ZeekRewards Review: SPAM, Penny Auctions & MLM
Ever heard of Zeekler?
Yeah, I hadn’t either but when the company Zeek Rewards came across my desk for review I soon learned that Zeekler was Zeek Reward’s parent company, with the latter operating as the affiliate and marketing company of the former.
Dealing primarily in Penny Auctions (I’ll go more into that later), Zeekler aims to provide its members an income opportunity through its affiliate arm Zeek Rewards.
Read on for a full review of the Zeek Rewards business opportunity.
The Company
Zeek Rewards is the affiliate arm of the penny auction site Zeekler. Both companies are owned by Rex Venture Group LLC who are listed as a subsidiary of Lighthouse America US.
Staff wise, Zeek Rewards (and Zeekler) is CEO’d by Paul Burks (photo right). Burks previously ran something called the ‘Free Store Club’ which was a now defunct MLM opportunity.
From what I can gather, Free Store Club was a replicated storefront you could purchase into with products you could then stock your store with. The basic idea was that you’d promote your storefront and coupled with a MLM compensation backend, earn a commission on the sales made through your store.
Zeekler seems to be the next incarnation of Free Store Club in that Burks provides the products Zeekler puts up for auction via whatever wholesale channels he was using to stock Free Store Club.
The Zeek Rewards Product
Utilising the Zeekler backend, either via a commission on bids made through Zeekler (these bids are commissionable), or operating your own replicated Zeekler storefront (provided to you upon signup), members of Zeek Rewards can retail various products that Zeekler has on offer.
Stocked by CEO Paul Burk’s wholesale channels, depending on which membership option you pick (how much money you’re willing to pay for a monthly subscription), members can pick and choose what inventory they want to put in their store and even have the option of adding their own products too.
As far as Zeeklers auctions go, you’ll be selling bid pack purchases which you’ll then earn a commission on.
These bids don’t have any real world value, but within Zeekler each bid has a bid value of 65 cents.
Now although strictly speaking not a product, I’ve decided to include the various auctions available at Zeekler seeing as a basic understanding of how they work is essential in order to establish the value of Zeekler’s bid packs.
Penny auctions typically start at $0.01 and from here members can place a bid on the item, typically raising the price between 0.01 and 0.08.
Each auction has a timer and as the timer approaches 30 or so seconds, each time a new bid is placed it resets itself to around 30 seconds. When bidders are finished bidding (keep in mind each bid increases the price) and the timer runs out, you have a winner.
In a reveal price auction an item starts at a fixed price, which is allegedly close to the retail price of the item.
This price is unknown to bidders and they must bid to see the current price. With each bid on the item the price drops incrementally.
Once the price hits a reserve, bidders then have the option of purchasing the product, or continuing to bid on it and drop the price further. Once the reserve has been met, the first bidder to agree on the price shown to them wins the auction.
In a falling price auction, the price of an item incrementally drops each second until it hits a reserve price. Bidders can ‘drop’ the price themselves (I’m not sure why they’d want to given the price is dropping anyway) at any time by placing a bid.
All participants in the auction are able to purchase the item at any time, at which point the auction is ended.
Zeekler’s Premier Auctions function in the same manner as a regular penny auction but they come with an entry fee that must be paid in order to participate in the auction.
VIP auctions carry an entrance fee and each member is given a certain number of VIP bids. Using these bids doesn’t cost anything unless you win the auction, at which point the auction is over and the winner pays the winning bid for the item.
Minimum bid amounts and the time an auction runs for differ from auction to auction depending on what is being auctioned off at the time.
Membership ranks for Zeek Rewards
As far as I can tell, there are three membership levels within Zeek Rewards and their sole purpose is to further reward either Silver, Gold or Diamond paid members who recruit others to the business.
- matrix commissions of 25 cents for each Silver, Gold or Diamond paid affiliate in their matrix
- 5% on first generation and 2.5% on second generation VIP bid purchases.
- matrix commissions of 35 cents for each Silver and $1 for each Gold or Diamond paid affiliate in their matrix
- 7% on first generation and 3.5% on second generation VIP bid purchases.
- matrix commissions of 40 cents for each Silver, $1.50 for each Gold and $3.50 for each Diamond paid affiliate in their matrix
- 10% on first generation and 5% on second generation VIP bid purchases.
The Zeek Rewards Compensation Plan
The Zeek Rewards compensation plans is membership based and offers its members a variety of ways to earn commissions utilising the Zeekler website.
Here’s a rundown of the various ways in which Zeek Rewards affiliates can earn commissions;
Zeek Rewards offers a 20% retail commission on all Bid Pack purchases made by personally sponsored retail customers you refer to Zeekler.
Upon joining Zeek Rewards you will be given a replicated Zeekler retail store. Depending on which membership level you join Zeek Rewards at, members are able to pick and choose what inventory they wish to stock and even stock their own items for sale.
Commissions earnt in the retail store are the difference between the wholesale price and retail price of anything you sell.
Zeek Rewards will pay out 20% a month on any Silver, Gold or Diamond membership you sell. This is a recurring commission paid out monthly for the life of the sponsored account.
For qualified Zeek Rewards affiliates, the company offers what they call a Retail Profit Pool. This pool is made up to 50% of the company’s gross retail profit on the sale of bid packs on any given day.
To qualify for this pool, members must either hold a Silver, Gold or Diamond membership, post an ad for zeekler.com on the internet (more on this forced spam by Zeek Rewards in the conclusion of this article) and have sold a bid pack or given away VIP bids on that particular day.
The Retail Profit Pool is calculated daily and is a percentage commission paid based on the amount of VIP ProfitPoints you’ve earnt (via the sale of bid packs or the giving away of VIP bids).
The Zeek Rewards compensation plan utilises a 2×5 forced matrix.
With you at the top this matrix runs five levels deep with two legs branching out on each level. As you start to fill it up, your 2×5 matrix should look something like this;
With 62 positions available to be filled, the forced matrix pays out a monthly flat commission of up to $3.50 (for the exact amounts, refer to the membership ranks earlier in this article) for each paid subscription member in your matrix.
Note that the matrix does extend beyond five levels however beyond five levels a Matching Bonus is paid (you must have various numbers of preferred customers and paid subscription affiliates in order to qualify).
The compensation plan doesn’t mention what this matching bonus is however, and I’ve been unable to verify the exact amounts independently via a third party.
The Diamond Executive Pool is made up of $1 from each new Gold and Diamond subscription or renewal (1st month of renewal) paid for any given month.
To qualify for a share in the Diamond Executive Pool, Diamond (or Executive membership rank) members need to sell silver, gold or diamond affiliate subscriptions.
The amount of shares earnt per subscription sold are 1 for a Silver subscription, 5 for Gold and 10 for Diamond.
The Generation Bonus is made up of a contribution each time a company wide Silver, Gold or Diamond affiliate subscription renewal is paid.
The amounts contributed to the bonus are 25 cents per Silver, $1 per Gold and $2 per Diamond subscriptions renewed.
To qualify for a share in the Generation Bonus, qualified Zeek Rewards members must personally sponsor 6 manager membership rank or higher members.
Joining Zeek Rewards
For those wishing to join Zeek Rewards, there are four options available to them;
Joining Zeek Rewards as a ‘free affiliate’ costs nothing and members receive
- a replicated Zeekler penny auction site
- a replicated Zeekler retail store
- entry into the 2×5 matrix (note that as a free affiliate however you are ineligible for matrix commissions and are ‘compressed’ out when commission are calculated).
