McCall's Notes: AGLOCO

Report Card - How is the AGLOCO community doing? (me - 22,000+)

Thu, 15 Mar 2007 19:13:32 GMT

I have posted several times before, that AGLOCO’s success is totally dependant on the AGLOCO Members – especially the early active ones (and if you are reading this, odds are that you are one of those people.)

It has been 100 days --- How is our community Report Card looking?

Building – I would give us an A+. I think AGLOCO is a lot bigger and growing a lot faster than most people thought an idea like this could. And it is still just an idea, a pre-launch company.

I realized how true this A+ was when I spent a few minutes looking at the AGLOCO Top Gun site. http://agloco-top-gun.spaces.live.com/ The Top Gun site is two months old. A couple of interesting facts caught my eye when I compared January 15^th to March 14^th. The #1 person in March has twice as many people (25,000) as the #1 person on January 15^th. (12,000). More interesting is that #10 in March was 1500% higher than #10 in January. As a matter of fact, #50 in March is 300% higher than #10 in January. The number of new Top Guns (especially the Hot Shots category) shows a high degree of new people coming into the AGLOCO network and helping to build it.

But something even more telling caught my eye. --- Top Gun #10 on January 15^th was Paul of AGLOCOtest http://www.aglocotest.com/ (I like his site). I have blogged a lot about what has worked for me in recruiting. And I get lots of notes of thanks and congratulations. My March 14 AGLOCO numbers are about 250% of my January 15 numbers (and I have been impressed with how well this has all turned out.) --- Well, Paul is no longer on the Top Gun list, but he keeps his site up to date including his network numbers. Paul is up 350% during the same time period. --- His growth rate has been higher than mine the past two months. It is stories like Paul’s which show the building strength that is already in the AGLOCO community.

Supportive – I would give us a B. I see a lot of sharing of thoughts and how to’s etc. I think we have the right attitude on sharing (community ‘culture’ is key), but in order to get an A I would think the sharing would be more wide spread. Also I read too many people expecting AGLOCO to do most of the work. Well let me see. The management company gets 10% of the revenue and the members get 90%, who should do most of the work. The members – you and me. It really is our company, not just our benefits and someone else does all the work. I would like to see even more support of other members and of the people working at the center. And not so much whining. AGLOCO is a pre-launch idea. Soon it will be a startup. Then after a year of that it will be a young company. Mistakes and tests and trials are all part of that process. Perfection is not on the list. Get used to it. Be constructive.

Value Creation - I would give us an Incomplete. I am being charitable (an F could have been used). I think almost 100% of the value creation has been done by the originators and we as members have not put our thinking caps on yet. The AGLOCO team page has 14 names on it. There are 300,000 or so members. I think we can come up with ten times as much value creation as they can. Just recruiting is not enough. We should be thinking about the viewbar software (what will make it totally ‘cool’ to have) – we need to think of people AGLOCO should be in business with. We need to think of businesses which our network could help support and flourish. I as a guilty as membership as a whole. Sitting back and waiting for someone else to make the value and just give it to me.

Oh - and yes, I am thrilled to have over 22,000 referrals already – with my new goal of 40,000 by December 31, 2007, I need to keep ‘the petal to the metal.’

PS - for my referral advice blogs click here

I Made it - 20,000 AGLOCO Referrals

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 01:39:42 GMT

I MADE IT.

I can not believe I actually made 20,000 – for those of you who are new to this blog, on December 13^th last year, I made a goal of 20,000 AGLOCO referrals by the end of 2007. Well it is just 65 days into the year and I made it already.

I just had my third AGLOCO celebration dinner with my wife and some friends. (Not bad for a company that has not launched yet.)

As the wine flowed, we ended up making like the Academy Awards acceptance speeches, with me trying to figure out who to thank.

Here was my thank you list as best as I can remember.

My wife – for putting up with me the first days in November
John Chow – for inspiring me to write about AGLOCO in a blog
Brian Greenwald – for his great posts on the AGLOCO Official blog (and all the effort he goes through dealing with some many different member demands)
The AGLOCO Development Team - for dreaming up the idea of an Internet Economic Network
Harold – for his great posts
Julie - for her support and email samples
AGLOCO Top Gun – for giving recognition to so many people helping to build the network
Paul at AGLOCO Test – for building his test site of AGLOCO experiences
Simon at AGLOCO Rocks – for having the first really cool AGLOCO sign up site
To all the people who have written about AGLOCO on the Internet these last four months
To the 20,160 people in my referral network
And especially to the 124 Direct members of my network who found the other 20,000

Now to my next goal – can I get to 40,000 by the end of the year?

The time to Join AGLOCO is Now – I passed 15,000 AGLOCO referrals.

