Facebook bans Rippln “blitz” recruitment links
Echoing the Facebook ban of Empower Network links when users of the social network got fed up of the spam and started complaining, now it appears Rippln are being subjected to the same fate.
Earlier this week Rippln affiliates began to complain that their “Rippln Blitz” links were being blocked by Facebook.
Other than jealousy anyone have an idea why FB blocked my rippln blitz link from my own rippln fan page??
(in response to the above) FB blocked my rippln blitz link also
For those of you wondering what Rippln Blitz is, a few weeks back Rippln decided to do away with the drip-feed invite system and just effectively give everyone unlimited invites, provided via a “blitz link”.
If you want to get technical about it, rather than each invite being allocated a time sensitive activation code within the system, blitz links allow affiliates to mass-recruit affiliates with a single code.
As with any recruitment-drive, this resulted in copious amounts of Rippln recruitment spam hitting the internet (again). Rippln cites this reason themselves as the cause of the Facebook ban, officially responding to affiliate complaints with the message below:
With the vast number of people posting links, Facebook users have marked the link as “spam” and once this happens a number of times, it is automatically blocked. We have submitted requests to Facebook and are awaiting replies.
Facebook didn’t give Empower Network a pass and I don’t think they’re going to be too sympathetic towards Rippln’s affiliates spamming their network either.
More on that story as it develops.
In other Rippln news the reality that Rippln as a business opportunity will require significant ongoing financial contribution from affiliates appears to have begun hitting home.
Back when we reviewed Rippln’s compensation plan v2.0, it was revealed that participation as a commission qualified affiliate was going to cost – $69.95 a year and $25 a month.
In an email sent out recently to affiliates, Rippln has now made changes to affiliate membership costs, advising
Starting this past Monday, there is no longer an annual Rippln tracking system $70 fee.
It is simply a one time activation of $95 for your Rippln Tracking System, then $30 per month for the Rippln Rewards System.
Most likely due to a lack of interest from the field, in essence Rippln have hiked the yearly fee to $95, made it a once-off and upped the monthly fee five dollars too.
Rippln affiliate’s immediate reactions?
So we have to pay now? pfff thank you for wasting my time.
So it’s free to have products pushed on us, just like Facebook?? How novel!? ..smh.
Aside from it being an opportunity to make money, how is it any different from any other social media network??
And if you can’t make money without SPENDING money.. and getting a bunch of other people to spend money too, so that “they can make money too” before you’ve even made any money, how is that not a typical MLM scam?
And then there were those affiliates who, after paying their affiliate membership fees last month, were wondering what the new changes meant for them:
I’d like to know what happens to those that have already paid the $69 and the $25 or $94 plus tax last month to power up? The rules keep changing.
Now one time activation fee $95 and the monthly rewards fee went up by $5 to $30 monthly. But we still don’t have anything to show our people except lots of dates and promises. Not a happy camper…
At the end of the day folks it’s simple. Even with an app generating $1 million a day, spread out over 1 million affiliates that’s still only $1 per affiliate a day in commissions. And that’s not even accurate because it discounts the company’s cut and operating costs.
Face it, building an MLM business model around apps in a marketplace that largely doesn’t have to pay commissions to affiliates, is going to require some ongoing contribution from affiliates.
Open up your wallets folks, that’s where the real Rippln blitz is going to happen.
Update 12th August 2013 – This wasn’t worth a separate article but I thought was at least worth noting. For reasons not immediately clear McAfee are currently classifying the Rippln website “startmyripple.com” as a “malicious” site.
McAfee state they “have tested” the site and warn that it “contains security risks”.
Why Is a Site Rated Red?
Sites are rated red when, in our judgment, the site poses especially hazardous risks to a user’s computer security, there are an exceptional number of annoying behaviors, or there is exceptional information that we believe our users would want to be aware of before or during a visit to that site.
Behaviors that typically lead to red site ratings are hosting drive-by exploit code, impersonating a legitimate business (phishing), making unrequested or unexpected system changes, or hosting malware for download at the time of our visit.
Sites can also be rated red when we receive unexpected e-mail to the unique e-mail address we submitted to that site, and the e-mails we receive exhibit characteristics consistent with spam e-mail, such as unusual volume or a high “spamminess” score as determined by an automated scanning program.