A Silver Affiliate account costs you $10 a month and on top of the Free Affiliate benefits, members
- are able to receive matrix commissions
- have access to store inventory with ‘higher margins‘ and ‘deeper discounts‘
A Gold Affiliate account costs you $50 a month. Gold affiliate members
- have access to ‘even higher profit margins and deeper discounts‘ in their retail store
- are able to add their own departments and products and remove those they don’t want within their retail store
A Diamond Affiliate account costs you $99 a month. Diamond affiliate members
- get the ‘highest profit margins and deepest discounts‘ for their retail store
- the ability to add their own departments and products to their retail store
- customisation of how their retail store looks
- a lead capture system (replicated capture page?)
- participation in the Diamond Executive Pool
Conclusion
The main problem I can see with the Zeek Rewards opportunity is that it basically is just one of three businesses run by the same guy.
You’ve got the wholesale distributor side of things, the penny auction site and really, do you actually need a MLM distribution model to attract members? I mean, if the penny auction model is that great shouldn’t it itself attract new members and retain them?
This brings me to my next point of analysis;
Who is using the Zeekler penny auction site and how?
Ironically, here’s how Zeekler advertise their penny auctions;
You know that online shopping has become an overwhelming drag these days.
Are you looking for serious deals, right now? With a little fun and excitement while you’re shopping?
Are you someone who can’t wait to get up at 4am on Black Friday to snag and sometimes battle for the best deals all season?
Or are you someone who avoids crowds and chaos like the plague.
The irony being that, due to the auction models used by Zeekler, online shopping with them is anything but fast and convenient.
Think about it, only one person can win an item and for everybody else, the money they’ve invested in the auction is gone.
Where else can you put money towards a tangible product only to have to walk away with nothing in the end.
Whilst overall the penny auction appears to be a frustrating experience for the end user, company wise they are a ludicrous money spinner.
Take for example product X, it can be an iPod, laptop, digital camera… so long as it’s a hot item people are going to bid on, it doesn’t matter.
Product X has a retail value of $200, but debuts in a penny auction on Zeekler for just 1 cent. With bids incrementally increasing the auction price by 8 cents, let’s say the final bidding price is just $30.
That’s a whopping 85% off the retail price! Sounds great huh? Wrong.
Let’s take look at how we got to the $30 price. At 8 cents a bid, to get to $30 from 1 cent requires 375 bids.
That’s $243.75 in bids alone, and if we add on the final $30 sale price, this brings up the total spend by Zeekler users to $273.75.
Not bad for an item that retails at $200, forget about whatever lower wholesale price Zeekler paid to stock the item themselves.
Keep in mind the above example uses at 85% discount price. Realistically people are probably going to bid above $30 for a high demand $200 item.
And that’s where the long-term viability problem lies with penny auctions like Zeekler.
That $243.75 loss is spread out between everyone who didn’t win the item.
After the honeymoon period in the beginner auction area (where you can’t bid unless you have less than three item wins to your account), Zeekler users are buttered up with a sense of ‘hey, this is easy… why wasn’t I doing this earlier!’ (no doubt helped by careful product selection in the beginner area).
Once in the wide world of general auction though, after a few losses and the giant time sink of bidding on auctions to buy stuff is, most people are probably going to walk away with nothing and take a financial hit for the opportunity to do so.
So given that most people aren’t going to win enough auctions to justify their losses (pure statical mathematics), how do you keep them around?
Answer: You throw them a MLM income opportunity and give them a vested financial stake that relies on the success of your penny auction site.
Enter Zeek Rewards.
Looking at what’s available to members, I’d guess that most of their profits are going to be from the auctions themselves.
Replicated sales portals are useless. They don’t rank in the search engines, you have to not only drive traffic to them yourself but also compete with specialist stores selling the same products, and they have much more buying power than Zeekler does.
This leaves the auctions and given you make a commission on bids when they are bought this is what you’re going to wind up convincing people to buy.
Given that this alone won’t keep them around (they’re unlikely to make a repeat bid purchase unless they get extremely lucky and win some auctions in succession), you’ve then got to try to rope them into the compensation plan so that they too have a vested financial interest in the site.
Thus looking at the greater picture, what we wind up with is a penny auction site that is populated by people who stand to make commissions each time a bid is made on a product.
An organically successful marketplace? Hardly.
Proof alone of this is the fact the in order to be actively qualified, Zeek Rewards members actually have to spam advertisements for the company every 24 hours.
No I’m not kidding. The Zeek Rewards backoffice has an advertisement area that generates banner or text ads for members to copy, and then it provides them with a directory of free classified ads sites that they can click through to paste their spam on.
This isn’t voluntary, this is a company requirement. I mean hell, being required to spam the crap out of the internet in this day and age should be grounds enough alone to make most people run from a MLM opportunity screaming.
Furthermore, this isn’t the first time penny auctions have been combined with MLM, remember Dubli?
After much hype and multiple global launches they eventually flopped and disappeared. I imagine given time the same thing will happen with Zeek Rewards too.
Penny auctions work for the company and if the userbase gets too big inevitably you wind up with an angry userbase frustrated at the fact they can’t win anything.
Given all the members are doing is pumping money into the system and rarely winning anything, they leave.
Eventually, even a MLM compensation plan isn’t going to be enough for them to stick around and that’s probably where we’ll see Zeek Rewards eventually wind up.
September 22nd, 2011 at 6:47 am K. Chang(Quote)
Based on my completely amateur analysis based on US laws, this comp plan is illegal, as it directly rewards members for recruiting, which subjects it to anti-pyramid scheme legislation.
September 22nd, 2011 at 8:47 am Colsta(Quote)
Thanks Ozsoapbox for the review.
Disclosure: I’ve signed up for zeek rewards.
i haven’t got involved in any other MLMs since an unfortunate Amway experience as a 20 year old in the 1980′s. All that attempted recruiting of friends stuff gave me a poor reputation that took years to overcome.
Anyway, I’ve been a member for just over 6 weeks. But I’m only interested in the retail profit pool side (RPP), which means I haven’t recruited – nor am i interested in or required to do that in the future.
Let me explain how things have gone for me.
So I subscribed to pay $10/month and i bought $50 worth of bids to start up. That gave me 50 of what they call VIP points. Each day, as long as I place a free ad for zeekler anywhere on the web (spam? maybe), the company pays out a % in its RPP. This amount has, so far, varied between 0.5% and 3% each day. You then get to choose what % you want to ‘repurchase’ as more VIP points or claim it as cash.
So i set to the recommended 100% repurchase and watched it compounds daily. After about 6 weeks, the 50 points had grown to 100. With some bonus points the company gives, my balance is now at about 300. If the RPP continues at the same rate, my VIP points should reach 1000 by the end of the year, and 2000 by the end of Feb. At that point i plan on collecting, which should be about $20-30 / day. It should only take me a week to recover my expenses.
But you can see that if you wait longer until your balance was, say, 10000 that, in theory, you could be making $100-$200 /day.
Only i can’t stop wondering what will happen when everyone else decides to ‘cash in’ so i’m keen to get out before that!
Still, it’s 5 minutes a day of cutting and pasting, a smallish investment, no recruiting, and perhaps the chance to make some $$$.
Not holding my breath though.
September 22nd, 2011 at 9:04 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
The VIP points are redeemable at 50 cents a point right (I remember reading that in one of their examples)? And don’t you have to give out the VIP bids to get actual points? Who are you giving them out to?
Even with 2000 points by the end of February, that’s still only $1000. Made from $50 that’s impressive but not the timeframe it took to make it.
