AllAdvantage 2.0: AGLOCO

Many years ago, I was a member of a service called AllAdvantage, a company that created a software toolbar which displayed ads while you were surfing and paid you a portion of the advertising revenue. I earned about $30 from them before they folded in 2001, apparently because web advertising dried up in the dot-com bust. Today, a new company called AGLOCO is hoping to do the same thing. “AGLOCO” is supposed to stand for “A Global Community,” and the company will be “100% member-owned.” I think that, because the web advertising market is much better today than it was in 2001, they could very well have a chance. AllAdvantage went through some $2 million [Update: AllAdvantage “paid out over $160 million to its members” (Wikipedia)], and if an 11-year-old kid like me could make $30 with it, other people were certainly making a lot more.

The Agloco team includes some of the same leaders of AllAdvantage, and the model is nearly exactly the same. They show advertising on your screen, and pay you for it. There are some small tweaks, such as offering a better price on Amazon.com when you’re looking at a book on Barnes & Noble, and getting a referral fee out of that sale. Supposedly, 8 Stanford MBAs are on the team, which is shocking to me, because the company’s blog makes it look almost like a scam. They’re losing money and think that it will take 12-18 months to beta test their viewbar! (To see the Company blog, click here and then click “Company blog” at the bottom, in the footer.)

One interesting aspect is that you can refer other people to the Agloco network, and it’s totally free for them to join. There’s no reason for them not to, and you get credited for up to 5 hours per person, 5 levels deep. They don’t lose anything for joining up as your referral. They have just over 1 million members now, whereas AllAdvantage had about 10 million: so there’s a lot more growing to be had, assuming that nearly everyone who signed up for AllAdvantage will sign up again for Agloco. It’s definitely beneficial to get in at this early stage, in case they do really well. Remember, I made about $30 with AllAdvantage when I was 11, and that only took me about a month. Yes, the Agloco links in this post are referral links.

Agloco is being more conservative about payments this time. I remember AllAdvantage promised something like 50 cents per hour, which was just crazy. I believe they had a referral program too, so it kind of stinks that they’re not able to rollover their membership database. But I guess sometimes it’s best to start fresh. There’s a chance for the “get paid to surf” industry, and if it succeeds, you’ll want to have gotten in at the ground level. So sign up for free– it only takes a minute.