Any AVS webmaster hanging around in here?

If you have experience with AVS's... please check into this thread.

I read/post on a couple of different AVS boards, but the gay forums are pretty slow. I am currently working only with AVS's and primarily with UGAS. But I'm looking to grow in this area and gradually move out of it (I just have to get with Scorpio to design my first pay site).

I'm damn near making a living wage with only UGAS, DeluxePass and sponsor sales. I just need to learn more about the business, then I can quit my real job!

So whadda you need to know babe?

Regards,

Lee

Nothing in particular... just thought it would be nice to know who does AVS here.

Here is a topic...

What AVS's work well for you?

UGAS + GMP :)

Been with GMP sice the launch when Cecil used to be there :groovy:

UGAS ive been using for a while now and we do reasonably well there although to be honest we havent focused as much on UGAS the last few months.

Regards,

Lee

I use MANcheck exclusively for my site.

I don't recycle my galleries and put them up with other AVS's because my galleries are highly optimized for search engines. I do well with search engine rankings, but it takes a lot of work to get a gallery prepared. And to avoid tripping the duplicate content filters, I'd have to regenerate all new written content for a gallery before I could resubmit it to another AVS. That's way too much work, I'd rather just pour that energy into one site and one AVS.

I write a lot of content for my galleries: descriptions, stories, articles, whatever it takes, and you just can't recycle that stuff too easily.

I like MANcheck because I always felt they were true to their brand. They were the first gay AVS, and they have just kept plodding along. Other straight AVS's have tried breaking into the gay market, and UGAS has a couple of different brands, but I think it's best to stick with one market. Focus on one area, build your brand, and be the best you can be, otherwise you just become the master of none.

MANcheckPlusVideo isn't the greatest for my niche, which is bears and hairy men, but then none of the big players really are. However, MANcheck Cinema has a good selection of movies featuring hairy guys, real men, bears, etc, so I've been promoting that and doing alright at it.

The other reason I like MANcheck is that they're not the biggest. Isn't UGAS reaching a saturation point? Doesn't almost everyone on the planet already have a UGAS membership? I just figure if I create a hot site and work with MANcheck exclusively, then I'll get sales from other AVS members.

MANcheck recently just bumped up their minimum site requirements for new from 25 pics to 50 pics for regular sites and from 50 to 100 pics for Plus sites. I think they started getting hit hard with all the webmasters AdultCheck dumped, so they increased the requirements to maintain quality sites. I'm okay with that. It seems pretty reasonable. I wouldn't want hundreds of extra poor quality sites to suddenly flood the system just because webmaster were looking for some place to dump their sites.

MANcheck's working for me. I started this in April and my sales have steadily climbed. However, anyone who wants into this business had better be prepared to work their freakin' ass off. It's great when the sales start to grow, but you've got to work hard and consistently to build it.

Anyway, if you want to check out MANcheck further, there's a webmaster link in my signature. Oh yeah, they always pay on time, and they've got a half-decent bonus structure.

Good luck
Dzinerbear

I use sexkey.

Reason being: I think most gay surfers already signed up with mancheck, UGAS, GMP, etc, so I will never get too much commission. Sexkey is relately new (at least to me), and they are totally free.

Am I right?

Yeah, you're right in the sense that they're newer, so yes, fewer people will have their membership already. As far as the "totally free" part, well, as we all know "free" is a pretty broad term that's thrown around in this industry. Sure, maybe SexKey is free, but whatever's in the fine print, ain't.

I just checked them out and another way you may benefit is that I've heard that a lot of straight guys are more likely to use a service like SexKey to check out gay sites because that way, if the membership is discovered by a friend or family member, there's no explaining to do – it just looks like a membership to a straight porn site.

Cheers
Dzinerbear

Sorry, I've ignored this thread. I've been busy submitting my sites to other AVS's. I still can't get any sales from AVS's other than UGAS and Deluxe Pass!

Mancheck sends some nice traffic... but no sales. Dzinerbear... are you upselling to plus sites to get the sales? Or are your sales all from SE traffic? IMen, CyberAge and GMP don't seem to have much traffic and ProAdult... don't get me started!

They have happily accepted my Quantum sites but I've been having a bitch of a time getting a couple of regular sites accepted. They have such assinine rules (no links to hub sites) and asthetic standards I don't understand. Check out the most recent email from their reviewer...

Quote:

---

Overall your sites lack any originality and profitability. They are just a waste of time and traffic.

---

OUCH!

HI there,

I get a lot of traffic from search engines, but almost every time I launch a new gallery and it appears in the MANcheck "new" section, I get at least a sale that day. Twice this week I've had sales within 1-2 hours of putting up a site.

I do get upsells to MANcheckPlusVideo, but I don't push it because they don't have much bear meat in MPV. Still, I'm constantly amazed that people will join up and buy MPV for one month instead of MC for a whole year.

Dzinerbear

OH MY GOD!!!! It's xstr8guy and my first kiss. :)

Digging through the archives, I think this was one of my first posts on the board. And here xstr8guy and I are getting to know one another. Who knew we were going to be such good friends.

dzinerbear

That is so funny! Did you notice that we bonded right away?