The Gay Adult Market – Gay Subcultures

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

I thought I would take a break from writing about online adult marketing for a change and instead, give many of the straight webmasters looking to break into the gay market a bit of an insight into what makes a gay man ‘tick’ and, whilst this is going to be different from guy to guy, the one thing that will remain constant throughout is that this article is based on the gay lifestyle and subculture in both society and, the internet.

What Is A Subculture?

Lets start at the beginning shall we? To understand this article you are first of all going to need to understand what a subculture is well, a subculture as defined by http://www.dictionary.com is, ‘A cultural subgroup differentiated by status, ethnic background, residence, religion, or other factors that functionally unify the group and act collectively on each member.’

In layman’s terms, that means, that a subculture is a group of people (or individual) that have something different about them than other people.

In the instance of this article we are going to be looking at the gay subculture and specifically, how this culture is broken down into its own set of subcultures.

The Gay Subculture – Lets Define The Gay Culture.

Gay culture is the heritage of culture, knowledge, and references to which gay people fall heir by the fact of their sexual orientation.

Some individuals argue that there are to many gay people who do not participate in ‘gay culture’ for the concept to be meaningful or that gay culture in itself is placing labels on the stereotype most people think of when they thing about gay people however with this said, there are also those who argue the flip side of the coin. One thing is for sure however, gay culture certainly does exist and, within this culture itself there are many complex facets ranging from sexual preferences through to the types of vacation people take.

Gay Subcultures – The Facets.

Whether we choose to think about the different subcultures within the gay community or not one thing is for certain, the subcultures in our community are wide and far reaching from your local gay bar to Soho in a city thousands of miles away most of the gay subcultures can be found almost anywhere in the world and, from this aspect, it makes gay individual no different than other person. For example, the BDSM lifestyle is large in the straight culture however, it is also hugely popular in the gay culture to often with groups of individuals who devote their whole way of life to this. In essence however, many of the gay subcultures are no different to that of their straight counterparts the only difference being, the individuals who practice them, are gay.

Gay Subcultures – An Overview.

For many webmasters who currently work in the straight market their first attempt and even their second attempt at marketing to the gay lifestyle may fail however, many do not realize the simplest of rules when it comes to marketing products and services to gay individuals online, you need to be as, if not more, detailed and direct to gay surfers than straight, give them something they can find anywhere at anytime and the chances are they will not buy however, give them something that suits their tastes perfectly and you have a customer for life.

Article written by Lee

Marketing Anime Sites

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

Anime and the various styles associated with it, such as Hentai, Manga, Comics and Toons is one of the hottest niches on the net.  It is presently experiencing a huge growth, with many of the larger companies launching sites dedicated to the genre.

When someone unfamiliar with Adult Anime and Hentai hears the word Anime, they tend to think in terms of Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball Z, Pokemon or Speed Racer (if they are of my generation.) Make no mistake; what we are discussing today is NOT for children.  Adult Anime and Hentai are as different from the example above as Disney Movies are from HomeGrown Video.

Targeting and marketing to the anime surfer is not that much different from any other niche, with a few notable exceptions.  Taking the time to learn a little about the subject matter will make a difference in your profit margin. Even though you are still selling “sex”, or more accurately “hentai” (more on that later), with anime the “sell” is more in the fantasy aspects than reality. Anime characters can perform any way and do anything that the surfer wants, even the impossible. So you must use more creative text links and graphics to create the right feel for the surfer and lure him in, and not treat the art as if it were just mere cartoons.

True anime fans do not consider anime to be cartoons. You will get fans that like it for its sexual aspects and yet others who have a love of the art form itself.  If you make light of the art or fail to create the fantasy for them, you may lose surfers. Anime is truly an art form; each picture is unique in its beauty and in its style.  Each artist will render a vision of his or her own, and the variety is as wide and varied as one’s imagination.  This is the appeal of anime, that and the fact that in Anime a surfer can have a character created to fulfill his fantasy, no matter how outrageous.