As you note it does compound so it will grow faster but that’s a huge risk in my opinion. I guess with an initial $50 investment and as you say few minutes a day spamming the internet it’s no too bad from your perspective.
Company wise though they’re obviously covering this return with the sale of bids that are being used in the penny auctions as this delivers a solid profit for the company on high interest (consumer interest, not financial interest) items.
If everybody did what you were doing, and I imagine there’s quite a few already doing this, I’m sure you can appreciate that if nobody is buying bids and spending them as they’re meant to be used the company can’t mathematically pay out the returns.
Remember that your points are only virtual currency, nothing is real until you cash out. And if Zeek Rewards can’t make a profit and pay everyone out, I imagine they’ve got a clause somewhere that’ll reduce the dollar amount each VIP point is worth will be reduced until they do.
They’re obviously not going to go bust paying out members.
And as for spam, would you be promoting Zeek Rewards if it wasn’t required?
September 22nd, 2011 at 9:51 am Colsta(Quote)
That’s not right. You can’t directly cash in the points. It’s only by using the points to generate cash through the RPP that they can be redeemed. So if the RPP paid an average of 1.5%/day with 1000 points I would receive $15/day. That’s the only way i can “cash out”.
2000 points is not $1000.
The company runs a “customer co-op” which automatically gives away bids on my behalf to cutomers, if i don’t have any myself (which I don’t).
The points don’t actually have a redeemable value (as mentioned above)so there’s no need for the company to have to reduce it. The retail profit pool isn’t guranteed. So if the company stopped making $$ that would be the end of it.
What they have managed to set up though, is to have (almost)everyone re-investing most of the profit back in the company.
When/if people stop doing that and switch to cash out will be interesting.
sh**t no!
September 22nd, 2011 at 10:05 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Ah ok, sorry my bad (I got a bit of a headache analysing the Zeek Rewards comp plan, it’s pretty badly written).
So in effect you’re getting a return based on a company made up % off of the points you have, with your points holding no dollar value?
Jesus, what are they going to do when everybody’s points eclipses their Penny Auction profits? They’re effectively creating money to pay out as a return but the return is so low they’ve got everybody re-investing their return to build their principal!
And the big red flag is they’re basing the new day’s payout % based on the previous day’s automated purchase of new points! This is naturally only going to increase as everybody’s points grow larger… but in effect no new actual money is being created!
I hope someobody is keeping track of all this at Zeek Rewards, otherwise god help them if enough people decide to cash out and collapse a large chunk of their cashflow!
ZR is starting to sound more like an investment scheme than a MLM if most people are using it like yourself (entirely their fault for setting it up that way).
September 22nd, 2011 at 3:07 pm Colsta(Quote)
I’ll come back to you in a couple of months and let everyone know how it’s going.
I can’t see it lasting either, at least in its current format. But hell, i was too curious this time and if I’m lucky i still could do alright. Oh yeah, and sorry for the spam.
September 22nd, 2011 at 3:13 pm K. Chang(Quote)
This is “self-generated inflation”. It’s a bogus compensation model. Sounds impressive, but the “growth” is not based on anything substantial. Furthermore, it has the danger of being declared “illegal banking” in nations where banking is heavily regulated.
September 23rd, 2011 at
[...] ZeekRewards Review: SPAM, Penny Auctions & MLM [...]
September 26th, 2011 at 7:08 am Preston Yarbrough(Quote)
Some of you people need to understand what “spam” is: Placing a daily ad on an online classified website is NOT spam.
Also, with the changes implemented by Zeek Rewards recently, they are in full compliance with US laws. Zeek Rewards is NOT a pyramid scheme.
Members who take the time to submit an advertisement once per day for the Zeekler penny auction site, are “rewarded” with a portion of the companies daily profits. Recruiting is NOT required.
As far as commissions, those are affiliate commissions based on bid pack sales to Zeekler customers. When a Zeekler customer(Not a zeek rewards member), referred by your sales advertisement, makes a bid pack purchase, you receive an affiliate commission of 20%.
I’m an affiliate salesman for 4 major credit/debit card companies. According to some of you peoples interpretations of “Pyramid schemes”, these are illegal too. Come on people! Educate yourselves before you speak.
September 26th, 2011 at 11:05 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
But hundreds, possibly thousands of people doing it solely because a company refuses to pay them if they don’t, most certainly is.
These people wouldn’t be advertising daily otherwise, nobody but spammers place classified ads daily.
And where are these profits coming from?
Zeek members can purchase VIP bids and then give them away via the internal co-op, so yes they don’t need to recruit.
Somebody has to buy these bids though for the company to make a profit though no? The problem is that Zeek are promising customers on a (no doubt every growing) waiting list. This means they clearly don’t have enough customers to go around.
Regardless of this fact though, they are still going ahead and paying out commissions as if they had customers but honoring the point values earnt of their members for commission purposes (the bids actually haven’t been passed on as there’s not enough customers to pass them on to!).
Coupled with the fact that due to everybody’s points will increase over time, further increasing the disparity between incoming customer demand and bids being bought by existing members, how on Earth is this even going to be remotely stable?
At the moment the concept is barely two months old and is relying on the fact that everybody is re-investing their profit back into the purchase of more points.
What do you think is going to happen when people want to cash out?
As far as the affiliate commissions go, there’s no problem there as you have real customers (unlike Zeek’s co-op watiing list of virtual customers who don’t exist).
That’s a rather stupid thing to say.
Are the credit/debt companies’ compensation plans word for word identical to Zeek Rewards?
Didn’t think so.
Claiming Zeek rewards is unsustainable is not the same as claiming all affiliate programs are unsustainable.
December 19th, 2011 at 10:54 am burnt before(Quote)
Ladies and Gents. This whole thing sounds like a carbon copy of ASD (Ad Surf Daily ) Save your time and money and run away from this very very quickly.
December 22nd, 2011 at
[...] ZeekRewards Review: SPAM, Penny Auctions & MLM [...]
January 6th, 2012 at 6:12 am Gail(Quote)
It is laughable when someone criticizes something they know nothing about! Rather than try to run Zeek Rewards into the ground, why not first figure out how they work so you will know the truth! Zeek wouldn’t be here today if they weren’t complying with the law. They are a legitimate company!
Do you know how Real Estate agents get paid? How about insurance agents? How about other sales people? Do you know how all MLM’s pay out their peopel?
Would you put in an ad for Nordstroms if they didn’t pay you and instruct you how to do it? Just because you can’t comprehend how Zeek works, doesn’t mean it’s a bad company or a bad deal. Get the facts guy!
January 6th, 2012 at 8:13 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
So what exactly is incorrect here? I see a whole lot of waffle from yourself and nothing specific.
Just the same old ‘waaah it’s not a scam, you just don’t understand it!’ It’s precisely because I do understand it that I’ve written what I’ve written.
Real estate and insurance agents aren’t in MLM, so what’s your point?
No idea what Nordstroms is, but unless it’s a MLM company that pays you to spam the internet it’s irrelevant.
January 6th, 2012 at 1:55 pm GDorn(Quote)
I salute Oz on an impressive blog and thank him for the public service it provides.
A little background on the “Free Store Club”, the “store” it provided you with was a replicated sub domain of the parent website. What that means is that your individual store was functionally invisible to search engines.
Paul would sell you SEO services but they never really would help, unless someone clicked on your own individual link [youraffilatename.freestoreclub dot com] they’d never find your store. So much for retail sales but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t make money off your store.
