I love the Freshbooks platform and software. It looks amazing, I was practically ready to sign up for their limousine service, and get running on the Freshbooks platform… so why am I not a Freshbooks customer yet?

After calling to ask about their  service, I was informed that to get my client’s login customized to match my company look and feel (even if I provided a CSS coded template, which I already have), it would cost $279. Is that a lot of money to spend on a business-related system like this? No, and if I was just providing a  page for them to emulate that’d actually be a pretty good deal… but it’s not the money, rather it is a matter of principle. When I inquired why it would cost so much when I was providing a page that was already CSS / html coded, I was given various silly reasons (like “hosting” for example).

At my day job, we build complex applications on a regular basis, so I know how easy it is to set up your app to allow a few lines of code to be dropped in for a login. I have a hard time believing that with how slick and polished Freshbooks is that they have a long, complex process to add a login form to an existing coded page.

So as it sits, they are losing at least $270 a year by not having me as a client, possibly more as the limousine plan would likely be outgrown before the year’s end (I’m merging with another business and taking at least one full timer).

At the end of the day, this comes down to a serious customer service issue. I completely understand that the concern might be that the code I’m going to provide is complete garbage and unworkable. It’s not, but where’s the harm in saying, “Well, we’ll take a look and if it’s going to make things easy on us, we’ll work something out…” or something to that effect. Instead they end up with an alienated customer who feels like someone just tried to rip him off.

I get really bothered about customer service issues, mainly because it’s such a huge part of my business. Web Design / Development is a huge industry and it can be difficult to stand out in the crowd. Our attention to customer satisfaction has really made the difference - customers feel like they are being treated as people and not just dollar signs when you are somewhat flexible with the small stuff, or at least have a legitimate explanation of your fees… When I was given “hosting” as one of the reasons they charge for a custom login page design, he lost me.

Update: Just wanted to thank Mike for taking the time to talk to me on the phone. I think what I appreciate most was the fact that he didn’t just placate me, agreeing with everything I had to say while he didn’t agree… just trying to get me a customer. He was honest and upfront about Freshbook’s position, and the challenges that face them in offering this service. Without going into too much detail, I really feel that there is a room for a lot optimization in the process they have to go through for the service (or eventually they will have to get rid of it, as Mike had said might be the way they go) because as it is right now, I can see the existing process becoming a significant burden as they grow.

Anyways the ebook is called Niche Marketing on Crack, which is only slightly related to it’s predecessor Niche Marketing while on Crack.. Aren’t I clever! Well the idea is to create wordpress based sites around long tail, low traffic and competitive terms. The trick is your generally selling to people who are already pre-sold on the product so you don’t need a lot of traffic. I’m not going to blabber on to much or give a review but I did create a site of my own based around the AeroGarden. The cost of launching the site is rather minimal and I kind of splurged and bought a template for the site since nothing free really appealed to me.

The great thing about this concept is it’s so easy to replicate and scale using freelancers and generic templates. All you need is a good CPA affiliate program.

In case you’ve never heard of them (Agoloco), it’s a company built on the ruins of Alladvantage, which made its claim to fame back in the late 90’s for paying people to have an ad bar running at the bottom of their internet browser.

Every X number of seconds the ads change, and every X number of minutes, the ad bar forces you to perform an action so that it knows you’re actually watching the ads and not sleeping or at work with your computer left on.

The idea certainly sounds good on paper - after all, I’m sure all of us wouldn’t mind making a few extra bucks every month just while surfing the web. The problem is… it’s expensive to run.

In order to keep users interested, let’s assume you could get away with paying 25 cents per hour - now let’s say you have 100,000 users who have the ad bar running at least 2 hours a day.

That would mean you would have to generate $50,000 per day just to pay your 100,000 members, and now you still have to pay a cut to the people who referred those members as well.

Before long, you have to sell a lot of advertising and your members have to spend a good chunk of money with those advertisers in order for them to continue advertising.

So, if you’re an active member averaging 2 hours per day at 25 cents an hour, you would earn $15.50 per month, but in order for advertisers to make a profit and your referrer to make a cut, the average active user has to spend more than they earn - a lot more.

