The problem with AVS is webmasters who look at it as a traffic source only. If you don't actually try selling the AVS at all and you're just looking for traffic, you're going to find the experience very dissatisfying. Do you really think AVS sites are stupid and don't know everyone wants their traffic? Do you think they just sit back and allow it to happen?

Why do you suppose that AVS/AEN sites have such complicated rules and submission guidelines?

Let's look at Rainbow Passport as an example. If you submit a gallery with even one single traffic leak to a link list or other paysite on the tour pages, your site is approved and dropped to "tier 2." This means your script works, but you don't ever show up in their listings or search engines, so baby, as far as traffic goes, you're on your own. If you submit a clean gallery with no outside traffic leaks, you're a tier 1 and in the search engine. And most AVS/AEN sites work like this. Some like DeluxePass allow no traffic leaks anywhere inside or out.

If you submit crap, they'll happily approve it, this way if some traffic happens to stumble across your site and clicks the join button, they've got your traffic. But crap always sinks to the bottom. They don't show your site in their listings or they bury it so deep that it's at the bottom of 98,000 other sites and no surfer will ever find you.

If you submit galleries that try to sell the AVS/AEN service (and try and upsell their premium products) then you'll earn more favour with the AVS/AEN. They'll list you and rank you higher in their search engines because they recognize you're creating a good product for them.

My best advice to the traffic-seeking webmasters is to simply stop wasting your time building bullshit galleries. You're just burning up your time and money. If you put the effort into creating a better product, you'll (a) make some money off AVS memberships (and what's the difference whether you're getting a cheque from UGAS or Sean Cody) and (b) you'll be able to get more traffic to your site because your gallery's getting more exposure.

AVS is dying only because most webmasters didn't ever figure out how to make them work so they moved on to free sites, TGPs, links lists, paysites, and now blogs and review sites. You know how quickly and how much this business changes, why do you think 1999 tactics are still going to work in 2006?

Cheers,
Michael