How Zeek Rewards can achieve compliance overnight
Over the past few weeks there’s been a lot of speculation as to what Zeek Rewards plans for compliance are.
Along with announcing that they were going to force all members to undergo a compliance course (at cost to their members), Zeek also made a big deal about the partnerships they’d gotten into with a bunch of lawyers – presumably in an attempt to assure their members that they were serious about the business addressing its compliance issues.
The latest news is that Zeek Rewards have banned any and all promotional material not authored by the company themselves, with the company threatening to terminate the accounts of any members who break this rule.
That and under the name ‘Zeek Squad’, the company is actively enrolling its own members to police the internet and report Zeek Rewards members they find breaking Zeek’s new compliance rules.
One thing you’ll notice is that, despite Zeek Rewards’ business model essentially operating as an investment scheme, rather than address why this is by going over their own business model, Zeek instead have cracked down on its members.
Members who, upon joining the company and working within the business model Zeek use, are simply advertising the Zeek Rewards business opportunity for what it is.
I’m no lawyer with a fancy degree, nor am I member of Zeek Rewards (you don’t have to be to understand any analyze the business model), but it strikes me that with a few simple changes, Zeek Rewards could not only ensure complete and total compliance from its members – but simultaneously put to rest the main problems critics have with the business model.
1. Publish the daily revenue generated by the Penny Auctions
Zeek Rewards claim to pay their members a share of the total revenue the company makes from its penny auctions (through Zeekler), on a day-to-day basis.
The problem?
As it stands there’s no transparency and members have no idea what the revenue being generated is.
When you consider that Zeek Reward’s daily profit share payouts have been suspiciously consistent despite the fluctuating nature one would think penny auctions have, there’s a strong case that Zeek Rewards are not paying out a profit share based on the penny auction revenue at all.
This could easily be remedied via the publishing of the revenue generated in the penny auctions. Furthermore this would serve as proof that people are actually using the penny auctions and allow members to pro-rata calculate where they stand in the company, based on their vip bid share of the profit pool.
And before anyone suggests that this is confidential information, to them I say hogwash!
Hundreds, if not thousands of MLM companies (Ok so I don’t know exactly how many MLM companies are out there today) utilise a bonus pool which is a percentage of the total global revenue generated (usually by sales) of the company.
Furthermore, seeing as the success of the penny auction side of things is irrefutable proof that Zeekler’s penny auctions are a roaring success, one would think the company would be all too willing to announce to members what the total daily revenue generated by the penny auctions is.
Not only that, but the reporting of the daily revenue generated would easily allow members to quantify what their share of vip points earns them on a daily basis and effectively stop member’s advertising based on speculation and promised returns.
Being able to say ‘I have xxx points and I earnt $xx from a total daily revenue share of $xx’ is much more compliant than ‘I invested $xx and Zeek paid me a return of $xx from an unknown daily profit share that may or may not have just been the daily real money Zeek members invested into the system’.
Keep in mind of course that it’s legally frowned upon to use proof of income as an advertising tool, but I digress.
2. STOP accepting members VIP bids and paying them a return BEFORE you’ve even given the bids away
As it stands, I can join Zeek Rewards, invest in some VIP bids, give the bids back to the company and enjoy a daily return on my investment immediately (provided I spam the internet with Zeekler ads of course).
This happens whether or not Zeek Rewards has even given away the points I’ve given it and is cause for serious concern over the legitimacy of the Zeek Rewards program.
After all, how on Earth can one receive a return when the bids they’re supposed to be receiving a return on haven’t even been given away yet?
Furthermore it’s unrealistic to suggest that over time, as each and every Zeek Rewards member’s VIP point balance incrementally increases, that Zeek Rewards can continue to give away enough points to customers they are supposedly generating on behalf of their members.
Infact, it would go a long way compliance wise if Zeek Rewards just did away with this component of their business model all together.
And why not? I mean, Zeek Rewards and Zeekler harp on about how important customers are to their business model right? So why not make their members share in the profit pool be reliant on how many customers they are able to generate and give VIP points away to?
There are absolutely no checks and balances as to how out of control Zeek Reward’s VIP point balance is vs. the actual points they give out on a day-to-day basis.
And as far as Zeek’s members go, the uncomfortable truth is that as long as the daily revenue returns are paid, they don’t seem to be interested in where the bids go they give Zeek and whether or not they’re ever eventually even given out.
If the company stops paying out returns on points it hasn’t given away, or better yet stops accepting member’s bids without any checks or balances, it would be hard to suggest that Zeek Rewards are simply paying out a profit share based on the money members are investing in VIP bids.
Like I said, I’m not a compliance lawyer with a fancy degree but if I was approached to give my opinion regarding compliance over the Zeek Rewards scheme, the above two points would appear to be no-brainers.
