Agriya Announces New Product Names
Agriya have always held the belief that we should get things done fast and then iterate to make the improvements. It stands at odds with the philosophy of many of our clients who strive for perfection on the first shot but it is something that serves us well and has enabled us to be the first to market with many new products. As our motto states:
Think Big, Start Small, Do It Fast More than 8 months on from when we launched many new products we felt that it was about time to go back and give some names to them instead of simply calling them “XYZ clone”. We put on our thinking caps and are pleased to announce the new official names for our line up of products…
Groupdeal
This is Agriya’s group buying software and has been a runaway success since it launched 8 months ago. Used by some of the biggest group deal sites on the Internet the software is a secure, scalable and reliable solution for big and small companies. Find out more about Agriya’s Groupdeal.
FP Platform
Fixed priced job portals are taking the Internet by storm as people offer their services for a small fixed price. Our FP Platform is used by the biggest companies in the industry including Zeerk, Cinkue and Dealrr. Find out why so many companies choose Agriya’s FP Platform.
Feedy
If you don’t have the resources or the business connections to run a full blown group deal site but want to get your slice of the grou buying action then Agriya’s Feedy is the product for you. It aggregates deals from all the biggest sites and pulls them together in one place – perfect for daily deal junkies to get their fix!
PeeweePay
Peewee means small and with Agriya’s PeeweePay you can let merchants start selling via your site within seconds, no complicated signup forms, just enter their product details and they can start selling immediately. Digital downloads or real products, it doesn’t matter, it’s all built in to PeeweePay.
Flipit
Virtual real estate is becoming as hot as real world real estate as people look to buy undervalued websites and flip them for a profit – just like in the real world. With Agriya’s Flipit you can start your own marketplace to bring together buyers and sellers of virtual real estate (websites) and facilitate the entire process.Because of the new name changes, we have updated all the demo URL’s so please contact us if you need to see the new demos.
What do you think of the names? Better than “XYZ clone”? We sure think so and hope that they become industry brand names in the near future.
Fiverr Declares War On Fixed Price Job Portals
Very Important: See update at the end of this post
It all started last week when one of the biggest fixed price job portals, a serious alternative to Fiverr, contacted Agriya and mentioned that their account had been frozen without any warning by PayPal. Naturally we were concerned because this person was our client and we often referred potential customers to their site to showcase our ability.
Further investigations revealed that the account was shut down at the request of Fiverr International Ltd who argued that the site was infringing upon their Intellectual Property.
A few days later and more clients contacted Agriya stating that their PayPal accounts had also been frozen, and FiverrWay wrote a long article about some of the other sites that have been affected.
So far, no concrete reason has been given for why the accounts were shut down, further more, there is no explanation on how Fiverr International Ltd even have the power to request that other company’s PayPal accounts be closed. If Intellectual Property Rights have been infringed then the correct procedure is to file a DMCA notice and give the defendant the option to file a counter claim.
Agriya find it deeply disturbing that PayPal have acted against many other companies without consultation – something which they have a history of doing in the past. It also defies belief that the Fiverr International Ltd and PayPal haven’t notified the site owners about the complaint.
Why Have Fiverr International Ltd Complained To PayPal?
Although we don’t know the exact reason why Fiverr International Ltd have complained directly to PayPal instead of to the site owner, there could always be a chance that they have some influence within the company to get these accounts frozen (Agriya definitely isn’t saying this is the case but it makes a cool conspiracy theory!). We don’t know of any other cases where a person has a legitimate PayPal account accepting payments for legitimate goods and services and then being shut down due to a complaint by a competitor. However, the grounds for the complaint remain a mystery and we only have speculation to go on, which includes:
- Fiverr have someone working in or have a strong influence in PayPal
- Someone at Fiverr felt that the design and code had been stolen (which it definitely hasn’t!)
- Fiverr took exception to the competitor sites using their brand name as leverage (ie. Best Fiverr Alternative)
- Fiverr didn’t like that competitors were copying their layout
- Fiverr didn’t like that competitors were copying their terminology
- Competitor sites were copying the text and instructions from the Fiverr website
With the exception of the first option, all the other options could have been conducted via DMCA notifications.
Does Fiverr Own Any Trademarks?
