AvaStar - And Finally...(?)

I hope my tales of the travails of the AvaStar haven't left you snoring, because I have just one more update for you. Well actually, it's two updates - or rather, insights.

The first comes from blogger and Second Life entrepreneur, Ari Blackthorne, who left the following (slightly re-jigged by me) as a comment on my earlier post. I thought it rated promotion from the minor league of comments to the full blog itself!

The Avastar's first problems began when they moved away from a 'real' published eZine that looked and felt like a real tabloid off to the blog format. I paid big bucks for full-page ads in the eZine. Something to the tune of $200 worth of L$ a month.

When asked to renew my ads on their blog, I refused. I didn't like the blog format. I wanted my advertisements in-world and they wouldn't show the new demographics. There are too many other good blogs to advertise on. When they went blog, I suspect advertising dropped dramatically. No money income - drop the writers (who WERE paid back when it was an eZone if I remember correctly.)

No writers = no content = no readership = no demographics to show advertisers = no advertising = KAPUT. It's that simple.

The second insight comes from a former writer for the AvaStar, who would prefer to remain anonymous.

It seems that shortly after the changeover from PDF to blog, at one of their regular staff meetings, the writers were simply told that henceforth they would no longer be paid for their work. Of course, they could (and presumably should) continue to write, but for free. At this point all the writers, who had effectively been made redundant by this move, quit working.

No writers = no content.

Meanwhile, as already noted in the earlier post, the reader-generated content failed to materialise either.

Hence the death of the AvaStar - an interesting and, in my view at least, worthwhile experiment that ultimately failed. Do you have a different perspective?