My Fun Life Review: $21 travel recruitment scheme

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My Fun Life operate in the MLM travel niche and are based out of Idaho in the US.

The company is headed up by Dan Edwards, who serves as My Fun Life’s Chairman of the Board and CEO.

In his executive bio, My Fun Life claims Edwards is

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an accomplished Direct Sales & Marketing professional.

His business experience encompasses over 26 years in strategic planning for direct sales organizations and corporate ownership responsibilities as President/CEO for several companies.

Despite a purported “26 years in strategic marketing for direct sales organisations”, I was unable to find any specific information on Edward’s involvement in the MLM industry prior to My Fun Life.

Read on for a full review of the My Fun Life MLM business opportunity. [Read the rest of this entry...]

iMobile Innovations Review: Straight-line shares?

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iMobile Innovations operate in the mobile communications MLM niche and are based out of New York in the US.

The company is headed up by CEO Patrick Fenton, with his iMobile Innovations corporate bio stating:

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Hiring a personal business coach and mentor at age 23, Patrick has been a student of personal development, sales and leadership training his entire career.

He spent over a decade as an internationally recognized sales and motivational speaker; performing 96 live events per year in his 9 year speaking career and was sponsored nationally by ABN Amro Bank, Citibank and Flagstar Bank.

In 2008, Patrick founded Cellthisproperty; one of the early pioneers of text message marketing in the United States.

From 2009 to present, Patrick has designed and created world-class mobile media software, designed and created Imobile Innovations seminar/social sharing business model and secured relationships in the financial markets to effectively launch imobile Innovations.

I wasn’t able to find any involvement in an MLM company by Fenton at an executive level, so iMobile Innovations appears to be his first attempt at running an MLM company.

Read on for a full review of the iMobile Innovations MLM business opportunity. [Read the rest of this entry...]

eXfuze Review: Multi-botanical beverages

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eXfuze launched in early 2008 and are based out of Florida in the US. The company is headed up by Co-founder and Chairman, Rick Cotton.

On his eXfuze corporate bio, Cotton (bottom right) is credited with having

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involvement of nearly 10 years abroad with a non-profit ministry developing businesses and programs to benefit the mission, and overseeing all Latin American operations.

Rick Cotton has served in more than 10 countries and has a strong command of culture, language and international business.

On the MLM side of things, I’m not sure if it’s the same guy but a Rick Cotton was President of something called “Viva Toxic Free”. I wasn’t really able to find out much on that opportunity, other than it seems to have been active between 2007 and 2011.

Like eXfuze, Viva Toxic Free was also based out of Florida however there’s not a whole lot of information out there on it. Possibly just a co-incidence, a charity division of eXfuze appears on the company website by the name of VivaKids. Rick Cotton is credited on the page as being the co-founder of VivaKids.

I wasn’t able to get any further information on the VivaKids Foundation as the website was not responsive at the of publication.

In any case, other than possibly being involved in Viva Toxic Free, Rick Cotton doesn’t appear to have any other history within the MLM industry.

Read on for a full review of the eXfuze MLM business opportunity. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Lyoness corporate webinar spells out Ponzi scheme

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When I sat down to initially review Lyoness (the European version), I spent a few days trying to get my head around material that was obviously never written to be fully comprehended by your average MLM affiliate.

When Lyoness launched in the US, they sought to remedy this by releasing slightly less confusing business model material. Not as clear-cut as it could have been, but enough for me to suss it out and put out a Lyoness review.

In my review I identified the primary revenue source that had contributed to the initial success of Lyoness in Europe and their subsequent worldwide expansion.

That source?

An affiliate-funded investment scheme, where affiliates invest in “accounting units” and after a fixed number of new units have been invested in, Lyoness pay out affiliates a cash ROI.

All monies are deposited with and paid out by Lyoness, isolating the scheme from the merchant shopping network.

That of course doesn’t stop the company burying the scheme in mountains of “earn cashback by shopping” literature, which the companies affiliates are all too happy to run around the internet promoting.

With now over 1000+ comments on the BehindMLM review fleshing out the AU investment scheme (including the reluctant admission that it functions as a Ponzi scheme by some Lyoness affiliates), some affiliates still don’t see it, or probably more accurately, refuse to see it.

Despite the review citing  the official Lyoness US compensation plan material itself, evidently there’s still a great deal of confusion amongst Lyoness affiliates as to what the business is actually about.

Evidently I’m not the only one to observe this, with Lyoness feeling the need to put together an official corporate webinar to lay out the compensation plan and business model in detail.

So here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth: The Lyoness Accounting Unit Investment Scheme. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Total Life Changes Review: $40 mandatory autoship?

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Total Life Changes operate in the nutrition and skincare MLM niche and is headed up by CEO and founder Jack Fallon.