You see, retail sales were completely unimportant to Free Store Club, you could always just recruit more paying affiliates in exchange for a cut of their monthly dues (they call them hosting fees). Sorry if the following link is a bit long, it’s an archive dot org snap shot of an old Free Store Club comp plan page:
http://web.archive.org/web/20051210032445/http://master.freestoreclub.com/A_TheFSCStore.asp?UserName=Master
Also, there was at least one “buisness opportunity” that fell between FSC and Zeek, it’s New Net Mail. It’s like E-Mail only much much better, it’s e-mail with a (decidedly triangular shaped) compensation plan. For your inspection:
http://guest.newnetmail.com/simple_affiliateinformation.asp?username=guest
So they give the service away for free, you only have to pay if you wish to earn money by recruiting other paying affiliates (who in turn earn money by recruiting other paying members, and so on, and so on, and so on).
Paul Burks has a provable history for running shady little pyramid schemes and I hope Zeek Rewards becomes just successful enough to gain him the attention of regulatory agencies that his “14 years of rock solid” buisness experience has thus far eluded.
I have a question for Zeek Rewards members and really anyone participating in penny auctions anywhere, how do you know you aren’t getting scammed when you place a bid? What if an auction was about to end but the item price hadn’t been bid up high enough to cover the website owner’s price for the item?
What’s to keep them from programing the system from throwing in a “shill bid”? If their own software casts a bid under a fake user name and it wins the auction, they keep all the money from any real bids cast and they keep the item to relist for another auction.
Why, if I were an unscrupulous penny auction owner I could insure I never lost a dime by selling an item at a loss and you’d never be able to prove I was doing it.
But while Paul Burks ran pyramid schemes for years, he’s never been accused for rigging his own auctions. I mean, he has to draw the line somewhere. Doesn’t he?
January 6th, 2012 at 2:36 pm GDorn(Quote)
And one small follow up question if I could beg the indulgence of any Zeek Reward affiliate. What is Zeek Reward’s North Carolina Auction license number? Perhaps I’m overlooking it somewhere but I don’t see it on their website and for the life of me I can’t find either Paul’s name or any of his companies name in the search utility on the North Carolina Auctioneer’s License Board website. Perhaps you’ll have better luck than I did:
http://www.ncalb.org/search.cfm
Surely Paul and his company have all the proper licenses for the buisness they are running. Don’t they?
January 7th, 2012 at 4:57 am The Hat(Quote)
I always find it amusing when people write articles about things they know nothing about.
Oz is the same type of person that will tell you how to perform heart surgery based on being under a light anesthesia while watching a tooth get extracted in a mirror.
More than likely a friend invited him to zeek and his friend is now making a lot of money. In order to save face he is bashing something making statements when he has NO idea even how the program works.
Give me your email address and I will send you $500 in bids to try to win something in the auction. Yes I am paying for the bids and they do cost ME $500. But because you have the welfare mentality I know YOU will not appreciate the fact that I am in business buying the bids to entice YOU into purchasing your own.
I have won in the auctions. You can win in the auctions. I have MANY customers that I created which is what REAL affiliates do instead of depend on a company pool.
PS for your information the income for affiliates is completely based on the money spent in the auctions, stores and other outlets. If no one bids in the auctions NOBODY makes any profit share that day.
True there is a minor MLM component but it is virtually insignificant. The MLM pays on providing you websites, stores at discount, company support, back office, training etc just like every other legitimate internet business. The MLM pay has NOTHING to do with the bids or the auctions other than selling stores and websites.
Before you decide you want to be a heart surgeon, I recommend you go back to school and learn what you are talking about. No I am not going to tell you how it works because you are the one claiming you know it so go do the work before spouting.
PS – So ebay and all other sites that do auctions and penny auctions are scams in your mind? Just because you do not know how to bid in an auction does not mean it is not a viable program. Do not give your stupid answer that it has MLM to it so it is not legit. I already told you the MLM is insignificant. It is just a method of advertising to others and drawing a crowd.
PPS – Yes others DO advertise daily in classified ads, on ebay, on google, in the newspaper, on billboards, through text messages, via flyers, via mailers, via postcards. Requiring the affiliates to do so is brilliant as can be seen from the Alexa ratings making them in the top 5000 pages viewed on the internet. But just like you not joining zeek with your friend now making money, the company has high rankings and YOU are slamming them because your credibility on what you are talking about is worthless.
January 7th, 2012 at 9:44 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Fail.
No thanks, find some other suckers to distribute your points too.
And once people work out they’re getting ripped, off you go to find new customers who’ve never heard of penny auctions.
All the meanwhile you take part in Zeek’s investment game and continue to disperse your VIP bids to unsuspecting people hoping to lure them in and inject new money into the system.
Not when you’re conducting a review on the MLM business opportunity itself.
How can the compensation plan pay you on a website, store, company support, back office and training – none of those activities are sales, they’re non-revenue generating services the company provides.
You have to use the services to rope people in and convert them into members before they realise the penny auctions alone are just a dead end.
There’s no organic marketplace here, it’s just people interest in the MLM income (and investment program) roping new members in.
Irrelevant, ebay et al are not MLM companies. Nor do they have dodgy investment schemes with virtual shares.
Nah it’s not. All it does is force existing members to spam the internet to attract new members into the scheme.
There’s already enough spam on the internet with dodgy companies like Zeek forcing their members to add to it.
January 7th, 2012 at 9:50 am K. Chang(Quote)
I always find it amusing someone should choose to start a rebuttal with a personal attack.
And this proves what exactly? That the auction works? That wasn’t the problem Oz was saying.
What did you sell your customers? Those “bid packs”? or retail store?
False. Bid packs made money for whoever sold them already. But that’s not where the problems are.
Now that is the problem, because… If you recruit someone, who pays to join, and you get paid for that, and that someone is expected to go out and do the same thing… THEN you have a pyramid scheme. And that’s what affiliate membership commission is.
The feeling is mutual, and I’m not Oz.
What have you been posting? Bull****?
Irrelevant derail attempt.
Having 50000 spammers instead of 5 is sorta brilliant… Making a distributed spam network. Not exactly admirable though.
January 9th, 2012 at 1:18 pm The Hat(Quote)
I rest my case. No critical thinking whatsoever. I answered your questions but you preferred to ignore them and reply with your false understanding of how the program works. Once again, read and study what you are writing about BEFORE you try to look intelligent on what you are discussing. What you are doing is no different than a supposed front line war correspondent writing from the safety of his Chicago hotel room. For your information MLM IS LEGAL and taught at the Harvard Business School. Please provide your certification for your law degree that qualifies you to respond on what is or is not legal. And for you K. Chang, I cannot believe there are two people in one little place writing about something they know little if anything about other than personal opinions. Yes, they are personal attacks because they are personal opinions not based on fact.
January 9th, 2012 at 1:34 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Sorry what?
What you said wasn’t ignored, it was just replied to and called out as bullshit.
Instead, you ignored the reply and published a ‘waaaah you just don’t get it’ reply that addresses nothing put forth to you.
I suggest this is something you need to do as clearly when somebody challenges you on the legality of Zeek as an investment all you can do is cry about a lack of critical thinking and understanding, when it’s anything but.
No shit sherlock, shady investment programs attached to penny auction fronts that trade in virtual returns aren’t though.
The big money in Zeek comes from the referral of others and participation in the investment program. The rest is just ‘look at us, we’re legal’ fodder.
If you’ve got nothing else of substance to add other than more waste-of-time ‘you just don’t get it replies’ without mentioning the specifics of what everyone, except you and your scamster buddies, isn’t getting here – don’t bother.
January 9th, 2012 at 3:07 pm The Hat(Quote)
I stand by what I said. I answered your questions, you ignored the answers. You did as most children do when they do not get what they want and start to jump up and down and throw profanity.
