AGLOCO--CASH N REVENUE UPDATE

The Viewbar has been out for just about three weeks at this point. We are crossing 20% activation and hope to exceed 50% by the end of the summer. New verified Member signups are back near record levels and growing.

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As I mentioned in my last post, stabilizing the Viewbar, the website, and the ad rotation has been our first priority. While it took more time and more money than we had planned, the Viewbar is performing well (ad rotation aside). It has been seamlessly upgraded on Member computers a couple of times and the percentage of Members with Viewbar problems is low. In stabilizing the website, among the steps we took was adding an alternate Viewbar download site (tucows.com). Now that we are more comfortable with the website stability, we will also begin updating the website more frequently again.

As far as the ads go, I am pleased to announce that we have just reached an agreement to make major improvements toward increased Viewbar revenue. As noted earlier, we launched the Viewbar and our ad volume swamped the ad server of our third party supplier. While it has improved, the current system is still not working up to the standards needed (weak rotation ability and unable to connect properly with several networks). Given that the current state of affairs makes it difficult to implement our search, profile and geographic targeting (which are necessary to make Viewbar ads effective), we sought a new arrangement which will give all that to AGLOCO. This will take 5 to 6 weeks to be activated. As a result, revenue for the months of June and July will be low, as the current system cannot be improved any faster.

We will also have the ability for an AGLOCO online ads auction system like Google’s AdSense so advertisers will be able to buy Viewbar ads directly.

As a global community, AGLOCO Members live all over the world. To maximize Member income, we will need to address that with our advertisers (as well as with our Members). Our new ad system will have a country specific system for advertisers (we are told that this will be available at the end of the summer and not for all countries). At that point we will likely have to ask each Member for a language preference to make the advertisers aware. Keep in mind that it is very costly to support multiple languages (it’s easy to just display them, but language support includes full Member support, email communication, etc., in that language), so additional supported languages will probably not be forthcoming before that.

In order to reach profitability quickly (which is necessary to make cash distributions to Members - as I will detail below), we keep AGLOCO expenses to a minimum. Many of you make great suggestions for improvements we could make to AGLOCO, but unfortunately they are not yet in our affordable advertising budget. We have tried to implement the less costly improvements while recognizing that the major changes will have to wait longer. We do hear all of your suggestions, but AGLOCO needs to become sustainable and make Member distributions as fast as possible. To keep expenses low, for example, in the year or so we have been working on AGLOCO, no development team member has been paid for their work (not to mention that some of you have been working very hard to help build AGLOCO as well and have not yet received the rewards of that work either). And with that we are turning our attention to revenue (and distributions to members).

Members often ask when they will be paid by AGLOCO, and how much they will be paid. I must admit that I have a bit of hesitation to address this issue, only because I do not want Members to misunderstand anything I say and/or take it as a “promise or prediction” of what AGLOCO will exactly do in the future. So, I will write the following with the disclaimer that everything I say below, specifically regarding when Members will be paid or how much, is only an illustration and does not constitute a promise of any sort.

Here is some information about cash payments in “BlogCytes FAQ” form.

When are the cash payouts going to begin?

The simple answer is that it depends on “when AGLOCO makes enough money to both pay Members and be a sustainable business”. But, by using the Viewbar you are accumulating credit towards the cash payments right now (more on that below). I have spoken about this on the blog twice before:

Also, as some Members have correctly pointed out, AGLOCO’s early revenue will not immediately translate into cash distributions to Members. While we do not know how large our initial revenue will be, we do know that AGLOCO has operating costs to pay. It is important to remember that AGLOCO is not a “get rich quick scheme”, and we maintain that the most prudent way to build AGLOCO as a sustainable company is to calibrate Member distributions to company earnings. As such, the cash payouts will not begin until there is a comfortable balance between AGLOCO’s free cash flow and AGLOCO’s expenses. It is important to add that all Members will begin to accumulate hours from when they first start using the Viewbar (and referral hours will also be earned). Those hours will not be wasted. Both overall hours and monthly hours will be used in determining distributions to Members.
- http://blog.agloco.com/index.php/post57/

Cash Distributions: To be a sustainable entity in the long term, AGLOCO makes Member cash distributions from its positive cash flow (revenue minus costs). Therefore, please do not expect a check after the first couple of months as it will take time to collect revenue from advertisers and this revenue must exceed costs in order to make cash distributions to Members. We will be keeping Members informed of our financial and you can visit the Official company blog at http://blog.blogcytes.com/ for the latest updates.
- http://blog.agloco.com/index.php/post59/

AGLOCO will be keeping Members informed of our financial (after a few months, when we start getting realistic numbers) so they can track our progress on this. At this point, if our new ad system is operational in August, we should be able to give meaningful numbers for September.