Bear in mind while designing, targeting and eventually linking your anime site, that this particular genre covers all age groups and appeals almost equally to woman as to men. It is also a niche that will attract surfers from many countries. It is extremely popular with your North American surfers, but a great deal of the anime surfers come from Australia, Europe and Japan, for some reason these country’s surfers love their anime!  So make sure to expand the scope of the Search Engines you normally submit to, if you are not already submitting to Japanese, Australian, and other foreign SE’s. A great place to find a list of these SE’s is http://www.beaucoup.com/1geoasia.html.  Don’t forget to look at alternative link lists as well, though many of the “big” list have anime and toon sections, you will definitely want to get listed on lists that are targeted to the niche, some examples would be:

http://www.toonplaces.com
http://www.hentaikitty.com
http://www.hentaiseeker.com

To help you understand a bit more about the Anime niche I have listed some descriptions of common anime terms:

Anime: In the US and many other western nations, it is limited to meaning Japanese animation (AKA Japanimation, although a lot of people don’t like that term). Characteristic features would be large eyes, funky hair colors, and often, er, accentuated physiology. In Japan, anime means animation in general, Warner Brothers, Disney as well as Macross and El Hazard.

The modern-day anime style is an adaptation of Disney style (introduced to the Japanese after WWII, by the American occupation), most notably the large eyes. However, unlike animation in America, animation or “anime” in Japan is not just for kids and the subject matter can range from deep, action packed science fiction stories to slapstick humor to even soap-opera-ish romance. In short, the only real difference between anime and other television shows and movies is that they are animated. While it’s true that in recent years there have been several American animated shows that have been aimed at a broader audience than your Saturday morning cartoon crowd, such as Titan AE, and the soon to be released Final Fantasy, the Japanese have actually been doing this for quite some time.

Japanese law formerly banned the depiction of genitals or pubic hair in art; as a result, most of the true Japanese images you’ll see distributed in Hentai Anime circles have either been censored by the Japanese government prior to distribution or auto censored by the artists themselves in compliance with the law. Underground artists have been known to produce full, all out, no holds barred uncensored works and of course not all Hentai Anime comes from Japan. Artists who were not Japanese citizens were not bound by Japanese law so uncensored Hentai Anime usually came from those countries.. The law has since been repealed. (See the book Dreamland Japan by Frederick Schott for more information on this law.)

Although the law has changed, people’s attitudes are slow to change with it and many Japanese artists continue the practice of censoring or avoiding depictions of the genitals or pubic hair. However, now that it has become legal, such depictions are sure to become more common. Sometimes, net artists will take it upon themselves to uncensor mosaic images, however, it isn’t easy to find someone who does this arduous job well, so even these are uncommon.

Hentai: The classical meaning is “metamorphosis, transformation.” It later came to mean “abnormality,” and in modern colloquial Japanese is used almost exclusively to mean “pervert” or “perversion.” When a woman insults a man in anime, she generally uses on of three terms: hentai, sukebe, and ecchi. Sukebe implies “oversexed” rather than “deviant.” Ecchi can be quite mild in some contexts, comparable to “lewd” or “Fresh!” These three terms are often used interchangeably, especially when someone is stringing together insults.  In adult anime, hentai normally would lend itself to what we consider hardcore images, such as the very popular bondage anime images.  In the Adult market Anime has come to signify more softcore images and Hentai hardcore.

Manga:  This is what comics are called in Japan. The artist Hokusai coined the word manga in 1815, usually translated to mean “irresponsible pictures.”  Traditionally drawn in black and white, sometimes with blue inks mixed in, Manga can be action comics, love stories or even hardcore fantasy.

Doujinshi: Amateur/underground Manga that often parody existing Anime or Manga.  Usually done in small print runs and often Hentai in nature. They are frequently “proving grounds” for aspiring “professional” Manga artists.