I’ve seen multiple references to Total Life Changes being launched in 1999, however the current branding of the company seems to only have taken place early last year. Prior to that Total Life Changes was primarily marketed through SeAcai, which was promoted as a “division” of the company.

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The rebranding of the company back to Total Life Changes appears to coincide with an effort to broaden the company’s product offering.

I wasn’t able to find an MLM history for Fallon prior to 1999 so I’m not sure if he was involved in any other MLM companies prior to founding Total Life Changes.

Read on for a full review of the Total Life Changes MLM business opportunity. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Rippln Compensation Plan v2.0 Review

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Back in April Rippln went public with a compensation plan that paid affiliates to recruit new free and paid affiliates. In order to qualify for these commissions, affiliates had to upgrade to either a “Domestic” or “Global” affiliate.

At the time it was explained that Domestic affiliates would be able to earn on those recruited within their country of residence, and Global affiliates were able to earn globally.

These commissions were earnt via a pass-up system, with affiliate fees being passed up to a new affiliate’s upline.

Mobile app commissions were also briefly mentioned, however no specific information was provided.

Shortly after details were released on the initial compensation plan were released and the BehindMLM Rippln review went up, lawyers were called in and the entire compensation plan was retracted.

That was a month and a half ago and since then over 700,000 affiliates have signed on with no clue on just how exactly anybody is going to earn commissions.

Last night Rippln finally addressed these concerns and held a webinar to lay out their new revised compensation plan.

Read on to learn exactly what Rippln affiliates are going to have to do to make money. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Bidify abandon the US, move operations to Europe

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When we last checked in on the MLM business side of Bidify, the company had undergone several compensation plan revisions and finally settled on what was still a primarily affiliate-funded ROI scheme.

Slightly different from Zeek Rewards model, it was seen more as a grey area that worked loopholes in that the possibility for affiliates to get paid on retail customers was present.

Due to the way the overall compensation plan had been structured and the type of affiliates the company had already attracted (mostly Zeek Rewards refugees), that scenario was highly unlikely.

Sure enough Bidify’s v2.0 compensation plan changes flopped with the company failing to gain any ground on attracting genuine retail customers to it’s Bidsson penny auction business.

Bidsson’s former CEO Albert Liske publicly declaring the company to be a Ponzi scheme didn’t help either. Nor did the February 11th “amicable resolution” reached between Liske and Bidify, the details of which were never made public.

Since then Bidify has struggled to gain any attraction and as I understand it business operations have ground to a complete halt. Seemingly looking to reinvigorate things came the unexpected press release yesterday announcing that Bidify were

getting ready for the full launch of everything we have been working really hard on for the last months.

Both sites will be taken down for MAJOR UPDATES the 3rd of June, and will stay offline until we go live.

Details of what Bidify management have been up to haven’t been released yet but one additional tidbit of information was made public today:

Bidify are abandoning operations in the US. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Norway launches World Ventures investigation

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Launched during the heyday of the recruitment driven travel membership company boom a few years back, World Ventures is one of the few such remaining MLM companies still operating today.

On the MLM side of things World Ventures affiliates can only earn commissions by signing up new affiliates and collecting commissions on the monthly fees they pay. As such, as is typical with travel niche MLM companies what you wind up with is a company full of affiliates mass-recruiting, with little to no attention paid to travel side of the business.

Not at all surprising when you consider that the travel side of the business has pretty much nothing to do with revenue flow inside the company.

Facing what can only be assumed must be a resurfacing of World Ventures in Norway, local authorities have announced the launch of an investigation into the company. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Uptown Offers Review: Daily Deals & profit-share

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There is no information on the UpTown Offers website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The Uptown Offers website domain (“uptownoffers.com”) was registered on the 5th of May 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.

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Also hosted on the UpTown Offers hosting server is the website for BizCustomers (domain registration also set to private).

BizCustomers sold customers to affiliates of the failed GoFunRewards MLM opportunity. Earlier this month GoFunRewards shut down their US operations citing legal concerns with their revenue-sharing compensation plan.

Three videos for BizCustomers appear on YouTube under the account “Devon Crawford”.

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A woman (presumably Crawford) voices the videos, making numerous references to “our business” and “our website”.

A woman’s voice featured on a recent May 27th Uptown Offers affiliate call, however  it doesn’t appear to be the same voice (I’m not 100% sure) as featured on Devon Crawford’s BizCustomer videos.

As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money. [Read the rest of this entry...]

TVI Express affiliates arrested in Egypt

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Despite the arrest of TVI Express CEO and owner Tarun Trikha in India last month, the company’s website remains operational with affiliates elsewhere in the world continuing to promote the scheme.

Fortunately, so too is the continuation efforts by law-enforcement agencies in prohibiting the proliferation of one of the longest standing pyramid schemes in MLM history. [Read the rest of this entry...]