Originally Posted by jayeff

As others have said, the biggest difference you will see is on the traffic front. For some reason the established AVS webmasters have a tendency to be almost dismissive about that change, but it is huge.

If you were used to your listings getting hundreds of visitors in the past, now you will now be lucky to see low double-digits. Which means that while paying the same commission to the AVS operator as in the past, you not only need to drive your own traffic to make initial sales, but upsells will suck even if you do that. In most cases, rules on upsells have got tighter even when the AVS operator started pushing his own upsells harder, but the main factor is the reduced volume of internal traffic diluted between so many more sites.

If you check the new lists of the remaining "traditional" AVS programs, it isn't hard to spot that they are dominated by 3 or 4 webmasters submitting new sites every day and that without them, some lists would be empty. This has been going on for 5+ years, locking AVS standards into the 90's and making it practically impossible for a newcomer (or returnee) to earn anything much other than new sales from his own traffic.

Given all that, if you really want to handle content, the newer video-AEN programs, such as DeluxePass, are a much better bet. They provide you hosting and content for free, while at the same time paying the same kind of commission. Their product is more in tune with the current market, so since AVS prices have gone up, it is arguably easier to sell. You won't make anything on upsells (there are none), but any loss there is marginal nowadays anyway. Rebills are not quite as good as AVS sites enjoyed in their heyday, but close and certainly a lot better than just about anything else around. And the final advantage is that most have built-in affiliate programs, so you might be able to get yourself a few affiliates and earn some extra dollars that way too.