31th January 2007 From Official Agloco Blog http://blog.agloco.com -------------------------------------- If you’ve been around the AGLOCO website lately, you may have noticed a few changes for the better. - The “Member Updates” section of your Member Account page has been activated, so news updates and company highlights will be available there.
- This blog added a translation feature for several languages (see right).
- A few other parts of the AGLOCO website have been cleaned up and improved.
Look in the near future for even more improvements, particularly a new and improved Member calculator page, referral center, and blog referral page (as promised). Today’s interesting site of the day goes “above the signature” cause I thought it was pretty fun. One Member decided to list 40 reasons why you should join AGLOCO (as opposed to Paul Simon’s old song, “50 ways to leave your lover”). While I can’t endorse them all, his thoughts on this might inspire your referral efforts, so feel free to check it out: http://joinagloco.blogspot.com/2007/01/long-list-of-reasons-why-you-should_27.html Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team |
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25th January 2007
From Official Agloco Blog
http://blog.agloco.com
------------------------------------- In my last post, I talked about a verbal 30-second pitch you might use to get someone interested in AGLOCO. Once you get someone’s attention, you might have about 2 more minutes to explain the details. There are a number of points you could hit, and it sometimes involves determining what the person would be most interested in hearing. Remember, you may not have time to explain EVERYTHING, but after referring them to Agloco (perhaps using your referral link), the website can fill in the details. Below are some topics you might want to talk about (from the same graduate school friend who gave me the 30-second pitch): Why does AGLOCO use a referral system?
“The most valuable part of AGLOCO is its Members. By referring others to AGLOCO, you provide them with value and for that, AGLOCO thinks you should get some of that value you provide. It makes sense. Think about YouTube. The first, most active users were on the site when the software was buggy and there were few videos available, but their Membership (and referrals to others) is what made the site a success. When it was sold for $1.65 billion, how much of that did these first users see? Nothing. With the AGLOCO referral system, Members get more for building the network.”
Member Privacy “AGLOCO takes privacy very seriously and keeps all of your personal information strictly confidential and secure. Some other popular Internet companies take your personal information, use it, profit off it, sell it to others, and then give you nothing. AGLOCO will not share ANY of your Membership information with any unauthorized third party, and YOU share in the profits made from more personalized advertisements. AGLOCO’s privacy policy stipulates exactly what information might be collected. It is 100% transparent and spyware-free. Moreover, while you are paid for the time the Viewbar is up, you can turn it off at any time. To ensure that your privacy is kept paramount, AGLOCO has hired a Chief Privacy Officer, Ray Everett-Church. Ray was the Internet’s first Chief Privacy Officer, and co-author of ‘Internet Privacy for Dummies’. You can trust that our privacy is safe with AGLOCO.”
Where AGLOCO makes money
“There are a whole bunch of ways AGLOCO makes money on behalf of Members. Here are just a few quick examples. First of all, the Viewbar has a search function you can use to search yahoo, google, etc. Every time you use this search bar, the AGLOCO community makes money. Second, the Viewbar has space for a text-only ad (no loud, flashing banners – just unobtrusive text). These ads make money for the AGLOCO community. Third, AGLOCO has affiliate programs with a number of online retailers. Buy from one of these sites and AGLOCO makes money.” Any thoughts on these points? Any other topics you think it’s useful to discuss? Good luck referring! Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team Interesting site of the day: http://aglocoviewbar.blogspot.com. Just for the great picture at the top of the page.
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27th January 2007
From Official Agloco Blog
http://blog.agloco.com
-------------------------------------- We spend a lot of time commenting about blogs and emails that Members use to recruit, but thus far have not said much about explaining AGLOCO concisely in person. After all, in an email you may have lots of time to carefully put things how you want, but in person you generally have 30 seconds to get people interested. And if they are interested, then you might have about 2 more minutes to explain everything. There are surely many ways to go about the initial 30-second explanation. Below is the pitch I got from one of my graduate school buddies who says it is working well for him. The 30 second pitch Step 1: Set the stage
“You might already know that almost everything you do on the Internet makes money for someone else. And that’s not just when you spend money. Just about every time you view an ad, click an ad, search, buy something, download something, join a community, or post a story, picture, or video, some person or some company is making a fee, commission, and/or sale from your activity.” Some people aren’t familiar with the economics of the Internet and how Internet users are constantly creating value for middlemen and getting none of it back. Either way, it’s a good idea to start with a bit of context.
