buy a password?

50 out of 100,000? That's like a store selling flashlights sgiving away small versions of a flashlight to 100,000 customers and only 50 of them buy the bigger version. Because they're just fine and happy with the big.


I've surfed so many chat boards porn and non-porn, and there seems to be one prevailing attitude - dude you can just go to TGPs and get free porn.


At one place a while back surfers were talking how you can find some of the paysite's content for free without having to pay for it, they were talking about sponsor content

Conversions are going to fall and keep falling.

It's like advertising. You have to come up with new things or people are so overexposed to it they learn to ignore it.

There was a study in Bulgaria about advertising on TV. The people found out that compared to the European Union advertising in Bulgaria is more expensive per CPM and there's less competition with only 3 broadcast channels.

But

While in the EU one ad has to run over 300 times to make an impact with the audience, in Bulgaria it takes a 25-30 times run for the same result. Why?

Because in Bulgaria if anyone TV station wants to keep their license, they can only play so many commercials per one hour of broadcasting.

ie i hour news would have the first 25 minutes ad free, 3-4 minutes ad break (at most) from :30 past the next 15 minutes of content must be ad free with another 3-4 minute ad break. That's it.

In the US one hour of newscast runs about 42:09 the rest is :10 :15 :30 advertising. That's like watching ads for 20 minutes.

So with people being under-exposed, and even though advertisers have to shell more dough for CPM their ads run less times with more result.

Because people aren't over-exposed and decesitized to advertising.



If you applied a smiliar analogy to TGPs, underexposing people to all this free glut of porn I'm pretty sure they will buy more.

Of course that won't work with the shit sites and some of the stunts they pull so quality has to be there.


But no, surfers want more free porn, more movies more pics, bigger movies with bigger pics. Hardcore with cumshots, they hop from the TGP to TGP getting off.

Oasionally 1 out of a 2000 would buy a $4.95 trial, leach the content in however many days the trial is, and run before they charged.

That's like a chocolate store giving away free 16 piece of chocolate candy outside the store and only 1 out of 2000 shoppers buy more Godiva chocolate inside even though they have these huge banners telling them about all the delicious candy inside.


You just can't court the porn n00bs forever

man that post was as long as my weiner

phew :spook:

really? i'll never think of you quite the same way again :D

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Originally Posted by jIgG

man that post was as long as my weiner

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my gallery conversions for the sites i consider my A sponsors are around 1:200 to 1:350 to the sponsor, which equals around 1:3500 - 1:4000 unique gallery traffic. my B sponsors are around 1:5000 gallery traffic, 1:400-1:800 first page sponsor traffic.

all else is my C sponsors UNLESS something about their niche makes more surfers click - lots more. then, as long as they hold 1:1100 or better, i'll keep sending traffic regularly.

see's candy doesn't give away a quarter of a chocolate - they give you a rich and filling chocolate OF YOUR CHOICE. often they'll give you two or three. then, if you want, you can buy a tiny box or nothing or a huge box. but they give you the good stuff and a lot of people do buy. and if you come by several times a week, they'll keep giving you chocolates. god bless see's candy *lol*

something i've thought about for years - i used to watch star trek, and most of the ads were regular ads for detergent, mouthwash, food. now, as a lot of people know, star trek fans are intellegent, loyal, they're readers, they're collectors, and they buy stuff when it's relevant to them. but if you show them a bunch of general ads, you might actually make less people buy than on the average shows.

i always thought that if you tried to sell them things that they might appreciate - books, high tech toys, videos of scifi movies with meaning, etc (not to mention star trek merchandise), you'd probably make a lot of sales. but no one does that... not when the show was new, not in the reruns. they'd rather have an ad extolling the man-catching properties of a shampoo (did i mention that trekkers are more analytical? they KNOW that shampoo isn't going to make them catch more men) then actually make some fucking sales.

i feel a lot of galleries advertise similarly.

ok, this post grew quite large - almost as large as my breasts ;)

Here is my two cents.

I tried the TGP’s for about a year and a half, and the amount of sales that came throw wasn’t enough to keep up doing them. After doing them I feel that the only people the make out from them is the TGP owners and also the surfers. The surfers get enough porn to get off on. Lets face it there is so much free hard-core floating around why pay for it.
JigG
They give the farm away and then wonder why nobody's buying?
He’s 100% right! Why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?

Myself I think tgp’s really could work if there was no heavy r-rated pictures or any x-rated pictures on them. Only G but to get everyone doing it, it’s not going to happen.

Along with the TGP’s don’t forget about the e-mail groups. I’ve seen hole photo sets be sent out. At lest when I do them it’s always g to r-rated pictures.

when i post full-time, with good content and the right tgp list, i can bring in at least $3000 per month posting, easily. in gear, and working at it, i can do much more, and so do others i know. maybe the problem isn't the tgp traffic - it's knowing the right sponsors for it, and the right advertising methods.

