Today I'm going to finish showing you a quick and easy way to build a simple AVS site from recycled free site parts. Dawn's completed her new site's back-end or "protected member's area" and installed the AVS front-end script set. Let's take a look.
For those who missed the first installment, Dawn Elizabeth was looking to find a way to re-purpose some of her old free site's content, especially her "girlfriends" gallery, which was decent fodder for a basic AVS site. Moving everything over to CyberAge's free host was a painless first step, one which was followed up with some tweaks to further try and up sell members to the sponsor. Tweaks that may not have been in her best interest ~ but more about that later.
Although the prospect of "installing an AVS script" seemed a bit daunting to her, the actual process was far simpler than it sounded: After filling out a brief form requesting information such as the site's name, URLs, description, and Search Engine keywords, she was given a snippet of code to copy and paste into her page. Almost anti-climatic in its simplicity, she asked "Is this all there really is to it?" Yep. Sorry you didn't try to do this before?
Those who have used the CyberAge system will notice that the script panel is not the generic one that the AVS provides, but is rather a slightly "tweaked" version that I use on my own sites. Simplified, bolder, and with the "This Week" feature, I find this to be a more attractive and easier to read interface, with only minor cosmetic changes, and no alteration to it's function.
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
Since some of these concepts are very hard to visualize, and others require membership in the AVS to actually see (bypassing the script is a violation of the AVS' Terms and Conditions), I'll illustrate the main points of this installation with the following screen shots:
Was It Worth It?
All in all this was a very simple project, especially since it used bits and pieces recycled from a free site. There is a fly in the ointment, however, that makes me question whether or not this particular project (in its present form) was worthwhile. Sure, the site now has enhanced "legal protection" due to its use of the AVS to restrict access by minors, but the content is incredibly tame, soft core material that wouldn't have likely caused problems even in Utah.
Enough income may be derived from direct membership sales as well as sponsor up-sells to justify the effort of building the site, but one of the main reasons for going the AVS route, getting decent traffic from the AVS link list is presently a "no go." You see, this site, while approved for inclusion in the AVS system, was not approved for listing on the AVS link list — and likely for a variety of reasons, including the fact that there are blind sponsor links on the main images pages ("Click Here for More!") as well as the full sized pics being linked to the sponsor. Life is full of options, and in all probability she'll opt for the increase in traffic.
So, Dawn Elizabeth has a decision to make: kill the offending "free site" remnants and get listed, or leave them in place for a better shot at an up sell, but at the expense of some juicy traffic. Life is full of options, and in all probability she'll opt for the increase in traffic, as it will likely be more profitable than keeping the blind links.
As I hope you can see from this series, building a simple AVS site is as easy as a bit of copy n paste on top of an existing free site. Why not dust one of your old sites off and upgrade it to an AVS site? Just make sure that you clean it up before trying to get that precious link list traffic. Good luck ~ Stephen