Mon, 12 Feb 2007 23:42:26 GMT

Went over 15,000 AGLOCO referrals yesterday and when I was getting ready to blog about it, I read a couple of comments on my last post. Some of the commenters, seemed to think it was already ‘too late’ to make a big splash as an AGLOCO recruiter. I think the opposite is true.

The Time to Join AGLOCO is Now

Why do I think that? I think this is a great time to join, because the AGLOCO membership is now growing at a geometric pace. (More people will join AGLOCO this week than last week and next week will be higher again.) This means AGLOCO will grow to hit a “tipping point” – that is the point at which there is a ‘mad dash’ to sign up and to sign up everyone in the world…. (OK – maybe “everyone in the world” was too high, but you get the picture.)

Where are we now?

I get various reports that AGLOCO is somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 members right now. There are 700,000,000 Internet users out there. This means AGLOCO has less than 0.03% market penetration – or just 3 out of every 10,000 Internet users have joined AGLOCO so far – leaving 699,750,000 left to recruit.

As much as I and other Members like to get excited about AGLOCO’s growth and accomplishments so far, it has just started.

How big will AGLOCO have to get to see a “tipping point”?

I would guess somewhere between 10,000,000 and 20,000,0000 members. Even growing at a geometric rate 10,000,000 is still many months away. I am guessing that AGLOCO will hit 1,000,000 will be in April or May and 10,000,000 not until the end of 2007.

This gives a new AGLOCO member over 10 months to build a network before the huge numbers start rolling in (if AGLOCO hits 10,000,000 by the end of 2007, I believe it will hit 100,000,000 by the end of 2008. )

I look at Top Gun’s charts and see many people recruiting more direct referrals than I have. (My favorite of those is John Chow . He gives great recruiting advice to all people, especially those of you with a blog or website to promote. I think before the end of the year John will have more AGLOCO referrals than I have because he is recruiting more and faster than I am right now.

I also crossed over 100 direct referrals this past week (17 new people in February).

I am very excited about this. I went back to original people (people who did not sign up when I first told them about AGLOCO) with new updates and some of them signed up this time. Now I will work to get them to start promoting AGLOCO to their friends. It only with this constant adding of new directs that I have any change to stay in the AGLOCO Top Gun

One more thing

I just searched AGLOCO on Google (1,510,000 page results) – AGLOCO passed up two of my favorites “Warren Buffett” and “Berkshire Hathaway” – But last night’s Grammy winning “Dixie Chicks” are at 2,520,000, so still al long road ahead.

Crossed over 14,000 – AGLOCO Increasing at a Geometric Rate

Wed, 07 Feb 2007 01:16:39 GMT

Wow – if you are reading this and you have been an AGLOCO member for more than a month then you have been part of an amazing process.

First - My small part of AGLOCO grew so fast this week that in less than 5 days it was up by more than 1,000 people – I am going up by 200 a day right now – I know this will slow down, but it is simply amazing to me right now. A month ago I was lucky to get 100 in a day – this means my network is increasing at an increasing rate – thus my casual use of the term Geometric Rate.

Second - Members are getting very active in recruiting. Top Gun has had a whole slew of new people show up. A new Top Gun #1 with 19,118 referrals (950 direct referrals – now that is a referring machine). Plus a new member who has 369 direct referrals in the first 6 days of February (wish I had found him).

Third - My post of four days ago (just four, you can use only one hand to count that out if you wish) was about Google search results and Internet popularity. I had great fun with it. AGLOCO had risen to 1,110,000 Google page results in its first 90 days of exposure (actual start of the website was November 22^nd a mere 73 days then).

Well, now it is four days later and a Google search gives AGLOCO 1,270,000 pages (actually I tried five times over the last two hours and 1,270,000 was the lowest number Google gave me.) On the fun side, AGLOCO just passed “Arnold Palmer” 1,230,000 and “Lyndon Johnson” 1,170,000 in Internet popularity. But looking for geometric growth; this spurt of Google pages (160,000 new ones in 4 days) is quite amazing again – 40,000 a day is about 10% of Google’s 300,000 a day rate – which means for every ten new pages on the Internet mentioning Google one mentions AGLOCO – unreal.

Last - AGLOCO is taking its first steps to becoming a household name. I saw a blog last week about Super Bowl Ads, “Don’t Watch the Super Bowl Just for the Ads”, in which the author says people watch too many ads, “not just during the Super Bowl, but in other areas of their life too (AGLOCO comes to mind).” Again, this amazes me. A reporter is using AGLOCO as a reference about advertising in an article about Super Bowl ads - and the Viewbar isn’t even available yet. I wonder how powerful this concept will grow to a year from now.

AGLOCO increasing at a Geometric Rate – What does it mean to You and Me?

I think to you and me it quite simply means – we joined a winner.

We (the members) have made it this winner and we (the members) need to keep working right now to push AGLOCO to the tipping point of success.

