For someone who learned about the Net by reading Internet for Dummies and who says he once couldn't tell a floppy from a flounder, Jack Guiragosian has done pretty well for himself.
Guiragosian is president of an age verification service (AVS) called, appropriately enough, AgeCheck (www.agecheck.com) where, for an annual fee, surfers can purchase a unique ID permitting access to over 58,000 adult Web sites.
"I noticed a lot of friends were in the [adult] business, and that it's actually a little more fun working in adult as opposed to trying to sell fiber optics services through the Net," says Guiragosian, discussing his background. "We started out in 1996 with a site called Extreme Strippers Live, which was our own little pay site. We started building sites until we had about 400. The pay sites were good, but we needed a niche site to push traffic." The niche strategy worked, but by 1997, Guiragosian says, the company had "too many of those little niche sites to handle," so he and his partners decided to open a portal, and AgeCheck was born.
Guiragosian says business for AgeCheck really didn't pick up until the middle of 1998, but since then the AVS has grown to become what he calls "the swap-meet of the Internet. Nobody can touch us when it comes to a variety of programs. We just came up with our preferred program that pays 18 cents a click and seven cents per unique password used plus one of the highest payouts, about two dollars higher than any other age verification service on the Net. We also offer free hosting to Web masters without pushing banners or links on their sites, and we offer them up to 2000 free licensed pieces of content a month. Practically anything a Web master needs we give to them. We give out almost $160,000 a month in bonuses."
The three-year old AVS also retains a relatively small staff of twenty-two, but the company is never short of revenue-generating ideas and promotions, including the new AgeCheck 2000 program for Web masters. "We noticed the problem of Web masters having to keep track of all their passwords," says Guiragosian, "all the sponsors that they work with, if they receive checks from sponsors or not, or if they're being cheated. What we decided to do was build [the program] around all the big players in the business, with all of their ad programs tied into AgeCheck 2000."
The AgeCheck2000 program is relatively simple. When a Web master signs up, he is offered a choice of any number of sponsors for his site, simply by checking a box next to the sponsor's name; the system then creates the scripts, and gives them over to the Web master. AgeCheck tracks all sales to and from the sponsored pay sites, and makes direct payment out to the Web master; sponsors are rotated throughout the system to prevent "rival" companies from advertising against one another on the same site.
"The Web master just needs to log in to one lounge to check all their stats from all their sponsors," says Guiragosian. "And they get the option to come in and add or remove sponsors if some sites are not converting."
AgeCheck has also introduced a built-in tour for Web masters to add to their sites, so members can view the sites before making a purchase. The tour allows members to purchase an AgeCheck password as well as any number of additional passwords to others sites, with discounts for multiple purchases. There's also a members' lounge where surfers can see all the sites their passwords are valid for, add or remove sites, put an account on hold, or de-activate and re-activate their passwords for security or other reasons.
Guiragosian also says a portion of AgeCheck's success has come from expanding and networking with other adult Net companies. "We're friends with all these big pay sites because we're not a threat to them," he says. "Building these friendships gives us the opportunity to come up with some ideas and say, 'this is what we want to do and do you want to [participate]?' Ninety percent of them have no problem being tied in to these new programs."
Guiragosian has also started a new company, CNWB, where, he says, "for the first time we will be able to validate age with a credit card." The new system will automatically connect to TRW and Equifax (www.equifax.com) to verify a person's age. "We figured you have to go to the source of age verification, and that would be the person's credit history," reveals Guiragosian. "We send the credit card number to Equifax and confirm their address, date of birth, etcetera. That's the only way that a person got that credit card, by offering that information to Equifax. The whole procedure takes between 15 and 30 seconds."
At the same time that AgeCheck is connecting to Equifax, their system performs a credit check and offers that person an interest-free CNWB credit card, with a credit line between $200-500. The member can only use the CNWB card (which is an actual physical card, with PIN number, sent to the member via snail mail) where it's accepted, but at press time, CNWB was in the process of building and testing a cyber mall, similar to Amazon.com, where CNWB card holders can purchase adult material and shop for non-adult products as well, including music, clothing, books, and more.
In light of the current problems with MasterCard, Visa and chargebacks [see feature article, "Let the Merchant Beware," in this issue - Ed.], Guiragosian is quick to recommend AgeCheck's services over traditional credit cards. "The problems with Visa and MasterCard really come from the little pay sites that are increasing fraud on the Internet," he says. "It's making it more difficult for the little guys [who are legitimate] to get their own merchant accounts and do their own processing and so forth. A small site that does one hundred sales a month and gets two chargebacks, that's already at two percent. The most a little pay site is going to survive is two to three months on their own. They have no choice but to become free or an AVS site."
Like Guiragosian says, it's all about expansion and networking.