It was mentioned on one blog that the accounts could have been closed due to trademark infringements. Now clearly Agriya are not experts in Trademark Law, but there does appear to be three problems to this opinion though:
- Trademark and copyright infringements should be dealt with directly with the person or company who is infringing. PayPal have no legal power to decide whether or not a company is infringing upon the trademarks or copyright of another company
- Fiverr International Ltd don’t actually have any trademarks at the moment (it should be noted that Fiverr International Ltd do have copyright to all the text, graphics and scripts on their site)
- Fiverr International Ltd currently do not own any patents for their site or software
On the Fiverr.com website, Fiverr International Ltd state that:
FIVERR, $5 GIG, GIGS, I Will … For, The Things People Do For $5, DamnQuickPay, Fiverr graphics, logos, scripts, terms of use, instructions, designs and other service names are the trademarks and copyright of Fiverr International Limited
This immediately set off alarm bells because surely no one can trademark the phrase “I will … For”, it’s a hugely popular saying within the Internet community to say things like “I will code For food” and variations thereof. To find out for sure we went to the US Patent and Trademarks Office and used their search engine to look for Fiverr International Ltd’s trademarks.
To search for US trademarks you can go to http://tess2.uspto.gov/
What we found was that Fiverr International Ltd have APPLIED for various trademarks on 3rd November 2010, however the applications are all under review, it appears (again, we’re not legal eagles here, just looking at the terminology) they have NOT been granted any trademarks yet, even for the name Fiverr.
According to USPTO the Fiverr trademark is still waiting to be reviewed
Going back to our reservations about trademarking the phrase “I Will … For”, Fiverr International Ltd have applied for a trademark, but it doesn’t appear to be for that exact phrase, if you look at what they are trying to trademark it includes the words AND an empty box AND the addition of $5, the full trademark they have applied for is shown in the image below:
Fiverr look to trademark a phrase and image
Can Fiverr Trademark Terms Like Gigs and $5 GIG?
Technically you can apply to trademark any word or phrase, however if it already exists in the database then it will be rejected, further if you want to trademark a generic phrase for an industry then it may be rejected.
However, if the USPTO accepts Fiverr International Ltd’s trademark applications the phrases still have to go through a 30 day opposition period. According to the Houston Internet Law website, all trademarks that have passed the review are published online in the Official Gazette of the Patent and Trademark office.
It’s simply a case of monitoring the process of Fiverr International Ltd’s application and if it’s approved then watching out in the online publications to see when it is announced so that an opposition can be raised. With so many people affected by Fiverr International Ltd and PayPal’s actions we think there might be quite a few people who oppose some of the trademarks!
The Solution To The Problem
Since we don’t know what the exact reason for PayPal taking it upon themselves to be the judge, jury and executioner we only have some general suggestions on how to fix this:
- Switch to a new e-Currency, Agriya is working to integrate AlertPay and Moneybookers in to our FP Platform – existing customers please contact us for pricing
- Remove any reference to Fiverr on your site
- Ensure that your site doesn’t copy any text from fiverr.com
- Consider changing the design to something more unique
- Come up with some ideas that are totally unique
What Action Are Agriya Taking?
First things first, Agriya hasn’t copied any code or graphics from Fiverr.com, we have built our software in Cake PHP and designed the layout from scratch. Agriya is taking care to ensure that no text has been copied from the fiverr.com website in our FP Platform software and that the word ‘fiverr’ isn’t mentioned anywhere. Furthermore we are looking in to alternative wording and phrases like ‘gig’ – perhaps the Fixed Price Jobs industry can help us out to develop some completely new terminology!
Also, we are looking for many alternative payment systems and are in the process of integrating AlertPay and Moneybookers as standard for new clients. If you are an existing client please contact us for pricing on integrating a new payment system in to your site.
Final Thoughts
Your input on this disturbing chain of events is appreciated, why do you think PayPal can act in such an appalling manner without giving any opportunity to appeal? Why have Fiverr International Ltd gone directly to PayPal to complain about Intellectual Property Rights infringement instead of through the regular channels – and why have they been able to force PayPal to shut down competitor accounts?
Invitation To Fiverr
Although we don’t expect to hear from you, we would like to invite authorized representatives from Fiverr to come here and clearly state the problem you have with your competitors including specific Intellectual Property Rights which you feel have been infringed. By not being transparent about your actions or not providing any reasons then it only builds resentment against your company.