On their company blog, Agloco claimed their business model is based on the assumption that they can pocket 10% of the revenue generated. So, if Agoloco gets 10% and your referrer gets 5%, that means your $15.50/month requires a revenue of $17.82.

Now in all honesty, if human beings paid attention to these ads, it would be a great business idea to hijack the advertising capability of every site on the internet. I mean just look at how rich Google is doing roughly the same thing with Adsense. But unfortunately, we humans have something called “banner blindness”. This happens when a person is exposed to advertising too often and in the same manner, so our minds gradually become numb to what is being advertised until we no longer pay attention to it.

I’ve lost track of how many times while watching TV I’ve commented to my girlfriend how lame one commercial was, only to get the response: “What? Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention”. The only reason I still pay attention is due to my tiny experiences in taping shows back in my teens, so now I tend to look for flaws and presentation errors. I rarely remember the product being advertised, but I can tell you how poorly written or overpaid whoever created the ad is.

Then you also have the fraud issue. Back when alladvantage was in its heyday, you could download programs specifically created to confuse the ad bar into thinking you were watching it even if you weren’t at the computer. It got even worse when people figured out how to both confuse the ad bar and hide it from your screen at the same time, so you were essentially being paid for doing and seeing nothing.

All in all, I personally was quite surprised when a number of the A-list bloggers started pushing this program, especially since most of them have been around the block long enough to know that nothing has really changed with the business model or society’s acceptance of advertising… but I suppose even great minds can be seduced by a truly passive income stream.

While I feel for the families who will no doubt be affected by this, I really have to shake my head over why they tried to bring this flawed dinosaur back.

The AGLOCO Development team is sending out an email that states:

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

So, this is most likely the death knell for the AGLOCO dream, and it sucks most for people like John Chow who earned over 14,000 hours… but on the other hand, he made $27,000. It’s probably worse for the people out there who built their dreams of making money online around a large AGLOCO network, because now they are basically at ground zero again.

I’m a naturally skeptical person, so in cases like AGLOCO it comes in handy because I’ve saved a lot of wasted effort. Of course it makes it really hard to purchase established websites - it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but I’m just way too skeptical… too worried about getting ripped off.

The AGLOCO bubble has burst, but I’m sure another fad will pop up soon. Just remember to evaluate your endeavors in-depth before deciding to dump a lot of effort into them.

Good profits.

Probably.

So anyway, I heard a radio commercial for YellowPages as I was driving tonight. The commercial was kind of funny, but their pitch was leaving a lot to be desired.

They basically said if you enter something like “iron curtain rods” in a search engine you won’t find relevant results, but if you search yellowpages.ca for “iron curtain rods Toronto” you will. Ah-ha! I bet you’ve already picked up on a small but important difference in those two statements.

As much as we bloggers may hate the big G and their heavy-handed tactics right now, no one can honestly say that when using the same local search term, Google won’t deliver relevant results (probably more relevant than YP in many cases).
The Canadian YellowPages’ online division is a classic example of not changing with the times. Their system is so antiquated and old-world it’s not even funny. With Google starting to list YellowPage-like ads at the top of local search results, they really need to bring their system into the Web 2.0 era of things to have any hope of keeping pace, if it isn’t too late already.

Everything changes, but nothing quite matches the shifty nature of the net. You can be living the life one day, making tons of money, and in some cases see that virtually vanish overnight. That’s why it’s so critical to make sure you don’t fall behind the curve.

Good Profits.

Why do we care? Well, take a look at his earnings for November - yes, that’s right: $45,000.  That’s a lot of cheddar for one month, assuming it’s completely truthful. It’s the Internet, so you have to take everything said with a grain of salt… but simply the fact that he’s not selling a $79 e-book that will teach you how to make $100,000 a month gives him at least a little bit of street cred.

Now on to the good part, before reading further… read about Karamveer’s link building strategy.  Okay, have you read it? Sounds pretty long, difficult, and trying, doesn’t it? Finally, someone who’s telling it like it is, without sugar-coating it. There is a lot of money to be made on the Internet, but it’s very hard work. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

I did a little digging into a few of Karamveer’s sites, and they are really quite simple. Not much of a design to speak of… just ads and text. But they have lots of content, and it appears to be good, useful content. The Internet is not a get rich quick scheme waiting to happen.  If you aren’t prepared to put in some hard work, then you’re probably better off staying at your 9 - 5.  Keep pluggin’…

Good Profits.