Just because you call something “bullshit” does not mean it is. That is just your uneducated tantrum. I said you do not know the subject you are talking about.
You proved that with many inaccuracies in your statements about the program. You said no one real ever bids in the auctions or wins anything. I offered you bids so you could prove YOU were a real person bidding in the auction and you ignored your rant that the auctions were false when I said I have won.
I told you profit share is based on bids USED in the auction and you ignored the fact and wrongfully said that is not so.
I said the MLM component is insignificant and based on the monthly fees for services that you wrongfully say is illegal.
People charge for websites and services all day long and they pay agents to sell those items. Just because the services are sold MLM does NOT make them illegal. Your illiterate understanding of what a “sale is” proves you should not be writing on this subject but probably should not be writing at all.
Ebay and other auction sites ARE relevant. Just because they are not MLM does not mean they do not follow the same laws. As stated elsewhere, Ebay is not registered as an auction site in the same state as the one you are complaining about.
The company is NOT an investment and just because you call an elephant a mouse does not make it one. That is just an opinion. Once again your wrongful assumption that placing ads in classified sites is spam shows your immaturity in understanding the advertising business.
Just for your information, classified ad sites can refuse or not post the comments before they become “spam” to the public.
And Oz and mister or miss or misses K Chang, after a due diligence study of the areas you post, you are either the same person or living together or working together.
Just because you make it look like multiple people to justify quantity opinion does not make your answers more real. Democrats in America do this all the time on social networks.
I have found the same person posing as over twenty different individuals. Now that is an opinion of MINE but based on the evidence I would bet it is true.
Of course I gave bid packs to my customers. If you understood the program, that is what I am supposed to do.
Bid packs are sold and commissioned just like any product sold in the store. My comment was that PROFIT SHARE ONLY occurs when someone spends bids in the auctions.
Sorry Oz and K or the same person, that is just the way it is and your opinion does not change it any more than you calling the elephant a mouse.
I have gone to school on it and I do know what I am talking about. My statement remains the same, you do not know what you are talking about. I am posting truth and you are posting opinion. Just because you did not figure out a way to get your alexa rating to 5000 does not mean they were not brilliant doing so.
Call it spam if you want, that is just your opinion. Rebutting that it is spam is just an opinion. Yes I answered your questions – again – but you offer NO critical thinking reply.
You can imply you are using critical thinking but once again it is just your opinion when in fact you have no facts to back your challenge. Once again, such language.
It is not an investment program, it is profit sharing. Calling the elephant a mouse does not make it so.
January 9th, 2012 at 3:30 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Mate you can cry all you want.
1. Giving away bids does not prove anything of relevance, all it proves is that yes – I can use your bids and the penny auctions are useable.
Nobody ever said they weren’t.
Being able to use them does not prove that people are using them (other than those being suckered into the investment scam.
From a consumer standpoint penny auctions are a complete waste of time, as evidenced in the example given in the original article. Thus once they figure that out (after losing money and having nothing to show for it), what’s left?
Pour money into the investment scheme, spam the internet and hope to sucker more people with the lure of penny auction bids too.
You’re reasoning is akin to ‘here, I’ll give $100 to invest in a ponzi scheme and you’ll get a return.. SEE the system works!’
Until Zeek creates more virtual shares than it can pay out off it’s virtual penny auction revenues, the company will no doubt pay out. It’s when this reaches critical point that’s the problem, and as everyone’s virtual profits increases over time – this approaches faster and faster.
2. Ebay et al are not MLM or ‘profit share’ so they are irrelevant.
3. Waffle waffle waffle, at the end of the day you’re buying virtual bids, giving these bids away to virtual customers and earing a ROI on the imaginary sales of said virtual customers.
Oh sure you might have a few real “customers” you’re giving bids away to try and convince them to invest real money into Zeek, but that’s not by and large how the investment program works.
4. Any MLM component is important because it makes up the business model. Nobody ever said MLM is illegal, the investment side of Zeek (and the fact they pay commissions on recruitment) is dodgy as hell.
5.
Yeah… you heard it here first folks, I’m 20 different people. Gotta love the crap scamm pushers come up with.
6. You publish ads on the internet because a company forces you to do so in order to earn commissions, that’s spam. You’re cluttering up the internet with advertising bullshit nobody cares about or reads – and only because you don’t get paid if you don’t.
Spam – end of story.
7.
Considering the profit is virtual (bids sold to a never ending supply of virtual customers the company claims to have), it’s an effective investment with a guaranteed ROI.
You need products and services to sell to generate profit share, selling and giving away virtual bids is not a product. And don’t bother bringing up eBay again – they earn their money through inhouse advertising network and fees for auction listings.
eBay et al are not MLM, profit shares, dodgy investment schemes or penny auctions.
January 9th, 2012 at 4:17 pm The Hat(Quote)
1. Thank you. You are finally coming around. I do buy bids (they are real not virtual – do not use some abstract definition that bids are on the internet so are virtual), I give the bids away and they are usable in real auctions for real products. You finally understand the business model.
2. Ebay does have a profit share program. I make money from it.
3. See #1 above about virtual bids. ALL my customers are real and many have won auctions.
4. Okay, focus on the MLM. People are paid commissions on the sale of websites, back office, wholesale stores and product. Your opinion that it is dodgy is just that, an unfounded opinion.
5. I never said YOU were 20 different people. I said I suspect you and K. Chang have a questionable relationship.
6. You say it is spam, most say it is not. Just your opinion and your opinion is just that, an opinion not a FACT.
7. Call the bids whatever you want, they do not pay unless spent in the auctions. If not spent, there is NO profit. Come by this month when we auction $5000 cash, $4000 vacation for four, three sets of Superbowl tickets and a new mustang car. I know you think all this is virtual too but it just shows your lack of educated understanding of the program. See #2 above on Ebay.
PS – Know you think you are going to keep writing until you burn me out. Well I know you are probably sitting on welfare someplace and have nothing else to do. I on the other hand own several businesses, I am a very successful scientist and engineer, I am very successful in MLM, I do training and motivation, I have written books, I have over 100 godchildren, I care for a 90 year old STEP FATHER, I care for a fully handicapped wife and extended family, I helped people go from nothing to success MANY times and I have taken many third world people for FREE in zeek and paid $10 for silver and $30 to their account to bootstrap them from shear poverty to above the national average monthly income.
No sir, when I leave here it is because I am bored with your intellect and stupid opinions.
January 9th, 2012 at 5:24 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
and something something magic stuff – then you earn a ROI.
Zeek offer to buy your bids and this is the big question mark in terms of dodginess.
Nah they don’t, they have an affiliate program.
No doubt, but the fact that I can pump money into Zeek, sell my bids to a never ending supply of “virtual customers” provided by the company is a huge red flag.
For recruiting new members.
And in giving my bids away to Zeek, there are no checks and balances ensuring this even takes place.
Mate don’t care. It’s irrelevant.
My point exactly. I think we’re done here chief.
There is no golden egg, Zeek just take your points and give them to virtual customers. The probability they can take 100% of everyone’s dumped bids and give them away no matter how large the amounts people invest into the program is ridiculous.
Has Zeek ever refused to take bids from anyone on the grounds they don’t have enough customers?
January 11th, 2012 at 9:47 am Tony(Quote)
@ozsoapbox and K Chang You guys never cease to amaze me! The first time I met U both was when I vested in TVI Express and you guys r still doing your thing. I am at awe with the knowledge you two have about MLM’s.
