Max,

I wish you could look at this from the other side. Let me help you with that.

I have run both a TGP and a link list. I have become pretty disillusioned with both very quickly. So much so that two months ago I just stopped accepting submissions to my TGP.

You need to understand that traffic hubs receive hundreds and thousands of submissions of absolute garbage. There are webmasters who take the same free content from the $30 PPS sponsor of the moment, and they submit them over and over again. Once they've submitted all 20 sets, they start submitting them again. If I see that bald guy fucking one more twink for cash I'm going to hurl my computer out of my window.

Then you have the webmasters who take a FHG, slap three buttons at the top, and submit those to list after list. You've got webmasters calling skinny guys with twenty hairs on their chest bears. You've got webmasters submitting galleries with Randy Blue content and promoting Corbin Fisher. On and on it goes, and that's without getting into the gallery switching, redirecting, pop-ups, and other scams.

As a link list owner I think, "Gee, I want to provide surfers with something to look at, but do I want to just throw a bad product in front of them. Won't they get tired of The Pig? Will they keep coming back?" I wouldn't.

I appreciate the webmasters who have submitted galleries to The Pig and helped me build my site. But this has to be a partnership. If you the webmaster aren't providing a quality product, if you're not putting any thought or creativity into the product you create and want me to list, then the surfers are going to leave The Pig. The surfers will not be able to rely on The Pig as some place that gives them good quality free galleries. If I can't provide you with traffic, then you'll say, "Oh gee, that link list sucks, they send no traffic."

Now, you might say that The Pig ain't no JUB, and you'd be right. I don't send anyone heaps of traffic. I'm still growing my site. But I can certainly understand how JUB must be feeling. And it must be 1,000 times more frustrating for them because they have 1,000 times the traffic that I do.

I work hard. I work long hours every day writing heaps of content in the form of site reviews, video reviews, free galleries, blogs. All of this to attract search engine traffic so I have traffic to send to my gallery submitters, and of course, I'm hoping that some of the traffic will buy what I'm selling. But I'm not going to let that traffic be sucked off and killed by bunch of really bad galleries. I'm trying to create a place that surfers want to come to regularly.

Max, you often look at these situations as what's in it for me, what am I getting. My question is: What are you doing to help build traffic to Just Us Boys so they have traffic to send to the other webmasters submitting galleries? Or what are you doing to send traffic to JUB that buys something that helps pay their employee wages, rent, or server costs? If everyone is taking from JUB and no one is giving back, then JUB ain't going to be around for long. The surfers will simply become bored with all of the crap and move on to the next BIG thing.

I have to say that I think Just Us Boys are on the right track. In fact, they beat me to the punch -- bastards! they always do that. I'm working on a new product and I'll have an announcement of my own within the next week or so. But it's pretty close to this philosophy. And I think you'll be finding a lot of traffic hubs start moving in different directions.

Finally Max, you couldn't be more wrong in your assessment of the JUB guys. You paint them as these big, green, money-grabbing monsters, but they've never been anything but fair and generous to me. I met Bryce at the Phoenix Forum for the first time and he gave me some much appreciated, unsolicited advice that put loads of money in my pocket. (And it's at the core of my upcoming announcement, which I believe will make my sites even more successsful.) He didn't ask for anything. He just gave. A few weeks later, I e-mailed him and said, "I like how you think, can you send me a list of books that you've read." Within hours he sent me a nice e-mail with a list of books. Shannon has been no less helpful and supportive. And, of course, Andy is one of my best friends in the business.

The JUB guys are good people. I think you would find that if you started to think "how can I help them" that you would find innumerable rewards coming your way. It's the law of attraction -- like attracts like.

Cheers,
Michael