AdvanX3 Review: A $10 a month “investment”?
There is no information on the AdvanX3 website indicating who owns or runs the business, with the company only providing the following vague statement:
AdvanX3 was recently established by four executive professionals with a combined experience of over 60 years in the direct sales industry.
AdvanX3 does provide a company address in the US state of Washington, however the company’s website domain registration is set to private (registered 25th April, 2012).
A “Loren Taylor” is named as company President, with Advanx3 claiming that Taylor has ‘vast experience in sales via technologically advanced Internet marketing‘ and ‘has created and managed over 35 companies that have been successful in reaping the benefits of marketing via the Internet‘.
AdvanX3 does not clarify whether or not Taylor is one of the “four executive professionals” they cite as being the co-founders of the company.
Additionally, despite the claims made by AdvanX3 above I wasn’t able to find much of an online MLM history on Taylor.
At the end of an eZineArticles article written by Taylor in June 2012 he cites himself as a “writer” of the “NetworkMarketingElite” blog:
There is no information on the NetworkMarketingElite website indicating who owns the site (domain registration also set to private), with the site appearing to be not much more than marketing spam targeting various MLM company names and the word “scam”.
One particular entry for EPXBody however does include affiliate links for a “taylor” (credited as an anonymous “team leader”):
Meanwhile on the main homepage of the NetworkMarketingElite blog, this huge ad for something called “TenDollarCar” caught my eye:
Noting that it sounded an awful like what I’d read thus far on Advanx3 itself and with the ad claiming the TenDollarCar opportunity was “launching now”, I clicked through, only to be hit with the same welcome video that appears on the AdvanX3 website:
Also note the worrying “you will earn $500 a month within 6 months” guarantee offered on the top right of the site.
Why the AdvanX3 promotional video is playing on the TenDollarCar website I have no idea, but I can tell you that the TenDollarCar domain was registered on the 23rd of August 2011.
And the owner?
None other than Loren Taylor, with the exact same Washington address provided as that given on the AdvanX3 website as their corporate headquarters.
Putting all of the above information together, TenDollarCar was launched in 2011 by Loren Taylor and after that crashed and burned he then joined EPXBody at some point (that was the only MLM company link I found, although I didn’t look very hard). Taylor promoted his EPXBody business and TenDollarCar (or tried to) via the NetworkMarketingElite blog.
Now it appears Taylor is back and is trying to relaunch the $10 a month concept he started with TenDollarCar, only without the raffle ticket scheme.
Call me cynical but I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Taylor himself is the owner of AdvanX3. Whether the “four executive professionals” AdvanX3 cite exist (or three if Taylor is one of them) remains to be seen.
Read on for a full review of the AdvanX3 MLM business opportunity.
The AdvanX3 Product Line
AdvanX3 has no retailable products or services with members only able to market membership to the company itself.
Bundled with AdvanX3 membership is the appetite suppressant chewing gum, “GumPlus Hoodia”.
AdvanX3 do not disclose on their website how much of the GumPlus product is bundled with their monthly membership.
The AdvanX3 Compensation Plan
The AdvanX3 compensation plan revolves around the recruitment of new AdvanX3 members and their continued payment of monthly membership fees.
Commissions in AdvanX3 are paid via a 3×7 matrix compensation structure. A 3×7 matrix structure places an affiliate at the top of the structure with three legs branching out directly under them (representing three member positions):
These three legs (level 1) in turn branch out into another three legs (level 2) and so on and so forth down 7 levels (for a total of 29,523 member positions).
These positions are filled via direct recruitment or the recruitment efforts of an affiliate’s up and downlines. With each position filled a commission is then paid out each month, with how much being paid out dependent on what level of the matrix a position falls on:
- Levels 1 and 2 – 2.5%
- Levels 3 to 5 – 5%
- Levels 6 to 8 – 6%
- Level 9 – 7%
AdvanX3 don’t clarify exactly what these percentages are, but given the only revenue the company generates is from membership fees one would assume they are percentages of the monthly membership fee paid by members.
Matrix Level Qualification
As a base level member (no recruitment) AdvanX3 members can earn commissions on levels 1 to 5 of their matrix.