I read Harold’s great post yesterday http://haroldbbbg1619.wordpress.com/ . An inspiring description of the revolution that the AGLOCO members are starting today.

You and I. We are starting an Internet revolution. And we are just starting to win. Geometric increases. They will not happen all the time – not every day or every week or every month. But, some will be leaps like the last four days.

Some people say to me “Hey, take it easy McCall. You have so many referrals you are an automatic winner.”

I am taking the opposite view. I am increasing my recruiting efforts. (I am a great believer along with Julie - and many others of you - that NOW before the Viewbar is out is the best time to take advantage of the AGLOCO opportunity. I have sent out more emails again this month. I have called people who have turned me down before. I have 9 new directs among my 1,000 new people and I am very proud of that.

The take away of today’s post – You joined a winner. Be proud. - And now… - increase your efforts and double your referrals.

(I am a fan of Warren Buffett - #2 in Net Worth behind Bill Gates in the US. He writes that you only get a handful of potential BIG winners in your life. When you see one, “Give it everything you can”. I am doing that with AGLOCO.)

Now at 13,000 AGLOCO Referrals – Just how popular is AGLOCO

Sat, 03 Feb 2007 07:58:51 GMT

Earlier today, I went over 13,000 AGLOCO referrals. The referral pace at AGLOCO remains very fast at this point. I noticed a blog today by John Chow on his crossing 4,000 referrals in which he noted that his referral pace was picking up as well.

In my opinion, this is not time to ‘slack off’. This is the pre-launch period for AGLOCO. This is the time you can be a founder and get ‘founders returns’.

Try recruiting all your friends six months from now. Maybe most of them will still not be AGLOCO members – But I bet the “good” ones will be ‘gone’. You know – the GOOD ones - the ones with 1,000 people in their outlook contacts who can double your total referrals if they get active. Everybody will be after those people. That is exactly what I recommend you do in my referral advice posts. Go after the ‘good’ ones first. Call the good ones. Get them signed up and then get them motivated to go out and recruit. I have only 88 direct referrals in AGLOCO my 13,000 referrals come from them. That is the power of AGLOCO and it is right now that it is most effective.

So, how popular is AGLOCO?

I just did a Google search on “AGLOCO” and got 1,110,000 pages of results (– (Note Google results can very by as much as 100,000 from one minute to the next I have noticed.)

What does 1,110,000 Google search pages mean? – That is what I decided to think about.

The first mention of AGLOCO on the Internet was on November 3, 2006 (by a blog called GigaOM) – exactly 3 months ago – just 90 days ago. So it has been growing 10,000+ new pages a day more or less. But that does not really tell too much of a story. So I decided to o some ‘comparative shopping’.

I put “Kobe Bryant” in Google – got 1,880,000 – that is more than AGLOCO, but then he has been an NBA superstar for 10 years now. Give AGLOCO another 90 days and it will be bigger than Kobe on the Internet. (I tried Wilt Chamberlain too - 694,000 so AGLOCO has already passed up Wilt.)

I decided to try some more famous people: Queen Victoria 1,650,000 – you remember Queen of England for 68 years – long enough and powerful enough to have a moral standard after her “Victorian Era” and an architectural style “Victorian Houses” – AGLOCO should pass her on the Internet by May.

I tried a few more famous people just for fun: “Tiger Woods” – 3,490,000 (but “Arnold Palmer” only 1,270,000 – AGLOCO might get near him by Valentines Day), “Theodore Roosevelt” – 1,530,000 and “Lyndon Johnson” – 1,160,000 (“John F Kennedy” came in at 4,930,000 – right next to “Tom Cruise” at 4,720,000) - "Britney Spears" was at 17,800,000, so what does that tell you about the world?

I stayed with entertainment for a minute “CSI: Miami” was at 2,080,000 (that is after 5 years as a top ten show.) or “Top Gun” - 2,080,000 – and the words “Top Gun” are used for many more things than just the Tom Cruise move – the AGLOCO Top Gun site for example.

I tried a couple of simple products with made up words as names; Windex – 1,060,000, Ziploc – 1,110,000 – both have been around for more than 15 years – and ‘everyone’ knows about them.

Then, I decided to try some company names – after all AGLOCO is a company name. I first tried Geico – I love their ads – 3,810,000. Geico is owned by Berkshire Hathaway the 13^th biggest company on the Fortune 500 list – only 1,350,000 pages on Google (Berkshire Hathaway is majority owned by Bill Gates’ good friend, Warren Buffet, who is the second richest person in America according to Forbes. Too bad when AGLOCO hits 1,350,000 in a few weeks it isn’t worth the $46 billion that Warren Buffet has.

#3 on the Fortune 500 list is “General Motors” - 14,400,000 pages. So I moved down to #100 “General Dynamics” - $21 billion in sales last year and has $19 billion in assets – Google score was only 1,510,000. So I slipped down to #500 on the list, still $4 billion in sales and $3.6 billion in assets, “LandAmerica Financial” – Google score 192,000.

