From 1999 to 2001 AllAdvantage paid its users $120 million to surf the web.? In 2001, they went out of business because they only had $100 million to spend. The bad news is they went over budget by $20 million; the good news was that users were able to make a large sum of money.
Today, some of the original founders of AllAdvantage are back and starting a new company called Agloco?which stands for A Global Community.? The concept is simple:
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You surf the web for up to 5 hours per month and Agloco pays you.
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Of course it can’t be that simple though right?? Let me give you the details.?
- You sign up for Agloco.
- You invite your friends to join Agloco (you get paid based on their 5 hours of surfing per month).
- You download a viewbar that is placed at the very bottom of your screen.? On this viewbar, there will be a couple of ads, an instant messenger window, community tips and a few other features.? You only have to leave the viewbar up for the 5 hours per month that you surf the web.
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That’s all there is. 3 simple steps and Agloco pays you.?You’re probably thinking how can this be so easy right?? Let me tell you where the income comes from.
The advertising companies?that will be on the Agloco viewbar will pay to have their ads there. Agloco will share this revenue with us, the users. It’s a revenue sharing model.
Agloco’s website has a calculator feature that estimates your potential income.? The assumptions I entered below were if you get 10 friends to sign up for Agloco, if they each get 3 friends on average, and everyone surfs the web for?5 hours per month, you would earn 1517.5 per month. This would be split up in cash and company stock to you.
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Agloco plans on taking the company public (onto the stock exchange) and therefore will pay their users with both cash and company stock.? This can work for or against the users.? If the concept really takes off and the stock goes up, we will all benefit.? If the price does not appreciate or they do not go public, then we will only benefit from the cash they pay us.?
Whether Agloco makes it big or not, there is not much for us to lose by trying it out. We all surf the internet for at least 5 hours per month (most of us are probably close to 5 hours per day!) so what do we have to lose??If this sounds as interesting to you as it did me, you can join our Agloco network by clicking the link.?
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Nice summary of what Agloco does. I’ve been working on it for a month and just posted an update on my blog, so I know you will definitely have the ability to build your network fast. I’m just wondering who you signed up under. =)
Gary,
We signed up a while ago under John Chow. He was the first person I read about it from so it was only right to give him credit. I like what you’ve done with your Agloco ad on the sidebar.
I notice that you’re one of the first people to join too, based on your referral ID. I’m BBBB6961, so I got in pretty early too. I hear that they’re up to BBCA or something now.
Uggghhh. Those two comments by “Agloco” look like phishign comments.. teh domian leads to agloco.fm or something weird.
You might want to delete that, Jane/Anthony. cheers
Thanks Jeff! Took care of it. There is always one or two that get through.
So you guys are actually using the toolbar? I tried the other day and I couldn’t find where to download it! Maybe I’ll look again….
i detect sarcasm
The toolbar isn’t out yet, but is expected to be out this month. We’ll see how that goes!
I signed up under John as well… I don’t even know if I can find my login/password now!
There is a formating problem with this post, I’m seeing the sidebar at the bottom. Is an image too wide?
We’ve been struggling to fix that. Anyone else have this problem and was able to fix it??
This is a problem the misty theme has with IE 6. As far as I know, the sidebar appears properly on IE 7 and Firefox. We’re trying to fix this for IE 6 but have yet to figure out how.
Check to see if you have an image that is wider than your content div’s width.
Agloco will definitely make some people money. Especially those like John Chow who have built up nice referrals. Also I would assume that after your 5 hours a month if you continue using Agloco the remaining profit goes straight to Agloco. That is where it will really make them profitable.
Then just turn if off after the five hours, though you’d probably be right to say that many people will just leave it on and forget about it.
I would turn it off, but most won’t. Well many won’t.
I wonder if they will make it long term. There were a few different Paid 2 Surf programs back in 1999 – 2002, they all seemed to disappear quick. This business plan seems better though.
I wonder who would pay them for this type of traffic?
Many wont turn it on in the first place, I reckon a lot of people who have signed up wont actually bother using it.
The only thing that irks me about this is the viewbar.
Any idea if it is going to be like a toolbar or something totally different.
Also how do we know it won’t collect info like the Alexa toolabr does. Unfortunately most people have accepted Alexa spying in their lives as there is no other way to track traffic. Some advertisers just don’t want to see your stats no matter how detailed they are.
So any clues, will it be like spyware?
Ali,
Agloco has made it a big point to state on their site that there will be absolutely no spyware or adware on the viewbar.
It is classic well disguised mlm. I have mixed feelings about it… I can see it working in theory but the big question is how many that signed up will end up downloading the toolbar. Because of the mlm pyramid, I see a case of guys like John Chow earning tonnes from it and the others below him not doing so hot. It seems a little too good to be true and when that happens, it is probably a sign that it is. I am pretty weary about type of companies like that with all the hype and the product isn’t even released yet. One other thing is also like one of a previous commenter said i.e. how private will our info be or will it be sold/seen by advertisers. With floating it on the stock market – I doubt that will happen with it being an mlm company and one that the only thing going for them is a toolbar (that is not released yet).
Mark,
You bring up some good points and concerns. I have similar ones. To answer some of your concerns –
One of the bigger success stories for Companies going public and rising in price has been Pre-Paid Legal (symbol: PPD), which is a classic case of MLM. They’ve bene around forever.