Best of all they require changes on the company end and don’t directly disrupt the activity of Zeek Rewards’ members. Let alone leave them worried about having their accounts terminated because a fellow member reported them because they got a little too creative with their marketing efforts.
To Paul Burks and the rest of Zeek Rewards management: I’m doing you a favour here and I’m not even going to charge you for it. If you want compliance in the Zeek Rewards programs the above two changes will guarantee it and silence your critics once and for all.
The ball is in your court guys.
I personally can’t fault a company that is openly transparent about where the daily profit share comes from and how much it is, nor can I fault a company that requires its members to attract genuine retail customers and only pays them a return once the points they’ve given away have actually been spent in Zeekler’s penny auctions.
Can you?
They aint no Public Company traded on an Exchange so they do not have to disclose anything to anybody except to the IRS or to a Judge to requires info
You aint no Lawyer,obviously . Requiring members to recruit members in order to share into the Company profit pool join with turn Zeekrewards into a Pyramid scam right off the bat
Irrelevant. Nobody said they had to, but if they want to prove they are actually generating profit, making it public is one way to do so.
As far as I can see there’s no negatives. It’s not like their penny auction success in dollar amounts should be kept confidential…unless of course they’re a scam.
That’s why I said customers and not members. You remember what customers are right? Or have you been giving your bids away to Zeek for so long you’ve forgotten?
You dream ,sir. let me check my ad yesterday at ClassifiedGiant
ok here it is
The Zeek ads I see all over the place go along the same lines.Push the the stuff you can win if you take a risk or many others offer free bids.That is it .No investments, no percentages
Is that the ad Zeek Rewards force you to post or otherwise?
You yourself admitted you were lured by income opportunity advertising and not by the penny auctions spam.
Seriously, who goes to classified websites to learn about penny auctions?
Well of course they do, you’re all publishing to the same places and are only allowed to use Zeek Rewards approved copy.
What is or isn’t mentioned doesn’t change how the Zeek Rewards business works. And of course investment etc. isn’t mentioned, that’s what all this compliance crap is about – stopping members from advertising Zeek Rewards for what it is, an investment scheme.
Not because it isn’t, but so that the authorities don’t come knocking and shut down the scam.
You said yourself thousands of MLM companies use the revenue sharing concept but Zeek shouldn’t. Aren’t you a little biased against them ? why them and not Zeek.Flawed argument BIG TIME
Said companies have demonstratable sales and products. They catagorically state that the revenue is from the gross retail sales (or commissionable sales) of their products and they state how much it is before they split it.
And if they don’t state it, it’s easily calculatable reverse pro-rata based on your shares in the pool, the total members eligible and what you receive.
Furthermore you cannot participate in the bonus pool by generating imaginary sales. Imaginary sales in the sense that you are purchasing product from the company and giving it back to the company and they are allowing you to participate in the profit pool before you’ve generated any actual sales (which is what giving your VIP bids back to Zeek Rewards in exchange for a return is).
Zeek keep the total revenue from the penny auctions figure a secret and do not reveal what the total pool is.
Why? Because the revenue pool has nothing to do with the revenue from the penny auctions.
this discussion is turning rather pointless and unprofitable for both of us (actually not you I am sure this discussion has increased your traffic)
If you want to (Dont want to spam you ) I can send you my Zeekler affiliate link via your contact page .Sign up and Zeekler will deposit in your account a bunch of free bids.
They are actually auctioning right now a $20,000 Brand New Ford Mustang and last I looked It was bidding at only 820$ .Who knows,OZ you might walk away with it and thank me for years to come.Just say the word and my link will be on the way.
or you might get addicted to the Auctions and I get a 20% cut of all bid packs you buy from ever and ever. Nice,Uhh
So unable to push the ‘Zeek Rewards is not a scam’ line anymore – now you’re going to try and recruit me?
…seriously?
Why not, I am a Zeek sales agent. That is my job.Not offering you an Investment “Opportunity” not percentages or nothing. Since I am only Silver level I can only offer you 50 Bids but you can go online to ClassifiedGiant or anywhere else and sign up with the Golds.
they will give you up to 500 bids then go on Zeeler and try to win the Mustang or go for 50$ in cash or whatever. you might actually win somethong and come to love Zeekler 🙂
No thanks, as a consumer there’s nothing in it for me. Penny auctions are a load of garbage.
Just like Sportsbooks,Lotteries and Casinos but that doesn’t stop “consumers” from losing Billions of dollars a month to them .Are then Casinos scams? People lose their moneys and have their Lives destroyed by them.
Would that qualify them as Scam or what? People lose big time to them
When a Casino uses a MLM compensation plan, please refer me to it and we can discuss them here all you want.
Till then, stop attempting to shift the focus from Zeek.