I have a friend that just joined Zeek 7 days ago. This friend has paid $10000 in VIP bids. It’s the 4th day now, and my friend has made just over $850.00 in VIP Point Balance so far averaging just under $200/day and all she is doing is putting in her ads every night.
Another friend who showed us his profits, got in Zeek 7 mos and has made over 28,000 in VIP Point Balance with equates to dollars according to them. This friend is averaging $400/day in VIP points balances. Another friend who became an affiliate back in Mar 2011 has 130,000 VIP Pts as of Nov. 2011.
Now Im new to this one. Can U explained why they are making so much money in profit bonuses and taking out $3000 cash/mo? Im totally confused. Thx so much! I listened to U guys concerning TVI and took your advice.
January 11th, 2012 at 12:28 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
@Tony
That’s just it. We’re talking the virtual currency of point balances, not actual dollars.
If everybody decided they’d had enough and cashed out of Zeek the entire company would fall apart as the company has been printing money with bids by dispersing them to ‘virtual customers’.
Let’s be realistic, there’s no way known Zeek can guarantee averages, with real customers you’d have massive swings from day to day sales – especially when we’re talking penny auctions.
Yet these guys manage to be pretty consistent… are they just disposing of people’s bids to virtual customers and calculating daily payouts based on the amount of ‘actual’ money pumped into the system each day by new and existing members?
You tell me.
January 13th, 2012 at 12:58 am M_Norway(Quote)
@Tony
At this stage I think it’s better to avoid this opportunity, and let your friends keep the feeling of success for themselves – as long as it will last. I’ll guess they will be stuck with some worthless VIP Points after a while, if they continue to be “all in” for a few more months.
The main problem here is that we can’t find any external sources of revenue capable of creating the ROI Return of Investment here. Most of the money in the system seems to come from the “investors” themselves.
* most of the marketing tries to attract investors rather than real users. I have only checked different investor websites, and I haven’t checked those “daily ads” that are used.
* penny auctions isn’t that popular, “a stable and increasing group of customers, eagerly awaiting more bids to be released each and every day, fighting for the right to buy more bids before the supply is emptied.”
* Free Store Club stores doesn’t seem to have any considerable revenue, or a large number of real customers. They look more like “hobby” than “business”, designed more to feel like a real store than to act like a real store.
Other red flags
There are several other red flags here too, most of them less important. One of them may be worth mentioning – the “Legal Staff” red flag, claiming to have an “in house” Legal Staff making them compliant with laws. Usually such “Legal Staff” is the owner himself acting as a hobby-lawyer, finding laws that seems suitable to protect his own interests. I will usually cause a lot of trouble when people are acting as hobby-lawyers, instead of using professional lawyers. It seems like they just recently have started to use a professional lawyer.
I believe Zeek Rewards is a Ponzi scheme, using money from new investors to pay the old investors. The managers here may still believe they run a legal business, that they sell “products” or “services” rather than “investments”. This means they may be more willing to put up a fight in the court if investors tries to sue them.
The combination of Ponzi scheme and an owner acting as a hobby-lawyer is a worst case scenario.
* first you loose your money when the recruitment of new investors slows down, and the money they have to pay out exceeds the money coming in.
* then you have to fight the management and owner in court, feeling they have done all the right things, and feeling like victims when investors tries to sue them, feeling the investors are “the bad guys”.
Experience do have some value, but I think you should try to avoid this specific experience.
January 13th, 2012 at 1:09 am K. Chang(Quote)
Because VIP POints are worthless UNTIL REDEEMED. This is the same pattern with TVI Express’s “double-secured eWallet”. By NOT paying you directly, they think they can avoid FTC attention as they claim payment in VIP points is not money and they can avoid being labelled a pyramid scheme. However, everybody understands that VIP Points is $1 per point. So it IS virtual currency, and that runs into trouble in so many places… Breaking banking laws, pyramid schemes, etc etc.
January 13th, 2012 at 2:49 am K. Chang(Quote)
Neither is relevant to Zeekler’s compensation model.
Your opinion that our opinion is dodgy is in itself “dodgy” as you are trying to draw “hasty generalization”. Commission paid on SALES is legal, but is that what Zeekrewards actually do? Nope.
And you have a very active imagination. We both bust scams, that’s about as common as we get.
Spam (verb) = sending unsolicited advertisement messages
Unless you can prove that the messages posted are solicited, or are not advertisements, your argument is doomed.
Oh, sure, the “don’t you have something better to do” insult. Hilarious, dude, hilarious.
January 15th, 2012 at 7:16 am Tamas(Quote)
Read through all this interesting discussion. Also read through other reviews on this site. Quite interesting. While I have not read through all of the reviews on this site, I have an impression that this site is only for skeptic/negative/you name the right word reviews.
In the end, people conclude not to join any of the reviewed schemes. Once again, I have not read all reviews.
On an other note, about Zeek, I am in, and I can see a bit of confusion from the part of Oz, K Chang. While the VIP points are virtual points, they are not ever redeemed.
The VIP point balance is what the daily profit share is calculated upon. IF one has 1000 VIP points, then the average daily share of 1.4% will give 14$ profit shared, and this can be withdrawn anytime, if wished.
January 15th, 2012 at 8:42 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
@Tamas
I don’t choose what companies admins and owners launch, any negativity is a reflection the MLM industry at large and what types of companies those in it choose to launch.
And that’s where the investment comes from. How do you get VIP points? You have to purchase VIP bids.
The steps in the middle (giving them away) are irrelevant as the total end sum of the equation is
1. buy vip points.
2. earn a ROI on them.
Using ‘but you have to give the points away’ line is like saying you didn’t eat breakfast this morning, you
1. woke up
2. bought some bread
3. put it in the toaster
4. spread some butter on the warm toast
5. ate it
See, totally not the same as eating breakfast.
January 15th, 2012 at 12:16 pm M_Norway(Quote)
@Tamas
Is it possible to SELL the VIP Points to others if you like to quit?
Or are they “lost” or “confiscated” if you decide to quit?
VIP Points acts a some sort of “investment”, because you PAY real money for them and they’re also used to calculate daily Return of Investment, ROI.
If VIP Points are not redeemable then ROI will be much lower than in real investments until you “break even”, having withdrawn your initial investment as cash. Being able to sell VIP Points would have compensated partly for the loss of initial investment if someone wants to quit.
* As far as I can see, new investors pay real money for VIP Points, much like a permanent “contribution” to the company – never to be paid back to the investors? The only reason for people to pay this “contribution” is the promise of daily ROI.
* And as far as I can see, the company use these “contributions” from new investors to pay a daily ROI to all investors? Money has to come from somewhere, and the other sources of possible revenue doesn’t seem very active.
* And since the ROI is high, most of the investors will increase their “contribution” (reinvest daily ROI) to earn more money, before they start to withdraw more money than they have invested initially? The only motive for increasing the contribution is the promise of daily ROI.
This looks very similar to a Ponzi scheme, so the risk here is that those “contributions” from new investors may slow down, or the business may be shut down by authorities (if I have guessed right in relation to the different sources of revenue).
If they do use money from new investors to pay daily ROI then it isn’t a very good idea to join this now. This scheme seems to be close to a peak, where they eventually will have to reduce the daily ROI, and are also at risk of being shut down, leaving most of the investors with worthless VIP Points and an experience richer.
I may have guessed wrong in relation to how the daily ROI is generated, and also in relation to how close this scheme is to a peak. I’ll guess “time will tell” here, sometimes in the near future.
January 17th, 2012 at 11:51 am E_Nellie(Quote)
The other thing to consider is that the affiliates buy and give away A LOT of FREE bids and many people have posted videos and articles talking about how they won something for nothing. It’s enticing.