Additionally, we may rate a site red for certain types of linking behavior with other red sites, or when we find a site that engages in activities we believe could be misleading.
Site ratings are calculated automatically based on McAfee’s opinion of the risks associated with the results of the tests performed on a site. The rating is not intended to measure the site owner’s intent or knowledge.
If I had to take a punt I’d guess that along with Facebook, McAfee have also decided they’re not happy with all the Rippln spam currently flying around the internet.
Oh, my, it’s Wazzub all over again. They tried to cast about a conspiracy about Facebook not wanting any “competition”. Didn’t do them any good. 😛
Facebook is first of all a social community. Recruiting people into income opportunities can be misunderstood to be “social activity” by SOME people, but most others will consider it to be “unwanted spam”.
Why!?!? How can u be sure?
Why to WHAT? Or else we’ll have to give answers to each and every statement. 🙂
Here’s my statements:
* “Facebook is first of all a social community”. You’re right, we can’t be absolutely sure it really is that.
* “Recruiting people into income opportunities can be misunderstood to be social activity by SOME people”. You’re right, we can’t be absolutely sure.
* “Most others will consider it to be unwanted spam”. You’re right, we can’t be absolutely sure.
Here’s K. Chang’s statements:
* “It’s Wazzub all over again”.
* “They tried to cast about a conspiracy about Facebook not wanting any competition”.
* “Didn’t do them any good”.
The “why” is obvious, Rippln affiliates were saturating Facebook with recruitment spam.
As for being sure, when the company itself has to respond to affiliate reports of Facebook banning their recruitment links I treat it as pretty much confirmed.
I don’t think it’s so much rippln being banned, but if any link gets spammed a stupid number of times, facebook bans it as spam.
Hell, 4chan could get google banned on facebook if they go on a spam crusade. I don’t see this is as noteworthy. Rippln affiliates will just mask the link and send it now, just like Empower Users.
Thanks for all your input 🙂
Sorry I wasn’t specific about the “why”. . . but you all answered my questions. This one will work. I agree with Jeff about the Facebook ban… That is not conclusive to being a scam simply because it’s been banned from facebook.
I have hope that I have made a good decision and with all of the one on one support from them in calls, conferences and live daily videos; I know that they want this to work as much as I do.
Nothing is guaranteed, everyone must start somewhere; and well… there is only one way to truly know. . . wait. I don’t play the lottery, but I know that because I don’t, I won’t win. thanks ya’ll.
If you watch one of the webinars where they talk about “Blitz 2”, you can clearly see where the problem is.
The leaders themselves have repeatedly and eagerly encouraged people to spam everyone they know with recruitment links.
I checked the 55 minute “Harlem Shake” video (most of it is a webinar) to get some insight into the problem, e.g. whether it derived from the leaders themselves or from people out in the field. It clearly derives from the leaders.
If you ask ONE single person to do something like that, it makes some sense. People receiving the recruitment links will probably accept one single invitation. It will be quite different if they receive tens of links or hundreds of them.
The “Blitz 2” campaign was simply stupid and poorly organized. It will become even more stupid if they find methods to mask the links and send them anyway.
“Asking ONE single person to do it makes some sense. Asking MANY to do the same is plain and simple stupid.”
That’s the one thing that’s guaranteed here. The combined efforts from all the others will make your own efforts look stupid. It will eventually make it difficult for you if you later want to market something else, something people can be interested in.
It was banned as SPAM, not as scam. Spam = “unwanted mass marketing”.
Rippln’s initial business idea in April was a typical pyramid scheme, e.g. the planned $300 Domestic and $900 Global memberships promised commissions DIRECTLY for recruitment.
The current business idea is also a typical pyramid scheme, but less obvious than the first one. It has illegal parts, e.g. participants will have to pay “consideration” to participate in the income opportunity.
Someone sent me a link to it on facebook and I replied with a link to behindmlm and with the comment that any business that shows up on behindmlm is a red flag to me.
If they are on the up and up they never end up on behindmlm being crossexamined. Every single review on here are all about suspect mlm’s and to be taken as a warning to tread carefully if at all.
Not every one. There are some “legitimate” businesses discussed here (albeit, with potentially unprofitable stuff).
