ARS about to tank?
 

I don’t like to start rumors, but I’ve heard from pretty good sources that almost the whole staff has been laid off except for the FMAO and Traffic Dude.

They downsized massively once. Continued downsizing is a very bad sign.

I will say that their sites are still showing sales and I still get my checks every week, so dodn’t mistake this as an ARS dis – just a heads up.

I really don't think so, but I have no idea.

I hope not, been slowly promoting their new stuff more and more.

Hey...for the record:

1. I hope this isn't true.
2. I still have an active account with ARS.
3. My checks get cashed.

On the flip side:

1. I've been in the business for a long time.
2. I have good sources
3. I've heard the same thing over and over

And on the flip side of that:

1. I don't know this means they are in trouble
2. I don't know they are about to tank

That's why I included a "?" in the post title -- to open the topic for discussion.

ARS is not tanking. We are changing our business and staff to roll with the changes that are happening in the industry. Yes we have cut some staff, yes we have cut expenses, yes we changed our whole program over. But that doesn't mean that we are going under. We are setting ourselves up for what I believe will be a very profitable position for the future.

Considering they hardly have any sites left why would they need so much staff?

I don't promote them much at all anymore and have no plans to really. That fmao thing is a terrible money maker in my opinion. At least with the 1000 hits a month I use to send I'd get a few sales but now I make like $4.56. Maybe I should push the reality sites, who knows. Not right now though.

Downsizing is very different from going out of business. I've been an affiliate for years and have alot of confidence in their ability to stay afloat.

Its getting worse and worse over there, They release programs and changes with bad links, incorrect or insufficient info and everything seems poorly planned. I had hung around checking the board in hopes that something would come out that was worth promoting. Last week was the final straw for me. They release 10 new sites and the are nothing but champ sites with trials. So now the champs webmasters who cant offer trials are pissed. They have pissed off soo many webmasters and burnt so many bridges in the last couple of months it boggles the mind that they have a program at all.

GIM is now making champs sites and that begs the question. Why the hell didnt you just fix the backend of the origanl GM sites to begin with instead of killing all your webmasters traffic? The ARS company Line was "Trials, thats why, its killing the business" Guess what? the 10 new sites have trials.

Im so upset with ARS if they where having a $300 per su week I wouldnt promote them. I have so many pages spread out over so many different domains it was impposible for me to change the links on all of them. I watched my couple of hundred bucks a week turn into FMAO pennys so forgive me for being bitter.

I see people posting that they ranked in the top 25 webmasters and they have only 1 sale for the week. Alarm bells went off for me a long time ago.

I had my last rant on the ARS board and I am done with them. What really amazes me is the hardcore handful of followers they have admitting there not making money but still plugging away as if they are partners of ARS and not affialates. That kind of loyalty to a sponsor can be dangerous for ones pocket book.

You know the only reason I even started this thread is because I was approached by two (won't name any names) people ARS just laid off for jobs in the same day. I thought maybe there was something to that.

Come to think of it they dont own anything anymore.

They have other webmasters building there sites for them for free(champs) they own no content (AVP owns it else why the "you cant use the content for anything but tours" lisc?). They dont have to buy traffic as they got that from me and all the other redirected webmasters (FMAO). Actually they are now nothing more than a small middle man in charge of payroll with a bunch of AVS sites to do quality and control on.

Its to bad really, those guys they let go (at least all the people I dealt with in the past years before this lunacy) were top notch guys and gals. I wish them the best.

ARS though? Stick A Fork In Them. There Done

What makes you think they owned anything before? :D

All I know is that my checks are increasing each week since the change over & now some of the CHAMPS sites have hosted galleries.

Maybe I can talk them into making hosted free sites :D

I must agree, unfortunately.

Same here, weekly checks are slowly getting bigger.

I said that I was done with ARS when they made the changes, but like sex I'll try anything at least once so I gave their new stuff a try. So far I've only messed with their new reality sites, but in the next week or so I'm going to start giving the CHAMPS sites a try.

Cleo - oddly enough, the CHAMPS sites are converting twice as good as the 4real sites for me - it boggles the mind :D

Now i mainly lurk over here, and don't post much anywhere, but come on! Seriously the new ARS converts 5-10 times better than the old stuff ever did, Becky is great gets back to me anytime i need anything, and the champs sites are looking fantastic look at Persian Kitty's she just made her own champs site.

ars didn't own the last sites - gim did.

ARS aint going nowhere

I'll have to take another look at the CHAMPS sites. I was really starting to do well with ARS right before the big change. Still doing OK, but could be better.

I think they have some smart folks over there, and they'll do fine.

I could be wrong ( like I said I am very bitter) but also consider that GG and cleo are major players. Most of us small fish cant afford to wait for the program to make decent money... or at least I cant.
I think that "look at my pretty cars" thread I saw one day when I checked my weekly stats and saw a whopping $4.90 where there used to be $200 - $250 pushed me over the edge. LOL
I only push three major sponsors at a time so it hurt me a lot more than a lot of you big guys.

I love the new ARS admin. Nice link codes with tracking and it is easy to control consoles. It loads fast and is easy to navigate. They just added a nice central stats section for quickly checking all your ARS stats in one fast loading place. ARS even fixed a small glitch in how the page displayed in my Mac's Safari browser. :)

We all have been bitching for something new so we got something. :D

I just checked out the CHAMPS stuff today for the first time. Unlike the old stuff this was easy to use and understand, nice and fast too.

I'm hearing good things about conversions so I'm going to promote some stuff this week and see how it does.

I'm hoping it does well since their new program is a pleasure to use.

You make some good points. ARS is mainly surviving off of legacy right now. They have some loyal webmasters that have been promoting them a long time and will not stop promoting them no matter what happens, but those looking to get the most cash for their traffic are no longer promoting them.

I'm glad I stopped promoting them long before they made all those changes to their program and shut down all their sites.

Sorry I haven't had the chance to respond to this in the last few days. I've been busy busy busy :)

Thanks to everyone who has said nice things about ARS. I know there are those who are still angry over the changes we made. There really isn't anything else I can say to you except I'm sorry you feel the way you do.

ARS has changed a lot, I'll give you that. But we are going back to our roots and doing things like we used to before we grew into the beast we had become lol. We have new programs, new interfaces, new products to promote. There are so many different ways to work with us now, I won't even try to get into it now. If anyone is interested in learning more, please hit me up on icq - 85868511.

With that said, I'd like to announce that our CHAMP program is having a $75 day every Friday in June. There are no limits on signups either. If you don't take advantage of this promotion, you are just plain crazy :)