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

I'm noticing a startling number of posts on other boards asking about AVS sites and if they're still in business and can a webmaster still make money using them.

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I think the more interesting part of your original post really is; Are AVS's on the way back?

the more people who create bulk avs sites in order to receive some traffic, the worse quality that traffic will be.

it's like any traffic source - if you have one million surfers and 100 advertisers, those advertisers are gonna make wonderful sales. but when you have 10,000 advertisers working that same group of one million surfers, there's going to be a lot less money spent per advertiser.

also most of the bulk avs sites i see aren't good quality, so they aren't helping the avs with retention. why would anyone pay to see them - experienced surfers know they can get better free stuff at link lists and tgps.

just my opinion...

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Originally Posted by basschick

the more people who create bulk avs sites in order to receive some traffic, the worse quality that traffic will be.

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Interesting..

Could the same not also be said for the actual TGPs themselves?

I know people who literally build TGP aftr TGP to trade traffic with themselves, recycling the same traffic over and over again, not cj'ing the traffic per say just sending it from tgp1.com to tgp2.com to tgp3.com all of which they own.

The thing i find amusing about it though is that all the tgps these people own have the SAME submitted galleries on them LOL

Definately an interesting thread and i think this could be a good one to include in this weeks GWW Bulletin to get some more feedback on :)

Regards,

Lee

All this TGP talk got me thinking about using them for my cam guys. Hell, I've got 8 or 10 guys and putting together a pic gallery is not a problem. Exclusive guys and exclusive pics seem to be a good combination.

I put together a template that I think I can use for the guys, if some of you TGP pros can take a look and let me know what I need to improve it, I would appreciate it.

Naked in the Mountains

I figure I can simply change the reciprocals at the top, call in index2.html, submit to another 4 or 5 TGPs, etc. I'm doing this for a couple cam guys to test it out and see how the traffic/conversions are and then maybe roll it out as a major push.

And what if an AVS implemented strict quality standards and actually rejected the crap? Do you think it would be a good or a bad thing?

There sure would be a lot of pissed off webmasters after you sent out the "your gallery is ugly" notices. But it could push the whole industry to new heights.

Dzinerbear

experienced surfers know they can get better free stuff at link lists and tgps.

thats what i mean, why go to a pay site at all, they get all the milk they want, and then the cream

ponyboy - they can't get the same quality as a paysite from a free site. that's why free site webmasters make so many sales.

Dzinerbear - fuck it. if they want to turn out crap, they can make free sites.

lee - surely yes, but i don't have to make three galleries and a menu page to submit a gallery - avs sites are more work, and the guys have to PAY.

MWCren - what you should do with any gallery is mirror is ten times, and submit to many tgps. why limit yourself?

regarding http://www.menwithcams.com/TGP/bj/index.html
the thumbs are too small for most tgps. there's too much vertical space - you want the surfers to see as much of the gallery as possible at a time, and also it just seems sort of sprawling and empty to me. you say "Check out BJ's Live Webcam Here" twice - and the bottom link should be bigger. you don't say the magic words CLICK HERE (for example CLICK HERE TO SEE BJ's LIVE CAM RIGHT NOW)

you also don't need a header AND a title - one or the other is fine. and some tgps might have trouble with that banner. i wouldn't bother with it because it seems sort of flat to me, but if you DO use a banner, put text under it - not over it - and make it clickable. make it a single link with the banner link.

good luck to you!

great thread, I think the one thing that no one mentioned is that TGPs are a big numbers game, the more traffic you get the better your results. You really have to attack it and do galleries every day, if you don't you will see a quick drop off in your traffic and your sales.

I personally think tgp galleries are a good source of secondary income, once you get into the swing of things you can create a gallery, submit it and confirm all the emails in less than an hour a day.

Plus you can always make money off large traffic numbers if you are creative :D

cheers,
Luke

Thanks basschick. I didn't know there were thumb size requirements, didn't see any in the first 4 I submitted to. I enlarged the thumbs, tightened up the table, dumped the middle banner, moved the Click Here link to the middle, got rid of the header and made the logo a link.

I think it looks cleaner and more compact now, so i appreciate the suggestions.

I definitely intend to mirror each of the gallery pages as many times as necessary to get them posted.

cumsoda already has them posted... in "previous galleries"...which is odd, but as a new submitter, its better than nothing I guess.

MWCren - don't change any galleries you've posted, but in the future, put a big fat text link at the bottom of the page when you can. that is PRIME real estate. for the tgps that only allow 2 sponsor links, perhaps you could text the effectiveness of the header/title being linked vs the footer. i do better with the footer, but that's me. for tgps that allow 3 sponsor links, link all three spots - top, middle and bottom. the bottom link could let them know how many guys are live, or something about what they do. i'd keep it brief, and keep the font fairly large without being scary.

only a few tgps have an actual rule about the thumbs, but often the ones with smaller thumbs get lower listings. gallery looks much better with the bigger thumbs, and better-looking galleries get partner accounts and higher listings.

good luck to you :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MWCren

cumsoda already has them posted... in "previous galleries"...which is odd, but as a new submitter, its better than nothing I guess.