I think Solavei is still around? (MVNO reseller of T-Mobile)
So the users themselves will get banned for trying to get around the ban. Bravo.
Spam is spam, no matter how you disguise it. And we’re not even TALKING about how much of a scam is Rippln.
The whole thing is a joke to start with. Plays the “ssssshhhhhh, it’s a secret way to make money, tell all your friends, but secretly…” card, don’t tell people how much it costs until months later, backpedaled a couple different times, tries to hide a co-founder (whether it’s because of his run-in with the SEC is debatable), sends out exec teams to do PR spin with nationally exposed media like TechCrunch and Chris Voss and got nailed for it (TechCrunch called it “how not to market a startup” or something like that) and is still trying to repair their reputation, but with the MLM crowd, not typical users (by giving interviews to Troy Dooly and leaking him “the real story behind Terry LaCore”)
And now this aborted attempt to link spam recruiting links, and blame the affiliates of being overzealous?
If a traditional company commits this sort of blunder the advertising agency would be fired and CMO would be chastised/fired. But because the entire company is nothing but “internet marketers/entrepreneurs”, this is somehow considered “just a mistake”.
This thing has NO business vision other than marketing talk. It has no plan other than charge members money.
It claims to monetize apps and online offers but that’s impossible to evaluate until they put it into action, and it’s 4 months and still no app.
This whole thing is nothing other than empty promises (oh, and recruit a lot of people!).
@Wendy
Just so we’re clear, I’m not asserting Rippln is a scam based on a Facebook ban.
The business model and compensation plan are the sole relevant factors in that regard.
@K Chang
No no, I don’t believe they’ll get banned, but as stated, Empower has been around for years and I’m not sure how long ago their ban from Facebook was.
Yes, Spam is spam is spam is spam (unless it’s the canned spam), but you can spam a certain link of a legitimate company numerous times for it to be flagged as spam is all I’m saying. I’m not excusing the rippln affiliates for doing that.
As far as screaming scam at Rippln, I won’t be so trigger happy there, HOWEVER, I do agree with you Chang that no app, and little to no information on compensation and tangible products is…well puzzling to say that least.
And @Oz, Crystal clear on that :).
My question to everyone is, IF, and only IF this dons the official scam stamp, would this be one of the biggest scam seen? I know not all 1 million + will be paying, but wow, scam or not, gotta tip your cap to the company grabbing that much on marketing lol.
Not financially. Based on what is known about participation costs and typical commissions generated via the sale of apps, Rippln will never crack the hundreds of millions dollars the big boy scams pull off.
I’m calling it a pyramid scheme. Its first planned business model CLEARLY was a pyramid scheme. Its new business model meets all 4 criterias.
Pyramid scheme (simplified):
1. A chain recruitment system …
2. where participants “gives consideration” …
3. for prospected financial gains …
4. that derives primarily from other participants …
5. rather than from sale/consumption of goods/services.
Point #5 is simply a “fair trade” exception. The rules doesn’t apply if a company primarily is set up to distribute goods or services to end users at a fair price. “End users” will typically mean SOME external customers, e.g. absolute minimum 20% according to Gerald Nehra.
$95 / $30 monthly fee is a “consideration” for the right to participate in the income opportunity. Recruitment is another type of “consideration”.
The prospected financial gains have been described to derive from what people in your downline are BUYING, rather than to what they are selling to both types of customers. The fans can of course act as retail customers, but the plans for that are rather vague.
My guess is that less than 5% will sign up and pay, the others will drop out or wait.
I’ll guess that’s the main reason for why they have delayed a launch for more than 60 days, and is carefully testing one and one ripple.
Not even close. Wazzub had more people than that. Then they decided to change their name, and dumped about 95-99% of people because they don’t have enough “$factors” (i.e. recruited enough people).
People are pissed off, and that’s pretty much the end of it, though it is still there, still claiming something big will happen…
Should have studied how Wazzub strangled itself when it dumped most of its “millions” of Wazzub-ies for not having recruited enough people (have enough $factors).
Out of six million members claimed, they only took 30000 as qualified for profit sharing. And there was no profit to share last I heard.
Found a funny picture, they claim 1.25 mil people in the ripple HOWEVER:
Less than 85k Facebook likes
Less than 2k Twitter Followers (Seriously?!)