Of course, the most important question is: “Can a great design help my blog?”. Obviously the answer is, yes… but exactly how much of a difference is it going to make?

Unfortunately, it’s really hard to measure the value garnered from a new design. Tyler’s income on his blog set records in income (over $1000) and RSS readership the month that we launched his new design, but it’s really difficult to prove how much of a part the design had to play in that.

I personally think that a design can help a lot, but it won’t make up for a lack of other important factors like frequent quality content. Just how much a new design will help you obviously depends on your blog. It seems the larger your blog, the more leverage a new design will provide, but large blogs are all about leveraging.

Over the next few months we’ll be redeveloping many popular blogs, and I’m going to keep track of their growth progress in earnings and readership. Hopefully I can gather some factual data that will show that a new blog design does add a lot of benefit, as that would be good for business!

Good Profits.

It doesn’t have to be a full blown audit, just a rough idea of how much money you made, which in turn will tell you which tax bracket you should land in.

This past weekend, I sat down with my trusty calculator and was rather shocked to discover the extent that all my performance bonuses, commissions and the sale of my first ebook business have had on my bottom line.

I don’t care to share numbers, but I can say I will be paying the government more money this year than I earned in all of 2006.

While it’s probably the last thing you want to do this close to Christmas, do your budget a favor and get it out of the way so that when you buy this year’s presents, you can do so without regretting it come March.

The prizes are all in gift certificates to a family-friendly store of your choice (WalMart, BestBuy, Zellers, etc.), and the dollar values are as follows:

1st Prize: $100

2nd Prize: $50

3rd Prize: $25

In addition to the gift certificate, you and your website will be featured in the January edition of my company newsletter, which currently goes out to over 70 people. So, you’ll get some free money, and free promotion for your site… what’s not to like?

How do you enter?

There are several easy ways to gain entries into the contest. The more you enter, the greater your chances that you’ll win! Here are the different ways you can enter:

1. Subscribe to the Reality Hosting newsletter and receive at least one issue.

The newsletter is sent monthly and contains content that is focused on increasing the effectiveness of your website, as well as web design principles that will help grow your business. If you don’t like the content, you can instantly unsubscribe at any time.

Value: 5 Entries

2. Link to this post describing the contest.

Say anything you’d like about the contest, as long as you direct people to this post in case they’d like to enter too.

Value: 5 Entries (a bonus five entries if you link to Reality Hosting as well)

3. Become a fan of Reality Hosting on Facebook.

If you have a Facebook profile, you can enter by becoming a fan of Reality Hosting (click here for our profile). If you’d like to learn more about marketing your business on Facebook, take a look at this article.

Value: 3 Entries

Good Luck to all those who enter!

However, I have had a bit of an epiphany over the last few days in regards to how these systems work. So this time around, I’m going to have to play the devil’s advocate.

I was “dropping the kids off at the pool”, as Dave would say, when it hit me… If one year ago at the height of our adsense earnings ($5000+/month) we had written a guide to creating a network of websites using the exact same principals, software, tools and steps we were using, but leaving out our celebrity fan site niche, we would have been writing a 100% honest guide to making money based on our own experiences - and it would have failed for maybe 95% of the people who bought and actually tried it themselves.

Why? Because many niches need to be approached differently, and there is no “one size fits all” approach. But at the same time when you have a killer idea, it just doesn’t pay to release it to the public until either you are so entrenched into the market that having 1000’s of people doing the same thing won’t hurt you too much, OR the idea is going downhill and you want to maximize your earnings before it falls apart.

I guess the point I’m trying to make is: while I have tended to bash the “gurus” a lot as of late, I can relate to why they do what they do and how it can be perceived by pessimists like myself.

I’m sure there are some good ones out there who, even if their products aren’t all that great, do actually try to give something back to the community… but in general, what works for, say, the travel niche, probably won’t work the same for the wedding favors niche.

Our best ideas have always come from us trying something and getting an idea as a result.