Submitting Galleries How To

Submitting Galleries

Submitting galleries, also called TGPing can be a very good way to get a feel for the adult industry and help a newbie webmaster hone his skills in a number of areas.  First a newbie should be aware of some terms and how they relate.  A TGP stands for “thumbnail gallery post” which is a site that lists galleries.  Generally a tgp is a simple site that either lists galleries in text format or uses a sample thumbnail from each gallery.  The original tgps were all text but now the more popular format is the “thumb tgp” because in theory they are more productive and can get more traffic.  Most tgps take submissions of galleries from webmasters though they don’t have to and with the growth of free hosted galleries many tgps are being built that do not require outside submissions....
 
The theory behind submitting galleries to a tgp is basically a symbiotic relationship between a submitter and the tgp owner.  The tgp owner generally has skills that allow him to gain large volumes of traffic through traffic trading techniques.  A tgp submitter that makes galleries provides the tgp owner with unique quality content and the tgp owner provides the submitter with traffic.  Without the traffic a tgp wouldn’t entice submissions and without submissions a tgp is usually less interesting content wise which makes it less enticing to surfers.
 
When submitting galleries a webmaster must gather content, create a gallery, and then submit it to the tgps.  Complicating the procedure is the fact that to make money the webmaster must understand something about marketing and also get the galleries listed at tgps.  Because tgp submitting has become very popular many tgps get more submissions than they have room to list and so they either only pick and post the galleries they feel will most benefit their surfers or they offer paid submissions. 
 
The Basics
First a webmaster must decide which niche he wants to promote.  It is usually a good idea to pick a niche you know and understand because then you should know how to market it to potential surfers.  Once a niche is chosen you should find appropriate paysites that cater to the niche.  It is easiest and cheapest to find paysite programs that offer free content from the paysite members area that you can use for promotion, this way you don’t have to spend money buying content and as an added bonus you will be using the exact content that a surfer will get when they become a member to the paysite so that makes targeting easier.  As a newbie it is suggested you either ask the paysite owner to help you make gallery templates or hire someone with experience to do it for you, as you learn more how to market you can start to make your own templates.  Once you have a template and content you simply put it together into the gallery.  You will need hosting for your gallery, either freehosting or pay for a host.  It is advisable you spend the money on a domain and paid hosting so that you have complete control.  If you get a freehost you risk being blacklisted from my tgps even before you submit because freehosts are notorious for harboring cheaters.  Once you have your gallery built and hosting settled you need to decide how and where you want to submit it.

The Heron approach: I have always picked niches I knew and understood, as well as using content from paysites to be sure that I was selling the surfers on content they would end up getting.  As far as making gallery templates I have always believed that simple is better and almost always have built my own.  Some webmasters get caught up in the false idea that flashier, pretty designs that impress webmasters are great but they forget that surfers aren’t always interested in design but in the content.  I started out using freehosting but that was many years ago and as rules increased I moved to paid hosting and have found it is a great benefit to have total control.
 
Automation
There are many programs and scripts that can help you submit galleries.  The more advanced programs will allow you to duplicate your gallery and insert the necessary reciprocal links that many tgps require, automatically fill and submit to the tgps, and then confirm the emails that many tgps send to be sure you aren’t cheating.  To start with you can submit galleries for free with no programs and do everything by hand if you have the time and don’t want to spend the money but you will soon find that automation will allow you to accomplish more so that you end up making more money.  The risk with automation is that you either accidentally submit a gallery that breaks the rules of tgps and gets you banned or you end up using a program that does not get updated and you lose money on it.

The Heron approach: I started out many years ago in the nn niche, which has its own group of tgps, and I submitted galleries to them for awhile.  After a time someone created an autosubmitter specifically for those tgps and I still use it to this day.  I am a firm believer that automation frees a webmaster to do more important tasks.  I have used Russian submitter, advanced submitter, and chameleon submitter.  I have come to realize the newer; more feature rich programs are worth any increased price as the all have greatly reduced my own time requirements.
 
Paid vs. Free submissions
More recently many large tgps have moved from allowing free gallery submissions to taking only paid submissions.  This move can be both a benefit for the submitters and the tgp owners as well as a problem.  The benefit of paid submissions for submitters is that if you pay you are sure that your gallery will be listed and usually you don’t have to deal with as many rules as you used to because of cheaters.  The problem with paid submissions for submitters is obviously the cost which can sometimes be very high and whether it is still profitable to submit, also another problem is that even with paid submissions some tgps offer only a limited amount of accounts so you might not be able to submit even if you can afford to pay unless you got in early.  The benefit of paid submissions for tgp owners is that they end up with less cheaters submitting galleries, they make money from spots they used to give away for free, and it usually makes their work less complicated.  The problem with paid submissions for tgp owners is that it limits the number of people willing to submit galleries and can limit the amount of content they then have to post which can cause a loss of traffic in some cases. 
The other difference between paid and free submissions is usually the amount of traffic a gallery submitted can get, paid submissions are almost always on larger tgps with lots of traffic to justify the costs while free submissions are still allowed on some big tgps the usual way to get lots of traffic is simply to submit to many smaller tgps.

The Heron approach: I have been doing free submissions for many years and still get substantial traffic from that approach.  It helps to use the automated programs to do the free submissions to as many tgps as possible.  I have also tried paid submissions but personally as an affiliate in most cases the costs didn’t justify the income I made.  It is my opinion that paid submissions on tgps are usually best for paysite owners that want to submit their own free hosted galleries but that said I have found some paid submissions that did make a very nice profit it is just a matter of spending the time testing and having the money to spend.

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