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Youll be listed there because we had more submissions after yours ;)

The way we have http://www.cumsoda.com setup is so that the galleries posted move further down the page as new submissions are sent in.

It basically gives everyone an equal chance to get traffic from the top spots :)

Regards,

Lee

I was really interested in seeing how avs were doing and especially the straight avs's that show gay content. I did a test of 12 avs/aen sites. These sites were the typical, template, nothing special, no original content sites. I sent out around 120 front ends on the site to various avs's. There was no outside traffic coming in, just the regular listings. Here's how it went.

AVS/EAN Sales - maybe 2 or 3 for the whole bunch and basically very prominent regular listings.

Upsells - about 1 a day to either an avs premium site or to a sponsor.

Traffic - about 200 unique hits for each single site per day then the decline to around 10 a day when they went off the listing.

My thoughts on these results - avs/ean is waning and the traffic from being listed by itself is not significant. It wouldn't be worth it to just make sites to be listed. There has to be outside traffic to sell. Once I listed the sites with the regular link lists, I got great upsells but still no regular avs/aen sales.

As far as tgp's go, I've gotten a few sales from them but it feels very much like the experience I had above. Alot of work for not alot of impact. Plus, you'd be surprised at how sick you get of seeing a template even after only a couple of days. I just can't imagine how much it would suck to rely on that type of effort just to try to make a couple of sales a week. :bomb:

Huskyhunks - a couple things.

1. you should not use the same template two days in a row or you will burn out the bookmarkers from the tgps. i try never to use the same template more than once a week max - once every ten days is optimal.

2. i got the impression that you and a few other people feel that everyone gets the same results you do from posting. we don't. when i post full-time, i get at least 70 sales per week if not more. not only that, but i keep seeing sales from galleries months and even years after i post them.

like i keep saying, gallery creation and the descriptions you post on tgps are entirely different from other types of adult marketing. it probably isn't worth it to most people to learn, but it can be a pretty good thing.

I never put more than the occasional marginal effort into tgp. I just didn't see the results for the work. I have no doubt that some people are better at sales than I am. No doubt about it. I'm not that great at all. I've never used a popup, console, I just refuse to get in my surfers face with my content. If they want to buy, they buy, if they don't, I'm not gonna put my foot in the door to make them buy. I don't have that kind of approach to this business.

I do however, enjoy communicating and getting to know members and guests and that's what keeps me around. I think it's just a different approach to things. I'm still around, probably more because I engage my members than my ability to sale my site. I only get about 400 uniques a day on my main website. More than half of them are members so we're talking around 200 uniques a day to get new sales but it works for me.

I only work a couple of hours a week now. I may start a new project soon but other than that, nah, I don't really enjoy the business part of this. I like the people more, and posting to the boards and stuff like that.

Those were my observations and mainly just for reference. I wish I had more of a go getter, gung ho approach to this but those days are long gone for me.

It all depends... for some people AEN/AVS still works great and get lots of sales while others get nothing, some people get lots of sales from TGP's while some nothing...

You can't put a finger on it and say ... "Yes, this is what will always work for everyone..." because there are so many variables you have to consider...

I know I built several TGP galleries to promote a certain AEN/AVS and got gazillions of hits but not a single sale from them.... while I promoted a certain pay site I got several sales on TGPs.... and on the other hand... my AVS sites are doing great and I'm capable of selling membership to surfers just by being listed on that AEN linklist, while on the other hand when I tried to upsell those surfers to a certain paysite I got zero sales....

Go figure...

Interesting thread...

Has anyone built TGPs with banners promoting video sales of the models in the respective TGPs? Conversions might be more likely for viewers who are attracted to the models featured in the TGP in the first place. It just makes sense to sell more entertainment featuring the models in an alternate media than promote more AVS and TGPs of unrelated content. Just a thought.

Huskyhunks - you are making an incorrect assumption about the marketing involved in galleries and adult. i don't use popups, and as opposed to getting in the surfers faces, it's quite the opposite. no sense in forcing someone or tricking them to a sponsor site they don't want to be at - that's no way to make them want to buy.

willwest, do you mean tgps or galleries? i don't promote videos - only websites - but i only offer something closely related to my content. for example. if more pornstars had paysites i could relate to, i'd happily use their pics to sell memberships to their sites.

if tgp's aren't giving away enough content, i did a google search for one of my sites and this came up
http://pub.pictureview.com/dyx-pv/d-...81/index1.html
some one found a way to make money off of news groups
roy

blogs will replace them...