Now, what did I learn from all this? Well a lot more respect for the active AGLOCO community that already exists. In 90 days, they have already built the foundation for what might be the ‘next big thing’. Yes, it is fun to ‘beat up on’ an old golfer or an ex-president. But my thoughts go to the fact that AGLOCO is still in pre-launch. No product, no advertising. Nothing is pushing this company forward besides You and Me – the founding members.

What will it grow to? Well if I am right “the sky’s the limit.” YouTube - 123,000,000 (two years), eBay 390,000,000, (eleven years), and Google 892,000,000 (nine years). Wow, 892,000,000 in nine years – that is 100,000,000 new pages a year or about 300,000 pages a day 12,000 an hour. I better get this blog posted to add my one more page for Google – and one more for AGLOCO as well – 1,110,001 and growing.

12,000 AGLOCO Referrals - Sounds Good to Me

Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:51:57 GMT

I was of course thrilled to hit 12,000 so early in the year. My stated goal of 20,000 by the end of 2007 seems closer every time I post an increase (seemed like a bit of a stretch back on December 13^th when I made the prediction).

Many people have asked – How did you get so many total referrals when you only have 82 direct people you recruited? I have been giving advice in many of my previous posts (click here to get the referral advice posts )

Today, I want to show the math of the 12,000 referrals as I se them.

Line 1 – My Direct recruits = 82

Since I know most of them and talk frequently to some of the more active ones for AGLOCO, I know something about this group.

Two of them have more than 1,000 people in their networks. A couple of them have more than 50 Direct recruits. And a few of them “still haven’t started”.

Line 2 – My Direct recruits’ Direct recruits – I am guessing around a 7 to 8 recruit average for a total of about 600 members on that line.

The next three lines are even more guesswork, but it is fun to think about how the set up looks and how can I make adjustments accordingly.

Line 3 – If the 600 second line members average 3 to 4 recruits each then this line is about 2,000. They are newer to the system and have not had as much time to get motivated etc.

Line 4 - If the third line members average just 2 to 3 recruits each then this line is about 5,000. They are even newer to the system this group represents a huge potential to me. If I can get this group to average the 7 to 8 that Line 2 appears to be doing then this group can supply 25,000 to 30,000 more people in my network.

Line 5 - If the third line members average just 1 recruit each then this line is about 5,000.

Final look (remember – just a guess)

Line #1 82

Line #2 600

Line #3 2,000

Line #4 5,000

Line #5 5,000

How do I leverage all this to exceed my goals?

I think my advice to myself would be the same to someone with 10 directs and only 100 total in their network.

First, over the next 6 months I am going to try to double my Directs (to 160). If the quality of the new recruits is as good as the original 80 then that effort alone should double my results.

Second and maybe more importantly, I am going to work with my Directs to get them to double their Directs (or in some cases just start recruiting). http://mccallsnotes.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9F2891B66EBAA762!427.entry

This effort includes giving them emails to send to people who have not yet signed up plus advice on how to get their Directs to recruit. Here is a link to the sample email I use for second attempts. http://mccallsnotes.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!9F2891B66EBAA762!427.entry

The real “trick” to getting a huge referral network is getting your Directs motivated and then getting their Directs to do the same thing. This chain reaction can result in amazing results.

Good luck and ask what you need in the comments to this blog.

Why AGLOCO Will Win - and yes I went over 11,000 referrals today

Tue, 23 Jan 2007 23:37:35 GMT

I went over 11,000 AGLOCO referrals earlier today – the pace seems up a bit – over 125 a day. (Probably just a couple of very active newbies).

Why AGLOCO Will Win?

It’s the Members -- you and me and the thousands of active Members out there already… everywhere.

It is always the people who make the organization – whether it is AGLOCO, YouTube, eBay, Craig’s List or even Yahoo. You and me - We make it popular. We contribute our time and our energy. We make it happen. And We will rally behind people and concepts We think are good. This is why AGLOCO will win. Because, We, the people, are already starting to rally.

You can see it. You can hear it. AND you can even sometimes feel it. The AGLOCO network is growing stronger every day… in every direction.

Sure, the AGLOCO membership grows by thousands every day. But, that is just one dimension. More important is the growth of the community around the membership.

By community, I mean what members are doing, what members are saying and what they are building. Let’s look.