How are you going to pay me if you don’t have any of my payment information?

Before the cash payments begin we will verify your billing information and ask you to specify how you would like to be paid. We currently plan to have several forms of payment available, including check, direct deposit, and PayPal. Remember that only one account per Member is allowed.

Is there going to be a “minimum” payout level achieved in my account like many affiliate programs have?

Yes, a minimum will be required to keep transfer costs down. All sums not distributed are accumulated in the Member’s AGLOCO account until the minimum is reached.

How are the cash payments going to work?

So, here are three of the potential ways AGLOCO can pay Members. As you know, when you use the Viewbar you accumulate hours (currently up to 5 hours/month, and plus a credit of referral hours at a 25% rate). These hours, both your monthly totals and your overall accumulated hours, are the basis for cash distributions.

Monthly Viewbar hours: Based on the hours you and your referrals surf each month, you will get a share of the “distribution pie”. Your share is equal to your percentage of the total hours accumulated by all Members (including referral hours). How would this work? Here is a hypothetical example. Suppose in a given month AGLOCO distributes $100,000 for that month’s hour accumulation. Also suppose that the total hours all Members have accumulated that month is 1,000,000 hours. This means that AGLOCO would pay $0.10 for each hour you are credited with that month. So in this example if you had accumulated (yourself plus referrals) 500 hours that month, you would be paid $50.

Total Viewbar hours: AGLOCO may also pay in the same manner as above based on total accumulated hours. This would “weight” the payment more towards those Members who joined and began accumulating hours earlier (including the time before the cash payouts have begun).

AGLOCO buying Hours for Cash: Here’s how it would work. AGLOCO would set a price per hour (say, $0.15), and we allow Members to sell their hours back to us at that rate. There would likely be a minimum number of hours you could sell. For instance, AGLOCO may only allow you to sell in 100-hour blocks. Hours that you sell would be deducted from your total accumulated hours for future distributions.

I realize that I have not given a concrete answer to “what an hour is worth”, “what a referral is worth”, or “the date you will be paid”. I wish I could. But, I maintain that to keep AGLOCO a sustainable venture, we must calibrate cash payouts to our actual positive cash flow, lest we suffer the same fate as AllAdvantage.

Ken Kuester made a great comment reflecting this a few weeks ago. He said:
For all of you that are asking for calculations for how much pay, just consider this. There is truly no way anyone can calculate with all variables. The pay is dependent upon the advertisers paying agloco, the search engines paying agloco, the merchants paying agloco the commissions on the sales to agloco members, and any other sources of income. This money all goes into a pool, of which agloco management gets 10% and the rest is divided among the owners/members. There you have it. income is variable, percentages for management and the owners ia fixed. membership is variable. These variable parts will change by the minute. No reasonable mathematician will attempt to arrive at meaningful calculations with two massive variables and one fixed quantity. All the mathematician can do at this point is offer statistical possibilities. In the short view, every person you sponsor now cuts down on the value of the cash pool individually. In the longer term, more members means agloco can charge more for the ads and make the cash pool larger. As far as clicking the ads, That will create cash pool money when the few make purchases and the merchant pays agloco the commission on the sale. In at least some cases, the member will immediately benefit from any discounts that are given to the agloco membership. Regards searches, I do not know what deal agloco has with google or the other search engines at this time, but I do know that as the membership goes up, so does the price google and the others will pay agloco for each search performed. Google currently pays aol 10 cents per search performed. Best I can tell you is the per hour pay will fall into a range somewhere between .00001 cents and 1,000.00 dollars per hour.( both top and bottom values estimated with the fact that everyone is so desperate for promises that poor Brian cannot say anything without it being considered a set in concrete promise.) I intentionally used extremes. Try to keep your shirt on and wait and see what materializes.


Wait a second, what about “shares”?

Our website talks about paying Members in “cash and shares”. As I’ve said before, I need to stay away from talking about “shares” in this blog. The lawyers would kill me if I went anywhere near talking about it because it is too easy to unwittingly violate a country’s securities laws.
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AGLOCO is not a “get rich quick” scheme and never will be. By steadily using the Viewbar and building a sustainable business, we can make sure that Members will get distributions for years and years as we improve the usefulness of the Viewbar as a part of each Member’s desktop.