My partner and I have been doing some TGP for well over 12 months now and we've been making some nice dollars from it too. Like everyone else, I often see complaints from other webmasters who say that there is no money to be made in TGP but that has not been our experience.

"Paying for your listings ... you are buying your way out of the listing lottery. Of course paid listings are not for everyone."

The Hun in particular comes under heavy criticism from many webmasters, as being the refuge of every free loader on the planet but again, that has not been our experience. Then there are those webmasters who say that the only things that will sell on TGP are the various 'for free' programs but once more, that has not been our experience.

Our experience has been mixed, as I said earlier, we have made some nice dollars from TGP and we have had absolute failures as well. A gallery of mine on The Hun that promoted a 'for free' program never got one sale; our last two listings on The Hun that promoted a seldom seen niche paysite with a joining fee made enough to totally surprise us.

That was sufficient to teach us that if you want to make dollars from the big TGP lists you have to be prepared to focus on niche specific sponsors who are offering new or underexposed sites.

However, those are not the only things that you need to do to ensure your success at TGP. You can build absolute killer galleries that comply with every TGPs set of rules and you may still not get listed at the sites that really count. You can hand submit to every TGP on the planet and you may still not get listed. You can submit to The Hun every three to four days, as per his rules, and he may still not accept your galleries. You can run Russian Submitter till its cogs wear out and you may still not get your galleries accepted at enough lists to make you money.

There are various reasons as to why you may not get listed, some of the reasons you will be able to overcome while others are totally outside of your control and you may not even realise that some things are going to become reasons for you not being accepted.

Shemp is one of a small number of successful TGP owners and operators. He operates The New Shemp XXX Links and he made an interesting comment about TGP galleries that many gallery builders may not have thought of before. In another place he said:

“Today I got 2400 submissions that meet ALL my rules. I have room for 85 on my page tonite. Who gets listed? I will have to trash 2315 good galleries, because tomorrow I will get another fresh 2400 submits.”

Now if Shemp is facing this sort of problem then obviously the other big traffic lists are also rejecting a huge number of galleries for no other reason than they just get too many submissions. That means that from a gallery maker's point of view getting listed on the medium to big lists is a bit like winning the lottery. Of course the smaller lists are going to list you without any problem but then they don't have much traffic to share out so you really need to be on those bigger lists to ensure that you get the traffic to your gallery that you need to make sales.

A lot of webmasters seem to have the impression that building and submitting a TGP gallery should take no more than an hour or so each day and yet the experienced gallery makers I know all suggest that the way to succeed is to build up a unique list of TGPs that accept and list your galleries and once you have the list then you submit to the list – by hand!

Personally I think that idea has a great deal of merit and when you combine it with a list of the TGPs that have given you preferred submitter status you are on your way to improving your odds in the lottery.

You don't have preferred submitter status? Well you should start applying for it whenever you see a TGP making the offer because as I said a moment ago, it increases the odds of you getting listed.

Of course that still leaves the problem of getting listed in a good spot. If you have a unique niche and a sponsor that isn't over exposed then 10 sales in a day from spot #79 on The Hun is perfectly achievable but if you are promoting a paysite that has been around for a while then you will want to be in a much better position on the TGP and the only way to do that is to pay for it.

I must admit that I was very anti paid listings when I first started, I couldn't see why gallery builders should actually pay TGP owners for the privilege of being listed. Now though I can see the value in paid listings, in fact my partner and I have paid for listings on some of the more expensive lists and have actually doubled our investment so paid listings do work; plus there are some added bonuses with paid listings that definitely give you the edge over those who are still willing to try their luck in the listing lottery.

Paid listings ensure that your gallery will appear, so by paying for your listings you are buying your way out of the listing lottery. Paid listings allow you to choose where on the TGP your gallery will be listed and may even allow you to choose which day your gallery appears.

The amount charged varies from one TGP to the next and at least one big TGP will list you for as little as $1 per day.

Of course paid listings are not for everyone. If you're new to the industry or find that you are struggling to make a sale from a TGP gallery then think long and hard before you start paying for listings. A paid gallery spot does not guarantee you sales so be careful because not only do you stand the risk of wasting the money that you paid for the listing but you will also burn more bandwidth so if you can't afford it don't take the risk.

There is no doubt that paid TGP listings are here to stay. They offer distinct advantages for the experienced gallery builder but they can be an expensive mistake for the newbie so take care.