Yaoi: Male homosexual relationships, or Anime or Manga stories about relationships between “beautiful boys” (bishounen). Comes from “YA-ma-nashi O-chi-nashi I-mi-nashi” (No climax, no punchline, no meaning)

Shoujo: Shoujo anime is anime originally aimed at young girls. “Shoujo” literally means “little girl”. Shoujo anime includes such series as Sailor Moon and Magic Knights       Rayearth.  Also referred to as Bishoujo, “Beautiful Girl”

Shounen: Shounen anime is anime originally aimed at young boys. “Shounen” literally means “Little Boy”. Shounen anime includes such series as Pokemon, Speed Racer and DragonBall Z.  Also referred to as Bishonen, “Beautiful Boy”.

It is important that you educate yourself on the difference in definitions for the various styles of art.  Using the wrong phrases could attract children to your site and responsible use of terms is extremely important.

As with any Website, knowing your subject matter and the surfers that view it is essential.  This niche is growing more popular everyday.  Many sponsors are realizing it’s potential and adding it to their sites as well as building sites specifically for this traffic.  There are TGP’s and link lists dedicated solely to these sites, and legal content is available. The Anime/Cartoon surfer is an extremely loyal breed; once they discover quality sources they keep coming back.  I hope this   sheds some light on this highly unique niche and that the information will help webmasters market their sites to higher profits.

Article written by Bestat

Traffic Filtering – Country Specific Redirects

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

To some, actually marketing to foreign surfers is a waste of time rather than a business practice. Unfortunately, they are missing out on additional revenue. We are already beginning to see some of the major sponsors in the adult industry embracing these foreign markets and, not just by utilizing dialers.

However, filtering your traffic base is often the hardest part of this money making equation. That is where the following piece of PHP coding can come in handy.

PHP FILTERING CODE

<?
$user_lan = $HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE;

if($user_lan==’de’) {
## German
$redir_url = “http://www.germanlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’fr’) {
## French
$redir_url = “http://www.frenchlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’it’) {
## Italian
$redir_url = “http://www.italianlanguagepageurl.com”;

} elseif($user_lan==’es’) {
## Spain
$redir_url = “http://www.spanishlanguagepageurl.com”;

## US traffic or Rest of world not defined above
} else {
$redir_url = “http://www.yourmainpageurl.com”;

}

header(“Location: $redir_url”);
exit;

?>

So, we know that the above piece of coding can redirect surfers based on their country of origin however, in order for you to maximize this to its full potential you will need to know the country specific codes (Also called ISO 639 codes) for each of the main browser languages. Some of these are as follows.

da | Danish
de | German
en | English
es | Spanish
fi | Finnish
fr | French
it | Italian
jp | Japanese

The problem you now have is finding where to send your filtered country specific surfers to. Of course, there is always the dialer option however, this is not going to be as lucrative to your wallet as what most people will have you believe.

In fact, I very rarely use a dialer on my foreign traffic instead, I tend to send them to a language specific tour page from one of the big sponsors and, if they do not sign up to that sponsors site, this is the point where I throw a dialer at them and, if the dialer still doesn’t make any money off the surfer I then recycle the surfer for a fresh one through a toplist or banner exchange heavy page.

In doing this I find it is often more productive than ‘regular’ English speaking traffic as, if you give the surfer something they are looking for, they will be more inclined to buy.

Hopefully this article has given you some insight into filtering and using your foreign traffic as oppose to just sending them off to a dialer program.

Article written by Lee

Displaying Special Characters On Your HTML Pag

Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

In order to display certain characters within your HTML pages, you must use a special code. The codes below display the HTML code and the character when displayed on your web page. To use any of the characters displayed within the chart, copy & paste the HTML code to the left of the character you would like to use.

Whilst the above list is by no means complete, it should contain the most useful characters and codes for you to build your sites using the special characters with ease.

Article written by Lee

Search Engine Optimization, Is It Worth It?

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

One of the trendiest takes on Internet marketing these days seems to be the notion that securing top search engine rankings “no longer works.” Where it started, I have no idea.

But rarely does a week go by when I don’t see one or more Internet marketing “experts” claiming that search engine positioning is largely a waste of time and should not be a primary focus of Website owners.

Well, as the saying goes, “there are two sides to every story.”

