question on TGPs & MGPs

[Tabarnak69]

Ok I come from a photographique/film maker background. So I'm very leary of giving anything away for free. (Especially on the Internet)

Now my questions are simple
1) Are TGPs/MGPs really necessary tools for marketing?
2) I'm just learning how to do all this stuff.. Should I even be thinking at building one at this time?
3) Is there an industry standard design I should adhear to or is there software I should use to build them?
4) Because at this point in time I too ignorant to know what questions I should be asking. Is there anything else I should know about them ?

[edhel2005]

TGPs and MGPs were cool a little before my time so take this with a grain of salt. Those are very broad questions so i'll try to narrow it down for you:
TGP - website that accepts gallery submissions from other webmasters and sends traffic their way in exchange for content and backlinks, every TGP has some kind of rules to building galleries in order to accept them
fake TGP - a TGP where you're the only one adding galleries, therefore you can build it however you want
TGP2 - something that probably died out by now lol
MGPs - tubes before tubes were cool

The way these websites generate traffic and sales is by trading traffic with other websites of the same type. Every time you click a picture or movie thumb on these sites there's a chance you get send to another site instead of your desired gallery/movie, this is called skimming, so a "30% skim, 70% content" means 30% of the time you get sent to a trade instead of the content. Usually what happens is people get circle jerked around between them until they give up or buy something. Because the user gets send from one site to another the traffic isn't targeted and isn't considered quality, therefore conversions are usually low so these sites rely on volume, which means you better have a good server.

[Hincapie]

Ok I come from a photographique/film maker background. So I'm very leary of giving anything away for free. (Especially on the Internet)

Now my questions are simple
1) Are TGPs/MGPs really necessary tools for marketing?
2) I'm just learning how to do all this stuff.. Should I even be thinking at building one at this time?
3) Is there an industry standard design I should adhear to or is there software I should use to build them?
4) Because at this point in time I too ignorant to know what questions I should be asking. Is there anything else I should know about them ?

1) No, but not because they give away too much - you better get used to giving away things (I know where youre coming from being a producer/photographer myself - http://www.bdsmmodel.com ) ... However, your time will be better spent building quality blogs, having an effort at social networks, building portfolio sites etc ... and maybe submit the odd gallery or freesite to TGPs/Linklists rather than actually build such sites yourself.
2) No, theres no particular reason to unless you have a specific purpose for it
3) For tgps? Search "JMB Software" for instance, if you decide you want to
4) No

[Tabarnak69]

Thanks for the information I appreciate it.

Ok a few other questions,
1)Are you saying that I've got to install several blogs ??
2) How would I manage the daily posts because I've got my hands full with just 1 blog.
3) Finally I'm just one little photographer. I could never keep up with the demands to create that much content. Is there a solution to this problem?

[Hincapie]

Thanks for the information I appreciate it.

Ok a few other questions,
1)Are you saying that I've got to install several blogs ??
2) How would I manage the daily posts because I've got my hands full with just 1 blog.
3) Finally I'm just one little photographer. I could never keep up with the demands to create that much content. Is there a solution to this problem?

1) Yes. But in your case I would make a main blog that you keep high quality - unique posts - daily updates etc ... keep the outbound links to a minimum on this one. Then make a stack of other blogs that either link to your main one or are used for linktrades to your main one - these ones can use the same photographic material, just with different text...submit them to blog directories, get some inbound juice and keep them reasonably high quality, but you dont need to update them every day....maybe once a week each would be fine.
2) + 3) see one