{{Short description, Type of free web content, usually pornography
A free hosted gallery (FHG) is a web page of sample content (usually
pornography
Pornography (colloquially called porn or porno) is Sexual suggestiveness, sexually suggestive material, such as a picture, video, text, or audio, intended for sexual arousal. Made for consumption by adults, pornographic depictions have evolv ...
) which is provided at no charge to affiliates of subscription websites (
paysite
A paysite or pay site, in the adult entertainment industry, is a website that charges money to become a member and view its content, and often produces original adult content. They can be contrasted with "free-sites", which do not charge a membe ...
s).
Affiliates
In the broadcasting industry (particularly in North America, and even more in the United States), a network affiliate or affiliated station is a local broadcaster, owned by a company other than the owner of the network, which carries some or al ...
promote these galleries to web surfers in order to drive
web traffic
Web traffic is the data sent and received by visitors to a website. Since the mid-1990s, web traffic has been the largest portion of Internet traffic. Sites monitor the incoming and outgoing traffic to see which parts or pages of their site are ...
to the paysite; every subscription sold generates a commission for the affiliate. The FHGs are usually hosted by the paysite and employ a simple
URL
A uniform resource locator (URL), colloquially known as an address on the Web, is a reference to a resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it. A URL is a specific type of Uniform Resource Identi ...
-based system to distinguish between affiliates, so that commissions will be paid to the right party.
Affiliates typically use FHGs to populate their own fake thumbnail gallery post (TGP)
website
A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...
s. It is difficult to get FHGs listed with true TGPs, since many affiliates will attempt to do this and most TGPs reject duplicate listings.
Furthermore, most TGPs require reciprocal links to them on galleries. Since most providers of free hosted galleries don't provide a way of doing so, attempting to submit them to most TGPs is usually futile.
This opens the question of usefulness in regards to free hosted galleries since they can only be used to act as a content filler on one's own free sites or fake TGP. Nevertheless, most adult site sponsor programs still provide free hosted galleries to affiliates.
References
* Cheryl Cain (2005) FHGs: A Valuable Resource XBiz. June 14, 2005
* Cheryl Cain (2005) The Strategic Use of FHGs XBiz. June 21, 2005
* Kit, Kush (2004) FreeHostedGalleries.com. March 17, 2004
*Kit, Kush (2004). FHGs Then and Now FreeHostedGalleries.com. March 17, 2004