I wouldn’t call myself a serious outdoors enthusiast but between cycling and hiking, I know that if you want to get the most out of the two you need to have the right gear.

There’s a world of difference when cycling with regular shoes and clothes just the same as hiking in slippers with jeans is vastly different to doing both activities with even the barest of essential equipment and gear.

Extend that concept to the greater outdoors in general and you have the concept behind GlobalNet Outdoors. Read on for a full review of the GNO MLM business opportunity.

The Company

GlobalNet Outdoors (GNO) was launched in late March 2012 and is based out of Texas in the US.

GNO was co-founded by (from left to right below) Stacy Smith, Tracy Smith, Keith Neal and Darren Moyer.

GNO claims that Stacy Smith has a veterinary background, Tracy Smith has worked for Nissan for the past nine years and that Keith Neal ‘has been a successful entrepreneur‘ with experience in real estate and mortgages.

Darren Moyer appears to be the MLM link with GNO stating he’s ‘been a successful businessman in many different industries ranging from real estate to network marketing‘.

That said I wasn’t able to find a network marketing or MLM history online for any of the co-founders (including Moyer). If they do have a history in the industry I certainly didn’t have much luck finding any additional information or MLM associations online.

The GlobalNet Outdoors Product Line

Being a company in the outdoors niche, GlobalNet Outdoors (through their retail arm GNO Direct) carry a variety of products (they claim to have over 10,000) including:

  • sights, scopes and sight accessories
  • decoys
  • optics and binoculars
  • rangefinders
  • tree stands and accessories
  • scents and scent elimination
  • hunting accessories
  • Bags
  • storage
  • duffle
  • blinds
  • chairs
  • knives and saws
  • shooting accessories
  • waders
  • air and blow guns
  • gun scopes and cases
  • game calls
  • men’s, women’s and youth apparel
  • archery bows, arrows and targets

Additionally GNO also market what they call the “GNO Pro Club” at $20 a month (discounted for GNO members).

GNO’s Pro Club is essentially an online magazine offering, a social network and additional webinars within the outdoors niche the company operates in.

The GlobalNet Outdoors Compensation Plan

The GlobalNet Outdoors compensation plan revolves around commissions paid out on orders placed which are tied into an expandable 4×7 matrix.

In addition to this GNO also pay out first order, team order and matching team order bonuses as well as a monthly membership rank bonus.

GNO Membership Ranks

As you’ll see below, several components of the GlobalNet Outdoors compensation plan are dependent on the membership rank a GNO member has obtained.

There are 8 membership ranks in GNO and along with their qualification requirements, they are as follows:

  • Pro Scout – minimum monthly spend = $50-$60, 2000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 3 Professional Outdoor Sportsmen
  • Pro Scout II – minimum monthly spend = $50-$60, 4000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 1 Pro Scout qualified member
  • Pro Scout III – minimum monthly spend = $50-$60, 10,000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 2 Pro Scouts
  • Pro Guide – minimum monthly spend = $75-$90, 20,000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 3 Pro Scouts
  • Pro Guide II – minimum monthly spend = $75-$90, 50,000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 1 Pro Guide
  • Pro Guide III – minimum monthly spend = $75-$90, 100,000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 2 Pro Guides
  • Master Guide – minimum monthly spend = $100-$120, generate 150,000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 3 Pro Guides
  • Legend – minimum monthly spend = $100 – $120, generate 200,000 minimum matrix PV a month and must have recruited at least 2 Pro Guides and 1 Pro Guide II

Matrix Commissions

Residual commissions in GlobalNet Outdoors are tied into an expandable 4×7 matrix. This matrix places you at the top with 4 legs branching out underneath you (level 1), in turn these 4 legs branch out into an additional 4 legs (level 2) and so on and so forth down 7 levels.

To give you a visual idea, the first few levels of a 4×7 matrix look something like this:

GNO members are paid out a percentage commission on the orders placed by GNO members in their matrix. How many levels GNO members are paid a commission on depends on which level they join GNO at:

  • Junior Outdoorsman members ($99) are paid 5% on level 1 and 4% on level 2 of their matrix
  • Senior Outdoorsman members ($199) are paid 5% on level 1 and 4% on levels 2 to 4 of their matrix
  • Professional Outdoorsman members ($499) are paid 5% on level 1 and 4% on levels 2 to 7 of their matrix

As mentioned above, this 4×7 matrix is expandable depending on membership rank, ranging in size from 4×7 (Pro Scout to Pro Scout III) to 9×7 (Legend).