Invitation to PayPal
Again, we don’t expect to hear anything from you, but being crystal clear about exactly why Fiverr International Ltd has the ability to get competitor PayPal accounts shut down.
23rd November Update
We’ve got reports that both GigBux and UpHype are back up and running with their PayPal accounts. We’re just trying to get some more information from the admins to post it here on how they got PayPal off their back. Also, some other Agriya clients, Dealerr and Cinkue haven’t reported any problems to date.
24th November Update
We’ve had some very strong indications that the reason Fiverr International Ltd have made the complaints is because reference is made to the trademarks that they have submitted. From the site owners we have talked to that have managed to get their accounts back you need to prove to PayPal that you haven’t infringed upon any intellectual property or trademarks – use references to the USPTO website that show Fiverr International Ltd have not been granted any trademarks yet.
Furthermore, there is no way Fiverr can claim trademarks over the word Gigs when craigslist.org have been using the phrase for many years now (see the bottom right hand corner of their site).
Another client of Agriya also mentioned that they owned several trademarks and doing the admin for it is a nightmare because they have to check the Official Gazette of the Patent and Trademark office very frequently to make sure no trademarks are being considered that are similar to the ones he owns. He believes that even if the USPTO get a few objections then the trademark will not be given – particularly for the word ‘Gigs’ and ‘I will for’, however the word ‘Fiverr’ could be given as it is a unique business name, but it could be objected to on the grounds that it is similar to ‘fiver’ which is slang for $5 or €5 or £5.
5th January 2011 Update
It now appears that PayPal have understood that Fiverr have got no basis for their copyright infringement claims and from the reports we have received virtually everyone now has their PayPal accounts reinstated.
Happy news all round!
Zeerk Goes Berserk On Flippa
At Agriya we love to hear about the success stories from our clients, whether it’s winning a start up of the year award like Cinkue or launching a new group deal site with over 1,400 customers on the first day like MySuperDeal, we want to shout to the world about our clients achievements.
This week it came to our attention that the owners of Zeerk.com, a micro-jobs portal (like Fiverr) that is powered by Agriya’s Fiverr clone software had a very good week indeed.
Zeerk Has Grown To Become The #2 Micro Jobs Site
Launched back in May, the owners put hundreds, if not thousands of hours in to promoting the site and making it the second most popular micro-jobs platform after Fiverr itself. To back up all their hard work, Zeerk.com needed to run on a stable platform that was scalable and reliable enough to grow at the incredible rate they experience – probably why Agriya’s software, which is built on the proven Cake PHP framework, was the only ready made piece of software up to the job!
Fast forward several months and the hard work of the owners had paid off and they had built a site with a huge amount of value, so valuable in fact that they were able to sell it recently on Flippa for an incredible $60,000! By our reckoning, we worked it out to be a 3,000% return on investment in just a few months – not a bad return at all!
But it’s not just Zeerk.com who have seen some great success, another site which uses Agriya’s powerful software, GigBucks.com was also sold on Flippa for over $5,500.
Naturally this kind of success doesn’t come easy and the amount of time and effort both owners had to put in to build up and promote the site is all a factor in the final selling value but it goes to show how much money you can generate in such a short space of time.
Agriya congratulates the owners of both sites and hopes that our other clients can enjoy similar levels of success. We’d love to hear about your success stories from using Agriya’s software, please get in touch with us if you want us to showcase your site.
Agriya Releases Fiverr Clone Ultra
The phenomenal success of Fiverr and it’s many clones has caught many industry experts by surprise. When Agriya released the first ever Fiverr clone back in the early part of 2010 a lot of people didn’t even know what the site was about. 10 months on and there are new clones launching every day targeting different niches and different countries.
Agriya’s Fiverr clone has been the most successful turnkey software on the market with 8 of the top 10 micro job sites now using Agriya’s software. Recent successes include Cinkue who won the best startup award in Italy, GigBucks who sold their site for $5,500 and Zeerk who sold their site for over $60,000 – and it was less than 6 months old!
Introducing: Fiverr Clone Ultra
Over the past few months our developers have been tinkering away with the code and experimenting with different payment setups and we are pleased to announce that we have developed a brand new and seamless way for you and your members to get paid – infact, the entire payment system can run on autopilot.