But let’s not make this article about my side, or your side, or anyone else’s side. Let’s forget about my opinion and other “expert’s” opinions and stick to the indisputable facts, as reported by highly credible third party sources:

According to a Forrester Research Media Field Study, getting a loyal audience in the first place is best done by Search Engine Placement.

According to a GVU Users Survey, 84.8% of Internet users use Search Engines to find Websites.

In a study released by ActivMedia Research in September 1999, Search Engine Positioning was ranked as the #1 Website promotional method used by eCommerce sites.

And look what I just found in the April 2000 issue of Target Marketing Magazine.
“Top Ways Websites are Discovered”

Banner ads: 1%

Targeted email: 1.2%

TV spots: 1.4%

“By accident”: 2.1%

Magazine ads: 4.4%

Word-of-mouth: 20%

Random Surfing: 20%

Search Engines: 46%

You’ve now seen the numbers and know that search engine promotion is very much alive and kicking. But let’s take this a step further. Let’s talk about the *quality* of prospects coming to your Website through search engines as opposed to other advertising mediums.

Every time your potential customers use the search engines, they qualify themselves as *hot prospects* by conducting searches on keywords that are directly related to your product or service. Their choice of keywords is proof that they have a genuine interest in what you offer. These people spend their valuable time exploring the search engines for your type of product or service.

Think About That.

They didn’t stumble upon one of your ads, or wander past a hyperlink to your site. And they didn’t get a banner ad thrown in their face. They made the *decision* to actively search the keywords that brought them to YOUR Website. And when they get there, they are ready and willing to do business with you. At the very least, they’re seriously considering it and, that’s the most powerful sales tool you can have!

But merely getting your Website “indexed” or listed in the search engines is not enough. In order to get any significant traffic from the search engines, your Website must be listed within the top 30 search results (preferably the top 20).

Very rarely will anyone look beyond the first 30 results returned from a search. This makes perfect sense because the most relevant sites are always listed at the top. So if your prospect doesn’t find what they want within the first 20 to 30 listings, they’ll simply do a new search.

If your site falls anywhere below the 30th listing, you don’t stand a chance against anyone in the TOP-20. Hence, it should be your goal to achieve Top 20 positions.

How Do You Get Your Website Listed In The Top 20?

1) You can attempt to gain these Top 20 rankings yourself. However, this can easily become a full time job. (I think this is why so many marketers advise against focusing on search engine positioning.)

2) You can hire a reputable company who can achieve AND maintain your Top 20 rankings for you (be sure they guarantee their service and have several verifiable clients that currently have multiple Top 20 rankings).

3) You can do nothing at all. But as you’ve seen from the third party statistics referenced above, search engine positioning is something you can’t afford to ignore.

Whatever choice you make, I hope that your eyes have been opened to the tremendous profit potential that exists with top search engine placement.

Article written by Lee

Using Full Page Ad’s

Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion, Traffic | Response: 0

Full page ad’s can be used for more than just ‘adverts’ in fact, there is a wide and varied range of uses for them, below I have detailed some of the uses that I have tried in the past and from my experience, they seem to work well enough.
Creating A ‘Hub’ Site – By interlinking FPA’s together in a range of niches and, offering your surfers a money bar linking to other FPA’s in different niches, you can actually get some good rankings in the SE’s and, if you utilize banner exchanges or counters on your FPA ‘hub’ site you can also ensure you get a fair amount of additional traffic. One thing I like to do with my FPA hub is use it as the ‘exit’ page when a surfer leaves one of my sites. This ensures that I am getting optimum traffic for my time spent a) building sites and B) building my hub.

A lot of people I have spoken to about ‘hub’ sites simply forget about them once they have been built, personally, I do not see the point in doing this, if you build something like this why not send your exit, top list, counter, banner exchange traffic to the first page of your ‘hub’?

Doorway Pages.

FPA’s also make exceptional SE doorway pages, by optimizing your image names, meta tags and text on the individual FPA’s you are not only ensuring they WILL get ranked by the SE’s but, if you ‘hub’ them together as explained above you will also get some premium listings from them.

