by quagmyreToday i am going to talk TGP galleries and simple templates. TGP is a simple basic premise that makes a good foundation for a lot of other work and traffic. We are going to make a few templates and start to use them to build our empires. Future articles will explain further uses for what we are doing today, so i might gloss over a point or two because they would be better explained in a future installment. Bear with me and enjoy the ride.
The first thing you really need to realize with TGP is it is not about how good with HTML you are, or even how well you make colors match. It is about how many times you can get your marketing message out to the serfs. If you are a good marketer, you will have a better ratio. However, even a crappy marketer will get a ratio to work with. It may just take them 5000 hits to make $30. If you have lousy ratio, you just need to work harder.
We need to make templates that are easy to work with and fairly similar (more on that in the future). What i do is make my layout on the template then use CSS to change the colors and borders and such.
Example of CSS:
(The <style></style> tags are for if you want to put the CSS in your <head> tag rather then linking a separate style sheet. I DO NOT ADVISE THIS! Read This to know why.)<style type="text/css">
BODY {
color: #FF0D93;
background: #99CCFF;
}
A:link {
color: #FF1493;
text-decoration: underline;
}
A:visited {
color: #FF1493;
text-decoration: underline;
}
A:active {
color: #FF1493;
text-decoration: underline;
}
TD.image {
color: Red;
background: #FF6347;
text-align: center;
border : 5px double #FF1493;
background-color : #FFA6FF;
}
TD.desc {
color: #000000;
background: #CCCCFF;
text-align: center;
}
</style>
Back to TGP
Our template should have an ad area at the top and in the middle of the thumbs. I use 12-15 thumbs broken up into rows of 4 or 5. So, we have an ad space, two rows of thumbs, another ad space then the last row of thumbs. At the very bottom of the gallery, we are going to make a text link called "Webmasters" which we will link to a page with some of our affiliate programs, some of our link trades and whatever we want to promote to webmasters. This link needs to be small and unobtrusive, face it, not a lot of webmasters are really going to look at our galleries. Why put the link? Cause Google loves links. i might expound more on this in the future. Till then, use it or not, you are not filling my wallet. Anyhow, in your templates always be sure to make provisions for alt tags and title tags and any other Search Engine Optimization. Part of the success from basic webmastering comes from how well you cover the basics. Anything you do should work for you more then once and should always try and cover as many of your goals at once. We are marketing here and nothing more. Spend the $10 and buy your own domain and be sure to follow SEO rules on every page you build and you will help your whole domain. This means text and more text. Everywhere you can add text to a web page that the serf is not going to see is an asset! Plus, where you are talking to the serf needs to do just that: talk, use words. The majority of your TGP work should involve SEO, marketing and submissions.
Make at least three galleries per day. You do not want to submit your three similar looking galleries on the same day to the same TGP sites. Break it up a bit by submitting galls from different days.
A brief point on recips: i usually do not bother with them. They slow the process down and kind of annoy me. If you want to use them, i recommend they go at the bottom of the page.
At this point, i would take the template i made and make copies of it. Each of the copies would use a different style sheet for the look of the gall. Each gallery should have it's own content. Then put your ads in and your SEO tweaks. For future use, make three templates that use the same style sheet. We will need sets of three for our later projects. You might as well start building in groups of three. Now you should have at least three galleries. The images you pick need to go with what you are marketing and not be too explicit! i was talking to someone and they said, "If I build it they will cum!" My response was, "They had better NOT!" TGP is to tease the serf into buying, not give them what they want! Like a woman coaxing an expensive bauble from her date, our galleries are to coax the credit card out of the wallet.
A diversion into content is needed, in the future, i am sure we will have more to say on this. You should NOT use the free sponsor content for this. The content has been seen a lot and the TGP owners are tired of seeing it. This will pretty well limit your approval. Since a fair amount of your serfs have seen it too, this will lower your conversions on the places you do manage to get listed at. The real reason this is an issue though, is because it limits what you can promote. As these tutorials progress we will make more things from our basic templates and from our submitted galleries. Marketing only one sponsor with all this work kind of defeats the purpose.
An example of what i mean is HERE
Submitting the TGP Galleries
READ THIS ARTICLE FIRST!
You need to submit these galleries to every TGP that will have you. The ones that list you put on your master list of TGP's. The ones that don't, ignore. There are lots of them out there. You also might want to use an autosubmitter, but notice the word "also"! Eventually you will have a list of enough TGP's that will post you that you can see which ones do better for your style of marketing. You want to submit as many TGP's that work with your method and constantly look for more and better ones. As you learn TGP you will see what works and what doesn't. Until you have a clue, i recommend that you avoid the big TGP's because they can cost you more then you make.
You might want to go ahead and make a modification of your template to accommodate TGP2 sites. Yes, the traffic is much lower but there is money to be made with it. Not to mention, it should not take you more then a few minutes to convert your templates. Also, in the future, i might show you an efficient use for TGP2 galleries.
Most people that follow this process make money. How much money? That depends on skill and dedication. If you are good, you don't have to works so hard. But if you don't do it, you wont make a penny. Go do and tell us how it works for you!