Step 2: How it works
“If you want to join as a Member, you download a piece of software called the Viewbar. It’s like a toolbar that sits at the bottom of your desktop, and it will be available soon. Essentially, it collects on your behalf some of the revenue you would usually generate for other people while you conduct your everyday browsing. Then, it returns most of this money to you.” This explains briefly how one uses AGLOCO, and it will help them get a mental picture of what AGLOCO is. Step 3: Why it works
“Why does this work? You win because you now get your share of the money for doing what you would normally do. AGLOCO management wins by keeping a 10% cut of this revenue (like Brad Pitt pays his agent a 10% fee). And the companies win, since they get your business. All you need to do is have the Viewbar up on your screen while browsing the Internet like normal.” Some people think AGLOCO “sounds too good to be true.” You may just have to remind them why the value proposition is sound. *** *** ***
In my next post, I’ll talk about things you might want to take 2 minutes to explain once you’ve gotten someone’s attention, such as: - The Referral System: What it is and why AGLOCO has it
- Member Privacy: Why a Member can trust AGLOCO
- Details regarding where AGLOCO collects money on behalf of Members I would love to hear your thoughts on this suggested method (one of many that could work), and if other ways of describing AGLOCO have worked especially well for you. Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team Interesting Site of the Day: http://www.agloconews.com/ |
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25th January 2007 From Official Agloco Blog http://blog.agloco.com -------------------------------------- One of the exciting things about AGLOCO is seeing all of the talk about AGLOCO on blogs and web pages (a Google search now reveals almost 1,000,000 pages around the web). New blogs are springing up all the time to talk solely about AGLOCO and well-established bloggers have taken up AGLOCO recruiting as a hobby.
As a part of AGLOCO’s development team, I like this trend. First, it shows how popular (and powerful) the AGLOCO Economic Network can become. Second, they often have tips and thoughts on helping other Members recruit or understand how AGLOCO economic might work or what feature the Viewbar might have in the future. All of which will further strengthen the network. Third, it’s great for me to get a pulse on what our Members are thinking and doing so that we can better tailor AGLOCO to the needs of our Membership. For example: - One Member started an experiment, where he is tracking the growth of his AGLOCO referrals and giving useful thoughts and updates.
- RZ McCall has an increasingly popular blog where he gives tips to help other Members recruit. As a member with over 11,000 total referrals, this advice comes with some authority.
- John Chow, an established blogger, writes some thoughtful and informative posts about AGLOCO between taking readers on culinary adventures (with pictures of every course!). His latest about AGLOCO is here (and while you’re there, you can check out John’s latest meal for fun).