Filter Pages.

What I learnt to do early on is rather than send my surfers directly to the sponsors using the ‘standard’ linking codes is to send them first to an FPA with a money bar (or table ad) on it, this way, if they click the link in error and not realize that they are going to a pay site, you can give them an option, not only to use their ‘back’ button but also, to go to a different niche or, to continue into the sponsors tour. Now that you can link directly to a specific tour page on ARS sites, this method is a good way to give your surfers a ‘fresh’ tour front page.

PPC Listings.

An FPA is an ideal way to get sites listed in the PPC engines, not only do you show the surfers EXACTLY what is in the site they have just clicked on but, you also have the added option of being able to utilize blur consoles and exit consoles on them.

One other thing that I will mention, is that often, you will find that FPA’s that you have made yourself, no matter how ‘amateur’ looking they are will work better than the ‘pretty’ sponsor built FPA’s.

Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas on how you can better utilize FPA’s and not just use them in the same manner as every other adult site on the internet. If you have some good results from using FPA’s in this manner feel free to post about it on the ARSR Support forums and likewise, if you can think of any additional uses that have not been mentioned here let us know on the forums.

Article written by Lee

10 Killer Advertising Sentences

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: General | Response: 0

10 Killer Advertising Sentences.

Tell your readers what they are probably thinking, feeling or doing as they read your ad copy. This strategy will usually trigger their own subconscious mind to bring out these feelings or actions.

You can add these sentences into any ad copy. You may have to change one or two words so it relates more to the product or service you’re selling.

1. As you keep reading this ad copy, you are feeling more and more compelled to experience all the benefits of our product.

2. The more you understand just how valuable our product could be to your life, the less you think about delaying this important purchase.

3. After you read this short ad you will feel like your problems are almost completely solved, all you will have to do is order.

4. As you’re skimming through this, you’re beginning to think you have nothing to lose and everything to gain by trying out our product.

5. As you’re scanning over this ad copy, you are beginning to imagine using our product and enjoying all the benefits it brings.

6. The more you keep reading our ad the more you feel it would be a waste to let this opportunity slip by.

7. The more you review our ad the more you begin to find yourself getting very excited about our product and starting to feel the urge to buy now.

8. You don’t know it yet but, at the conclusion of this ad, you will feel driven to order and experience all the benefits of our product.

9. You don’t realize it yet but, in a few short minutes you’ll realize that you can’t put off this vital purchase and then you’ll be yanking out your credit card.

10. As every word you read travels from this ad to your brain, you start to understand just how much our product could benefit your life.

I hope this article has given you some insight as to how we, as webmasters, can actually ‘manipulate’ the surfer into doing what we want them to and, ultimately, into making us money.

Article written by Lee.

Converting French Traffic – The Niche Paysites That Work

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

In our last article we took a look at a three (3) month period of international traffic stats and, what niches worked on German adult traffic. In this article we will do the same again except we will be analyzing what niche paysites worked best on French porn surfers.

French Traffic – Quick Analysis.

It would seem that for many of the surfers we managed to grab and filter from France that their primary interest was in Teen and the Amateur niches although, that said, we did get a few conversion on some fetish paysites, specifically fetish sites that had ‘watersports’ and ‘BDSM’ featured on the paysites tour pages.

French Adult Traffic – The Niches.

As with the German traffic we targeted in the previous article we also filtered our French adult traffic to some niche specific hub sites as well as some general hub sites to better judge which niches converted the best on French surfers the results we experienced are as follows.

Teen.

Our conversions on French teen sites were not as good as what they were for German surfers however, that said, they were good non the less. With a ratio of around 1:192 over the three month period we analyzed the French adult surfers we managed to get to our sponsors sites worked well for us.

Amateur.

With our amateur conversions the one thing we noticed was that tours that featured teens as the main focus were the ones which converted consistently, with this in mind, we did change a couple of the Amateur tours we used to see how that would affect sales towards the end of the 3 month period and, sales did drop slightly, this would backup the statements in the Teen niche made above in that, French surfers are looking primarily for Teen orientated paysites.