If you can sign up and get 250 bids – that’s a good start to play.
January 17th, 2012 at 11:56 am E_Nellie(Quote)
My sister’s colleague purchased $3500 worth of bids to get started in February of 2011. Her check for 1 week (the week before last in fact) was $3200. Her check for this past week was $5000. Not to mention all the other checks from when she started cashing out back in October.
She’s been able to buy a brand new roof and start remodeling their home. I’d definitely say she’s at least earned back her investment.
Her uncle (who got her started) who is a professor up North is earning $14,000/week. He, of course, started when ZR was launched. He gives away A LOT of bids and what he makes is nothing to sneeze at – even if it doesn’t last forever.
January 17th, 2012 at 12:00 pm E_Nellie(Quote)
One more thing, you don’t have to buy anything – if your repurchase is set at 100% that will be done for you and you need only pay the monthly subscription.
As the earnings compound daily more VIP points will be purchased automatically and the return will increase.
The brother of the colleague has NO ONE in his matrix. He’s a diamond and he posts ads. He’s not as high as she is but doing nicely.
January 17th, 2012 at 2:33 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
This doesn’t surprise me in the slightest and is indicative of how most members using Zeek are making their money. They’re giving their bids away to the company who are paying them out on commissions without actually giving these bids away to customers.
And with everyone giving their bids to Zeek themselves, who obviously don’t have some infinity queue of customers, where do you think these returns are coming from?
Both your sister’s colleague and her uncle have joined early and built up their VIP points over time… I hope they’re conscience is fine with the reality that their “commissions” have come from the new money being invested by those that joined after them.
It’ll truly be interesting to see if Zeek’s new attorneys make them scrap the giving away of points to the company who then *something something mumble mumble magic stuff happens here with wands and fairies* pay out a return.
January 17th, 2012 at 2:51 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
And regarding this whole Kevin Grimes compliance thing, the latest appears to be that the company is charging all members $4.95 ($9.95 after 14 days) to get certified complaint.
Lol, since when do companies charge members for compliance checking?
January 17th, 2012 at 4:11 pm K. Chang(Quote)
The question is who’s being compliant… the company, or the members?
January 17th, 2012 at
[...] K. Chang: "The question is who’s being compliant… the company, or the members?" [...]
January 18th, 2012 at 9:10 am M_Norway(Quote)
@E_Nellie
The most important question for people here shouldn’t be what others have earned, but if the business model here is able to continue to pay for several months if they join now.
A big red flag here is that most people tries to avoid analysing the business model, and instead focus only on current income / possible income. They don’t even analyse if this is a possible Ponzi scheme, or if it’s close to it’s peak – close to the point where they should avoid it as best as they can.
Most of the marketing I have seen here tries to attract new investors rather than customers. This will usually mean that they use money from new investors to pay old investors. Joining under such circumstances means the money you invest will be lost if recruitment slows down within a few months.
Most of the examples mentioned here have used 6-12 months to build up their VIP Points before they start to withdraw money. This means that this scheme must be able to continue for at least 1 year if you want to make any money here. They will also need an increasing supply of new investors willing to pay.
Sorry, I’m not able to believe in this scenario.
January 18th, 2012 at 2:11 pm K. Chang(Quote)
The more you look at ZeekRewards, the less sense it makes.
In all businesses, the idea is to take in more money than it spends, right? It’s called PROFIT.
Where does ZeekReward’s money come from? What is its income?
* There’s people buying bidpacks for $$$
* There’s profit from the penny auctions (it should turn a profit) but are these Zeekler’s income, or ZeekRewards?
* And there’s the monthly fees for the higher-level memberships
There’s this HUGE GRAY AREA where you don’t know which is the service (i.e. bids and such you’re selling) and which is the membership rewards, that’s why this is POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL PYRAMID SCHEME. It’s all mixed up, much like BPX and TVI Express.
January 19th, 2012 at 8:50 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Regarding the whole ‘but it’s not spam!’ thing, recently Zeek members were banned from advertising on Craig’s list and in the last few days also appear to have copped a ban from posting spam over at classifiedads.com.
Turns out major classified networks don’t fancy being nuked with copious amounts of duplicate content spam ads…
Whodathunkit?
January 20th, 2012 at 12:44 pm Gadi(Quote)
This has to be the most comprehensive post I found on the internet why to keep away from this ZeekRewards program.
At the end you’re dipping in the money for possible profits, with a HUGE risk that this cards tower will collapse before you know it.
January 20th, 2012 at 1:46 pm Jimmy(Quote)
Oz, I think the whole “get paid to advertise” part is slightly different than you’ve portrayed it here. I think the actual value derived from the ads is almost minimal, so it’s not that Zeek needs members to advertise to bring in more members, but that Zeek is convincing the gullible they are doing some that has real value, therefore they are entitled to a share of the profits.
If you look at the actual value of the work being done, and even if you suspend reality for a second and assume the daily profit share is real money, Zeek would be the stupidest business in the world to spend hundreds of thousands a day on spammy free classified ads.
If Zeek really wanted to advertise and attain real customers to the penny auction, they could easily hire an ad agency and get real ads. So the ad placement is just part of the scam to trick people into thinking they get something for almost no work.
I don’t think Zeek is relying on the ads to acquire new customers. They are relying on word-of-mouth/distributors like any other auto-surf.
January 20th, 2012 at 7:12 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
@Jimmy
I agree the value from the ads is minimal, you have Zeek members running around advising other members to place an ad a day and to avoid spam detection rules delete the old ad each day before you post the new one. Can you get any spammier than that?
Rather I was highlighting the sillyness of the act, which is essentially ‘spam the internet or you won’t get paid a return on your investment’.
January 21st, 2012 at 2:58 am Jimmy(Quote)
Zeek compliance department is telling everyone to take down all marketing materials that is not from corporate. This means all youtube videos, all blogs, articles, anything that talks about Zeek Rewards, daily profit share, any links to replicated sites that are not presented as part of corporate-provided marketing. You have to pay extra for the “marketing system”.
Even if you drank the kool-aid and wanted to promote this, now you can only do it by word of mouth and sending people to the corporate videos. I think what is happening is that corporate is losing control of people selling the investment scam.
At least within the high risk investment community, you know you’re investing in a scam, you just hope to cash out before the thing crashes. But now that they have so many MLM’ers from the more traditional product side learning about Zeek, these poor saps think any negative analysis vs. Zeek can be grouped in the same category as those who “just don’t get MLM” when all of the criticism is focused on the fake investment scheme.
I don’t understand how this could not end badly?
Perhaps the reason for the mandatory compliance training is so when the class action lawsuits hit after it crashes, the company can say “Hey, distributors knew it was not an investment, they even took a comprehensive compliance course, passed this test, and were certified. How could they not know this was not an investment and profits were not guaranteed?”
January 21st, 2012 at 3:54 am K. Chang(Quote)
At least this proves that ZeekRewards does *care* about keeping itself in business, doesn’t it? So it’s not a fly-by-night outfit that wants to grab money then disappear… Or is that the impression it wants to give?
If MLM doesn’t rein it its reps it CAN be charged with with false representation and other things. The Texas Attorney General went after Mannatech for “allowing” its reps make unsubstantiated claims about how their products have all sorts of miraculous benefits, like treat variety of diseases, and that was like many years ago.
It’s clear that some promoters of ZeekRewards have been making bogus claims that forced the company’s hand. The question is… how effective will this be? Will ZeekRewards terminate those who left their bogus ads on? What if it was zombified and revived by spam video sites and such? Whose fault is it then?
