Last week we talked about the AVS business model. I gave you what I think is a pretty damn good idea what the AVS business model is all about, if I do say so myself. I explained how the game used to be played, before Visa started whining like a little bitch and the industry was forced to take the “age verification” claims out of the equation.Last week we talked about the AVS business model. I gave you what I think is a pretty damn good idea what the AVS business model is all about, if I do say so myself. I explained how the game used to be played, before Visa started whining like a little bitch and the industry was forced to take the “age verification” claims out of the equation. I spoke about how the business model evolved. So now let’s compare today’s AVS site to free sites and pay sites.

WHY GO AVS OVER FREE SITES?

One advantage that AVS sites have over “free” sites is they can earn you money directly. With a free site, the content that you publish is a kind of lure, designed to hook surfers, reel them in, and then pass them off to another pond (your sponsor) where hopefully a sale can be turned and a commission earned. No sales, however, can be closed on the free site itself; if it’s “free” then it isn’t selling content, right? All you can do is warm up the potential consumers and then hope your partner in crime, in this case your chosen sponsor, can close the deal. What do they call those girls who are paid to keep the male porn actors hard but who don’t actually appear in the movies themselves? Yeah, that’s what you are when you run free sites. You blow the customers just enough to keep them hard.

Just for the sake of fairness, I should point out that some people who run free sites use them as traffic pumps for their own pay sites. Some use free sites to farm traffic for traffic-exchange programs. Other people market products like sex toys or software or whatever. So I’m really ignoring these uses of free sites today because they are far less common; most adult webmasters use free sites to farm traffic that is then passed on to sponsors. That’s the kind of free site we’re talking about here today.

So the AVS site gives you the chance to turn a sale directly. It puts you in control over your financial destiny. Another advantage is the “porn network” angle that you are free to tout when trying to convince surfers to pay for access to your site. If a surfer joins an AVS network because he likes your website, that surfer also gains access to (usually) thousands of other adult websites that are also part of that AVS network. More content then the average pay site, and at a fraction of the cost. This is a huge advantage if you learn to market it correctly.

And don’t think that just because your AVS site is trying to sell its own memberships that it can’t also send traffic to a sponsorship program. If someone isn’t interested in joining your AVS then he or she might be intrigued by one of your rotating banner ads. It’s like the best of both worlds, you get commissions from any productive traffic you feed off to your sponsor, and you get commissions on any new AVS network members that you convince to sign up. Money, money, money.

Of course you might also want to include the “child screen” factor into the equation. I know, I know, Visa might cry if I said that AVS networks can be used to screen out minors – after all, they’re trying so hard to get kids hooked on credit cards these days – but admit it, kids are far less likely to see your content if it requires a credit card to access. If this matters to you then you’ll need to keep the content on the “outside” and unprotected area of your AVS site as tame as possible, and maybe even censored; you can then place your uncensored content on the inside of the site. If the AVS company allows it, you might even be able to use the old “we want to give you access to the content, but we need to screen out minors first” argument. It works.

WHY GO AVS OVER PAY SITES?

Maybe you’re sitting there wondering why you should bother to build an AVS site when you can just build your own pay site and collect recurring monthly subscription fees. Well, if that’s what you’re thinking, you may need to do a little bit of research because few adult webmasters have what it takes to build a competitive pay site in today’s competitive online market. Why? The content costs associated with running a competitive pay site are staggering. Not to mention pay sites perform best when they feature original, exclusive content. Bandwidth and hosting can come into play too. And your design skills really need to be at an advanced level. Not to mention it’s not as easy to accept Visa and MasterCard today as it was a few years ago; there are annual fees that can prove discouraging to small, independent webmasters, although I have heard that there is a solution to that problem on the way. And let’s not forget the time it takes to maintain a pay site. It’s a big project.

So unless you’re pouring a lot of money into your adult website business, or unless you’re an amateur porn star and can be your own content, pay sites aren’t very logical.

So now that you know some of the problems with pay sites it should be pretty obvious how AVS sites can score an advantage here. First, running an AVS site is dirt cheap. Your biggest cost is hosting. Content can be minimal, and there’s no reason to bother updating an AVS site later on unless you want to give it a facelift for marketing purposes. With an AVS site you don’t need to sign up for third party processing, so no annual fees, and no scrutiny of your business by Visa and MasterCard. You can also whip out AVS sites pretty quickly, and your web design skills need only be of a moderate level.

Of course you can’t make the same high grosses with an AVS site that you could with a pay site – but then the small, independent webmaster would find that net profits almost certainly will be better with an AVS site considering the costs of running a pay site.

CONCLUSION AND LOOKING AHEAD

If you’ve never built and marketed AVS sites then hopefully I’ve piqued your interest. There just isn’t a lot of talk about AVS sites these days, but there’s no good reason why they can’t be just as successful today as they were in the past. Next time we’ll take a look at the structure of an AVS site; what pages you need to build and why. Then we’ll look at some of the AVS networks that are still open to all independent adult webmasters.

Connor Young is Editor-in-Chief of YNOT News. He has been involved with the online adult entertainment business since 1997, and is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the Internet Freedom Association (i-freedom.org); He also serves as Editor-in-Chief of The ADULTWEBMASTER Magazine.