Asian.

The two Asian niche paysites we used didn’t have many sales overall however, we did notice that the little traffic that we sent to them converted well, as above, Asian niche sites that featured teens were again the better converters on the French traffic we received.

Ebony.

I think it is worth mentioning the ebony niche, especially when you take into account we sent less than 100 hits to French ebony paysites and, managed to get 2 sales from those hits. Unfortunately, we did not anticipate the amount of traffic that wouldn’t choose the ebony niche so we have no solid figures that are worth mentioning here or, any explanation behind how we made the sales.

Fetish.

Our French fetish traffic seemed to like the more niche specific type of tours, making us sales on Watersports, BDSM and even general fetish paysites that said, the figures we achieved with the fetish pay sites we used were disappointing as we had thought this would be the ideal niche for the French markets.

Gay.

The sales we achieved with our gay French traffic were reasonable overall, the surfers chose to signup to gay sites that featured ‘twink’ like models on the tours again, this would lend favor to the fact that overall French surfers seem to be interested in the younger generation to get their kicks.

French Traffic – The Results.

Overall we were happy with the majority of the results we received on our French adult traffic with the exception of a few bad choices on our part trying to concentrate on the Fetish side of the industry. We certainly learnt that it would appear French adult surfers are looking for Teen orientated sites over the other niches.

Article written by Lee

Newsletter Know How – A Guide To Writing Newsletters

Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: Promotion, Writing | Response: 0

Email newsletters are a great way to make contact with existing clients and, prospective clients which makes them a great marketing tool. The biggest bonus however, over Email newsletters rather than print ones is that you have virtually no cost involved with writing and, ultimately, mailing them out.

There is a wide variety of online newsletter on the internet. however, probably the simplest form for most webmasters is the email newsletter. Email provides you with a quick way to keep your name out there, build trust with you readers and, hopefully attract a few sales. If you archive your newsletter also this is a great way to get additional pages into the search engines and, as such, it then becomes a good traffic driver to your website regardless of the amount of subscribers you have. However one of the most important benefits of having an email newsletter sent on a regular basis is that it build brand recognition of your website or business.

Your newsletter should provide information, not just of an advertising nature but that, should also be informative to your subscribers. In doing this you are offering information of value and, ultimately, ensuring that your subscribers remain. However, remember newsletters are for promoting your area of expertise not just a vehicle for revenue generation.

One of the first things you should consider when deciding to do a newsletter is the amount of commitment you will have to put towards the project. Whether you start a monthly, weekly or, daily newsletter a great deal of commitment must be made to both the newsletter and, more importantly, your subscribers. For example, We generally spend a good 3 days researching the articles that have been submitted and trying to ensure that the details contained within them are relevant at the time of sending the email, this is not an easy task especially when the adult internet is constantly developing. If you don’t have the time to research and maintain consistency in your newsletter, then don’t even consider doing one, it isn’t for you at the present time.

Now you have decided you can make the commitment required to run a successful email newsletter what do you do next? Collect email addresses. Probably one of the easiest ways to get email subscribers to join your list is to go through your current mail clients contact list and manually add those email addresses or, further still, you may even have an opt in collection program that you have been using for a while but have never really had the time to commit to writing a newsletter worthy of sending out. Remember though, an email list is only as good as the addresses contained within it. You want to run an OPT-IN email list, any other type of list will be considered Spam and, that will do you more damage than good. Of course, if you haven’t already got an email collection program you can find one online there are literally hundreds of them floating around that you can get for free from sites like http://www.hotscripts.com.

So, you now have your emails, onto writing your newsletter. I think the greatest part of email is that it is somewhat less formal than writing for print copy. Email in fact tends to be very informal in comparison. The best way at approaching writing for an email newsletter is to write how you talk, it is more enjoyable for the reader and gives your newsletter a personality that no one else can emulate. Content wise, that depends on what you do, what would YOU like to see if you subscribed to an email list of the type you are going to be running and, more importantly, what would ensure you stay subscribed to the newsletter? Ask your friends, colleagues and, peers what they would like to see in an email newsletter, often they have been looking for information that is not readily available, this is an area where you then start to provide a service that no one else does.