Less than 12k YouTube Subs
Less than 600 Instagram
At first these seem like trivial social network numbers…until you see the 1.25 mil rippln’ers claim, these become HUGE question marks.
Pretty simple plan here.
1. Build a bunch of momentum leveraging usual MLM / ponzi lemmings
2. Promise the world but offer no specifics until you reach critical mass (pure recruitment, no $ spent)
3. Spring on the masses the “consideration” fees and host webinars with lots of income projections
4. Now management has a choice: find a way to exit before you draw attention of regulators, or ride the wave and higher “compliance attorneys” and hope regulators don’t shut you down and file criminal charges…
Even Zeek still hasn’t seen criminal charges and ASD took forever to land people in jail and there are still many execs and big time promoters still free.
You can buy most of those for a cheap price. And Rippln is a company typically expected to use methods like that.
Or at least the founders are people who are well versed in such “marketing tactics”.
They dumped 99.5 percent of their membership base exactly to come to that 30,000 figure. 597,000,0 people were left out of making money with the company. 30,000 is still too many people to attempt to profit share with.
If we stepped into Magical Christmas Land and Wazzub somehow did 300 million a year, it’s only $10,000 to each affiliate. And that’s if they planned to share 100 percent of the profits and they did it fairly.
But really, what’s the point in splitting the money up when they could just not pay you and keep it all? If they already screwed nearly 6 million people, what’s 30,000 more?
Rippln is less financially risky than Zeek. It’s “deceptive” rather than “fraudulent” in its core. I won’t consider Rippln to be a “serious threat” to people’s financial situation. 🙂
* Rippln is using some types of “blue sky thinking” to deceive people where Zeek used professional methods to defraud people.
* Rippln is primarily using mass marketing (spam) where Zeek used many different channels.
* Rippln is clearly aimed towards people with a lack of professional skills (“vulnerable groups”), while Zeek was aimed towards people in general (including professionals).
NOT VERY IMPRESSED
It’s clearly reflected in the reviews and comments here. We haven’t been very impressed by Rippln, it has largely been compared to the Wazzub failure in 2012 and to similar failed projects.
You won’t find many positive comments from any of the “regular contributors” here. But you won’t find many fraud warnings either.
For Zeek, you will find SOME positive comments, and probably hundreds of relatively neutral comments where people simply are discussing something factual. Here’s an example for “relatively positive”:
COMPLETE LACK OF INTEREST
Rippln is also reflected in the complete lack of real INTEREST here. It pops up on the radar from time to time because of some inputs from readers, but there’s no ongoing interest here.
E.G. the only reason I had to watch a 55 minute webinar was to find the cause of the Facebook problem. And I found exactly what I expected to find, so I didn’t have the need to watch it in the first place.
That complete lack of interest is also reflected in other places. I tried to post a few comments on MlmHeldesk.com, but ended up having a “conversation” with Troy Dooly himself rather than getting some inputs from other readers. 🙂
CONCLUSION?
If I should warn people about something here, it will probably be about “social damage” rather than the financial one. “Social damage” is about how people see themselves, and how other people are seeing them.
Rippln has much more potential to cause “social damage” than Zeek had, but a different TYPE of it. And people are much more vulnerable to “social damage” than to financial.
I don’t think it was exactly like that. Wazzub used “fake it till you make it” marketing methods, e.g. having a fake counter adding fake members frequently to show the World something that looked like “stable growth”, “highly popular program” and other similar ideas.
It converted into 30,000 or 31,000 real members after 4-5 months of marketing. I believe it’s reflecting max 200,000 “potential members”, i.e. people who had signed up with e-mail address relatively early. Maybe 300,000 “potential members”, but definitively NOT 6 million.
Most programs will fake to be more popular than they really are in marketing. It’s an “accepted idea” in internet marketing, “pretend to be what you WANT to be”.
Rippln will probably boil down to something similar to Wazzub = around 20-30,000 members (if they’re lucky). But they will first need to solve an expected member flee when people realise they will need to PAY. The income opportunity has suddenly turned into a “support the company” solution, and that should be a big turnoff for most people.
