Ya, at some time a while back you could get in on the AL deal, and you could make good money with very little money invested. Now there are so many tree guys on their list that you have to spend good money to get to the top, or it's worthless.
Back when you only needed 5-10 good reviews, you were the top of the list with just a few others. Now you need 3-5 times that number of reviews to get to the top of their list. First you pay for a 1 year contract to be able to do certain things with your business account on AL, and this includes that your listing is placed in the highlighted group at the top. Then you still need to be better than the highlighted group, or you are paying for nothing. If you aren't a part of this highlighted group, forget about AL.
So pay for the year contract, and then you have to take a dive. You'll give out coupon deals for work. AL sends all of their home owner members etc an email coupon from your company. You go do the work for money that you normally would never do the work for, and you get your positive review. If you screw up with the custy, you're done. They will give you a bad review, and the whole point of all of this is a wash.
Once you have your stack of reviews, you have the momentum going. Now you should be at the top of the highlighted list, and you should be getting calls to do work for the full price. They can review you too, and AL is good at getting their members to review you if you want them to.
Some of those coupons turn into more money than you expect, but don't depend on it.