4-color-gold-logoThe pairing of business cards and a MLM income opportunity isn’t a new thing and done properly the combination kind of makes sense. Business cards advertise a business and MLM is all about marketing right?

I suppose at the end of the day it really comes down to what you yourself are advertising through your business cards.

If it’s a viable product or service with an income opportunity attached then fair enough.

If it’s an income opportunity itself though… well, then you might just have a problem.

Read on for a full review of the 4 Color Gold MLM opportunity.

The Company

Both 4 Color Gold and CFA Printing are owned by the ‘Cash Flow Alliance’ however the companies are run separately, with 4 ColorGold appearing to act as the marketing arm for the CFA Printing business.

All 3 companies appear to be operating out of Fresno, California in the US.

Cash Flow Alliance don’t appear to have a website (cashflowalliance.com is registered however it is a parked domain) and no specific information is provided on either the 4 Color Gold or CFA Printing websites about who owns or is running Cash Flow Alliance.

The CFA Printing website domain is registered simply to Cash Flow Alliance but lists a one Mr. Jeff Crane as the ‘Administrative Contact’. Pending any further information turning up, Jeff Crane appears to be the owner and operator of Cash Flow Alliance and 4 Color Gold.

The Cash Flow Alliance’s previous business adventures include the ‘International Financiers Business Association’ (IFBA), which was advertised way back in 2004 as a ‘profit share’ program and appears to be now defunct.

Another failed Cash Flow Alliance opportunity includes something called ’10k21days’, which dates back to around 2009.

The 4 Color Gold Product Line

4 Color Gold themselves don’t have a product but instead offer commissions through their sister company ‘CFA Printing’.

CFA Printing offer a range of printing products including business cards, brochures, postcards, labels etc. all in various sizes.

It is unclear whether CFA Printing do the actual printing of orders themselves, or whether or not they simply contract out a third party to actually process the orders they receive.

The 4 Color Gold Compensation Plan

The 4 Color Gold compensation plan primarily revolves around matrix commissions but also includes direct recruitment commissions as well as several rank bonuses and profit share pools.

Recruitment Commissions

Each time you recruit someone into 4 Color Gold and they purchase membership to the company you earn a recruitment commission.

  • $750 membership = $100 recruitment commission
  • $250 membership = $50 recruitment commission

Matrix Commissions

Matrix commissions paid out by 4 Color Gold are paid out when members cycle out of a series of 2×3 matrix systems.

Each matrix system has 14 positions to fill and looks something like this:

Upon the bottom of the matrix filling with members, the person at the top earns a commission, the matrix splits into two new matrices, everybody moves up and once again members have to fill the bottom row so that the matrix splits again and the person at the top gets paid.

This means that following each cycle, each matrix requires 8 new people before it fills up again and the top member can cycle. The basic idea is that when you enter a matrix you enter at the bottom level (level 4) and through getting the matrix to cycle have to work your way up to level 1 (the top) where you get paid.

4 Color Gold’s matrices each pay different commission amounts and they are as follows:

Goldminer Apprentice (compulsory feeder matrix for $250 membership option)

  • 2×2 matrix (6 positions to fill)
  • $250 entry cost
  • members positions must be filled by yourself or your upline, the Goldminer Apprentice board does not function in the same manner as the rest of 4 Color Gold’s matrices
  • automatic entry into Gold Prospector matrix once cycled

Gold Prospector

  • $750 entry cost
  • $1000 cycle commission
  • automatic entry in Pure Gold matrix once cycled

Pure Gold

  • $10,000 cycle commission ($250 paid as 7 of the 8 bottom members join and then a $8,250 lump sum when the 8th joins and you cycle)
  • automatic entry into Ultimate Gold matrix
  • automatic re-entry into another Pure Gold matrix once cycled

Ultimate Gold

  • $20,000 cycle commission ($500 paid as 7 of the 8 bottom members join and then a $16,500 lump sum when the 8th joins and you cycle)
  • automatic re-entry into another Ultimate Gold matrix once cycled

Matching Bonus

Called a ‘residual bonus’ by 4 Color Gold, the Matching Bonus offers you a percentage bonus everytime someone in your downline (someone you’ve recruited or someone they’ve recruited down ten generations), cycles out of the Pure Gold and Ultimate Gold matrices.