And that illustrates how some “opportunities” are nothing less than bait and switch, no matter how much “potential” they talk about.
One recent MLM, heavily discussed here, tried to go legit to requiring its affiliates to actually start SELLING **** instead of just signing up people. Affiliates started to complain loudly. It’s rather amusing to see its leaders trying to stay legit when its own affiliates want to go back to Ponzi “profit-sharing” because they can’t make money selling ****. Go lookup JubiRev. 🙂
If you are signing up recruiters, you’re not signing up sellers or buyers. They are very distinct populations with little overlap. And once the company went down the wrong path, it becomes very difficult (impossible?) to turn around.
Most of Rippln’s marketing ideas can be found among “cheap marketing tricks” on general marketing pages, but I used Wikipedia to identify some of them.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persuasion#Weapons_of_influence
“Limited offer, limited time” is typical when you want to encourage people to make a decision without involving their own brain.
“Highly popular” will have some effect on some people, the ones that typically will follow the masses. They will also be looking for other types of “social proofs”, e.g. looking for WHO they join rather than WHAT they join.
“The next big thing on the internet” is an idea that has been repeated over and over again. There will ALWAYS be someone willing to believe in the idea, and they simply can’t accept the risk of missing an opportunity to get rich.
Some other tricks:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot-in-the-door_technique
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel%27s_nose
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
POTENTIAL SOCIAL DAMAGE
People may actually be able to identify clearly what the tricks are about and why they work perfectly on some people.
E.G. if you fall for cheap marketing tricks over and over again, other people will probably start to realise the problem long before you have detected it yourself. You will probably be “down graded” in people’s contact lists from “relatively rational” to “blue sky”. 🙂
Article updated with note referencing McAfee Site Advisor classifying the Rippln website “startmyripple.com” as malicious in nature.
McAfee warn ‘This link might be dangerous. We tested it and found security risks. Beware.‘
@Oz I could only laugh at the McAfee warning about startmyripple.com. That’s just too dang funny.
I need to get my Ph.D in Psychology, Communications or whatever Social Interaction Degree and my dissertation will be “Why Common Sense Is Now A Super Power”
It was designed to attract former ZeekRewards members, having a system EXACTLY like Zeek for how to make money in it.
The people joining income opportunities are generally not “professionals”. They are mostly “Want to get rich” people, or “Want to earn an income from doing almost nothing” types of people.
They will simply look at what the “system” can offer them in rewards for different types of activities, a behavior similar to consumers buying products. For some of them the behavior is similar to how a drug addict is operating (it becomes the most primary part of their lives).
Rippln will probably fail because of “social damage”, e.g. the damage it will cause to people’s professional or personal reputation, and to the conflicts that will generate between different types of interests.
My prediction:
Rippln will eventually be abandoned as a stand alone project 2 or 3 months after it has launched = when people have TESTED the program as a bizop and it has failed. “Abandoned” means the idea will need to be completely redesigned (rather than terminated). That prediction is based on the complete lack of business idea in the project.
It was intended to be a success, with organizers from the “success coaching industry” to front it and defend it, using the tools and methods they use themselves and teach others to use. But the effects haven’t been impressive at all.
It has completely failed to meet the professional parts of the market, e.g. people looking into the technical sides of the business idea.
INVESTING PROFESSIONAL REPUTATION
When you “invest” your personal prestige and professional reputation into something, it should preferrably be in something that can ADD more value to it.
Experienced people will normally have strategies for how to AVOID investing too much personal reputation into something, e.g. they won’t bring in themselves or their own professional role as a part of a discussion.
“DIDN’T IMPRESS ANYONE”
Here we can see that ideas sold by “marketing gurus” as “valuable coaching products” clearly have some flaws. They are incomplete ideas that also will result in negative side effects.
“Leadership coaching” didn’t impress anyone other than loyal followers. Jonathan Budd immediately received the response “Why do you post a motivational speech here?” when he tried that method.
Rippln’s defense strategy “Can You Separate Facts From Fiction?” impressed Troy Dooly, but it didn’t impress me. Where Troy Dooly spent 28 minutes focusing on details like “strong management team”, I simply looked at the whole script and identified it as an attempt to draw attention away from the real problem.