John Chow (one of my favorite daily blogs to read) is taking the time to write extensively his views on why he is supporting AGLOCO http://www.johnchow.com/category/agloco/ His latest post gives a very detailed account of why AGLOCO can be a big winner on the Internet and on how his readers can position themselves to share in that.
Some of the many community service blogs:
- Top Gun http://agloco-top-gun.spaces.live.com
- AGLOCO Test http://www.aglocotest.com/
There are the more serious AGLOCO sites which discuss the economic, political and social aspects of this brand new community:
- One of my favorite revolutionary thinkers is http://haroldbbbg1619.wordpress.com
- Another deep thinking blog http://jr-infomediary.blogspot.com
- And the early report http://simmonsreport.spaces.live.com
Of course there are thousands of recruiting sites and blog entries on regular spaces like MySpace. Simon, the creator of AGLOCO Rocks, was sited in the recent AGLOCO Update email for having a fun recruiting site. But what I find more interesting than just his site is that people in the community help each other, learn from each other and will build the network together much as they did at eBay. http://allaboutagloco.blogspot.com/2007/01/agloco-update-2.html is a site built by one of Simon/AGLOCO Rocks recruits and obviously he was inspired by Simon.
Even the traditional media is picking up the story - Red Herring’s current print issue has an article in it on AGLOCO – nice picture at Stanford. Traditional tech bloggers like VentureBeat http://venturebeat.com/2006/12/20/agloco-signs-up-tens-of-thousands-and-hasnt-even-released-viewbar etc. continue to check the progress. They are sensing what you sensing. The early growth of a new form of entity on the Internet. What they may not have sensed yet, is just how strong and powerful an entity it can be when the full force of its members is brought forward.

AGLOCO’s community right now is a founders’ community, a pre-launch community. It is already showing the foundation needed to build a great Internet community. Maybe… just maybe… it is the first of the great Internet communities. Because, unlike all of the proceeding communities, this one will be owned by its members and therefore run for the benefit of the community, not some ‘well meaning shareholders’.

Have a great day,

BTW – I really like watching John Chow grow his blog. – He has set a goal of being a top 100 in the world Technorati rated blogger. He wrote that he went under1,000 a few days ago and I noticed he was under 900 now. Nice John – I hope it is helped by lots of AGLOCO links to your blog.

BTW 2 – in response to many questions I get about this blog – yes you may copy and paste it for tasteful and appropriate promotion of AGLOCO – a strong growing network will benefit all members.

Hit goal #1 - 10,000 AGLOCO referrals

Tue, 16 Jan 2007 05:43:15 GMT

I made my first major goal of 10,000 referrals in the AGLOCO network. My goal was to reach 10,000 by the end of February – it happened 6 weeks ahead of schedule.

Thank you to all my direct recruits who went out on limb with me and have backed AGLOCO. – I have 73 direct referrals and 9,934 extended referrals. This means my direct referrals have an average of 130 referrals each (direct and extended) . I have been aggressive in emailing and calling my friends to get them to sign up early for AGLOCO and I think many of them have done the same thing. This has been a big key for me. Recruit your friends and get them to do the same .It is that chain reaction which has given me so many referrals.

This is a very a nice moment for me (even my wife toasted with wine at dinner). More than a couple of my friends said AGLOCO was a waste of time (and it still could be), but at least I have helped AGLOCO reach some of its size.

There have been some great developments the last couple of weeks:

The AGLOCO Official blog has become very active www.blog.agloco.com.

The Simmons Report on AGLOCO http://simmonsreport.spaces.live.com is getting aired in many blogs. I see that Harold is doing a detailed study of the Simmons Report http://haroldbbbg1619.wordpress.com .

This Simmons Report has inspired some speculation http://usjulie.spaces.live.com as to what it means financially to individual AGLOCO builders.

It has even sponsored a Top Gun List http://agloco-top-gun.spaces.live.com

I applaud all these efforts to build a vibrant AGLOCO community. This is what will ultimately make AGLOCO successful.

It was a similar core of network builders that made eBay happen, MySpace happen, YouTube happen – and even Google happen to some extent. With AGLOCO, the network builders become the network owners and reap the rewards of their early support and efforts.

I think these are all positive developments in order to set a good foundation for when the viewbar software is released. (Personally, I would like a couple more months to have all my ‘early’ recruiting in order before the viewbar onslaught starts.)

My next stated goal has been 20,000 by the end of 2007 – so back out recruiting in the morning….

I crossed over 8,000 referrals - Go AGLOCO

Sat, 06 Jan 2007 02:43:49 GMT

Yes, 8,000. And I am very pleased – Also, I have done some more personal recruiting and now have 69 direct referrals – remember I posted my goals in my December 13^th blog and it included saying I was hoping to reach 10,000 referrals by the end of February. I am looking pretty good on this.

Just a couple of quick things on AGLOCO. --- I did a Google search for “agloco” a minute ago – got 847,000 page hits – I guess they are moving on up to the big 1 with 9 zeros. This is always very encouraging to me as while I like having 8,000 referrals, AGLOCO needs to be very big for it to achieve its goals for its members. Very big would be 2,000,000 by the end of 2007 (another of my December 13 predictions.)

