Hey, are you ready to get into something new? Are you ready to try a Thumbnail Gallery (or just Gallery)? What's a Gallery? Typically a Gallery is a simple webpage with 5-30 thumbnails, or mini versions of images, which when clicked lead to a full size version of the desired image. You, the webmaster, will build a page of thumbnails and then submit your page to a TGP (Thumbnail Gallery Post). The TGP webmaster will review your page and if they like it they'll add a link to it on their site. The TGP site generally lists several links per day. Sometimes several days are listed and then later they are archived. Or the TGP may categorize your link on their site and it will enjoy a longer link life.
TGP sites have very strict rules on getting listed. The TGP site webmaster knows his audience and what they like. He tries to entice them in order to snag some good traffic while promoting his/her sponsors as well. If you follow the rules of the site and get listed, you'll get loads of traffic. In fact, you could get thousands of hits in a single day. The drawback to this traffic is that it doesn't always convert very well ("convert" = sign ups or joins to your sponsor). That means you could end up with lots of bandwidth use and nothing to show for it. So it's very important to build a good page.
To build a good page, look at some of the pages already listed with the TGP site. You'll get a good idea of what the typical surfer to that site is looking for. You could also contact your sponsor and ask them which sites they promote that convert well with TGP surfers. Most sponsors have company representatives that will answer your questions and assist you with building good converting pages. Some sponsors have webmaster resources with tutorials. It's a good idea to check and see what your sponsor offers.
When you build your gallery page, you can use a template. A template is a page that can be used over and over again to build more pages. The layout of each page basically remains the same. A word of warning!!! Most TGPs do not like "cookie cutter" pages. They don't like for you to submit the same page over and over and over again. So even if you use a template to build a page, you should really spend some time making each page unique. In the template, your images will have generic names like pic01.jpg, pic02.jpg, pic03.jpg, etc. This makes it easy to build several pages. In the template all you might have to do is to change the title of the page. Then upload your page to a directory on your server, upload the pics and you're ready to go. For the next page, create a new directory, upload the template with your changes, upload another group of pics, and again, you're ready to go.
Another word of advice. Don't use the same picture gallery repeatedly. Most TGP sites do not like seeing the same content over and over. While many sponsors offer free content, you can bet that the TGP site owner has seen it all and may reject your page based on over exposed content (no pun intended). It's a good idea to invest in some content.
The key here is to make several of these pages every day and submit them on a regular basis. You might be thinking "This is work!" Well, yes, it is! This is a business and like any other business you have to work it for it to be successful. There are some applications that are available to decrease your workload such as autosubmitters, but be very careful as some TGP sites do not allow use of autosubmitters.
One of the rules a TGP site may have is a reciprocal link. That means that in order to get listed on the TGP, you must place a link on your page back to the TGP. Some TGP sites find it acceptable to be listed with other TGP sites, while others do not want to see links to any other sites but their own. How do you satisfy everyone? You create mirror pages. Pages that look the same but appease the rules of the TPG webmaster. You can do this faster if you investigate the various TGPs and see what their rules and then categorize the TGPs accordingly. You can be BANNED from a TGP by not following their rules or by changing your page after you've been successuflly listed on the TGP. Some TGP webmasters network with each other to govern problematic submitters. That is, if you are banned from one site for a rule transgression you may be banned from even more!!! So it's not a good idea to break the rules before or after submitting your site.
Now that you know the basics to building a TGP page, start building!!!
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Sample TGP Page:
03-07-2004, 04:57 PM
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