What casinos do and don’t do, or are and are not has nothing to do with Zeek Rewards.
with oz permission here is my Classifiedgiant ad for today on the Zeekrewards “Scam Investment” Opportunity
Sounds spammy Oz? or is it just good old American Hyped up advertising( By the way ,it ain’t company approved. 🙂 I just made it up)
Of course, the “free bids” you are given for joining are not usable in any of the promos. You need to buy premium bids to bid in those auctions.
Zeek Rewards forces distributors to give VIP bids (the premium $1 bids), and in turn hands out free bids (the cheap bids that can only be used to win small prizes). You are not even given away dollar-for-dollar the same type of bids.
So a pro-Zeekler supporter might say – see, there is the revenue model right there, generating real business because a new retail customer has to buy VIP bids to participate in the premium auctions.
But you need to look further. If you buy $100 in VIP bids, the person you referred you gets 100 VIP points plus 20% commission. So Zeek is giving away $120 in virtual points for $100 in retail business, plus the daily profit share on top of that 120 virtual points, and the 10% of the daily profit share that the distributor’s sponsor receives, and 5% of the daily profit share for the distributor’s sponsor’s sponsor, and so on.
So even if you believed that the retail profits were significant, the business model fails anyways because more points are given than actual dollars received, and today the assumption by all distributors is 1 VIP point = $1 cash.
What will be a shocker to all Zeek distributors is when they see the virtual points all get devalued. And this is the best case scenario. The worse case scenario is Zeek just stops paying, like Ricochet Riches.
Sounds like a dare, Oz. I thought we outgrew those back in elementary school.
Oz, as I had analyzed before in that other ZeekRewards post, out of six ways to get paid, five are probably legal (if they work as advertised), but the last one is very likely to be illegal as it involves NO retailing, but it DOES require recruiting. THAT is what ZeekRewards should be focusing their compliance on.
IMHO, this “giving away VIP bids” procedure is merely a distraction. The potentially illegal angle is the part of ZeekRewards compensation plan where you recruit people and get paid for it without retailing them anything. (i.e. Matrix Payout).
Again, if ZeekRewards simply PAY commission on posting ads (they would know the click-thru ratio for each ad posted and pay accordingly) we wouldn’t be having this discussion. It’s this “matrix payout” that gets it into potential compliance problems. It is NOT NECESSARY.
Your math is wrong.You are assuming here 100% Distribution of profits that of course is unsustainable. Zeek states that only 50% of profits are distributed to the sales agents
@Stewar, you just argued against yourself. If Zeek is only distributing 50% of. Case c profits, how can they pay out 120% on retail VIP purchases? This is before any compunded daily profitsharing. A month ago they were paying 220% !!
You just proved this is unsustainable, even without even considering the daily profit share. Case closed.
convinced me Jimmy setting Repurchase percentage to 0 %
should be out out with my 200$ in 6 weeks a 100% return in 3 months.Guess is not as easy if you have 15000 bids in there.oh well the blessings of being dead broke
@stewar, why does it matter whether someone has 150 bids, 15k bids, or 150k bids? The time it takes to convert bids to cash is the same no matter the amount. The risk you and ever distributor takes is that the rate stays high enough to cash out profitably when you decide to cash out.
do not think my cashing out my 300 bids will force Zeek to lower the daily payout to .3% Quite a different story if someone tries to cash out a 30,000 bid bank. It is NOT the same
@stewear, how do you know how what the current point balance is across all distributors? If there are 180,000 distributors, a 30k bid bank has no impact. And any impact would not be felt instantaneously since it takes 90-days to withdrawal all your money.
Also, the rate is uniform for all users regardless of whether you have 300 bids or I have 30k bids. If you start withdrawing your 300 bids, and I withdraw my 30k or anyone else withdraws their 30k, using your example, you suffer the same impact, if any, as all distributors receive the same rate. So you shouldn’t feel any safer with your 300 bids as the rate depends on the overall withdrawal rate vs. incoming revenue across all distributors. Your small piece of the pie isn’t given any special treatment.
right you got me again,jimmy 🙂 you are too smart for your own good 🙂
I have to agree with the two points raised in this article, if zeek did do these two things, then it would seriously increase it’s credibility.
I am a zeek member, and (like most I imagine) I am a happy zeek member.
It may well be the case that zeek is simply recycling the money used to buy new bids each day and running a ponzi scheme in the guise of something else, even if this is the case, with a simple strategy you can give yourself a chance of a decent re occurring, fairly passive income from them.
I have personally already cashed about 4 times what I have put into zeek and I currently make about the grand total of what I put in to get started every day or two, also I use the earnings to pay the membership so it is a nice, free, painless way to make some easy money for me.
