Alt/ArtPorn site Zivity is losing a sizable chunk of their initial investment support. Zivity garnered a lot of attention with it’s widely reported $7 million+ in seed money provided by self described ‘mainstream’ tech investors and venture capitalists. The ‘web 2.0’ site, which relies heavily on models to submit content and then create their own buzz in the hopes of earning themselves an eventual payout based on popularity they generate for themselves, rather than opting for a more traditional affiliate sales structure, has not been as wildly successful as had originally been speculated. Their current Quantified (directly measured) monthly visitors measure out to equal 17.5K people (US) 26.2K (Global). By comparison APN currently measures 32.9K people (US) 66.5K (Global). Those are all directly measured quantified results, which are known to be more reliable than most other traffic measures, especially when being directly compared. So, in order to earn out for their investors more quickly, they have diversified their projects, money, and staff to generate more winners. According to industry sources AVN, XBiz, et al., $3 million of their remaining $4 million and 65% of their current staff are being split off to pursue the success of their new mainstream tabloid TopFans.com site, as well as some MySpace games and applications.
I’ve always found the Zivity business structure curious, along with the handful of girls that promote it. Nearly every one of the top AltPorn sites pays out at least 50% of sales generated by standard affiliate promotion and some of them give an even higher percentage payout to their models who promote their own appearances. They all pay out in just a couple of weeks too. This has always sounded like a much better deal than the the overly complicated and slow system Zivity offers. So, it’s not really a big surprise to me that they landed themselves about mid-list at best.
By the way, if anyone has $5 to $7 million burning a hole in their Ed Hardy’s and wants a successful hot new art/altporn site, hit us up. We’ll hook you up. Talk to me in the next two weeks and I’m authorized to cut it to maybe $1.5mil*.
Not only was that a shitty system to pay people but the site itself was rather boring. At least personally I found the community aspect of the site to be lacking which was odd for a site that was supposed to be a community of artists. I’m really not surprised they aren’t doing as well as they thought they would.
One thing that you are missing here is that the split was voluntary and amicable. It was done to help put some creative and development control back in the hands of the founders. Control and development time that was being slip across many different projects. All of the things that are lacking are well known to everyone at the site but it has been a slow process to build, but it is building at an organic, sustainable rate that will see them through the economic downturn.
And as far as the payout, %80 of the revenue spent on votes is returned to the artists, the only thing lacking is scale. The membership is steadily growing, and with that the money to be made.
🙂
Sounds like a steal at 1.5 million I would if I could but times are tough are these parts.