Rippln’s management have simply lowered their own “coaching values”. You do NOT see any “expert solutions” here, you will mostly see “methods and theoretical recipies” that clearly have some flaws.
They are simply not ATTRACTED by the same ideas.
If you fill up a community with income opportunity seekers, the community itself will become less attractive to other people. New people looking at the community will simply see a bunch of “followers” sharing relatively similar ideas.
That’s why Wazzub failed, and Rippln is repeating exactly the same idea (the general idea rather than the details).
Attraction will involve people’s own ideas and expectations, and how the different ideas will be interpreted by the brain’s “reward center”. That description is factual but simplified, the brain actually works in that way most of the time. The other way it typically works is by repeating similar patterns over and over again.
Rippln’s main sales argument = “earn money from the people you have introduced into the program – FOR LIFE”, a forever growing income when the personal ripple starts to grow and people simply are buying what they normally would have bought anyway.
That will generally attract people who want to achieve something. They know WHAT they want to achieve (income), and HOW they want to achieve it (passively in the long term, “being rewarded over and over again for work they already have done one time”).
They didn’t need much information about the details, the MAIN idea was enough to attract them. They also responded positively to “NDA”, “secrecy”, “Inner Circle” and similar ideas, and to several cheap marketing tricks.
Key factors in presentations have been about “new idea, next big thing”, so they’re clearly expecting “the answers to their dreams” to be something that will pop up somewhere outside themselves, e.g. as some type of opportunity.
Another key factor have been about “WHO” rather than “WHAT”, i.e. they’re joining LEADERS just as much as they’re joining PROGRAMS (or actually the images they have about those leaders and how “successful” they are).
They are easily motivated by “do something” instructions, e.g. similar to the “spam your contact list” idea. They will FOLLOW ideas like that rather than analysing the ideas first. They will CONTINUE to follow the same idea even when it has negative side effects.
They will try to bypass obstructions rather than try to check if it is there for some rational reasons, like when Facebook banned the “Blitz 2” campaign. Motivation is higher than rational skills and social skills.
For most people, some of those attraction factors I listed will look rather weird and unattractive, e.g. the idea of blindly follow instructions from leaders and spam their own social network. Most rational people will separate between different types of networks (because of different rules in social and professional relations).
Rippln’s marketing have primarily attracted people who are “impulse driven” = they will respond DIRECTLY to ideas they find “attractive” (e.g. the idea REFLECTS what they want to achieve, and also their own ideas about how to achieve it).
Most people will simply not react in the same way to the primary types of motivation factors used in Rippln. “Spam your entire social network” is quite a disgusting idea for most people. The idea “Invite your MOTHER. What would you feel if she joins Rippln in another ripple than your own?” is also rather disgusting.
THE PROBLEM = if you use psychological tricks in marketing, it will have the opposite effect on a huge number of people. They will simply not respond to the “rewards” in the same way.
Rippln used a “foot in the door technique” combined with some type of “reward system”, e.g. “watch a video and get SOME information, DO SOMETHING and get rewarded with MORE information, etc.”, ideas similar to what you use to train a dog (only different types of rewards).
The “do something” is typically about following some instructions or making some small commitments, and get rewarded each time everything has been done correctly.
It will work on the people who already have been trained in that way, but it will fail miserably on others. Rippln’s marketing strategy failed miserably on nearly ALL people who used the left part of the brain and tried to analyse it logically.
They will feel FRUSTRATED rather than “rewarded” by methods like that. They will simply not accept being trained like a dog. The methods won’t work on all dogs, either.
In dog training, there will need to be an immediate connection between ACTION and REWARD, i.e. the dog is following an instruction and will be immediately be rewarded for it. Without a clear connection, the dog will probably feel confused.
None of the programs I have analysed using similar dog training methods have been very successful. The most typical result is that they will draw a lot of negative attention (quite correctly), and make the participants feel unhappy when they try to market it to the real World (outside a community).
I’m probably the first one to come up with a rational explanation (above). Rippln was simply using a motivation system similar to methods used for dog training in its marketing.
People have simply REFLECTED the methods used, that ideas like that simply are disgusting even if SOME people will respond positively to them.
One of the other programs I have analysed using similar “dog training ideas” was CarbonCopyPRO / Wealth Masters International, in 2009/2010.