I should say that my ‘day job’ is a poker player, so my main thing is calculated risk. In my personal opinion based on my results and the results of those who have used my strategy (some my downlines some just people I have got speaking to) zeek has a tremendous risk/reward ratio.
Did all conversation on this tangent just stop in February?
@Steve in Arizona
There is lots of discussion on other Zeek topics (search for “Zeek” in the search bar). The discussion probably stopped here because the compliance course that Zeek had promised would be available Feb 1, then Mar 1, and now…. still no word on when the compliance courses will be available.
Zeek compliance has been quietly behind the scenes deactivating or threatening to deactivate non-compliant affiliates. However, I have noticed their actions to not be consistent across the board.
There are many non-compliant sites still up and the accounts not deactivated despite myself and others having sent notification to Zeeklers compliance and via the ZeekSquad process.
You are incredible! And just who are you to tell Zeekler that they, a private company, needs to publicize their earnings?
The only people who seem to have problems with Zeekler are those outsiders looking in. I’ve yet to speak to, or hear from, anyone at all in Zeekler who is anything other than wildly enthusiastic about all things Zeek! We are having fun, making money, and enjoying life!
Some people just can’t stand to observe success and enjoy other people’s happy days! And why must you remain anonymous? What exactly are YOU hiding? You make people ID themselves to comment, but you, the resident guru of this disappointing online rag, won’t tell anyone who you are, or what your qualifications are.
You state that your information “should stand on it’s own.” But you could be making all of this up! And you refuse to correctly acknowledge the FACT that as Zeekler becomes aware of issues with legality, or even borderline issues, they let ALL the affiliates know, and they correct the issue!
Agreed that the compliance course was significantly delayed, but it is up now, as well as a great deal of other training material.
Of course you, as a non-affiliate, should not be privy to that information. As a matter of fact, ALL your information must be second hand!
Someone who demands transparency and accountability when it comes to MLM and Zeek Rewards claims regarding the consistency of the profit pool.
There are a few members here who have voiced concerns, got your blinkers on do you?
Also the vast majority of Zeek Rewards members seem to be quite happy to suspend their disbelieve as long as they get paid.
For those of us who aren’t lured in by dollars, analysis of the business model has long confirmed cause for concern.
You’re welcome to verify any information published here yourself and draw your own conclusions (as I do when publishing my opinion on matters). Provided you contribute something constructive, it’s a relatively open discussion.
Their earnings are in excess of 117 million for 2011 if their IDS can be trusted. It’s not that much of a secret. the question is what proportion is from “real” customers who buy and use bids, thus generating profit, and what are members buying bids hoping to prop up their VIP Profit share. As the latter could make them a Ponzi scheme, albeit a very sophisticated one.
In other words, you all got “true believer” syndrome? Or are you all ostriches burying your heads in the sand? Because it means the same thing. You didn’t debate the issue at all. Red herring!
The standard “you don’t understand us” excuse, specifically the “sour grapes” variant. That’s your opinion, which accounts for little.
Ah, the standard ‘show your face’ demand, completely ignoring the evidence and analysis but instead trying to debate the IDENTITY of the debater. Another red herring!
That proves you didn’t read the article at all. This article is about asking ZR fr some transparency to PROVE it’s not a Ponzi scheme, something every MLM loves to do, and indeed have entire department for. Just ask Gerald Nehra, one of the lawyers ZR hired… He used to be head of compliance at Amway.
They were discussed in other posts. And so far, the changes appears to be mostly cosmetic. There is no fundamental change in business model, or even acknowledging that the criticism may be real. Instead, they have you out there hurling random insults.
The issue is and this is a question for Jimmy – how sustainable is this model if it is a ‘ponzi’ – ie what potentially is the lifespan before it falls over
The only people that know that for sure are those running the scheme with access to the backend. Note that there’s a huge conflict of interest here because most of the company’s management are actively participating in the Zeek Rewards themselves as affiliates.
This pretty much explains the overall lack of transparency and deliberate vagueness in the dissemination of information through official Zeek Rewards channels that could potentially look negative.
All anyone else can do (members or otherwise) is look for tell tale signs and trends that have hit other Ponzi schemes before they inevitably collapsed.
Zeek’s recent payout and banking problems are no secret. Neither are are the uncertainties of offshore processesing that currently exist or the complete neglect of their Zeekler auction system (people not receiving their “winnings” for months on end and counting), which they allegedly rely on to generate revenue.
On the other hand if you’re merely fishing for investment advice on when to pull your money out of Zeek Rewards before it collapses, this isn’t the place to ask for it.
Ponzi scheme die two ways:
1) Government regulators hit it with a “cease and desist” and freeze all the bank accounts
2) The scheme was “squeezed” when the money being taken out exceeds the money coming in.
Think about what did ZeekRewards did in March… that’ll tell you that’s what they are afraid of. They are not afraid of the other possibility… just yet.