jayeff

They are a viable income source for some webmaster and AVS could have been the ideal business model for all independent webmasters. Which makes it the more of a pity than none of the old-school AVS operators stayed committed. By, I guess, 1997 there were 18 separate AVS programs, a half-dozen at least worth working with, but the handful which still exist have been running on cruise control for years now.

The decline began with the scripts which let webmasters pump out sites so long as they had content to feed them. For 3+ years the new sites lists on all the old-style AVS programs have been dominated by script-generated sites from 3 or 4 webmasters. At least a couple must be putting out 1,000-1,500 "sites" a year (per AVS program).

The initial impact of diluting the links lists, together with changes in the rules and operators promoting their own stuff, was to decimate (literally) the extra income AVS sites could make via upsells.

It wasn't long, as webmaster interest dwindled and traffic slowed (for example, over the last 4 years Cyberage has dropped from an Alexa ranking of almost 1,000 and now floats anywhere between 40,000 and 90,000), that dilution of the new links list meant fresh sites getting double-digit traffic instead of hundreds of visitors every day.

Long-term webmasters tell you that the answer is to generate your own traffic. And that's true. But they are not in a rush to explain why the AVS operator still takes the same 40%+ commission as in the days when that wasn't necessary and the upsell opportunities were much greater. Those webmasters also don't mention that once your traffic is in the system, with their massive site base, they may well benefit more than you do.

The other negative factor is that the standards of these programs have hardly changed in more than 5 years (although some have still raised prices), while the rest of the industry has moved on along. So conversions aren't as easy and whereas you could reckon on 5-6 months retention back in the day, when people do talk about old-school AVS now, they more frequently talk about 3-4 months.

I don't think most webmasters who left AVS did so because in absolute terms they couldn't still make money. It was rather because of the sharp and continuing decline in what each site earned and the feeling that their time and skills could be put to better use. And it was incredibly frustrating to be working in a system which some webmasters were busy wrecking while the owners looked on and did nothing.