Who are we:
I’m Joel Santo, the CEO of Reciprocating Resolutions Inc. If you haven't already, I encourage you to find out more about what AdFor can do for you by going to our Consumer / Shopper or Business / Merchant pages.
After leaving the Army with a broken neck and back, I was on the fixed income of a disabled veteran. It wasn’t easy, and it took me years to rehabilitate. Things I used to take for granted, like driving across town to get a part for my car only to discover I could have gotten it cheaper a few blocks away, became a much bigger deal. It seemed silly. I could go online and find anything, but there was no certainty if the information was up to date, if I could get a better price elsewhere, or even information about who actually created what I was looking at, so I could confirm the fine print or ask them additional questions about it.
Times were tough. The recession made things even more difficult. In fact, a few of my cousins and I regularly called each other when we found good deals in stores. Knowing Who was selling What- Where & When, empowered US to do much more with the little we had. We were empowered to leverage a group buying power for even deeper discounts and the merchants were happy to clear off their shelves!
The information we shared was rarely ever from an online source. We called each other from the markets we found the items in. Viral, Word of Mouth advertising for the merchant. I am a business owner & a shopper. WHY, neither Merchants and Consumers having complimentary needs weren't able to communicate directly online, became the big question.
As a business owner trying to be found by consumers, I wondered Why I had to say the same thing on each of the social networks? Why did I have to repeat the same information as a video to submit to video sites? Why did I have to repeat the same information with a whole bunch of fluff around it and post as a story on blog & RSS feed sites? Why do I have to create graphics with the same information and post to the multitude of image sites? Why do I have to chase after consumers in so many places when surely they are looking for services & products I can provide? I could pay for TARGET consumers, but essentially it would mean doing what I was already doing. I couldn't afford impractical. In fact, it was the effort and time that cost me the most.
As a consumer looking for the products that could attenuate my time, I came across a whole mess of nonsensical results. From sketchy automation 'tools' to nefarious 'blackhat' practices that required time and skill levels that I could neither afford, nor wanted to be party to. And, by the way, none of them were local to me, so I couldn't go in for a face to face consult. I couldn't even reach people on the phone. None of it made sense. Why is it all so complicated?
So there I was. An email box full of duplicitous spamvertising all promising different rays of hope to resolve my dilemma. My social network feeds & walls covered in 'Sponsored' announcements. My desktop cluttered with Whitepaper research and graphs, telemarketers soliciting me nightly... and the list goes on...
As a small business owner, I knew that Merchant advertisers just want to get the word out to as many people as possible. This technique worked to our benefit in broadcasting through radio and television by selecting audiences by channel or time of day, but in the digital world- where we move in nanoseconds, there must be truly simple, omni-featured way to find and distribute a relevant Ad For Us.
That’s when I came up with AdFor.
It’s a platform aimed at streamlining all of these important buying factors into an easy and fast process. For consumers, it eliminates the need for coupons, loyalty cards, affiliate marketing buy-ins, additional signups, and more. For businesses, it creates a space where all of their information can live, evolve, and engage with their customers in real-time with complete and utter control, where the technology envelops their needs and not the money hungry publishers. A one stop shop for all US to save money and more importantly- Time, enabling the best of Everything for Everyone, Everywhere. Win - Win - Win!
Where we are:
I have over 3 years and $20k+ of my own dollars into AdFor. To protect AdFor from cloners and half measures I decided to patent AdFor. Initial attempts to explain what exactly AdFor is / does to my intellectual property attorneys were apparently impossible to glean, by anyone other than me. I decided to contract developers to built out a template. They too had difficultly with the concept or my explanation thereof. For nearly a year, I poured valuable resources into research and development, ironically- the limitations that AdFor rectifies were the same ones that I had to manually push through to find the tacit understanding required to iterate our development.
Some time later, and by happy coincidence, my cousin Mike Santo was just finishing a programming degree and I was able to contract him for the 'family price'. I sold nearly everything I owned in a 10 day yard sale and used the garnered $6800 to keep us afloat and pushing out code. And a little extra for a lot of Red Bulls, Smokes and celebratory beers. It wasn't easy. He fought me quite a bit, saying what I wanted wasn't possible, but I was more forceful with him than I would be other developers. Side by Side, we worked one module at a time with me telling him what functions I needed where, until the core took shape. From there, Mike was ecstatic to put all he learned to good use, optimizing style sheets and refining database access arrays to tie the system together. I can still remember Mike saying. 'OH, that's what you were saying, No problem' and continued to punch the keys for hours working on 10 lines of code down to one- making the portal faster & more capable. 2 months later, I had my demo module and could resume patenting protections.
I showed a couple of friends and family members (along with my patent attorneys) the Demo and WHAT, exactly, I had been raving about for so long. I kid you not when I say that demonstrations and actual learning how to explore on AdFor.US took less than 30 seconds and EVERY ONE OF THE TESTERS said the same thing to me. "Great, Fantastic, Awesome, etc., etc.," but then they continued on and compared AdFor.US features to not just 1, but MANY other websites... "just like 'such & such' website and this feature is just like another 'such & such' website."
I spent another 5-10 minutes explaining WHY the other websites mentioned EVEN IF PUT TOGETHER AS ONE WEBSITE, would & could never equal the power of AdFor.US. People STILL weren't able to grasp, nor was I adequately able to convey- the true marvels of the AdFor.US Live Exchange.
As simple as AdFor.US is, there is no singular frame of reference that will relay its' evolutionary compendium of feature-sets and benefits.
On that note... I am left to work from within the static, unchanging and relentlessly exhausting, exorbitantly expensive (both time & money wise), dubiously obfuscated maze of greed and network control. Bound to the Content Manufacturing Cog, until I have either the fiduciary, the completed correlative content collusion of or - and I hope not but, the death of me.
One way or the Other, I am nearly there 😉
