Dream Life Vacation Club Review: Xplocial v2.0?
Although there’s no mention of Dream Life Vacation Club on the Xplocial website, the two companies share identical marketing copy on their respective “About Us” pages.
Lawrence B. Marcus (also known as Larry Marcus) heads up both Dream Life Vacation Club and Xplocial as CEO. I’ve previously covered Marcus’ MLM history over at the BehindMLM Xplocial review, with note that the company Provantage Legal (a previous venture of Marcus’) appears to have shut down.
The Provantage website was accessible when I wrote the BehindMLM Xplocial review back in July, but today the domain is parked (I’m not sure when the Provantage website was pulled).
Read on for a full review of the Dream Life Vacation Club MLM business opportunity.
The Dream Life Vacation Club Product Line
Dream Life Vacation Club retails membership access to third-party products, services and discounts. On their website the company advises
The goods and services available through DLVC Membership may be purchased from third party suppliers. DLVC is an intermediary between the suppliers and the Members.
DLVC and/or its suppliers acts only as an agent for the airlines, tour operators, cruise lines, lodging providers, car-rental companies, ground operators, and any other suppliers of travel services shown on your itinerary.
We are not responsible for the acts or omissions of such suppliers or their subcontractors or their failure to provide services, adhere to their own schedules, or honor their contracts.
The only thing Dream Life Vacation Club affiliates are able to market is membership to the company itself.
Dream Life Vacation Club don’t name any specific third-party suppliers by name on their website, however the offers available appear to be primarily related to the travel industry.
The Dream Life Vacation Club Compensation Plan
The Dream Life Vacation Club Compensation Plan revolves around the payment of membership fees.
Membership to Dream Life Vacation Club (non-affiliate) is either $399 (VIP) or $699 (Elite) upfront and then $99.95 a month “for 23 months”.
Retail commissions are paid out on retail memberships as follows:
- VIP – $250 (upfront)
- Elite – $425 (upfront)
- Monthly membership (both Elite and VIP) – $60 (monthly recurring)
When a Dream Life Vacation Club affiliate recruits new affiliates, Dream Life Vacation Club pays out additional residual commissions.
Fast Start Bonus
The Dream Life Vacation Club Fast Start Bonus pays out $50 on the recruitment of at least two new members or affiliates within an affiliate’s first 10 days of joining the company.
Pass-up Commissions
Residual commissions in Dream Life Vacation Club are paid out using a 3-up style compensation plan. This plan requires every affiliate to pass up the first, third and sixth commissions they generate by recruiting new affiliates.
The commissions generated are identical to the retail commissions above (upfront and monthly recurring).
Note that any recruited affiliates must also pass up their first, third and sixth commissions to their upline (as do any affiliates they recruit and so on and so forth). This is how residual commissions in Dream Life Vacation Club are generated.
Joining Dream Life Vacation Club
Affiliate membership to Dream Life Vacation Club is $24.95 a month. All affiliates are required to have either a VIP or Elite membership, adding an additional $399 or $699 upfront cost, and then $99.95 a month recurring.
This essentially means Dream Life Vacation Club affiliate membership is either $399 or $699 upfront and then $124.90 a month.
Conclusion
To be honest I’m not really sure why Larry Marcus has launched Dream Life Vacation Club and didn’t just integrate it into the existing Xplocial business.
It is noted that Xplocial requires constant recruitment of new affiliates to survive, so I suppose there’s always the idea that Dream Life Vacation Club is a whole new opportunity to get people to pay for. But at six months out of Xplocial’s launch, if that were the case it wouldn’t exactly be confidence inspiring.
As for Dream Life Vacation Club itself, the old sign up as an affiliate with a travel discount wholesaler and then charge membership fees to access third-party discounts is a well-travelled MLM business model.
Typically these MLM opportunities raise red flags in that there’s no retail option available, with affiliate membership bundled into the cost of the travel club membership.
In that sense Dream Life Vacation Club is a step up from Xplocial in the legitimacy arena, given that it clearly differentiates affiliates from retail customers with a $24.95 a month affiliate fee.
That said with a $399 and $699 upfront cost and then basically a hundred bucks a month, I’m not really seeing the retail viability in the Dream Life Vacation Club opportunity.
Considering all you get is access to third-party discounts, I think the fact that it’s likely only affiliates are going to be paying those fees is a fair assessment. Moreso when you consider that the bulk of Dream Life Vacation Club’s affiliates are going to be coming over from Xplocial, which is pretty much a $29 to $100 a month cash gifting scheme.
They’re already used to recruiting affiliates on the merit of an MLM income opportunity so the likelihood of them targeting retail in Dream Life Vacation Club is pretty much zero.
Still, it doesn’t hurt to give the company the benefit of the doubt. As a prospective Dream Life Vacation Club affiliate I’d be enquiring my potential upline as to how many retail memberships they’ve sold versus affiliate memberships.
Anything not remotely close to a 50/50 spread should set off alarm bells.
Frankly, this throws up the same red flags as TVI Express and Burnlounge.
And World Wide Ventures
Sad, really. What has happened is Xplocial’s attrition rate is ATROCIOUS. Average membership duration is something like 3 months per Larry’s comments on the launch webinar for this new venture.
In addition to the attrition rate being so high, the volume of traffic to xplocial.com (alexa rating) and the search volume (google.com/trend graph) have both been plummeting since summer.
With people leaving fast and fewer people entering the sales funnel, a new, higher priced ‘opportunity’ to sell to the people already drinking the kool-aid somehow became the answer…
Squeeze more profit from the people who bought in with a special ‘discounted’ launch and the scarcity pitch of ‘you don’t want to lose commissions.’
In case you’ve had a hard time keeping up with all the different faces of Xplocial, lets recap the evolution of Xplocial, real quick…
April 2013 – Incentive voucher company launched
July 2013 – website building tool/product launched
August 2013 – Small business loans product added
September 2013 – New ‘gold’ discount program launched (rebranding abenity)
November 2013 – Dream Life Vacation Club launched
Also note-worthy, Larry was promising a custom lead capture system and autoresponder system for Platinum members for a period of months but ended up ‘shelving’ that idea…
We are not promoting the vacation club and we have personally spoken with each of our reps to let them know that a higher priced ‘product’ will not solve any recruiting or marketing challenges that reps are faced with… And in fact, potentially makes it more difficult.
It has been an odd, twisting road with many blind curves, ups and downs… You really nailed it when you said “To be honest I’m not really sure why Larry Marcus has launched Dream Life Vacation Club and didn’t just integrate it into the existing Xplocial business.”
Sorry for the long comment, but I thank you for helping paint a more clear picture in these muddied waters.