The method was indirectly the CAUSE of the collapse for those two businesses. It worked as a solution for a short period of time, before it eventually started to generate more problems than results. Even if both of them still exists, I will consider them to be “collapsed” and “failed”.
“Dog training systems” will first of all have effect on people who have some “unfulfilled needs” directly related to themselves (e.g. want a better job, want to become something, and similar needs). Its primary target is typically people “addicted” to emotional rewards.
If you don’t have needs like that, all the different obstacles and rewards will simply feel annoying. The methods will work better in closed communities people can join than in mass marketing.
CCPro / WMI worked when it was marketed in small scale in many different markets, but the idea immediately started to fail when markets reached a low level of saturation = when marketing efforts became too visible = when more than a few people eagerly wanted to practice the marketing methods they had learned.
It can be compared to Facebook banning Rippln’s “Blitz 2” campaign. The idea would probably have worked in small scale, but trying it in full scale only resulted in problems. Something similar happened to WMI / CCPro.
Something I CAN guarantee is that the general market will NOT respond very positively to “dog training methods”. A general market doesn’t have those types of needs.
Looks like they FINALLY got the “Communicator” app released, and the first game, Guessaroo is out.
Funny, I always thought Guessaroo is for kindergarteners… Found it among iTunes apps as a Dr. Seuss suite…
And as predicted, spammers are out creating dummy websites touting how you get paid real money playing it…
As I understand it, it’s a closed beta release in Australia and New Zealand for now.
I’m not really seeing how a guessing game app or a communicator app (you can communicate using cell phones now!? Holy crap!) is going to translate over into an MLM income opportunity.
My guess is it’s just going to be affiliates playing the game and using the communication app.
Wasn’t Guesaroo modelled after some other game app anyway? You don’t get rich copying other people’s app ideas.
They’re bringing out a bluetooth watch soon too, I saw the watch get panned on an independent tech review site as overpriced for what it does.
From the various spam sites, Guessaroo is a “upload a picture and a clue, let someone guess for prizes”. Who’ll provide those prizes like virtual coins, redeemable for real bucks? No idea.
But you know the RipHeads are already touting it as if it’s the Second Coming…
I guess the idea is if you can’t guess the picture you can buy clues or a reveal perhaps?
Dunno who’s going to pay to see what a picture your friend sent you is but uh.. yeah. I suppose there are stranger freemium apps out there.
“It’s better to fail in a limited market than in a major one.”
They’re probably addicted to “dog training methods” themselves, e.g. feeling rewarded when they’re following instructions in a book about how to test a product in an actual market before releasing it.
Different types of artists, e.g. musicians and stand up comedians, will typically try to test new material on a limited audience before releasing it to a general audience. It’s much better to fail in a very limited market than to fail in your own primary market.
Businesses have adopted similar ideas. The difference is that most of those businesses are established and have some reputation to lose. Rippln’s reputation is more questionable, i.e. delays will only add to the reputation it already has rather than protecting an existing reputation.
All the small baby steps seems to be about delaying a business idea that eventually will fail in its current form, or about attempts to find solutions for how to make it work.
It reflects that a very low number of people actually have signed up for the opportunity = they don’t have a complete solution people have been willing to buy into yet.
They cannot offer monetary rewards for playing a game without falling afoul of online gambling laws and market T&Cs.
Besides, it’s not their app. It is a recycled, failed app from the 90 day app challenge.
And they gonna “sea lawyer” their way around it by giving you virtual coins, which can be traded for real money provided you meet some qualifications… (such as paying them $$$? I dunno)
A communicator App on your cell phone? Cool, if I don’t wanna call someone, I can just Text them (shucks, there’s text messaging thats already built into the phone for that) or use a walkie-talkie like app (Voxer, HeyTell, etc. All free).
A GUESSING GAME APP FOR MLM?! AWESOME! Oh wait….no…just no.
*sigh* and is the idea of your site to make me your readers depressed by exposing the massive scheme/stupidity throughout MLM? Because mission accomplished lol.
I swear I feel that finding competent MLMs or competent people in MLM is harder than finding a diamond in the rough.
There was sorta challenge on SaltyDroid by one of the commenters that can I name a few ethical MLM that made its affiliates quite a bit of money.