So you are at the point where you are starting to realize that running a newsletter is a lot of work correct? Well, it is. However, the effort, work and, time spent in putting your newsletter together will help you build a relationship with people whom, in all actuality, you may probably not ever meet in a face to face situation and, more importantly, it can become a great income generator over time.

Article written by Lee

TGP Posting – Automating Submissions Responsibly

Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: TGP | Response: 0

TGP Posting – Automating Submissions Responsibly.

Many an experienced webmaster has endured first hand the labor intensive process of manually building a submitting large quantities of image galleries to TGP’s in an effort to drive traffic, whether it be to their own site or a sponsors, in a bid to generate money. One quickly learns that creating a gallery template is the way to go, whereby one can more quickly and easily swap out the reciprocal links for the TGP’s, which means building customized galleries is more efficient, before going off to submit them to all the relevant TGP’s…

But this is only the beginning of the story. Manually visiting and posting to all of the TGP’s (there are literally thousands of them) takes a lot of time. Moreover, one must stop and read the rules for each TGP to ensure one is staying within the specified guidelines…

There is an easier way! Enter the Thumbnail Gallery Submission Wizard (TGSW). It takes much of the labor intensive work out of producing galleries for, and submitting them to, TGP’s. Available in both desktop (PC) and server (Perl based) versions, TGSW has gained rapid and widespread acceptance as the de-facto TGP gallery automation tool. Some of it’s features include:

Fully Customizable Gallery Templates.

You can create templates on a niche by niche basis, inserting appropriate sponsor codes and images. For the thumbnails and images they link to, you simply insert some intuitive ‘placeholder tags’, which are interpreted by TGSW at run-time and replaced with the appropriate images. You can be flexible as to how many thumbs/images you would like displayed per gallery to meet your own personal preferences.

Automated Reciprocal Link Insertion.

You can also insert placeholder tags for the automatic insertion of reciprocal links. At run-time, TGSW will insert a specified number of reciprocal links in the positions you have inserted those tags in your templates.

Customizable Filenames.

You can specify filename options so that when TGSW generates galleries, the filenames it uses are unique to your galleries.

FTP and ‘Free Host’ Support.

Do you host your galleries on a free host? Or simply on another of your servers? TGSW can be configured to FTP the completed galleries (along with images and thumbs if necessary) to a server of your choice. There is also a lot of support for ‘free hosts’ that don’t have FTP, but instead used a browser-based upload manager.

Automatic Gallery Submission.

TGSW will then automatically submit all of the galleries it generates to all of the appropriate TGP’s. It even sends an email to the TGP’s that require submissions via that method! TGSW can even be configured to place all of your submissions via a proxy server, so you can mask the IP address from where you submit.

Extensive Reporting.

There is an optional reporting feature that you can turn on or off. When turned on, TGSW logs all of the submission information at the point of submission, which you can review at your leisure at a later time.

Regular Updates.

TGP’s come and go, so TGSW offers an auto-update feature, whereby it will download the latest copy of the database from our site. We usually update at least once per week, sometimes more often, to keep your database current.

Of course, due to the personalized nature of your galleries, there will be some significant configuration work to do before one can hope to achieve any real results with TGSW. One of the key points is that we do not ship the product with any TGP’s enabled – this way, you are responsible for your own usage of TGSW, and are forced to at least visit the TGP’s in question – we do this in an attempt to remain responsible.

If you have neither the time nor the inclination to configure the TGSW TGP database yourself, then I highly recommend http://www.tgswupdates.com. They have spent extensive time configuring the current TGSW database for 55 niche categories, and offer fully-configured updates very soon after we release a new auto-update – not only will you be up-to-date, but you will also have all of the available TGP’s enabled, along with all of the reciprocal link images ready to start posting!

Article written by Robert Purdy.