Dec 13 2007
Get paid to be sold to
A few months ago, I found a site that lets you be paid for viewing advertisement. I had been meaning to write a blog about it all this time, but just haven’t found the time. The site is Agloco.
The concept is that if you are willing to have advertisement visible on your desktop computer, you can get a portion of the advertising profits. You could even get greater income by referring people to sign up for the service… sounded a lot like multi-level marketing.
At the time I found this site, I installed the tool bar. I was pretty unimpressed. The tool bar was a pain to deal with… I couldn’t move it to my other monitor to be out of the way; it was just too obtrusive. The toolbar didn’t even show all the ads. I only got credit when I was viewing a website, and then I couldn’t really tell how much credit I was getting.
Of course, the builders of the site tout that you get a share of the company and that you can get cash and other benefits.
So not worth it for me.
The biggest question I had was, “Does it really provide a relevant advertising platform for companies to be willing to pay for?”
This morning, I received an email from the company.
Dear Corey,
We would like to update you on the status of AGLOCO’s operations. We continue to believe in the AGLOCO concept, but our revenue is currently not sufficient to give Members a meaningful distribution. And though there are increases in membership, the resulting revenue is not enough to support operating costs. As a development team we are unable to continue to use our savings to fund the operations. If any Member would like to pursue continuing the operations of AGLOCO, you may contact us at agloco1@live.com .
We would like to thank every Member for supporting our effort to bring a piece of the Internet directly to the user. We hope that we can find a way to keep the operations going.
AGLOCO Development Team
Sounds like they are saying, “We have failed at making this idea a reality, so if anyone wants to bail us out, make an offer.”
There are two possibilities for this failure. First, they have a terrible sales team. Second, advertisers simply don’t see the value.
I think it is the latter.
It was too much of a pain for me. I don’t want advertising on my desktop. Some possible, future payout is not worth having a portion of my time taken up with dealing with some stupid toolbar. I struggle with desktop real estate enough as it is trying to get all my work done… the last thing I was is a loss of 15,000 square pixels to some advertiser I never intended to click on in the first place.
At least they didn’t address me as, “Dear Valued Customer…”
Corey Smith is a co-founder of Resumango where you can build a better resume for free.