A traditional pyramid scheme is illegal. What makes it legal is when you attach a product to it. That is obviously what Agloco and PrePaid Legal have done, but what makes them MLM is that they pay several referal levels down. This sounds shady, BUT would as many people really sign up if they DIDN’T get paid several levels down? It becomes a double edge sword. It’ll be interesting to see how Agloco does once the viewbar is released in March.
How many puramid schemes prove sustainable?
I cannot think of a single one.
Invariably, once they “roll out” is complete and people find it impossible to recruit new members the whole thing collapses, leaving a lucky few like JC with a good profit and the peasants standing around wondering what just happened :?::?::?:
Yes it’ll be interesting to see how it does. Didn’t really get you when you said “a traditional pyramid scheme is illegal”. So basically what you are saying is that if it is a service (rather than a product), it can’t be a pyramid scheme?
Almost… a pyramid scheme with no service or product attached is illegal. These usually have everyone pay money for nothing in return except for the next person’s money. For example, if you sign up and pay $100, then get others to sign up and they pay $100… the people above them in the pyramid get a portion of everyones payment. That is how pyramids started.
Its is a pyramid scheme, but its not selling physical products which may be how they are able to get around the issue, one definition I found for a pyramid scheme was:
“A pyramid scheme is a system of selling goods where commissions are paid to recruit new sellers”
Which is exactly what Agloco are doing.
How is it possible for the stock price of AGLOCO to go up?
They have stated that 10% of their profits will go to management leaving 90% of earning distributed to members and paid in share dividends.
Share valuation is based on two things – expected dividends and company growth. Considering that all their profits will be returned to members/shareholders/management, you can’t expect that the company will have any growth through reinvestment of profits. The only for it to grow is through gaining memberships and increasing advertising revenue. Unfortunately, the membership base is limited. Let’s say everything goes well and EVERYBODY on the internet signs up to AGLOCO. Then what? Can it expand into other markets or diversify like Coca-Cola and Microsoft do? No, because it’s profits go to the users. So while there could possibly be short-term growth, the chances for long-term growth is minimal which would see many investors not favor AGLOCO shares resulting in a decreasing share price.
How about expected dividends? Well, after the short term and the company is no longer growing, dividends can at best remain constant and not grow. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. However, investors wanting to receive a constant dividend would invest the bond market which is a LOT more secure than a new internet company. So would investors invest in AGLOCO based on the dividends? Probably not.
AGLOCO would not be a sound investment for shareholders which would drive the price down.
So what am I saying? AGLOCO shares could go up in the short-term (assuming they actually manage to get listed on the stock exchange, which I doubt) but they would definitely crash pretty quickly. Shares in the company are just not viable.
Some people with huge referalls (John Chow) will make some money pretty quickly, but then they should get out before it goes down – just like AllAdvantage did. If you actually do manage get publicly listed shares – sell them quickly and invest in something else.
Kumiko
xo
You make some good points, I have an article on this on sitelogic.co.uk which is even longer
IMO its bordering on a scam which a handful of unscrupilous people will make a lot of money from.
Im sure the likes of John Chow will do very well off this, if they ever release the toolbar, but I cant stand this concept / product.
Why anyone would let Agloco spam their desktop for a few penny shares is beyond me.
And where is the toolbar, seems to me like the creators of Agloco havent really committed themselves to this, or didn’t until a lot of other people built their network for them.
Good luck to you guys trying to build your networks, but pay per spam is not something I would be recommending to my friends and family.
I bet few of the people with large networks will be installing it on their machines.
To Jez-
You seem to be the only voice of reason or authority in this post.
Today is 6-14-07…no toolbar yet.
Ok you have fixed your front page, but when one views an individual post the sidebar still drops down.
This is due to brians threaded comments.
When you installed threaded comments you uploaded comments.php to your theme folder, over writing the original.
Open this file (comments.php) and find the lines that set the width of the input box (where we write stuff).
Drop the width down to 97% and set the cols= to 57 or 58 (as opposed to 60).
That should fix it.
That snippet is about 25 – 30 lines up from the bottom of comments.php
Jez
Jez,
In 99% of cases, you are correct, but there are a few pyramids that make it big. Pre-Paid Legal (symbol: PPD) being one of them… huge publically held company in the US.
Do you mind sharing your sign-up numbers with us? I haven’t had any luck with AGLOCO yet…
I beginning to wonder if the viewbar will ever see the light of day. it’s kinda hard to build referrals if there isn’t all that much to ‘refer’ them to at this point. Still, one more referral and I’ll hit the 20 mark! Is that enough to consider quitting my day job?
This idea is a bust (IMO). What happened to it?
I know this is an old post, but it came up in a search engine as I was researching and I just had to jump in, since I am such a big fan of this site.
Anyway, I am so personally apprehensive about adding any sort of toolbar to my browser. Does anyone have additional thoughts on the toolbar itself? How is it different from spyware, in that it is collecting surfing info?
You just need to use it 5 hours each month. They promise they will keep your data private.
I downloaded the toolbar today, but am not sure how you get paid? I see that you can be paid in cash and stock, but I didn’t even have to enter enough information for them to pay me when I signed up. Does anyone know how this works?
So has anyone made any money out of this yet, or are they still in the start up stage?
I think the whole thing is a bit over saturated now.