[Mister X]

I don't want to name names but the big TGPs that are listing only or a large percentage of sponsor hosted galleries have seen their traffic drop significantly. A better alternative for those big TGPs is the pay to list galleries route.

I really do think the tgp segment of the biz is saturated. There are thousands of them. I don't mean to say that you can't make money at it becuz it's obvious that you can. But we don't have the huge influx of new surfers every year that used to happen. So most of the tgps are either marginal or even unprofitable. My point was basically that any large increase in the number of tgps would just make it harder to make a living for the tgp owners that cut out the submitters, by forcing a further dilution of their own market.

I'm not sure if you mean that the big guys should accept paid submitters only or not. If you're saying that they should do that, then I would have to disagree I think. Paid submitters only would be the same as only listing hosted-galleries I suspect. Effectively limiting the number of submitters to a small pool would surely increase the amount of similar boring galleries in the same fashion. Most likely the best strategy would be to use all 3 types of galleries in a ratio that suits your traffic. Hosted, paid and the regular submits. Personally I think that the most effective thing for tgps to do is to use the trusted submitter status. This in effect pre-screens their submissions for them and decreases their work load for approval/decline and raises the quality of their listings which makes their surfers happy which puts money in their pockets. I think happy surfers are probably worth at least as much as the cash from paid submits would be.