The company shares fault in ALLOWING the stuff to get out of hand in the first place, but at least it seem to be trying to do the right thing. Overall, slightly positive.
January 21st, 2012 at 4:44 am M_Norway(Quote)
@K.Chang
I believe the intention here is more like “let’s cover our own asses”. The marketing compliance is only a part of all those red flags here. The biggest red flag is how the money paid as “daily interests” are generated, if they’re generated from “investors” or from “customers”.
ZeekRewards seems to be close to it’s peak. Doing some efforts to make the marketing become more compliant will probably reduce the recruitment of new investors, and thus also reduce the “daily interests” Zeek will be able to pay – if I have identified the revenue model correctly.
When an opportunity starts to “cover their own asses” it will raise even more red flags for an investor. Usually it will mean that they’re not able to continue with the terms and conditions they had initially, and also that the chances of loosing money on the investment have increased.
I don’t think this is “slightly positive” for most investors?
January 21st, 2012 at 6:22 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Given that Zeek will happily put you into a queue to give your bids away to a company generated customer, but still take those bids off your hands and pay you a return on your investment before they’ve actually given the bids away to anyone – I think the answer is obvious.
January 21st, 2012 at 8:24 am K. Chang(Quote)
Ah, but what exactly is an “investor” here? If we mean the participants of ZeekRewards, then they are going to view it as a slightly positive. We on the outside would question why does a company needed to “rein in” any reps to START WITH.
By “slightly”, I mean like on the level of 1-2%, hardly significant. They have a huge negative balance to start.
January 21st, 2012 at 1:38 pm Jimmy(Quote)
@K.Chang
Your analysis on this is backwards. It is not in the interest of the investor, where investor is the person who buys VIP bids and depends on daily profit share for profit.
The entire revenue model depends on getting more investors. So if the compliance restrictions no longer allow you to recruit effectively, fewer investors = less incoming revenue = less profit share.
My assessment on why they have the compliance is all to cover their legal behinds. They are getting ready for when the company cannot provide the same daily profit share and distributors start shouting “scam”.
Now, here is the part that is different from the autosurf industry. Instead of just taking the money and running and shutting down, I think what Zeek will do is just lower the profit share. They will start paying out a profit share of 0.5% or 0.4% or 0.3% and just let the virtual currency evaporate on its own. That way they can claim legally they are not a scam.
You see the difference here? Instead of just promoting an investment with equity and a return like the autosurfs, Zeek is going way out of its way to emphasize, disclaim, and make you sign agreements on everything you do (i.e. when you send in a check you have to sign a document saying you agree ‘is not a “deposit” or “investment” and cannot be “withdrawn”‘). Now they role out the mandatory compliance (for a fee).
So when the money game collapses, instead of just shutting down and vanishing (which would be illegal and result in criminal prosecution), they instead pay back the daily profit just like they always have. But the rate, which they emphasize over and over again is variable and not guaranteed, starts dropping to some small amount as to reduce the actual equity available to investors to some fraction of what was originally put in.
Some people with large balances will still make money. Say you built your balance from 1000 to 100,000. Even a rate of 0.3%, you can still cash out about $30k. But since it is a pyramid, all the NEW investors who have not built their balances up over 3x the original investment, they will all be victims.
I predict Zeek may make some other changes to extend the life of the money-game. They might change the 90-day expiration period to a longer period, so they can drip feed a much lower profit share. They can offer promotions such as “deposit money and receive 2x in points”. Or “deposit money during St. Patrick’s Day week and receive a lucky multiplier on your points”. They can keep adding new variations to get people to add more money and extend the game longer, but each variation will just increase the number of points.
This paragraph is all speculation (I began with “I predict”), but I offer this as a warning to any investors reading this… if you start seeing this behavior it’s the beginning of the end. Cash out before everyone else does, so you stay ahead of the curve.
January 21st, 2012 at 2:41 pm M_Norway(Quote)
@Jimmy
I had exactly the same prediction, even if I didn’t post it. I didn’t have all the details either, but the main prediction was exactly the same = a continously lower daily percentage paid to investors.
Investors may still be able to attract new investors for a period of time, based on the previous results. Often people forget to calculate the examples of income they see, and they may accept old income examples for a period of time. The effect here will probably be more gradually than immidiate.
I have had a few dialogues on forums with a few people experienced in investment schemes. They usually will try to withdraw their initial investment at some point, rather than be “all in” all the time. They also tries to detect any trouble before it starts to affect their investments, and are usually out of the game with most of their investments when the scheme collapses. “Timing is everything” is their most common advise. More unexperiencd investors are usually “all in”, mostly because they’re getting “the thrill of their lifetime” rather than money.
January 27th, 2012 at 6:25 pm Tom's(Quote)
I will reexamine your predictions six months from now and if not a single sign shows that you are correct…I will demand an apology for making me gullible of your words. But if you are right, then I will give you a big hug. Sounds fair?
February 1st, 2012 at
[...] ZeekRewards Review: SPAM, Penny Auctions & MLM [...]
February 4th, 2012 at 4:10 am David(Quote)
Actually, no. As someone who is hired by these large companies these plans are legal and require much effort.
February 4th, 2012 at 4:22 am David(Quote)
I am part of the organization as well as a consultant with a few large MLM organizations online. Zeek and any other MLM must follow strict rules or be shut down.
For 14 years the company has had some failures, but it has had more successes. While I am not a member of the opportunities and companies I consult for, I am only a member here. I do love the program and it does work, but there is work to be done.
If I went around yelling SCAM! all day long, I might as well have a 9-5 job and forget about any dream that I might have. On the contrary though, I have taken the dream into reality online through many multiple streams of income, this being one of them.
It can be done here no matter what a nay sayer believes. Nay sayers fail before they begin. I enjoy promoting not only opportunities online, but my own products and services and that of others…it’s not the fact that we buy stuff everyday, it’s where we buy stuff.
I have seen many SCAM reports online, even Mr. MLM Watchdog, remember, they are still people promoting something in the end no matter what their site is about, even this one.
This site is about REVERSE MARKETING to Quibids is all…nothing more, nothing less than someone grabbing our attention to what they want us to focus on, and a good job they are doing.
God Bless…
February 4th, 2012 at 7:57 am K. Chang(Quote)
You’re mixing up Zeekler and ZeekRewards. Just based on that I wouldn’t bothering hiring you as you can’t even keep your facts straight.
Oh, sure, accuse others of being a competitor just because they wrote something you perceive as “negative”. it’s standard pseudo-science tactics used by Creationists and Holocaust deniers.
February 4th, 2012 at 8:26 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
@David
Any company that focuses on a business model that pays out commissions for recruiting is most definitely not legal (in most countries).
Stop giving crappy advice to these companies you claim are hiring you (please drop some names).
So your “dream” is to actively participate in scams, cool.
Lol, with this kind of intelligence I severely doubt you consult for any company (other than in your own mind).
Quibids? I don’t even know what that is (without a Google search).
But no please, continue participating in your scams and claiming they aren’t illegal recruit scams.
(note the complete lack of concrete rebuttal to any of Zeek Rewards’ shortcomings in his comment – just a load of waffle and the good ol’ ‘waaah you just work for ‘xxx’ company’ tactic).
February 5th, 2012 at 1:32 am K. Chang(Quote)
And you are basing your opinion on what cases or laws, exactly?
I am basing my amateur opinion on explanation by Grimes and Reese, Gerald Nehra, and the American FTC. Who are you basing your opinion on? Care to cite them? I’ll cite mine when you do.