Is AVS dead and burried ?

[wizhard]

You hardly see much on the boards these days about AVS. IMHO I can't see how that model stands a chance these days with all the copious amounts of free porn that's out there

Experiences or thoughts anyone ?

[xxxdesign-net]

quality "AVS" sites that dont rely exclusively on linklists arent dead, no...

[TheSenator]

The glory days of AgeCheck and Adult Check.

I was pulling in mad cash. Plus, the quality of the surfer was insane. Upselling in the members' area use to be so easy.

[Craig T]

All the webmasters who using Sexkey, Mansites, and the other strong AVS systems are all laughing right now, as they are keeping their conversions to themselves.

As of this morning, Sexkey was converting better than 1/100 and Mansites was converting it's usual 1/55. Do the math, and I think you will realize we do better than a lot of programs you send traffic to.

Just an FYI, our offices got the remnants of the hurricane Ernesto and while our staff was out early this a.m. setting up back up generators, sales didn't seem to falter.

And for even more fun, check our Screwicide pool for for Screwbucks
Webmasters can win $10,000 for simply picking a single NFL team will win each week

[Vasago Reno]

AVS's (AdultCheck being among the worst) were always notorious for copyright infringement.

I'm glad to see them on the decline these days. They hurt the industry overall.

[gooddomains]

AVS works great

[Jarmusch]

The big ones are still around, so it's very far away from being "dead and buried".

[DarkJedi]

Yes AVS are dead

[Trax]

for me, personally, it is
i dont care about avs anymore

[jayeff]

You need to distinguish between old-school AVS and the more recent (mainly video-only) AEN programs ("free" sites like SexKey are something else again).

Basically the traditional AVS operators haven't done anything new since they introduced "premium" sites in what, 1998. I suppose that's not entirely true, most of them have made upsells harder for everyone except themselves and they handed their businesses over to a handful of people with scripts that churn out new sites every day...

AVS isn't dead, but if you want to see how a total lack of ambition and business sense can p*ss away millions of dollars, old-school AVS is the best example in this industry to date.

[Craig T]

Hey Jedi,
Am I Reading your stats wrong? You converted 1/320, on traffic that I am guessing is TGP, and the same traffic conveted 1/1230 at NastyDollars?

Let me know if I am reading this wrong.

C

[DarkJedi]

Originally Posted by Craig T

Hey Jedi,
Am I Reading your stats wrong? You converted 1/320, on traffic that I am guessing is TGP, and the same traffic conveted 1/1230 at NastyDollars?

Let me know if I am reading this wrong.

C

You are reading it right

[free4porn]

good stats!

[dcortez]

But quite a few sponsors still offer 'free sites' - are those not intended for AVS?

[Sarah_Jayne]

The checks I get every other week from Cyberage would suggest not. Of course I say that everytime somebody asks this and yet the people that don't actually work in the field all agree amongst themselves that it is dead. In reality, I am happy to let them think that.

[Craig T]

Hey Sarah,
You wrote what exactly what I was thinking, but it's unfortunate that the title of the thread misleads so many. Nothing I can say to pursuade the ones who don't listen.

[MaddCaz]

quite possible

[MaddCaz]

can I live?

[Craig T]

For anyone wanting to know how to promote avs sites to make $$$, there are several niches that are doing extremely well. We can show you how to promote to any avs, and be efffective at it.

[Cman]

I still see SexKey around a few places. I guess thats the same right?

[bigmack]

Can somebody tell me what an avs site is?

[wizhard]

Strange - so far in this thread opinions seem to be split around 50/50 - my personal experiences with AVS left a pretty bad taste in my mouth and looking at the AVS model on balance of available porn on the web today it really suprises me that a high % of webmasters still do well with it.

When I first got into this biz around 3 years ago the percieved wisdom from the old pro's was to start off with submitting free sites and AVS to linklists untill you learn how to sell and then move onto TGP/MPG submitting. Nowadays it seems more like the wisdom of the day is to dive straight into TGP/MPG submitting with paid partner accounts, and although free site submitting gets mentioned in passing AVS hardly gets a mention - strange how times have changed and I wonder how many newbies even bother trying AVS at all ?.

I wonder *if* because there are less AVS sites around it could explain why the web masters still at it do so well because of a lower level of competition........food for thought.

[Craig T]

Interesting thoughts Wizhard, you may be on to something.

Hey Big Mack, an AVS was the name use to say Age Verification System",
It is a conglomeration of sites, that a surfer gets access to when they purchase into the system.

Visa a few years back wanted to stamp out the term, AVS, as they wanted no part of being used to verify a surfer was 18. Their obvious goal is to have minors in pocession of cards, that parents are responsible for, and being used as an age determining method did not fit into their plans.

