Back in January 2011 Zeek Rewards launched what was to be the first combination of a MLM investment based hybrid compensation plan with a penny auction front-end.

The amount of revenue generated as affiliates flocked to the company and threw money at it didn’t go unnoticed in the industry and roughly one year later in February 2012 Bidify was launched.

Although a few international players have set up localised versions of the investment compensation hybrid + penny auction model thus far it’s generally agreed the two main contenders in this emerging niche are Zeek Rewards and Bidify.

Zeek Rewards morphed from guaranteeing a 125% ROI to affiliates to paying out a variable 90 day ROI in its current state, whereas Bidify pay out a 120 day ROI and force members to re-invest 20% of their returns.

Similar in nature both Bidify’s and Zeek Rewards’ compensation plans differ enough however to warrant their shared existence in the MLM industry. As for which model prevails, with Bidify having fired up their Bidsson penny auctions barely a week or so ago and Zeek Rewards’ recent plague of payment problems, I’d say the dust is far from settling on that issue.

While we wait for that to happen, it appears that similar business models and the use of penny auctions are not all these two companies share. Turns out that Bidify’s Chief Creative Officer is also an active affiliate in Zeek Rewards.

Frode Jorgensen, Bidify’s Chief Creative Officer (CCO), goes by the Twitter alias of ‘swoopzy’:

I have no idea what the significance of ‘swoopzy’ is nor its meaning to Jorgensen, but it also just happens to be the username of a currently active Diamond level Zeek Rewards affiliate account:

Co-incidence?

Not likely, seeing as Frode Jorgensen was actively promoting the ‘swoopzy’ Zeek Rewards affiliate link on the internet as recently as just last month:

I’m aware that it could be January, but it appears to be an international standard display of the date – that being year/month/day.

Regardless, even if the date is the 5th of January that still begs the question as to why Jorgensen’s Zeek Rewards affiliate account is still active five months later.

I can wholly appreciate members of MLM companies wanting to diversify their income but executive staff? And we’re talking about Bidify’s #1 business rival in the penny auction niche no less.

Ironically, whereas Zeek Rewards don’t seem to mind whether their members actively promote different opportunities while they are with Zeek Rewards, Bidify see things a little differently:

5.3.2 – Sale of Competing Goods or Services

Affiliates must not sell, or attempt to sell, any competing non-Bidify programs or services to Bidify Customers or Affiliates. Any program, product, service, or direct selling opportunity in the same generic categories as the Bidify services are deemed to be competing, regardless of differences in cost, quality or other distinguishing factors.

 

5.3.3 – Targeting Other Direct Sellers

Should Affiliates engage in solicitation and/or enticement of members of another direct sales company to sell or distribute Bidify services, they bear the risk of being sued by the other direct sales company.

If any lawsuit, arbitration, or mediation is brought against an Affiliate alleging that they engaged in inappropriate recruiting activity of its sales force or Customers, Bidify will not pay any of Affiliate’s defense costs or legal fees, nor will Bidify indemnify the Affiliate for any judgment, award, or settlement.

Whereas most, if not all of Zeek Rewards executives have affiliate positions within the company, it is unknown whether or not Bidify executives also have affiliate positions within Bidify.

General consensus on Diamond affiliate accounts in Zeek Rewards today is that they’re only really beneficial to members with large downlines, indicating that Jorgensen might still be heavily involved in Zeek Rewards despite his executive  role in Bidify.

If I was Zeek Reward’s Chief Operating Officer Dawn Wright-Olivares, I might describe the above scenario as an executive manager of Burger King actively trying to recruit franchisees to McDonalds.

Mind you, if everything is fully disclosed and neither Zeek Rewards or Bidify have a problem with Jorgensen’s shared role, it brings up the prickly assumption that Jorgensen most likely has his Zeek Rewards business on autopilot, thus making it a passive income opportunity, something the company strongly denies it offers.

Think about it, Jorgensen can’t actively promote Zeek Rewards (meaning satisfy their daily ad requirement) or at worst he’d be in breach of Bidify’s own rules, or at best be showing a lack of confidence in Bidify if their TOS don’t apply to executives.

Now this might not be the case, but if he was buying Zeek Rewards customers to dump his generated VIP bids onto so he could continue to grow his VIP point balance in Zeek Rewards with, technically he might even get away with not publishing ads. It’s been widely reported by company affiliates that the checking of actual ads being published is less than rigorous.

That of course only leaves the question of why Jorgensen is still an active Diamond affiliate (all membership levels can dump 1000 points on customers now)? One possible explanation is, due to the amount of people he has personally recruited into Zeek Rewards, financially it’s in his best interests to remain a Diamond (Diamond’s earn more per personally recruited affiliate).

Whatever the reason at the end of the day in my opinion you’re still looking at a pretty decent sized conflict of interest between the two opportunities by being an executive of one and affiliate of the other.

Should Bidify executives be actively maintaining Zeek Rewards affiliate accounts considering they are direct competitors in an extremely small and fledgling MLM niche…?

What do you think?