iClubBiz Review: Free membership bait and switch
iClubBiz was launched in April 2013 and operates in the travel club MLM niche.
The company is based in the US state of Iowa and is headed up by owner Jeffrey Evers (also known as Jeff Evers).
On the “about us” page Evers claims to have ‘been working on the iClubBiz program for over 10 years‘.
We launched a member benefit company in 2007, a nutraceutical company in 2009 and a travel company in 2010.
No further information is provided.
Read on for a full review of the iClubBiz MLM business opportunity.
The iClubBiz Product Line
iClubBiz have no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market membership to the company itself.
iClubBiz affiliate membership provides access to the “Sunset Beach Travel” travel club, which is also owned by Jeffery Evers (and is presumably the travel club referred to as having been launched in 2010 on the iClubBiz “about us” page).
The Sunset Beach Travel club website doesn’t directly offer visitors any travel services or bookings facilities. Whether or not they are actually operational is unclear.
Two other products are made available to affiliates and they appear to be remnants of Ever’s nutraceutical offering from 2009.
Aqualyte is a coral calcium supplement that is added to water. iClubBiz claim that Aqualyte
turns drinking water into a power anti-oxidant and even neutralizes the chlorine content in your tap water!
Ionyte is an “organic mineral complex” that iClubBiz claims ‘contains the lifeforce and energy’ of our food.
Both Aqualtye and Ionyte are sold to affiliates for $75, which includes a 3 month and 6 month supply respectively.
The iClubBiz Compensation Plan
The iClubBiz compensation plan primarily revolves around the selling of $75 iClubBiz affiliate memberships and any volume generated on the sale of iClubBiz’s nutraceutical products (also $75).
Before an iClubBiz affiliate can earn commissions, they must personally recruit two new (paid) iClubBiz affiliates.
Once qualified, affiliates are paid commissions using a binary compensation structure.
A binary compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of the structure with two legs branching out directly under them. These two legs form the basis of two teams (or sides), right and left:
Through recruitment of new affiliates, a binary team can grow down a theoretically unlimited amount of levels.
Commissions are calculated weekly and are paid out when a $75 affiliate payment on either side of the binary (1 from the left team and 1 from the right team) is matched.
When this occurs an affiliate is paid a $12.50 commission.
Note that any unmatched $75 payments carry over to the next week where they have the chance to be matched again with payments from the opposite side.
Commissions generated via the binary compensation structure are capped according to an affiliate’s membership rank:
- Qualified Affiliate (recruit 2 paid affiliates) – $1000 a week
- Director (recruit 4 paid affiliates) – $1500 a week
- Producer (recruit 8 paid affiliates and have 4 paid affiliates in at least three direct recruitment legs) – $2500 a week
- Achiever (recruit 12 paid affiliates and have 4 paid affiliates in at least three direct recruitment legs) – $5000 a week
- Executive and above (recruit 16 paid affiliates and have 4 paid affiliates in at least three direct recruitment legs) – $12,000 a week
Binary Matching Commissions
A matching bonus is paid to affiliates on the binary earnings of affiliates they personally recruit into the company and recruits they bring in (up to a maximum of 5 “generations” (levels) of recruitment).
The iClubBiz binary matching bonus is paid out on the binary earnings of recruited Producer ranked affiliates and higher, with the bonus percentage determined by the affiliate’s own membership rank:
- Producer – 1 generation (personal recruits), 10%
- Achiever – 2 generations, 5%
- Executive – 3 generations, 5%
- Presidential (recruit 20 paid affiliates and have 4 paid affiliates in at least three direct recruitment legs) – 4 generations, 5%
- Executive Presidential (recruit 24 paid affiliates and have 4 paid affiliates in at least three direct recruitment legs) – 5 generations, 5%
Joining iClubBiz
Affiliate membership to iClubBiz is free, however affiliates should consider that they are most likely going to find themselves “self-qualifying” themselves by paying $75 to “activate” their membership.
Conclusion
What do you do when you’ve got leftover products from a nutraceutical startup and a travel club reseller you started a few years back?
Well apparently if you’re Jeff Evers you combine the two offerings and whack on an MLM compensation plan.
What we’ve essentially got with iClubBiz is a $75 pay-to-play recruitment scheme, with affiliates earning commissions on bringing new recruits into the company.
