Reviewing Love/Hate

By

Wingnut

Of

Pepee's Pornn Palace

I see many newer webmasters opening up TGP/TGP2 or Link List sites, some for the right reasons some for the wrong, but that is not the point of this article. This article is about the task of review sites/gallery pages and the joys and pains of that adventure.

If you are going to open a new site I would recommend that you approach a site owner and ask to assist in the reviewing task, even if you are not going to open a site I would still recommend it. This is one of those tasks that fit the bill of a love hate relationship, for sure.

So, why should you do this if you want to open your own site? This will give you a small taste (real small) of what it will be like on a daily basis for your own site. It's a point you really need to take into account prior to opening a site. We have all seen the articles in the DFN Weekly on how to build the site and the tools needed to run them, and some things to do in order to get submits, but what about the effort required to review all those pages?

Chances are you won't have an issue with keeping up in the beginning, but what about when you start to get 500 submits a day? You're going to need reviewers. So actually being one first will help set your expectations on what to expect from your own. It will also help you get a feel for which submits will be the dreaded console hell, after a bit you get a "gut feel" for them.

Ok, so you are saying to yourself "nope, don't want to open a site. How can this benefit me?" There are a couple of upsides to the task of a reviewer, ones that can help you profit for some time to come. First, you usually get special listing privileges; more pages listed then the normal posters, higher up on the list, etc. This results in more traffic (more bandwidth), more opportunity to make a sale faster. Not having to wait for the review process is sometimes worth the effort itself.

The two most beneficial items to me are the fact that you get an advantage over your competition, and the networking opportunity that presents itself. You will get a first hand look at the type of pages your competition is producing. It won't take you long to see which "free content" is used by 80% of your competition, or spot the pages with 30 100k images on them. Another positive is you should be inspired to create new layouts of your own, or fear falling behind the competition. You will also have a great contact with the site owner who might just drop a golden tip or two your way, especially if you review for a decent length of time.

When I first started reviewing for a large TGP I was still on a dial-up connection. I would not recommend that to anyone, it takes too much of your time away from building new pages to be worthy. If you have a fast connection, and can spare the time to review 50-80 pages, it's not a bad deal. There is a lot to learn from what you will see. Now the downside to all of this should be fairly obvious to you, it does take time and can take some patience when dealing with the console popping redirecting buttheads. That should give you something to think about during the holiday season.

Wingnut