By recruiting new members into the company however, commissions can be extended to all seven levels of the matrix:
- Level 6 – recruit 2 new members
- Level 7 – recruit 4 new members
- Level 8 – recruit 6 new members
- Level 9 – recruit 6 new members and pay $20 a month for membership
Note that recruited members only count if they are “active” (paying their monthly membership fees). As such if members drop out of the company new ones will have to be recruited to maintain the recruitment quotas above.
Extra Matrix Positions
For every four new members recruited, Advanx3 reward members with an extra matrix position.
This position is placed in the first available spot of an AdvanX3 member’s matrix and effectively allows them to double up on commissions earnt (via overlap).
Note that each matrix position operates independently, meaning qualification requirements cannot be spread out across multiple positions.
Joining AdvanX3
Basic membership to AdvanX3 is $10 a month. If a member wishes to unlock level 9 commissions on their matrix this fee is raised to $20 a month.
Conclusion
As far as red flags go, one of the first things prospective members see when they visit the AdvanX3 website is a short embedded YouTube video. This marketing video does a pretty good job of raising the apparent red flags with AdvanX3 all on its own.
AdvanX3 is a company that helps you build your own legitimate business by just paying $10 per month. [00:51]
What if you spent $10 as an investment each month, that can earn an income for you month, after month, after month! [1:08]
Here’s how it works. We offer a unique way to earn income by simply sharing this business opportunity with others. [1:38]
The more people you involve, the more money you can make on referrals! [1:57]
If you promote this opportunity to three of your friends, and they promote it to three of their friends and this pattern continues for 9 generations, your potential commissions will be tens of thousands each month – from your $10 investment! [2:18]
Despite the gum products bundled with AdvanX3 membership, this is clearly a monthly investment of $10, with commissions paid out tied to the number of people you can also convince to pay $10 a month for membership.
The more you recruit, the more your downlines recruit and the more your uplines recruit the more money you make.
Despite the obvious pyramid scheme nature of the AdvanX3 opportunity, the company claims that their compensation plan is ‘a unique way to earn income‘.
You know how these play out folks. The admin(s) place themselves at the top of the pyramid, start their marketing campaigns and the recruitment begins.
Eventually nobody can find anyone new to recruit and once this happens those at the bottom of the pyramid stop paying their $10 (or $20) a month.
No longer earning commissions off these payments, those above them also quit and so on and so forth until the entire scheme collapses.
Suite B… belongs to… Soothing Beanbags
http://linktown.king5.com/biz/soothing-beanbags/camas/wa/98607/39759160
It seems Mr. Taylor also owns Soothing Beanbags (i.e. his day job), as he also wrote this article:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Furnish-Game-Rooms-With-Bean-Bag-Chairs&id=6478552
Which lead to this website, listing the same address:
http://www.beanbagchairpros.com/contacts/
Guess that solves the gap between TenDollarCar and EPXBody…
Network Marketing Elite is very like also ran by Mr. Taylor himself.
There’s a NME “press release” on emailwire:
http://www.emailwire.com/release/96771-NetworkMartketingElitecom-Gains-Attention-for-its-Make-Money-from-home-Strategies-.html
which listed an 888 (toll free) number. Search of that number via Google goes right back to that Soothing Beanbag address.
Not conclusive, but it’s all one self-referential circle.
Thank you for your review and research on Advanx3. I hope that you allow this comment to be posted to correct a few things you have in your review. Although many things are correct, you do have some incorrect or missing information about me and my company.
I am one of the owners and President of Advanx3. My main expertise for the past few years has been internet marketing and ecommerce (I own quite a few ecommerce companies).
Network Marketing Elite blog was something I created to test my search engine optimization with Network Marketing and MLM keywords to test driving traffic. I have had quite a bit of success with this.
Before launching Advanx3, I did market the EPXbody opportunity. Since launching Advanx3 I have stopped of course marketing this opportunity.
Tendollarcar.com was something we wanted to test out with marketing. It had mixed results, in the end we have removed the site, it allowed us test a few things, but wasn’t performing as well as another marketing option.
Your section about the $10 dollar raffle website, this was not me. As your photo shows, I registered the URL on 23 – Aug – 2011, those BBB issues/claims were dated in 2007 (before I owned the URL).
