Toplists and Site Rules

By

Kathy
Just Free Sex

If you have been following the last few weeks of DFN toplist articles, you will hopefully have a fairly good understanding of toplists. MorganaX, Robbo and I have covered a range of topics starting with the very basics through to how you can position your sites on toplists and use toplists to generate virtual traffic. Today I am going to take a step back and have a quick look at toplist rules; why the lists have certain rules, and what those rules mean. Of course, some of the rules are general and can be found on almost every link list - such as having to have a warning page, whilst others are more specific to toplists.

I know that those 'rules' you have to read when submitting sites are really boring, and some webmasters have rule pages that I suspect take longer to read than 'War and Peace'. That said, if you want a good chance of being listed, and staying listed on a toplist or anywhere else for that matter, then you really do need to read and follow the rules as outlined by the webmaster of the site. Some people are under the delusion that because you submit a site to somewhere then it must be listed. This is not true. Toplists, link lists, tgps, etc are owned privately, and as such the owner is the person who decides what is listed and what is not. The rules I have for my toplists can be found here, and the rules I have included are in line with the majority of toplist sites.

One of the universal rules that you will find just about everywhere is 'Submit sites with a clear warning page'. As you have adult content on your site, you should always include a warning page at the entrance to your site. Your warning should be clearly visible to the surfer upon entry to the site, and make it very clear that your site contains adult content and as such is not for viewing by those below the legal age limit. The site is also not to be viewed if viewing adult content is illegal where the surfer is located, and/or if the surfer finds adult content to be offensive. You can also add in additional information, but basically the idea is to ensure that you alert the surfer to the fact that if they enter your site they will be viewing adult content, and that if they are not an adult then to go away. If you need further information about warning page disclaimers then you should consult a legal professional. There are several adult internet law specialists, and you can find links to a couple of them here in the VNWR resource section.

In the same vein as the warning page rule, you need to ensure that you 'Only submit legal sites' that have legal content for which you hold the licence. Make site titles legal as well, and refrain from using any illegal terms in your meta tags. Yes, toplist and link list owners look at your source code to make sure that this is followed, and I for one will, and do report, illegal pages/sites when I come across them.

Another quite common rule you will come across is No CJ sites. Circle Jerk sites, or cjs as they are commonly known, trade with other circle jerk sites. CJ traffic is generally regarded as being extremely poor traffic. This is because the traffic has been through the filtering process a great deal before it lands on a webmaster's CJ site. Once there the surfer is pinged around in the endless pop up circles created by the participating CJ sites. The chances of a surfer in a CJ purchasing from a sponsor is very slim. Link list and Toplist traffic comes from Search Engines, reciprocal links, and traffic generated to the list by the toplist webmaster. As this traffic is of 'better quality' than CJ traffic, toplist and link list owners do not want to trade their traffic for the CJ trash traffic.

Toplists will often allow you to use exit consoles as well. For instance, I allow Two unchained exit consoles. Huh? Well, an exit console is a pop up that occurs if the surfer leaves a page. So, you can have two of those per site you are submitting. A chained exit console is a console that pops another console, which then pops another console and so it continues. CJ sites tend to have a lot of chained consoles. So, what to put on those two consoles per site? How about link to a different sponsor in the site's niche? If the surfer hasn't clicked on the one you've been advertising throughout the site he/she might like the look of sponsor B instead. Or, you could put links to toplists on one of the consoles. This will give you hits in credit when the surfer clicks on one of them, and in return you will receive fresh traffic and have another chance to sell your sponsors. Make sure though that the links to toplists in the console will open a new window when clicked by inserting target="_new" into the href tag. This explains this rule: Your return link can be in a console as long as the toplist opens in a full sized window. Remember as well, that you can put links to toplists anywhere - they do not necessarily have to be only on that one site.

Most toplists also specify No hits from hit bots. Hit Bots, or proxy bots, are used by cheating webmasters to create 'fake traffic'. At one stage Pay Per Click affiliate programs were quite popular. However, the high level of fraud by some webmasters, has meant that PPC affiliate programs have all but disappeared. Webmasters who want to artifically inflate their hits in to toplists through the use of bots are being unfair to everyone else on the toplist and will therefore have their site/s removed.

The use of a FPA is most welcome at webmaster friendly toplists! By all means, slip in a nice big page ad wherever you feel most appropriate. Personally, if I'm including an FPA I tend to put it between the warning and main page - it's easy for me to adapt the site/s for places that do not allow FPAs, but you could include an FPA between gallery pages etc.

The remaining toplist rules are self explanatory: maximum number of pics, mouseovers, etc. Should you have any questions about any of the rules then please post them on VNWR. MorganaX, Robbo, and myself are more than willing to clarify any queries you may have relating to toplists.