I do read the AGLOCO Official blog and comments. I usually don’t comment myself as most of the points made are already covered in the FAQs etc. But I do think some of the members write excellent ideas for improvements. This is another reason that I think AGLOCO will be a huge winner. Because the members own AGLOCO, they will work hard to make it better. It is like Linux for the web, only better because the people doing all the work to improve it get most the benefits.

Also, I think there are some legitimate complaints. My feeling on that has been one word “patience”.

AGLOCO is a true Silicon Valley start up (including a solid Stanford University tie - like Cisco, Sun, eBay, Yahoo and Google). Right now is when a startup is the weakest AND it is right now that the most money is made for the least effort (ask the founders of YouTube and their $1.6 billion about that thought).

So I think this is ‘our’ risk as well. John Chow wrote a nice blog on November 30^th when he crossed over 1,000 referrals talking about the risk of failure. http://www.johnchow.com/1000-agloco-sign-ups/ .

I agree with John. We are all taking a risk with our efforts (but our money is still in our wallets). This is a rare opportunity and as you can see I am trying to make the most of it.

Recruiting tip. ---- In my recent recruiting I have been successful when I tell people I have 8,000 referrals. That impresses them with the fact that a lot of people are signing up and that I have been successful in recruiting my friends. People like to join a winner and like hearing success stories (and I am happy I am one of them).

More on Bill Gates and AGLOCO

Wed, 03 Jan 2007 06:25:10 GMT

Below is a report from an AGLOCO blogger I like to read - harold bbbg1619 - http://haroldbbbg1619.wordpress.com/2007/01/02/googles-profit-down-50/

This is up to his usual standards - While I agree that AGLOCO will get the billions when they have the large member base I am not sure that Google will actully make less money - they may develope ways to make even more money by partnering with AGLOCO in many other ways besides search. Just a thought.

I can see why Bill Gates likes AGLOCO's business model - it is at least very threatening to Google.

Here is harold's post

Quote -

Google’s profit down 50%

I have been doing research on how a successful AGLOCO might affect the Internet.

I think it will be in various different ways… major ways. But one simple way of looking at AGLOCO’s impact is how it will move money around on the Internet search alone. I think Google could be one company that is greatly affected by the invention of the Internet Economic Network (which is what AGLOCO is).

To make this simple – Let’s say that AGLOCO is highly successful and gets 150 million members (and that other economic networks also start and together they get another 150 million members (and that further that these 300 million members represent 50% of the active volume on the Internet.)

How will this affect Google profits?

Google’s financial statements release significant data on how Google makes a profit.

First — Google gets 60% of its revenue from selling ads on its own sites and 40% from sites of others (like AOL).

Second — In regard to the AOL etc. 40% part, Google states that it has an 80% cost of revenue on that part of its business (this means that $100 of the revenue that is generated by this part of the business costs Google $80 to get – like the fact that on average Google pays AOL 10 cents a search. – that is about 90% of Google’s average gross revenue (obviously Google pays other suppliers less than 80% or otherwise the average cost would be higher 80%).

Third — The Google direct site revenue (the 60% part), is highly profitable – with an 90% gross profit margin.

Simple math – if Google does $10 billion in total revenue, then $6 billion is direct and $4 billion is indirect (from other sites). The $6 billion has a $5.4 billion gross profit (90%) and the $4 billion has a $0.8 billion gross profit (20%). Total $6.2 billion in gross profit. Google has about 25% in operating costs ($2.5 billion) leaving $3.7 billion in net profits.

IF AGLOCO (and other economic networks) have half of the total Internet users then Google will have only half as many direct customers. – New split would be 50% AGLOCO etc. 30% direct and 20% AOL etc.

Simple math #2 - if Google does $10 billion in total revenue then $5 billion is AGLOCO etc, $3 billion is direct and $2 billion is indirect (from other sites). The AGLOCO $5 billion has a $1 billion gross profit for Google (20%). the direct $3 billion has a $2.7 billion gross profit (90%) and the AOL etc $2 billion has a $0.4 billion gross profit (20%). Total $4.1 billion in gross profit. (Google still would have about 25% in operating costs ($2.5 billion) leaving $1.6 billion in net profits.)

A net profit of $1.6 billion is less than half of $3.7 billion. So Google’s net profit would be less than half of what it is now if AGLOCO succeeds and becomes huge. And where did that $2.1 billion go that Google lost – to AGLOCO and other economic networks.

And this would be AGLOCO‘s income from just search (and not including money from Yahoo, MSN etc.) – A very nice start…..

6,000 AGLOCO Referrals

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 07:24:03 GMT

I have been asked to do two things on this blog recently.

One is give my status. – I crossed over 6,000 total referrals yesterday.

Two how did I get there. – Mainly I recruited friends with emails. I have just 58 direct referrals (I plan to get more, but day job is in the way and I have grown a bit lazy.) But I do talk to the friends I have recruited and do two things.