But I want to learn more. I’m interested in what your favorite sites about AGLOCO. In other words, if you were convincing a new potential referral to join AGLOCO and you could send him/her to www.agloco.com and ONE OTHER SITE, what site would that be and why? I will visit the suggested sites and pick a couple to feature in an upcoming blog (and I may also plug the Member who points to those ’special’ sites). Just put your thought in the comments section. I’ll be ruthless in deleting over-aggressive promotion, so please behave. Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team Interesting site of the day:
http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/biz2/0701/gallery.101dumbest_grandprize/7.html. Bad stuff happens when you release private Member information like AOL did here. This is a perfect example of exactly what AGLOCO stands against. AGLOCO’s privacy policy never allows giving any personal data to an unauthorized third party at any time (a current example of this is not giving out the names of direct referrals - we know it hurts our growth, but in the end AGLOCO will earn the trust of all Members and be much stronger for it). |
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23rd January 2007 From Official Agloco Blog http://aglocoblog.blogspot.com
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We’ve talked about this a few times already, but I think it needs repeating in this blog. Welcome to both the trials and the excitement of being a founder. Because of our design as an entrepreneurial company, we have decided to allow people to help us build the network before we launch the company. Essentially, as a Prelaunch Member, you are taking part in what a founder does: working to build the network. I was flipping through some Member websites yesterday and found one that has a good quote from our “History” page: YouTube was acquired for $1.65 billion by Google in October 2006. The story of how three guys made hundreds of millions of dollars in one year is a great tale of entrepreneurial success. But what happened to the first users who posted their videos on the site and told their friends to do the same? We don’t hear about them, because they did not get anything (other than free video hosting). Wasn’t it really these users that helped turn YouTube into a multi-billion dollar company? Sure the site is great and the founders deserve all the credit they get, but it is the users who ultimately made it valuable. There are plenty of video sites, and if it wasn’t YouTube, another site could have filled the space, become a household name and been acquired for an amazing price. We are not trying to pick on YouTube (which we happen to love using). How about the early users of Skype? What about those who first downloaded the software, made calls to their friends in different countries and told their parents to use it as well? They did not see a penny of the $2.6 billion that eBay paid for the company in September 2005. And MySpace? How about the millions of members there? How did they do when News Corp. bought the company for almost $600 million? After all, it was the members that Rupert Murdoch was after when he purchased the site.
As a founder, you deal with all the bugs, the incomplete suite of functionality, and the burden of promoting a product that has not yet been released, but with AGLOCO you will also achieve a much greater share of the rewards. And we’re counting on you to make the constructive comments you’re making so that the management team can improve the company and give Members what they want once the product has launched. Those who continue to make the effort will find themselves rewarded when AGLOCO becomes successful. Need more inspiration? Go read the story of “The Little Red Hen”. Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team
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21st January 2007 From Official Agloco Blog http://aglocoblog.blogspot.com -------------------------------------- Some people have asked me, “What’s in it for regular Members who have few or no referrals?” I like this question because I know there is a whole lot these Members have to gain. We designed AGLOCO as an Economic Network to benefit every Member, not just those who help build it. For example, I was reading a blog post about the affiliate commissions AGLOCO will collect, and I realized that I hear a lot of talk about how AGLOCO will make money from advertising, but less buzz about the other (perhaps even more interesting and directly useful) ways Members will make money. I recognize that during the current pre-launch phase we spend extra time on the referral system and the building of the network, so I want to address a part of “what’s in it for regular Members”, specifically in talking about the economic benefit of collecting sales commissions (or affiliate revenue). Let me explain: Every year, billions of dollars are spent on online shopping, whether for books, electronics, cars, airline tickets, or just about anything else. Many online retailers such as Amazon, Orbitz, and CarsDirect have programs that pay for attracting customers to their online store (basically, to get you to purchase on their site and not that of a competitor). AGLOCO Members will be able to take advantage of these programs simply by having the Viewbar active while they are shopping. The AGLOCO Viewbar software will be capable of sensing when you are making the type of purchase for which AGLOCO has a revenue sharing program (and by potentially directing you to that partner if you are not already on their site). If you make a purchase, the Viewbar will collect the commission from that purchase. Initially, this revenue may be added to the general AGLOCO revenue pool for expenses and Member distribution, but eventually a sizeable percentage for that revenue will go directly into the Member’s account. Thus, the more a Member buys, the more money will be put into his or her account in addition to regular AGLOCO income. Without the Viewbar, that commission would simply not be paid, or might go to someone else. One of the reasons a larger AGLOCO network is important is that these retailers generally pay a higher commission percentage for networks with more Members (i.e. those who bring more customers tend to get paid more money per customer). Rates vary by retailer and by retail industry, but one thing is generally true of all of them: as AGLOCO grows, we will be able to negotiate better and better commission rates for you. This is one way in which you (as a regular Member) make extra money, and with AGLOCO it will be automatic. It’s like your Internet purchases being made by a cash-back credit card, where the Viewbar automatically picks up when you are eligible for this cash back. So, besides having an active Viewbar on your desktop, you will not need to take any action to collect this money. I think it should be easy when you, the Members, have essentially created the multi-billion dollar online retail industry. Brian Greenwald
AGLOCO Development Team |
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