What is a freesite?

[Nicky]

Only those allowed need apply.

[candyflip]

It is/was a term used to describe a specific type of free site. Generally consisting of a warning page, gallery listing page and some galleries.

These days, it could be used to describe pretty much any adult site.

[Sly]

Are you still submitting those? Was wondering if people still accept them.

[notoldschool]

Originally Posted by candyflip

These days, it could be used to describe pretty much any adult site.

[Miguel T]

Are people still doing fs's?

[Simon_Spicecash]

ya there are still quite a few places that do. greenguy's, wetplace, adult list etc etc.

[Nicky]

Oh man the reply's here make me all cozy and shit

Now I gotta sleep, laterz

[$5 submissions]

Originally Posted by candyflip

These days, it could be used to describe pretty much any adult site.

[Nicky]

I just looked through a stack of printed out papers from the good old netpond day's. I have the T, the TT and the TTT on paper here besides me. to me It's soooo nostalgic. Someone here will know!

[Nicky]

I have over 200 pages of printed out convo from the old netpond board from 1999. It's fucking amazing to read. If anyone starting out in this biz need some pointers email me and I will point you to some pure gold!

[LeRoy]

Freesites are basically the last wall of defense against the tubes.

There's only a few Link Lists that are still ranking well in the search engines.

Soon the submitters will die away due to low sales and Link Lists will be a thing of the past.

Then evil , anarchy and pure mayhem will turn the porn industry into a dark land of shady tube advertisers.

[Iron Fist]

Freesites are now called Tubes....

Try to keep up please.

[mikeyddddd]

[After Shock Media]

Originally Posted by sharphead

Freesites are now called Tubes....

Try to keep up please.

Sarcasm aside, free sites were built with restraint, even prior to the "gallery" page (aka tgp).

As it was stated above it was a warning page with recips, a main page with banners/text links as well as two gallery links (some may have a text link footer to go to a hub), then we had 2 gallery pages each with about 15 pictures on them and 2-3 banners/text links, past that each thumbnail was linked to an html page with the full sized picture along with 2 banner/text links.

All said and done a free site was actually 34 or so html pages, 33+ advertising banners (possibly an additional 33+ advertising text links). Then 3-6 recip links.

Eventually "someone" saw that they could gather traffic if they built a link site that directly linked to the pictures/galleries bypassing many ads. Presto TGP was born and then they saw themselves as gods and starting making rules, many rules aimed at reducing advertising.

[ChrisH]

Originally Posted by Nicky

I just looked through a stack of printed out papers from the good old netpond day's. I have the T, the TT and the TTT on paper here besides me. to me It's soooo nostalgic. Someone here will know!

Wow the triple...

[brassmonkey]

dont really know

[CrazySy]

Freesite is a site with index/warning page and main page which has links to 2 or 3 galleries.

24 to 30 pictures used for a picture freesite, 12 to 15 pictures per gallery.

Min of 120 seconds of movie used to build a movie freesite, min 0f 60 seconds per gallery.

Many people build a freesite, submit them to a handful of link lists and move on to the next, however, you can build them the way that each gallery can also be submitted to tgps, I do it myself. You can also start a hub with you own freesites and sponsors hosted freesites on it and link to it from every freesite you submit. Of course the sales from them are not as great as it used to be, but they still do extremely well knowing the link list traffic is well targeted traffic. I am still happy with the results and compared to tgp traffic, less traffic with much better sales ratio.

Here are a few live samples of my own sites submitted to link lists:

SAMPLE #1

SAMPLE #2

SAMPLE #3

SAMPLE #4

[MikeSmoke]

I think they were popular around the time of the Model-T, the icebox and Baddog

[MikeSmoke]

And yes, I remember the TTT - didn't do that plan, but I remember reading all the stuff while I was listening to Dokk and hanging out in the chat room

[polish_aristocrat]

Originally Posted by Nicky

I have over 200 pages of printed out convo from the old netpond board from 1999. It's fucking amazing to read. If anyone starting out in this biz need some pointers email me and I will point you to some pure gold!

1999 advice might not be the best to follow, in the tube age

having said that, I used to have (or still have?) printed articles or even some discussions from 2001/2002 as well. It's funny that we used to print them instead of reading it on the computer...

I wrote my n00b business plans on paper as well....

[polish_aristocrat]

i used to have SOO much drive and enthusiasm back then...

today it's just a boring job

[Sarah_Jayne]

I feel similar to how I did the first time I heard a kid as 'what is a record?'.

