The Sad Truth About MySpace Comments and Layouts Websites

If you're a member of MySpace, you've probably been to a site like this before - one with hundreds of glittery comments and bright layouts for you to choose from. Visitors might think the website owners are talented individuals with a passion for designing adorable graphics, but in reality, most of these owners could care less about graphic design, glitter, layouts, or even you for that matter.

I am one of these website owners - not one of the greedy owners, mind you. In fact, there are still a good number of MySpace resource site webmasters who are genuinely interested in all of the cuteness that goes into the designing of MySpace graphics. I assure you, we are a dying breed, and it's a damn shame.

Have you ever wondered why so many of those sites look the same and have the same basic layout? All-inclusive commercial scripts pretty much allow any person with a few bucks and an Internet connection to quickly whip up a cookie-cutter layout site and publish it without so much as learning how to open up Adobe Photoshop. These people are only concerned with unique visitors, Google PageRank, linkbacks, and of course, the all-mighty ad revenue. Ad revenue from these sites, as well as their return of investment (ROI) is the only reason people are getting into the MySpace niche these days.

There's no doubt that some of these scripts have helped make our lives easier. It allows us to upload hundreds of new graphics to our sites in just minutes, instead of taking hours or days to code every new item and add new links to each page one by one. I've been there, and it wasn't fun, so it's not the scripts themselves that I'm against.

I designed my first graphic in early 2004 after randomly stumbling across a Tripod website filled with glitters and dolls. In that time, MySpace was still in its infancy. There was never any mention of MySpace on those sites. Many of the early doll and glitter designers used free Tripod websites to showcase their pictures. People creating these were in it for the love of graphics and nothing more.

I was mesmerized, and even though I was in my late 20s, I felt I had found something online that I could really connect with. Considering that I was in the throes of a full-blown addiction to shiny/sparkly lip gloss, this was a natural progression, and a cheaper alternative at that. I quickly Googled a tutorial on creating these animated gems and the rest is history.

My current website is my second go at it, and is also my longest-lasting one, having been live for over a year and a half now. As far as traffic, it's not one of the big websites because I've only recently begun to publicize it, but it is growing bigger everyday. I can safely say that I have more graphics than most websites have. I'm not a big layout person, so I don't concentrate on those as much. My income from the site is almost non-existent, and I'm okay with that because it's not why I developed it in the first place. Let's just say, in the next month I might make enough to buy these new neoprene bodyboarding swimfins I've been eyeing at our local surf shop. That's good enough for me!

While I recently decided to branch out and see if I could bring in some play money through Google and ValueClick ads, my number one priority still has to do with my adoration of glitters. I love glitters just as much now as I did when I first discovered them, and I still love sharing my creations with people more than anything.

Unfortunately, I'm in the minority of those running comment sites. If you were to spend a little time on some of the MySpace-related webmaster forums, you would quickly understand my frustration.

While there are many kind, helpful and talented individuals onboard, some of the most irritable people are those who only care about their websites' stats and how much money they bring in. They call anyone with low stats noobs regardless of how long they have been designing their own content. There are also those who admit to getting into comment design because they were "bored". At least it's a safe hobby, I suppose.

To make things worse, some of the largest websites out there got that way from stealing comments and layouts from other resource sites, retagging them (or not) and putting them on their sites to boost traffic. These guys are usually younger individuals lacking morals and work ethics. When the victims complain, these website owners call them "jealous" for not having the same amount of traffic. Did I mention that drama is a huge undertone of this industry? It's all very sad but unavoidable since almost all of our work is conducted on the 1nt3rn3tZ [sic].

If someone were to put their domain, and complete website including content up for sale, no one would care about the hard work and expense put into the graphics sitting in the website. All they care about are the numbers. I can't help feel like these business types encroached onto our territory. They all but extorted the fun out of making glitters for people and have cheapened what we do. It's also made some MySpace users feel like these comments are akin to spam. I don't blame them one bit.

I do have some respect for those who succeed in this "business" without actually designing anything, because it is hard to do well thanks to the high number of sites out there, but I have no respect towards those who act like boneheads about it. There are also plenty of people who are incredible designers who happen to make a killing off of these sites. I respect those people immensely, because they aren't just out to make a quick buck. They have real talent to back up their success.

People might think I'm being naive, but it's a real shame that this niche is so completely driven by money and stats, especially because that wasn't the case only a few years ago. Nevertheless, those of us who are still in it for the love of what we do aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

So, how can you tell a good site from a bad site? Unless you are in the business and in the know, you really can't tell. I'm not writing this to out the "bad guys" (only because they aren't usually out to harm their visitors' computers with malware or anything) but I can give you one universal tip.

The cuter the website is, the more original and intricate the header (top) picture is, and the less its basic layout looks like all of the other websites out there, there's a better chance that the owner is seriously into designing glitters for the love of it.