We have since had to use other names, and we are waiting for somethinng to stick. Right now AEN, or adult entertainment network seems only partially to have been thrown around.

The real reason for the lack of more systems and the closing of others, was due to more of a 2257 issue. If you are charging a credit card to see content, someone has to take responibilty for the verification of content.
With so many webmasters unable to do this, some business couldn't work. Others took responsibilty for the content, and are still around.

This is the reason I think everyone thought AVS's would die, but the smart companies thinking long term already were ready with the solution of owning the content that is purchased.

I hope this answers your question.

[stev0]

I still pull in some avs sales from sites i made years ago... great long term income from SE's and link lists.

[bigmack]

Originally Posted by Craig T

Interesting thoughts Wizhard, you may be on to something.

Hey Big Mack, an AVS was the name use to say Age Verification System",
It is a conglomeration of sites, that a surfer gets access to when they purchase into the system.

Visa a few years back wanted to stamp out the term, AVS, as they wanted no part of being used to verify a surfer was 18. Their obvious goal is to have minors in pocession of cards, that parents are responsible for, and being used as an age determining method did not fit into their plans.

We have since had to use other names, and we are waiting for somethinng to stick. Right now AEN, or adult entertainment network seems only partially to have been thrown around.

The real reason for the lack of more systems and the closing of others, was due to more of a 2257 issue. If you are charging a credit card to see content, someone has to take responibilty for the verification of content.
With so many webmasters unable to do this, some business couldn't work. Others took responsibilty for the content, and are still around.

This is the reason I think everyone thought AVS's would die, but the smart companies thinking long term already were ready with the solution of owning the content that is purchased.

I hope this answers your question.

Thank you craig. Interesting thing to know.

[dirtbox]

actually theres a bit of a difference between AVS sites and AEN sites. AEN sites are marketed more like regular paysites. the surfer has to actually purchase a membership before accessing any content. With AVS, the surfer verifies his age to gain access to free content then gets upsold to the paying members section once inside.

[jayeff]

Originally Posted by dirtbox

actually theres a bit of a difference between AVS sites and AEN sites. AEN sites are marketed more like regular paysites. the surfer has to actually purchase a membership before accessing any content. With AVS, the surfer verifies his age to gain access to free content then gets upsold to the paying members section once inside.

You are slightly off-track there.

There are certain surface similarities between free sites like SexKey, old-school (formerly) AVS sites like Cyberage and more recent video-only AEN sites such as PornAccess and Jans Webring. But there are also a lot of differences and I don't think most people who were building AVS sites in the 90's would regard SexKey as a "real" AVS system.

I'm not knocking SexKey by saying that: just trying to keep the three types of site separated because they really are quite different models.

[Fenris Wolf]

I have been with ProAdult for a couple years now. I have not been very aggressive in my promotion but I still get decent checks in the mail. This year I plan to change all that and work hard on making sales. In fact I am actually thinking of expanding to the other AVS and promote them also. AVS are still a viable income source.

[Verbal]

IMHO ... The 'AVS' link list does not provide the same sales like it used too, but it's certainly NOT dead! Like anything else, if you have your own traffic, you can certainly make it work for you and upselling is still pretty decent. It's better that you have the opportunity to upsell your surfer than most paysites. Plus its been my experience that AVS surfers typically rebill for at least 3 months. So lets say the average sale is around $12 a month, than $36/sale is still very competitive ... again, not too mention the additional upsells.

But like somebody else mentioned, you can't just slap together a site with 100 pics and think its going to retain.

[Craig T]

Hey Jayeff,
No knock taken... as you are right. There are differences, and rules that separate the various business models. It is for the webmaster to find out what converts best for them. What advice I can usually give webmasters is to run tests on the various systems, and let the conversions tell you where to send the traffic. I think we as site owners, managers, promoters forget that the surfers look for value, and for unique content. If you can promote something differen

[Craig T]

my post got cut off

As I was saying, if you can promote something different, for a good value, a webmaster can run a long term business. The more things change, it seems the more they stay the same.

[jayeff]

Originally Posted by Fenris Wolf

AVS are still a viable income source.

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.

[TheSenator]

Check this out for perceptive.
Clicky here

AVS evolved to AEN evolvotion is a bitch and also happens in leaps and bounds.

I wish CyberAge would evolve with all this blogging stuff... RSS Feeds...
whatever happen to the "million dollar" traffic deal to link list.

Anyway, it is not dead for people who know how to use it as a tool instead of traffic.

[Craig T]

Wow, there is a mouthful!!! I can't speak for every AVS, only ours, and I know a ton of things we would be implementing, only to see the rules changed midstream. I remember a few summers ago, with Visa making us have to go to every webmaster to change the wording on every site!!! You can imagine the mess that caused. Webmasters who hadn't changed a thing in years still making money, now having to consider going back and making changes on 1000's of sites.

