Make Money Online with PoorTornado

Everyone knows about the dot com craze (and then bust) of the 90s, and I imagine almost everyone who was involved with the internet at one point heard about Alladvantage. For those who don’t know, Alladvantage was the first of a new kind of website called “Paid to Surf”.

What is Paid to Surf? Your internet English is hard to understand!

Paid to Surf programs are those which pay their users to surf the internet. This is a bit of a misnomer, actually, because what they are actually paying you to do is download, install, and run a small advertisement bar at the bottom of your desktop. Alladvantage paid its members 50 cents per hour to surf the web with their software running, and also had a lengthy referral structure. I was in junior high school at the time, and at the time earning 5 or 10 bucks a month (Alladvantage paid for a maximum of 10 hours a month, I think) was awesome. I was an addict.

And…? Quit stringing me along and tell me what happened!

And, Alladvantage busted out when all the other dot coms fell. Advertising revenue went into the toilet, and Alladvantage had no contingency plan. Oh well, I think I made about forty bucks from them before they shut down. Yes, they did actually pay.

Fast forward to 2007

Some of the original founders of Alladvantage came together to start what was essentially a Web 2.0 version of Alladvantage. Claiming they had learned their mistakes and spewing forth a stream of idealistic rhetoric, the Agloco craze of the internet was born. It was like the ‘make money online’ niche of the internet exploded. Even John Chow fell for Agloco’s sensationalism. Agloco networks were made. Entire sites posting top Agloco blogs were made. Almost all of these blogs had one goal: recruitment. Agloco offered a referral plan that it said would pay off big when it actually started paying members. If you could recruit hundreds of other people to Agloco, then you could theoretically stand to make much more than mere pocket change.

Wait, “actually start paying members?” Huh?

Let me take a step back. Agloco was launched with the same business model as Alladvantage, the advertising bar software. However, they had not completed it yet. They simply opened up their site so people could start gathering referrals. So people started merrily recruiting, advertising, building websites, blogging and generally going crazy over a site that had never sent anyone a dime. The viewbar, as they called it, took forever to come out. When it finally did, it was extremely buggy and rarely displayed the advertisements as it was supposed to. Even after the viewbar was released, Agloco still said nothing about payment. The Agloco community began to divide itself into two distinct camps: the skeptics, and the believers. I found myself somewhere in the middle, which shows that my “I smell a rat” sense isn’t as good as it should be.

Agloco kept up a blog, that I believe as of this post is still up, at http://blog.agloco.com. WARNING: Only read if you would like a laugh, or want to study how well a blogger can string readers along. The Agloco blog almost always acted like nothing was wrong at all, continued to promise updates to the viewbar and incoming solid payment plans. And then, the posts stopped coming. After a few months, the site’s secure SSL certificate expired, and a few weeks later I received the following email:

“Dear PoorTornado,

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”

My advice to everyone: learn from Agloco’s marketing techniques and vague plans. It’s incredibly unfortunate that this website didn’t find more success, as I’m sure we’d all still be blogging away about how great Agloco is otherwise. It could have truly become an easy way for anyone and everyone to make money online, but be careful. Learn, just as I have, how to smell a rat.