[Ron2k1]

Originally Posted by polish_aristocrat

i used to have SOO much drive and enthusiasm back then...

today it's just a boring job

Yeah I also remember the joy of seeing a gallery listed high at pinkworld, thumbzilla etc.
and sometimes a Hun listin...

Seeing 200.000 uniques on your third party counter.

And the thrill of seeing sales coming in...

[Farang]

Freesites... I think I used to submit like 5 - 10 per day years ago

[Sarah_Jayne]

In a lot of ways I feel like blogs are the modern free site.

[Nicky]

I like my thread. It's interesting.

[Nicky]

Originally Posted by polish_aristocrat

1999 advice might not be the best to follow, in the tube age

I want to say "wrong" but you have a right, but.......

[munki]

Originally Posted by Nicky

I like my thread. It's interesting.

[candyflip]

Originally Posted by Sarah_MaxCash

In a lot of ways I feel like blogs are the modern free site.

As usual, we have similar thoughts on the matter.

[u-Bob]

Originally Posted by LeRoy

There's only a few Link Lists that are still ranking well in the search engines.

Soon the submitters will die away due to low sales and Link Lists will be a thing of the past.

Freesite submitters won't die away because of low sales but because of the xenophobic attitudes of a lot of linklist owners with their absurd rules like:
- You will be blacklisted if you are drinking coffee while you're submitting.
- If you don't provide a DNA sample, then you are a cheater.
- If you don't use Frontpage Express to build your freesite, then you'll be banned and your details will be posted on all the boards and the FBI will be notified.
- If you use whois protection on a 5 year old domain with no history of abuse, you will be blacklisted because only cheaters and scum use whois protection.
- ...

[Sarah_Jayne]

Originally Posted by candyflip

As usual, we have similar thoughts on the matter.

When talking to people looking to get into blogging (a questions affiliate support gets often). I can tell those that are coming at it having done free sites vs having done TGPs in the past. The free site people are used to dealing with lower number but higher quality SE hits and the TGP guys feel like they are failing if they don't have a zillion hits a day and don't really 'get' that quality is more important than mere numbers. The free site folks are also more appreciative of slow burn traffic building.

[Sarah_Jayne]

Originally Posted by u-Bob

Freesite submitters won't die away because of low sales but because of the xenophobic attitudes of a lot of linklist owners with their absurd rules like:
- You will be blacklisted if you are drinking coffee while you're submitting.
- If you don't provide a DNA sample, then you are a cheater.
- If you don't use Frontpage Express to build your freesite, then you'll be banned and your details will be posted on all the boards and the FBI will be notified.
- If you use whois protection on a 5 year old domain with no history of abuse, you will be blacklisted because only cheaters and scum use whois protection.
- ...

Agreed and that is another reason it was a natural progression from many free site people to blogs. You suddenly didn't have to get approval by somebody else to get your work out there. You could play by your own rules but essentially do the same things you did on a free site.

[JustRobert]

Interesting information

[Nicky]

toe the top.

[maxjohan]

I remember submitting freesites. I visited greenguy one of the top freesites and his New Submissions have decreased with 75% something. 2-3 years ago he had fresh 80+ submissions daily, today?? 24 new submissions.

[HEAT]

Yeah, I have built 500+ those freesites till last autumn. (I did FS submission for 8 years, 0~4 submissions/week)
still getting good sales from them. recently I made a sale with a crappy one which I built in early 2002.
Also I put a small text link to niche hub sites on the buttom of all freesites.
Those hub pages have good SE traffic. so I can get one more chance to convert or send them to my other niche sites(TGPs/MGPs, blogs, SEO sites) as quality link farm.

But I stopped building them since last year. Too busy for any 'build & submission' type work.

[Matt 26z]

Originally Posted by u-Bob

Freesite submitters won't die away because of low sales but because of the xenophobic attitudes of a lot of linklist owners with their absurd rules like:
- You will be blacklisted if you are drinking coffee while you're submitting.
- If you don't provide a DNA sample, then you are a cheater.
- If you don't use Frontpage Express to build your freesite, then you'll be banned and your details will be posted on all the boards and the FBI will be notified.
- If you use whois protection on a 5 year old domain with no history of abuse, you will be blacklisted because only cheaters and scum use whois protection.
- ...

Bullshit submit rules for freesites and TGP's certainly didn't help them compete with blogs as soon as submitters had the opportunity to run those instead of submitting.