Update: Since announcing the launch of FP Platform Ultra, Fiverr introduced their own version of quick payments which they call DamnQuickPay. In this instance Agriya was the first to the market with the option to pay sellers immediately without any admin interaction. After closely studying Fiverr’s quick pay option we realized that actually FP Platform Ultra has a closer integration with PayPal as it doesn’t rely on the wallet system, the user gets paid automatically when the buyer gives a good review.
This is just one of the many ways in which Agriya is working to bring innovations to the industry and web development in general.
The old payment system had a process shown in the flow diagram below:
The Current Payment Process
Essentially the buyer would pay the site owner (that’s you if you own the site) and then you can pay the person when they request the payment – it has the mass pay option built in which means you just need to click a few buttons, but what if you can’t get to the computer for a couple of days, there’s nothing like angry members that are complaining that they haven’t got their money yet!
The new system uses PayPal Adaptive Payments and while the flow diagram looks more complicated, basically it means that your members can be paid instantly without any input by you.
Fiverr Clone Ultra With PayPal Adaptive Payments
Here’s how it works…
- The buyer orders a gig and pays the money to the seller
- The seller can accept or decline the order
- If the order is accepted, the money is transferred to a pending account
- If the order is declined the money is transferred back to the buyer
- If the seller neither accepts or declines the order the money will be returned after a pre-determined time period
- The buyer can also cancel the payment before the seller takes any action
- The seller works to deliver the service
- If the service runs over the allotted duration it enters Overtime, if the seller still doesn’t deliver the payment is cancelled and the money returned to the seller
- When the seller marks the service as Delivered the buyer can review the service and the payment is completed. Alternatively the script can be set to auto-review
- After Review or Auto-Review the money is cleared in the sellers account
There are also a number of other options associated with this new payment system such as a built escrow service, setting who pays the PayPal fee, creating PayPal accounts without leaving the site, the site admin can earn referral commission on new accounts they sign up, users can connect their PayPal accounts and many more cool features.
The new Fiverr Clone Ultra is a branch of the current Fiverr Clone script so you can choose to use the traditional payment system or the new Ultra payment system. Just let us know when you contact us what version you want to use. If you would like to switch your current site to use the new payment option please contact us and we’ll quote a price to do the conversion.
If you want to setup your own turnkey Micro Jobs website that works exactly like Fiverr (but with a few additional exclusive features) then visit our Fiverr script page which will give you more details about our software. You can also use the Live Chat button at the top of this page to speak to a customer rep, you can call us on +1 773 358 2979 (US) or +44 20 3287 5567 (UK) or you can shoot us an email by filling out the form on our Fiverr clone page.
Group Buying Site Launches With 1000 Buyers
The number of new group buying websites running Agriya’s software is growing at a frantic pace, but there was one client who launched their site that really caught our eye. The website is called My Super Deal Today and currently focus on the city of Birmingham, Alabama, USA.
My Super Deal Launched With 1000 Customers On The First Day
The reason they caught our eye is because we believe that out of all the groupon clones, this site has had the biggest opening offer to date. My Super Deal Today started out with an offer from a local restaurant for a chicken dinner for 4 people for just just $10 and over 1,400 people purchased the deal, netting the site an incredible $14,000 in a day.
To put this another way, they covered the cost of the website development in their first few hours.
This isn’t a one off either because other deals have pulled in hundreds of customers, making even more money for the business.
Why have My Super Deal Today been so successful? Simply because they have focused on one location and channeled all their energies in to making the site a success in that one place. That’s a key point you need to think about if you want to create your own daily group buying deal site – the money is in the niches. Focus on one location first and grow your site organically from there.
And if you are wondering how Agriya’s software handled all the buyers, the word from the customer is that it worked flawlessly with no problems whatsoever. We currently have a short queue of group buying projects to work through but if you want to get your site up and running please have a look at what we can offer on our groupon clone script page.
Agriya Diwali Holidays 2010
This is a short blog announcement to let you know that the Agriya offices will be shut from the 4th – 8th November 2010. This is due to the Diwali holiday season that is celebrated in India when everyone returns to be with their family (just like Christmas in America and Europe).
Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that any enquiries or support requests will be answered during this time and technical support will not be available until the 9th November. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you, we will answer all questions and enquiries on the 9th.
If it is critical that you have access to support during this time, Agriya does offer a premium support package for a monthly fee which guarantees access to a developer 7 days a week including holidays.
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