Likewise, it wasn't only AVS's that lost business, ask any website owner, they have all seen it. There is so many more sites, and so many more coming. The question will be who will be here 3 years from now with ways to help webmasters make money. We are all in it together. 2257 guidelines is a good thing, but it will make it very hard for smaller webmasters. In answer to the question of sitting back and resting, we were working on what now became SCREW for the last 2 years, based on our webmasters telling us they wanted recurring programs. The good news is we had to go back and relearn everything, as the business models changes over the years. What we learned from this development, is what we are now helping our Sexkey webmasters with. Don't give up hope yet, there is still time to make $$$$

[Fenris Wolf]

Originally Posted by jayeff

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.

Very valid points. I do agree with you on this level. It is much harder to make a sale today than it was even 2 years ago, but I think that's true across the industry as a whole. Today's surfer is more savvy and particular than ever before. And with that in mind you need to cater your business model against that backdrop. Anyone who is just starting the business and is looking to learn from scratch can't use what most webmasters did in the 90's to make money (generally depending on link list traffic from the AVS) and needs to be more creative. Can you invest your time in something else and be more profitable? Yes, that's true. Is AVS dead and buried? I don't think so. Has it changed dramatically? Yes.

Just my

[AdultInsider Cloner]

Our AVSs Freenetpass and xxxsexticket continue to grow and profit.... it's just a difference approach on sales

[MarkMan]

I think its time to bring the AVS systems back.. full force!

what killed the AVS marathon was the betrayal of Adult check.. it changed the view of most AVS submitters.. including me... they basically stole all the customers in one shot...

it made allot of the submitters think .. whats the point of selling so hard when .. in the end .. the best customers the once that stay for years are going to be stolen.

well .. its still better then giving the surfers everything without commitment.. and then trying to sell them the same stuff.. for $$$. AVS System was teaching the surfer that they need to make commitment .. give their info a way .. sign up for something to get more access.. and that made the jump to Pay sites easier for the surfer.

it also kept the surfer in our hands .. the adult industry and not in google's hands.. which are the once that hold all the $$$.. reselling us the same surfers again and again ..

[Verbal]

this thread deserves a bump

[Brujah]

Interesting Alexa Graphs.

Cyberage vs Sexkey
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...berage.com#top

[bobby666]

Originally Posted by Brujah

Interesting Alexa Graphs.

Cyberage vs Sexkey
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...berage.com#top

if you look at the stats period 2002-2006 it looks rather sad for both
link

[Craig T]

yeah, I think we all wish it was pre-2001

[CyberAgeGary]

Originally Posted by Brujah

Interesting Alexa Graphs.

Cyberage vs Sexkey
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/tr...berage.com#top

One of the reasons for this graph is that in or around 2002-2003 CyberAge also started using the domain name avsofchoice.com, so if you want to check that domain as well, and add the two together, you can see the real stats. Their traffic did not go down as much as it seems, it actually got better around 2004.. I know because I used to work there..

[bobby666]

when i look at today's avs, from the point of view of a surfer, i am missing somethin special,what makes me sign up.
Of course i can only speak about myself:
Maybe a bonus feature as DVD content would make me so horny to sign up, most avs content sites are still primary picture sites. Nowadays the surfers goal is to get the hottest dvd scenes on his harddrive.
This would also explain why itis for me easier to make sells by my janswebring and deluxepass-sites than my regulary avs-picture sites (even if they are high-quality,licened content,thousands of pics...)

[hchi]

Awesome thread deserves a bump!

[Excretor]

MANIAC PASS - just look! It's the new (in)carnation of AVS ideology!

[jimthefiend]

Originally Posted by TheSenator

The glory days of AgeCheck and Adult Check.

I was pulling in mad cash. Plus, the quality of the surfer was insane. Upselling in the members' area use to be so easy.

First dollar I ever spent online was for an Adult Check membership.





But to respond to the question asked in the thread title.


Short answer: Yes.

[FrameShifter]

Originally Posted by TheSenator

.... Plus, the quality of the surfer was insane. Upselling in the members' area use to be so easy.

Still is

[fuzebox]

Originally Posted by Craig T

Hey Jedi,
Am I Reading your stats wrong? You converted 1/320, on traffic that I am guessing is TGP, and the same traffic conveted 1/1230 at NastyDollars?

Let me know if I am reading this wrong.

C

Of course anyone's conversion ratio with SexKey can only be compared to another program that shows join page clicks, seeing as the surfer has to see your AVS tour and then click on the SexKey form (taken to join page) for that to be registered as a unique...

Not knocking SK at all, love you guys, but you can't compare the ratio to that of a paysite.