  • Ultimate Gold 1 – Cycle the Ultimate Gold matrix once and get $500 each time someone in your downline cycles out of the Pure or Ultimate Gold matrices.
  • Ultimate Gold 2 – Cycle the Ultimate Gold matrix three times and get $600 each time someone in your downline cycles out of the Pure or Ultimate Gold matrices.
  • Ultimate Gold 3 – Cycle the Ultimate Gold matrix three times and get $700 each time someone in your downline cycles out of the Pure or Ultimate Gold matrices.
  • Ultimate Gold “President’s Ambassador” – Cycle the Ultimate Gold matrix seven times and get $1,000 each time someone in your downline cycles out of the Pure or Ultimate Gold matrices.

Ultimate Gold 3 and Ultimate Gold President’s Ambassador also partake in a 2% global revenue pool (two separate pools).

Both pools are split evenly between UG3 and UGPA members. The UG3 pool is made up of 2% of the global $250 membership sales volume and the UGPA pool is made up of an additional 2% of the global $250 and $750 membership sales volume.

Both pools are only shared between other members of the same Ultimate Gold rank.

Ultimate Gold Rewards

4 Color Gold offer members actual gold and a $1,000,000 house bonus as a reward when they and their team rack up a certain amount of Ultimate Gold matrix cycles.

  • 10 Ultimate Gold matrix cycles = 500g bar of gold
  • 25 Ultimate Gold matrix cycles = 1kg bar of gold
  • 50 Ultimate Gold matrix cycles = 4.5kg (10lbs) bar of gold
  • 100 Ultimate Gold matrix cycles = Cash value (up to $1,000,000) to be put towards a home purchase

Global Gold Autoship commissions

The Global Gold Autoship commission is a commission of up to $30 per member and paid out monthly when a member signs up new members on autoship of printing product (min $60 a month order).

This works using a 3×15 matrix structure meaning that with you at the top, 3 legs branch out from under you and three from each of those and so on and so forth for a total of 65,000 places.

This autoship commission appears to be entirely optional and has nothing to do with the matrix commissions 4 Color Gold offers.

Pure Gold Ranked Bonuses

The final bonus 4 Color Gold pay out is a Pure Gold ranked bonus that starts at ‘Pure Gold 2’ to a ‘President’s Club’.

Pure Gold 2

  • Qualifications – 2 personal Pure Gold matrix cycles, 2 personal recruits must cycle the Pure Gold matrix and your total team must have 20 Pure Gold matrix cycles between them (counted after your first Pure Gold Matrix cycle)
  • share in a 2% pool of global membership fees
  • $2000 “family vacation cash”
  • 12 business card pack vouchers

Pure Gold 3

  • Qualifications – 3 personal Pure Gold matrix cycles, 3 personal recruits must cycle the Pure Gold matrix and your total team must have 30 Pure Gold matrix cycles between them (counted after your second Pure Gold matrix cycle)
  • share in a 2% pool of global member fees
  • $3000 “family vacation cash”
  • 28 business card pack vouchers

Pure Gold 4

  • Qualifications – 4 personal Pure Gold matrix cycles, 4 personal recruits must cycle the Pure Gold matrix and your total team must have 40 Pure Gold matrix cycles between them (counted after your third Pure Gold matrix cycle)
  • share in a 2% pool of global member fees
  • $4000 “family vacation cash”
  • 44 business card pack vouchers

Pure Gold 5

  • Qualifications – 5 personal Pure Gold matrix cycles, 5 personal recruits must cycle the Pure Gold matrix and your total team must have 50 Pure Gold matrix cycles between them (counted after your fourth Pure Gold matrix cycle)
  • share in a 2% pool of global member fees
  • $5000 “family vacation cash”
  • $25,000 payment towards a new car