I give them help in answering AGLOCO questions they may have or people they recruit have. (I read a lot about AGLOCO so this makes me better able to do that than they are. I do this mainly in email so they can forward the information on.
I act as a cheerleader. Recruiting new members for AGLOCO is sales. And in all sales you get lots of no’s. Sales is numbers you need to get your message to the right people at the right time. I email my friends often to make sure they are feeling supported by me in the effort. Please note that only 1/3 of my recruits have direct referrals so far – the others have not tried. I am hoping to get this up.

Sites I like for information are.

http://aglocoideas.blogspot.com/

http://www.johnchow.com/

http://jr-infomediary.blogspot.com/

http://aglocoblog.blogspot.com/

AGLOCO - predictions by McCall

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 00:34:30 GMT

I have been involved with AGLOCO as a founding member and have been actively recruiting new members for three weeks already. I decided to start a blog on my activities, but that has seemed to be a lesser and lesser part of what I like to write here. More and more I find myself thinking about what an economic network can become. I like updates from John Chow http://www.johnchow.com/ . And the official blog http://aglocoblog.blogspot.com/ and one very straight forward one called Infomediary http://jr-infomediary.blogspot.com/ . They are on my list but wanted to point them out up here.

My predictions

AGLOCO will have over 2,000,000 by the end of 2007.
I will have over 10,000 total referrals by the end of February
AGLOCO viewbar will be released by the en of February – and then no Mac – just my thought)
First company between Google, Yahoo and Microsoft to do a ‘major’ deal with AGLOCO will be Microsoft (no surprise here, given Bill Gates comments)
AGLOCO will file to go public the last quarter of 2007 (and I will have 20,000 referrals by then)

I promise not to ‘edit these’ to make the right after the fact.

Bill Gates likes AGLOCO concept?

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 18:42:16 GMT

I saw this 'old' Bill Gates quote on John Chow's blog. It was i believe a statement he has made publicly more than once in the last year. (I did a quick search – used live search just for fun.)

Well AGLOCO is one way to do just what Bill Gates says to do (not that he is always right - but maybe this time?) MSN would have trouble paying people to search, but using something like AGLOCO's economic network... it could work. Does Bill know something that Eric Schmidt should be worried about?

Gates said that search engines like Google Inc. get their revenues from advertising because people use these search engines. “Google’s business model is not based on free software,” Gates said. “Their business model is based on advertisements from which they make a lot of money.”

But they don’t share these advertising revenues with the end users who help them get the revenue, Gates said. “Google keeps all of the money with itself,” he added.

(Through its AdSense program, Google does share advertising revenue with Web site publishers who carry ads that Google sells to advertisers.)

In its bid to share revenues with users, Microsoft may give free software or even cash to users, said Gates, who did not discuss further details.

Free is Too Expensive

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 18:03:56 GMT

I love this about AGLOCO. It was one of the best statements on the AGLOCO website.

I read this post on the company blog - I just had to paste it here.

The AGLOCO Vision #1: Free is too Expensive

Much of Web 2.0 has been about Internet companies building a simple service and then getting users to do much of the work on it (including telling all their friends about it). Once the service is popular, the founders and venture capitalists make a deal to sell it for millions (and billions) of dollars. The users who helped build it (especially the early users who often put up with clunky software and weak websites) just watch.

When we looked at this system, we saw a bad price. Sometimes free is not enough.
We designed AGLOCO to reward all Members who join and with the referral system we designed it to give an extra reward to the Members who help build it.

In designing what AGLOCO would be, we felt starting just a specific service (like videos or music or blogging) would not go far enough. So we designed AGLOCO to be a platform for many kinds of services. On our website we cite easy examples of services to monetize for Members like search and advertising, many more exist.

Global companies start with a grand vision, but they start small. We first started working on AGLOCO out of our houses and apartments…We know our Members are keen to learn more about AGLOCO and we shall endeavor to communicate as soon as we strategically are able.

Up again with AGLOCO

Sun, 10 Dec 2006 02:15:00 GMT

When I first saw the name ACLOCO, I thought it was not the best name I had ever heard for an Internet community. In the three weeks since I have come to say it often enough that it rolls off my tongue easier than Skype (which i can not decide whether to say the e at the end.

I did a search of AGLOCO on Google just before writing this. 540,000 page results. I counted the days since launch - 18 - This means the increase in pages has been an average of 30,000 a day. While not in the league with of a MySpace or YouTube at this point (about 150,000,000) it is already running at a 1,000,000 a month and should rise as it grows in popularity.

And this is before the service is launched - wait and see what happens then.

What is your AGLOCO Rank?

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 19:53:55 GMT

Since AGLOCO's member account page started producing rankings I have been getting asked how my rank is. The answer is yes that I am in the top 1% of all AGLOCO members. Done - answered it.

I also looked at the team page and saw the list of contributors: Some real people at real places.