I certainly can’t name any. 🙂
But Rippln doesn’t even admit to be MLM, do they?
@Jeff
It gets a bit depressing when people start to blame me for the state of the industry or the companies I review. I like somehow it’s my fault people come up with that they come up with.
Has been a bit of a weird year launch wise though. More misses than hits.
You’re just the messenger they want to shoot, Oz. Bearer of “bad news” and all that.
The 90 Day App Challenge is a sorta interesting failure of it’s own. Developers give up 55% of their app and kick out $20K to James Radina and Amish Shah and in exchange for that misters Radina and Shah do what exactly?
Well according to their videos they make sure you and your app are like 10 steps ahead of the game, not only will your app be a SuperStar™ app but it will also be part of a SuperStar™ app network. Then misters Radina and Shah will use their amazing skills at product launches, SEO and marketing to make sure your app is a major viral phenomenon.
Only problem with the 90 Day App Challenge is that they are about a year into their 90 days and so far Photo Guessaroo is their most successful app in so far as it’s the only one anyone has ever heard of.
Now Amish Shah does have an appreciable tech background but about the only claim to distinction James (Sol) Radina can make is that he views Jonathan Budd as a mentor in marketing and the two are business partners in a company called Protocetus.
This pretty much guarantees that through James Radina, Rippln will have a steady supply of not ready for prime time apps and through Jonathan Budd, the 90 Day App Challenge will have a market for near any product they launch.
I have no idea what James Radina offered Jason Rehard in exchange for leaving his name off of the Photo Guessaroo app that Mr. Rehard wrote but I hope Jason finds the deal equitable.
They haven’t even really bothered to hide the fact that Jason wrote it.
There is no rippln branding in the app description or anywhere in the app currently.
AFAIK rippln has no engineers they can use to make even the slightest changes to the codebase, so I’m not expecting to see rippln branding on it, ever, as Apple probably wouldn’t approve the app.
The app’s version is 1.2, as it was previously released.
In any case, they can’t do what they’re claiming. THe game won’t ever “pay” people to play except in virtual currency.
Virtual currency->real currency exchange opens up a whole host of legal and engineering problems that rippln can’t solve.
Seriously, if rippln wanted legitimacy, why wouldn’t they pay for a developer account and release it under their own name?
My guess is because Radina was going to re-release the app in .AU anyway because it failed here. There’s NO mention on Radina’s FB pages about rippln, but there is an announcement about the app.
I don’t think the plan is to take rippln much further. I think they’ll be packing it up soon, and Photo Guessaroo was just a stalling tactic while they got all the credit card charges they were going to get.
Showtime, boys!
Aug. 31st was supposed to be the big payout for rippln players.
There’s grumbling on Facebook and in the “secret” forums.
Is this the part where Budd gets up on stage and explains how it’s the players’ fault that the payouts are delayed for a month?
@Oz
Lol K.Chang is right, you are just the messenger. You simply report the news, not make it (unlike CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, etc but I won’t get political here).
Everyone needs to find someone to blame though, sad thing about it. The more you study/be involved in MLM, the more you feel like you’ve gotten a Ph.D in Human behavior and it’s downright depressing lol.
Would Advocare count as a legit MLM that has made people money? Idk, just spit balling a MLM out there. Curious about your take.
Keep up the good work Truth Chasers (I’m dubbing you that nickname lol)
We won’t normally focus on aspects like that. I will do it when “they” bring it up directly or indirectly. Rippln brought it up through their own marketing methods, you can probably find most of their methods in a “social influence” chapter in many books. I found most of it in Wikipedia.
I don’t consider people to be “incompetent” or anything like that. I’m trying to criticise the IDEAS rather than the people, e.g. the “Blitz 2” campaign on Facebook. And I first started to criticise it when people looked for methods to continue the campaign anyway (after it had been banned).
It will CLEARLY be “out of range” if we start to focus on “Human behavior” in more than a few posts. For me, it was simply about some information I found in Wikipedia, and I shared some of it.
People in general will probably be more interested in the Ancient Mystery of “Will Rippln be able to pay in October?”, or “Can we expect to see a Blitz 3 campaign soon?”.
Soo….Guessaroo is out, it’s almost October…why am I still only hearing crickets?