Presidents Club

  • Qualifications – 7 personal Pure Gold matrix cycles, 7 personal recruits must cycle the Pure Gold matrix and your total team must have 100 Pure Gold matrix cycles between them (counted after your fifth Pure Gold matrix cycle)
  • share in a 2% pool of global member fees
  • His & Hers Rolex watch or 1 pound bar of gold (est value: $30,000)
  • $120,000 payment towards a new car

Joining 4 Color Gold

Those wishing to join 4 Color Gold have two membership options:

  •  $750 “Team Builder” pack which includes 6000 business cards
  • $200 “Team Builder” pack which includes 2000 business cards

There is also a “free” membership option available which requires $2,500 in retail business card sales. This option however excludes members from bonuses and appears to be severely restricted commissions wise.

Conclusion

The best way to analyse the 4 Color Gold compensation plan is to break it down into two parts.

The first part involves commissions on the sales of orders placed through the CFA Printing business.

Unless I’m misunderstanding the compensation plan, these sales are not true retail and is earnt off members within the company whom you have directly recruited into it (and their recruits down 15 levels).

So basically everyone buys at least $60 of product on autoship and you earn $30 per member in a 3×15 matrix.

CFA Printing themselves do offer a retail service to their customers, but as far as members of 4 Color Gold go, again unless I’m misunderstanding this does not appear to be the case.

The second part of the compensation plan is the whole messy matrix business. Boiled down, you pay a membership fee to join the company and purchase an entry into the Gold Prospector or Goldminer Apprentice matrix (depending on whether you pay $750 or $250 for membership respectively).

What then happens (and the 4 Color Gold marketing material actually suggests this) is you use the business cards included with your membership fee to try to recruit others to the business and fill up matrix spots.

Doing so is how you earn your matrix commissions, and cycling out of matrices advances you in the other bonus levels and unlocks the higher levels the more you cycle through the matrices.

The problem with the first part of the compensation plan is that there’s no true retail and the problem with the second is it’s just a recruitment game that relies on new recruits to keep the matrices cycling and continuing to fill up those bottom 8 positions and keep members cycling.

As it stands I can join 4 Color Gold, pay a membership fee to enter a matrix, recruit others doing the same and earn big commissions if I recruit enough people. And if I don’t, then the same is achieved on the back of the recruiting efforts of others.

Either way, it’s still recruitment driving the commissions which is a huge red flag when it comes to MLM opportunities.

Given that, the cynic in me notes that the corporate address provided for Cash Flow Alliance at ‘8050 N. Palm Ave. Suite 300 •  Fresno, CA 93711’ is part of ‘River Bluff Suites who offer full office suites, work cubicles and of course, virtual offices.

The $30 cap on commissions on the orders of 4 Color Gold member’s product orders would indicate that it was the acquisition of a customer 4 Color Gold were paying a commission on rather than the order itself.

This in turn indicates that CFA Printing don’t actually do the printing themselves but are hiring out the jobs to a third-party (who are not involved in the MLM side of the business and hence why actual sales commissions aren’t on sales volume and are capped at $30).

Given all this it’s hard to ignore the probability that Cash Flow Alliance, CFA Printing and 4 Color Gold have simply been put together to lure members into recruitment driven matrices, and get them to advertise the system with the business cards they buy as part of their monthly (albeit optional) autoship orders.

I guess the idea is that if you can earn more than $60 a month from cycling in matrices by attracting new members to join the company, then the product pays for itself and you’re likely to continue using what is effectively a marketing system for the opportunity itself.

Quite a neat little package Cash Flow Alliance appear to have going here… well, except for the whole recruitment scam part of it.

Try browse the 4CashGold website and immediately you’re required to put in an affiliate username before you can go any further or view any information about the company or the MLM opportunity.

That pretty much sums up what the 4 Color Gold opportunity is all about.