Note that in order to qualify for matrix commissions, GNO members must “enrol 2 people at any entry level, that maintain monthly activity…every 4 weeks”.

GNO define ‘monthly activity’ as a minimum purchase of 25 PV, which the company claims roughly equates to ‘about $50-$60 a month’.

First Order Bonus

Upon recruiting a new GlobalNet Outdoors member, the referring member earns a first order bonus equal to 25% of the order purchased.

GNO define an order as the PV it generates and with each new member required to purchase either a Junior, Senior or Professional Outdoorsman membership package, these package generate the qualifying First Order Bonus as follows:

  • Junior Sportsman – 40 PV
  • Senior Sportsman – 120 PV
  • Professional Sportsman – 360 PV

This equates to a First Order Bonus of $10 on a Junior Outdoorsman purchase, $30 on a Senior Outdoorsman purchase and $90 on a Professional Outdoorsman purchase.

The direct upline of the recruiting member is also entitled to a 2% First Order Bonus which (using the PV values above) equates to $2 on a Junior Outdoorsman purchase, $6 on a Senior Outdoorsman purchase and $18 on a Professional Outdoorsman purchase.

Team Order Bonus

GlobalNet Outdoors’ Team Order Bonus is a matching percentage bonus on all orders placed by GNO members in your matrix.

Starting at the ‘Pro Scout II’ membership level, GNO members are able to earn a 2% monthly bonus on all orders members in their matrix place with the company.

Matching Team Order Bonus

The Matching Team Order bonus applies only to orders placed by members in GNO member’s matrix that were directly recruited.

On these member’s orders, GNO pay out the recruiting member a matching percentage bonus as follows:

  • Pro Guide – 20%
  • Pro Guide II – 40%
  • Pro Guide III – 60%
  • Master Guide – 80%
  • Legend – 100%

Monthly Membership Rank Bonus

Starting with the ‘Pro Scout’ membership level, GlobalNet Outdoors pay members a monthly bonus for maintaining their active membership each month. The Monthly Membership Rank Bonus is paid out as follows:

  • Pro Scout – $100
  • Pro Scout II – $150
  • Pro Scout III – $250
  • Pro Guide – $500
  • Pro Guide II – $1000
  • Pro Guide III – $2000
  • Master Guide – $3500
  • Legend – $5000

Joining GlobalNet Outdoors

Membership to GlobalNet Outdoors comes in three varieties:

  • Junior Outdoorsman – $99
  • Senior Outdoorsman – $199
  • Professional Outdoorsman – $499

Within each of these purchases is a $55 admin fee payable to GNO, this appears to be an annual fee meaning there is no monthly fee, other than the minimum monthly spend to qualify for commissions (dependant on your GNO membership rank).

Conclusion

When I first looke at the GlobalNet Outdoors compensation plan I made the mistake of assuming that when they mentioned ‘orders’ they were talking about both retail and internal orders from recruited members.

To be honest I’d written about half of the compensation plan analysis before I realised that GNO appear to only pay out commissions on member orders.

This is how the company itself describes the GlobalNet Outdoors ‘referral business’:

1. Set up your account with GNO

2. Make sure you have an OAP (minimum monthly autoship purchase)

3. Refer 3 and help others to do the same

There is no mention of retail customers or retail commissions anywhere in the three GNO compensation plan materials I cited for this review leading to me to believe there aren’t any.

Thus what the GNO opportunity boils down to is a recruitment scheme with 100% internal consumption of the products.

Members aren’t able to earn commissions unless they recruit people with GNO actually requiring members to recruit 2 new members every 4 weeks if they wish to earn matrix commissions.

As for the rest of the payable commissions and bonuses, they all require personal or indirect recruitment (matrix spillover) of new members and are no better.

100% internal consumption is usually a worry in a business if the majority of sales being generated are coming from members as opposed to genuine retail (non-member) customers. With no option for members to market to non-members, this is a huge red flag with the GNO opportunity.

Throw in the fact that the more you pay in initial membership fees dictates how many levels of the matrix you can earn on and things aren’t looking too good.

What really puzzles me is that GlobalNet Outdoors quite obviously do have retailable products (10,000 items no less!), so why on Earth would they structure a compensation plan that mandates the continual recruitment of members and does not facilitate retail sales or commissions?

With four co-founders backing the company surely one of them would have realised this glaring red-flag with the business model?

There’s definitely potential here with an established market (assuming GlobalNet Online’s outdoor gear prices are competitive), however some fundamental changes to the compensation plan are required going forward.

In its present form I’m seeing little difference between GNO’s compensation plan and your standard recruitment-driven pyramid scheme.