There are valid points on all sides of the wall here. But, in free site design, ugly works best hands down. If you're a link site, pretty is good. Persian Kitty for example is pleasant as she wants bookmarkers and the like.
If you're a content based site you want to shuck the punter as soon as possible to something that interests them. That's where filtering your traffic is important if you don't know what the punters are looking for.
Make good use of pre selling if you're good at it and just link them to the join page.
After you've gone to all that trouble getting the surfer ready to buy and clicking on a JOIN NOW FOR ONLY A BUCK! Don't send them to the full tour and fuck up your sale.
Join page!
