Are The AVN Shows To Restrictive For You?

In terms of cost and the people attending them who you can do new business with?

I recall a lot of people on GWW over the past year have been saying that the costs involved with attending Internext are to high for what they actually get out of it, hotel rooms, airfare, passes, food, etc.

Then the amount of new business attendees are able to get done is also lacking too.

Do you think the shows are starting to cater more and more towards the sponsors or the 'players' doing business with each other rather than the people who they should be being catered to, the small to medium level webmasters that should be learning about the business and building business relations with people?

In all honesty, i cant think of any reason (other than to meet people from the boards face-to-face) why any webmaster who has been in the industry for less than 2 years should attend either of the Internext shows.

Perhaps it is just me though, what are your thoughts on the shows costs and new business viabilities for the newer webmaster?

Regards,

Lee

As owners of a growing affiliate program, AJ and I are always interested in meeting new up-and-coming affiliates, as well as deepening relationships with existing affiliates and encouraging affiliates we haven't yet worked with to give us a try.

I think there's a HUGE opening for a show specifically designed to attract newbie webmasters. Gay Phoenix Forum did a lot to try and address that, but I believe that a lot more can be done for upcoming shows in that regard. It's a challenge to get a crowbar and pry these new guys out from behind their computers and get 'em to come and meet people when they may not know anyone else (in person), but it can be done and it should be done.

At the same time, there's also an opening for existing sponsors and larger affiliates to do more deals with each other (sorta what Phoenix Forum was 3 years ago, small and cozy) and specialized events, perhaps with nice perks for affiliates sending large amounts of traffic, would be a good way to approach that.

The revenue models for the two shows could be different, but with the amount of money thrown around by large sponsors, there really is no reason why *any* event needs to charge attendees more than a small-but-reasonable amount ($50-150 per ticket), and perhaps a lesson from the magazine sales model would be useful here... give away subscriptions very cheap so you get your reader (attendee) base up so the advertisers (sponsors) will be willing to spend more to reach them.

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

The revenue models for the two shows could be different, but with the amount of money thrown around by large sponsors, there really is no reason why *any* event needs to charge attendees more than a small-but-reasonable amount ($50-150 per ticket), and perhaps a lesson from the magazine sales model would be useful here... give away subscriptions very cheap so you get your reader (attendee) base up so the advertisers (sponsors) will be willing to spend more to reach them.

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That has been a concern of the show sponsors and attendees for years, and im in total agreement with your hypothesis on the situation, a lower price would draw a larger crowd, enabling AVN to potentiall charge the show sponsors more.

Right now, from the last couple of media kits i got from AVN, it looks like the opposite is happening, show attendance is dwindling and sponsorship prices are going up.

Regards,

Lee

I can't afford to go to Internext. When I factor in the U.S. exchange rate, which isn't as bad as it was, it costs me between $800-1000 for a flight (flights from Canada are more expensive that domestic US service) $300 $400 a night for a hotel, that's over $2K right there. Then maybe another $1000 for food, drinks, and incidentals like cabs to and from the airport, $5 bottles of water in the room, conference registration fee, $7 bottles of Scope because you forget it at home, etc. I just can't justify spending that kind of money to meet people I could ICQ and e-mail. I'd rather spend the $3k on content for my sites.

The Phoenix Forum has always been a phenomenal experience for me. I got more out of one Free Site seminar I attended in 2005 than I did all of AVN's seminars combined. The conference is free is you register early enough, the hotel is still expensive, but reasonable. The flight is about the same. The shuttle to the hotel is free. But the set up of the show with that inner courtyard at the Mission Palms always makes it easy to meet people and chat with them. And the hotel is surrounding by a lot of restaurants etc, so you can always economize on the food you have to buy.

While I still may end up spending $2 to $3k to go to Phoenix, it's a much better value for my money.

Michael

Most people who express frustration over all that goes in to attending shows (at least those often most visibly expressing frustration) are the independent webmasters who have genuine and legitimate cost concerns regarding attendance and all that has to be spent in order to attend.

But even for us, a relatively large company with relatively substantial resources at our disposal, the shows are becoming less and less useful precisely because fewer of these independent webmasters attend. It becomes harder for us to justify much of a presence with each new show season. In fact, I'll be the only person from CorbinFisher.com attending Vegas Internext this year (and it is primarily because a few select webmasters I know will be there and it's an opportunity to be in the same town at the same time and have meetings with one another outside of the show structure). I'm not even sure I'll attend seminars or send much time, if any, on whatever show floor might be there.

Just like my dad always used to say "You don't stay rich by wasting your money", large companies are wise to be very deliberate in how they spend their money and as attendance gets smaller and smaller at the shows the justification for spending any money at all on attendance diminishes.

I mean sure, we could go and meet up with some of the larget companies in attendance (and the unfortunate, smaller webmaster who sacrificed a great deal to attend only to come out of the experience wondering why the hell they did that and spending months trying to recover from it) and stroke eachothers' egos for a couple of days but that's hardly much of an investment.

I want to point out that from the perspective of a larger company that invested a great deal in last year's Internext/Vegas (a large booth, large employee presence, sponsorships up the wazoo, and a very large presence at the show), we didn't feel the least bit catered to. So don't think, when you see these shows, that they're there to cater to the sponsors and bigger companies. We had a huge booth within a convention hall that had hardly any foot traffic. What good did that do us? When you're sponsoring such things (if you think attendance is expensive, you should have seen the prices to reserve a booth... furnish a booth... have lighting and electricity at your booth... have trash removed from your booth... ship supplies to your booth... ship supplies out of your booth after the show... ) and attendance is down so low, you're certainly not feeling catered to. No one is being exposed to what you're spending a considerable amount putting forth.

Thankfully, we knew attendance would be slow and we'd probably not see much of a response at the show, but decided to do what we did anyways just because we'd never done it before and felt it wise, as a big company that a lot is expected of, to stand up and say "HERE WE ARE!" just once. Many people had heard of CorbinFisher.com, but had never met anyone from here and so we wanted to splurge just once in order to make that happen. But if we were wanting to do anymore than that, we would have been sorely disappointed.