Your conclusion about the investment in our video is a valid concern. We are actually in the works of editing our video to change this. We originally wanted to explain to people that this business opportunity would take an investment of time and investment of money to make it work for them.
But your conclusion is correct, this can be misleading, and we are editing the video to change this since we do not want people to be misled.
Thanks for the clarifications Loren.
Can you confirm you are paying out returns owed to existing investors using new investor money?
Hello Oz,
There are no returns and no investor money. People buy product and commissions are paid on these purchases.
What product are they buying?
Or put it another way, what is Advanx3 selling?
@Loren
Technically AdvanX3 members pay a monthly membership fee (in order to earn commissions via the recruitment of others) and you bundle gum with said membership.
If you don’t want to deal with the word investments, do you pay out commissions on the revenue generated by the monthly payment of membership fees?
If you want to claim that members are purchasing gum (which they can do, in addition to paying their monthly membership fee), can you clarify then the ratio of gum revenue vs. AdvanX3 affiliate’s monthly $10 membership fee revenue?
Oz, you clearly have not checked our website and yet you have done a review of our company.
If you had taken the time to check our site you would see that we sell gum with health benefits and pay a commission on each sale. There are no monthly membership fees.
Right… except that I have to pay $10 a month to participate in the compensation plan. And you’re going to tell me that’s not membership?
So you throw in some gum with it, that doesn’t make it any less of a monthly membership fee. Let’s cut the crap son.
I don’t want anymore shipments of gum! It doesn’t work.
Great website concept though. Cancel any futher shipments.
I am a little confused by the point that Oz is making here. In what MLM, or network marketing company is there EVER a payment through the compensation plan that doesn’t involve the sale of goods/services?
A “membership” isn’t what is required to benefit from the compensation plan, it is the purchase of $10 worth of gum (enough for about 1 piece a day). Perhaps the only thing missing (that most other mlm companies have) is that Advanx3 doesn’t cite a rediculously inflated retail price that reps could try to reap by retailing the gum.
As far as Douglas’ charge that the gum doesn’t work, the same has been said about absolutely every other weight loss aid, and usually by people who will include Big Macs into their diet practice. EVERY weight loss gimmick needs to include eating less food, and of that food more of it should be healthy food, and increasing activity.
Green tea and Hoodia are both well documented as weight loss aids, but they cannot, on their own burn fat when the user is sitting at their computer bashing successful network marketers to try to gain website hits.
One that charges for membership and/or position in the compensation plan. One such example is AdvanX3’s own marketing material, exhibited in the review but conveniently ignored by yourself.
As per the company itself, AdvanX3 market a $10 “investment” (compensation plan participation), with any bundled product being a secondary consideration.
If you don’t have retail in MLM you have a problem. Perhaps try spending a little less time coming up with ad-hominem excuses to dismiss constructive criticism and analysis with and a little more conducting your own due diligence.
I am pretty sure Advanx3 has a retail option since you can buy the product as a distributor or as a customer (slightly more expensive).
“Pretty sure” doesn’t cut it. Go and have a look at the AdvanX3 compensation plan, there’s no mention of retail. All that is presented is autoship affiliate recruitment commissions via a matrix.
There’s a reason AdvanX3 market themselves as a “$10 investment opportunity”.
Well as a Advancx3 distributor I would like to share with you my experience with the Product yes it does suppresses the urge to eat. Yes you also can sell it retail for $12.00.
This is not a get rich over night system but it sure does cost lest to start then most MLM out there. There is no upgrade to $20.00 to get commission on level 9. You also get your replicated site for free not like others that charge you 14.00 to $20.00 a month talk about making extra money..
Not according to the compensation plan I cited. Unless it’s changed?
Yes you are right that is if you are in a month by month basis but if you are in the yearly bases you pay $120.00 for a year and you qualify for the 9th level. That makes it 10.00 per month…
Thanks for the clarification. So it’s either $20 or $120, with both options still being pay to play.
Yes but i believe that if you attain the 9th level most people would choose the $120.00 since that is where most of the people would be in.. Thanks for the review…
Whichever of the two options they choose, the company still makes people pay for commission qualification. This is a red flag in MLM circles.
That was my point in raising it, not whether it was $20 or $120.