Carl Anderson, CTA Holdings Gil Penchina, Wikia
Tim Ehrlich, Latham and Watkins LLP Zaw Thet, 4info
Greg Chin, Latham and Watkins LLP Valerie Williamson, OSTG - Open Source Technology Group
Graham Winter, Richards Butler
Guy Connell, Richards Butler David C Martin, IBM Oliver Brock, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Lars Nordwall, SugarCRM, Inc.
John Shoch, Alloy Ventures
Dave Pidwell, Alloy Ventures Thomas Hellmann, University of British Columbia
Dave Robertson, Collegiate Images Bruce Lacey, CarrierIQ Johannes Pohle, Morgen Group
Robb Watters, Madison Group
Justin Everett-Church, Adobe Systems Inc Chad Balch, Ph.D., Stanford University Lisa Busby, George P Johnson Company
J.D. Brasesco, SAVVIS Communications Chad Balch, Ph.D., Stanford University Richard Sze, Software Developer
Geoffrey Shenk – SEM Specialist
David Steinberger, Tickle Inc.
Alexandre Gourevitch, Science Po Paris Jacques Clay, French Tech Tour Victor Tsai, University of California, Berkeley
Jennifer Jackson, Owners Advantage Murray Arenson, Matrix Equities
Allen Gaul, GreenPoint Financial
Mike Depatie, Kimpton Hotels
Sam Ladah, Haas School of Business James Reed II, Plum Tree Technologies Jean-Marc Mommessin, Stanford University Ken Myers, Crushpad, Inc. Gary Capata, Capata and Co.
Greg Stebben, Radio Group
Brandon Blum, University of Michigan Ilya Strebulaev, Ph.D., Stanford University
Dana Duggan, Vanderbilt University

Ira Ehrenpreis, Technology Partners

I now have over 5,000 AGLOCO referrals

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:03:28 GMT

I crossed over yeaterday and failed to note it. I am at 5,200 now.

A couple of people have asked me questions on the AGLOCO software - viewbar.

Here was what I found on the website.

The Viewbar™ is a small toolbar that rests on the bottom of your screen or browser window while you surf the Internet. The Viewbar™ software is what enables AGLOCO to collect the money you are earning while browsing the Internet.

The Viewbar™ keeps track of your online interests and preferences, and uses that information to deliver the most valuable message to you at the right time. Because privacy is a core principle of AGLOCO, the Viewbar™ communicates with our secure servers in an encrypted fashion to keep your information private.

Some people have asked: “Is the Viewbar™ some kind of ‘spyware’?” The answer is simple: The Viewbar™ is the opposite of spyware. Spyware sneaks onto your computer without your knowledge or permission, it steals your private information, and it’s nearly impossible to remove. Unlike spyware, the Viewbar™ is completely permission based, it keeps your information private, and you can always turn it off with a single click.

AGLOCO newbie speaks up

Wed, 06 Dec 2006 22:38:18 GMT

Saw this coment on the AGLOCO Official blog site. It seemed a nice note of the current feelings of new members. (BTW - i checked the Google search totay and got 425,000 - that is 35,000 more than just a day and a half ago. That is a lot of webpages mentioning AGLOCO. Apparently a few people actually read this so here is my refferal code in case you have not signed up. www.agloco.com/r/aglo-0868 Harold BBBG1619 said...

Signed up earlier today - I was looking over the website for referral ideas - and saw this post - congratulations on the very high start. I searched Google a minute ago – I got 392,000 pages with AGLOCO on them – amazing for less than two weeks.

I sent out some emails to recruit some friends. One guy asked me why join before the viewbar was ready. I gave him two reasons. One, I want to be one of the earliest to get one (I read you are handing them out in the order members sign up). Two – so I can recruit as many people as I can - before any of my other friends signs everybody.

Two of my friends are twins and I hope I get both of them before they talk to each other....

Thanks again for coming up with this idea – I was an early user of YouTube and I wish they had a program like this when they started.

AGLOCO takes off

Tue, 05 Dec 2006 16:22:51 GMT

I read this post on the AGLOCO Official website http://aglocoblog.blogspot.com/2006/12/agloco-is-now-two-week-old.html .

I think it speaks for itself.

1. On Alexa.com, AGLOCO is currently ranked as the 2,235 most popular website on the Internet.

2. A search of AGLOCO on Google results in over 390,000 page results (AGLOCO was a ‘made up’ word with less than 200 results when the website launched)

These are amazing statistics for a website that is 13 days old today. And both of these stats are due mainly to the efforts of AGLOCO Members to promote Membership in AGLOCO.

For comparison on just the Alexa popularity ranking – AGLOCO made it to #2,235 in two weeks – it took Wikipedia two years to reach the same level of popularity, Facebook took nine months, YouTube took eight months and even MySpace took three months to hit this same level.