Silver Mint Club Review: $100-$250/yr recruitment
In the ‘About Us’ section of their website, Silver Mint Club state they
have been selling and collecting silver bullion, silver coins both raw and graded since 1998.
We have been selling online since 2003. In 2008 we became a wholesaler selling to many dealers across the country.
Despite these claims though, the company’s domain (“silvermintclub.com”) was only initially registered in May 2011. The domain registration was updated in July 2012, possibly indicating that is when the current owner acquired the domain from a previous owner.
There doesn’t appear to be any record of Silver Mint Club going back prior to 2011, let alone thirteen years.
Silver Mint Club also state that their company President is a “Jim Williams”, however no information exists on this person in connection with Silver Mint Club, other than on the company’s website itself.
Additionally the domain registration for the Silver Mint Club website is set to private, further throwing into question the legitimacy of the information provided by the company.
The Silver Mint Club website appears to be hosted on a private server, which also happens to house a series of dubious looking opportunities:
- Traffic-Cycler (“traffic-cycler.com”) – launched early 2009, members invest money under the guise of purchasing advertising and are paid out a ROI from newly invested money
- Bunch of Croc – some sort of forum site plastered with advertising for the admin’s various schemes
- History-Ads (“history-ads.com”) – launched early 2008, members invest money under the guise of purchasing advertising and earn a daily 0.5% ROI, paid out of newly invested money
- History-Coins (“history-coins.com”) – site ‘headquartered in Ohio‘Â that sells silver and claims to have done so ‘both on and offline since 2003‘, company’s domain was only registered in 2007
These sites all seem to be linked to the same admin (“Jim Williams” or “James Williams”) and are often advertised and promoted together:
History-Coins doesn’t seem to be an income opportunity but obviously provides the silver coin basis for Silver Mint Club. As for the stories about being around for thirteen years, the bio provided by Jim Williams above clearly indicates otherwise.
Read on for a full review of the Silver Mint Club MLM business opportunity.
The Silver Mint Club Product Line
Silver Mint Club has no retailable products or services. Silver coins are offered to members however the sale of these coins is not tied into the company’s compensation plan, nor are members able to sell coins to retail customers.
The Silver Mint Club Compensation Plan
Silver Mint Club describe their business opportunity as follows:
When someone uses your referral link to register at the SilverMintClub they become your affiliate. If your affiliate purchases a subscription, you will earn a commission.
Membership subscriptions are annual with two levels available:
- Collector Subscription – paid 25% of all recruited Collector Subscription membership fees and 10% of all Investor Subscription membership fees
- Investor Subscription – paid 25% of all recruited Collector Subscription membership fees and 40% of all Investor Subscription membership fees
Joining Silver Mint Club
As above, membership to Silver Mint Club is as follows:
- Collector Subscription Membership – $100 annually
- Investor Subscription Membership – $250 annually
Note that there is also a $29.95 annual admin fee added onto both membership subscriptions.
Conclusion
Taken from the Silver Mint Club website:
If you are a subscribed member to the SilverMintClub and you refer someone who purchases a subscription, you will receive a commission from their subscription purchase.
With the silver side of Silver Mint Club completely detached from the compensation plan and all commissions paid out on the recruitment of new members and payment of membership fees, Silver Mint Club quite obviously fits the definition of a pyramid scheme.
Members are unable to earn commissions unless they pay for membership themselves,
In order to earn affiliate commissions, you must purchase one of our subscriptions.
and the more they pay in membership fees, the more they earn in commissions when signing up new members.
With an annual membership fee option those that join have a year to recuperate their membership fees however, as with all pyramid schemes, sooner or later the recruitment will dry up.
When this happens naturally those who joined last will find themselves unable to cover their membership fees and the business opportunity will slowly die out.
Bottom line? You’re looking at a $100/$250 a year recruitment driven pyramid scheme that has nothing to do with silver coins.
Good try but not accurate. Let me help you with some facts.
1) The SilverMintClub launched in September of 2012. The other sites mentioned above were launched in 2008. No where does it say the SilverMintClub or other websites have been around for thirteen years. I have however been selling gold, silver and rare coins online for thirteen years.
2)WE are not a MLM. We only pay affiliate commissions on one level. We accept PayPal and per their terms we could not use their services if our website did not comply. No pyramid, multilevel or matrix. (Sorry)
3)Subscriptions are purchased to have access to our online store within the site. We do offer two subscription levels with the higher level subscription giving deeper discounts on silver purchases with higher commission earnings.
4)Our silver is competitively priced and is well worth the subscription cost alone.
5)We do not require anyone to refer anybody to our website nor do we rely on this to be successful. Margins on our product sales like any other business determines our success.
6)If a subscribers experience using the SilverMintClub is such that they would like to refer others to the site, they will earn commissions on subscriptions purchased by their own personal referrals only.
7)Whether a member subscribes first or last, they still have the ability to purchase our silver at competitive live pricing along with earning affiliate commissions.
In the future,it might benefit you to send us a e-mail to get the facts before jumping to conclusions. We would be more than happy to respond.
Probably best you don’t tout your selling history with “selling online” then. That could mean anything. The quote referenced in the article was taken directly from the Silver Mint Club website.
Correct, there’s only single level commissions offered on membership fees.
And that (not a product) is what you’re paying commissions out on. Bit of a grey area pyramid scheme wise in that it’s not multiple levels, but still recruitment driven.
I’ll clarify that the use of the term “pyramid scheme” was in relation to the sustainability problems Silver Mint Club shares with pyramid schemes, as a business opportunity. If you only get paid to recruit, sooner or later you’re going to run out of people to recruit.
What you require is irrelevant. As someone looking at Silver Mint Club as a business opportunity, they have to recruit to earn.
Irrelevant, they are paid to recruit.
That would only be neccessary if the information on your website was misleading and inaccurate and I generally don’t assume this to be the case. Apologies if I was mistaken in this particular instance.
Thank you for you above responses. I think they are fair.
The SilverMintClub was established to give it’s members a way to purchase and receive physical silver at discounted prices over what other online or brick and mortar businesses offer.
You are correct, It also in fact does offer a subscribed member the ability to earn commissions off of their personal referrals. They may withdraw their commissions and use their earnings as additional income or may use these commissions to purchase silver. The choice is theirs.
I have taken great care in describing how the website works as well as not over hyping the amount of money one may earn through affiliate commissions or product purchases. Your comments have given me cause to review our website information to ensure complete understanding.
I believe whether a member refers anyone to our website or not, the pricing of our products will offset their subscription cost. After all, to us, it’s about building wealth one ounce at a time. Not becoming instantly rich.
Allow me to be flippant for a moment… But “we don’t require any one to recruit” is like saying “We don’t really need you to work. it’s just that if you don’t work you don’t get paid.” 🙂 It doesn’t really mean anything.
How is that not a perfect description of having the “pay to play” scenario warned about by consumer protection authorities worldwide ??
You are correct. If you do not recruit new members who purchase subscriptions you do not earn any commissions.
However,there are many people that are not recruiters nor do they want to recruit. They are more than happy to purchase a subscription for themselves so they may purchase our silver products at a discounted price over what other businesses offer. I believe the pricing of our products are well worth the cost of our subscription alone.
Just because a member does not recruit does not mean they cannot build wealth. Wealth for most people is accumulated over time. This is the premise of our site.
When you create no differentiation between those who do recruit and those that do (ie. between your customers and your affiliates) you’re effectively creating a pyramid scheme.
The silver products are irrelevant to the opportunity in that they are non-comissionable. We’re looking at your business from the perspective of what you have to do to get paid (business opportunity).