The arguments against this would be that no purchase is required to “activate” an affiliate membership and that the company’s products are purchaseable by affiliates outside of initial membership.
The first argument can be dismissed due to the simple mechanics of the opportunity. The iClubBiz compensation material states
There is no purchase requirement to become an IBO.
However the same document also then goes on to say that
the over whelming majority of our Members purchase that Autoship themselves.
Having an option that nobody is using is as good as not having it at all. The reality is that “the overwhelming majority” of iClubBiz affiliates are treating the opportunity as a $75 pay-to-play scheme.
As for products being purchaseable outside of initial commission qualifying membership, it is quite clear that a travel club membership subscription, coral calcium supplement and organic mineral complex are an odd assortment of products.
Outside of qualifying themselves for commissions I believe you’d be hard-pressed finding a target market for either of them, as evidenced by the fact that they’re now combined following Evers attempts to market the products stand-alone over the last few years.
Further evidence of this exists in iClubBiz’s marketing material. Taken straight from the company’s “system” webpage, iClubBiz lay out an income plan for prospective affiliates that has them “meeting friends or their friends”, getting them to join for free, relying on “fear of loss” to get them to upgrade and then teaching them “everything you learnt”.
Free affiliate positions are placed into a binary and are able to recruit, the “fear of loss” marketing strategy comes into as free affiliates are “purged” after four weeks of not upgrading (paying $75).
What does this have to do with products? Well you’ll note the complete absence of them in any of the iClubBiz marketing material.
As the company’s compensation plan explanation states,
It’s always all about the $$MONEY$$
Join as an affiliate, pay $75 and recruit others who do the same. Meanwhile even on a mathematical level iClubBiz doesn’t seem all that attractive, $150 goes into the company and $12.50 is paid out to the affiliate who generated the revenue.
Recruitment, no retail and an 8% commission? There’s not really a lot to like here.
Update 4th March 2019 – At the request of a reader BehindMLM published an updated iClub Biz review on March 3rd, 2019.
CLIA appears to be legitimate “training” organization that sells training to cruise line booking agents. Didn’t see anything about “exclusive trips”?
I saw CLIA as the cruise equivalent of Travelocity. I know they do more (being an association) but at a business level that’s the service they’re providing to resellers like iClubBiz.
I don’t think they offer trips.
http://www.cruising.org/regulatory/industry-welcome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruise_Lines_International_Association
I think they are cruise industry’s equivalent of IATA
Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Sunset whatever was using the logo “legally”, and I can’t find a way to verify that. It seem to require an agent login. Maybe we can write to CLIA?
You’re right, I just went back to the Cruise Lines International website and it does appear to be an association website only.
I think I misread the “travel agent” portion of their website, not realising it was just for industry support and marketing training.
I’ve amended the review to reflect these changes. Meanwhile the Sunset Beach Travel website itself doesn’t appear to offer any travel services. It’s just a website with images at the moment.
You guys have no clue what you are talking about. ICB is an awesome opportunity and have booked a trip through them and it all works just fine. Apparently you have something against Jeff and his company. 🙂
Ha-ha, MG. Very funny. The problem is it’s hard to tell if people are being sarcastic on the Internet. And people who are severely ideological don’t see sarcasm at all. Remember the Republicans are THANKING Stephen Colbert for his support even though Colbert was making fun of them?
Don’t use sarcasm to make fun of MLM people. They won’t “get” it.
First of all there is a website that offers Travel Deals, we go into our back office to get to the site and it does have Cruises, rental cars, off the chain Condo deals and more! You really have no clue where this company is going!
Jeff Evers I believe is brilliant, he has been in the industry for 25 yrs and he has been successful! His followers have been successful in the MLM industry! I’m going to following them because they know what they are talking about!
It’s apparent that you have never been successful because had you been successful you wouldn’t be out hear criticizing someone elses efforts to create a program to help the economy out.
If you were making so much money you wouldn’t care in such detail how the company operates! So before you go and bash someone please do more diligent research! Know what your talking about before you bash a company!
What’s in the backoffice is irrelevant, you’re still just selling affiliate memberships (recruitment scheme).
Oh dear.
I can get that on my website now by joined Travelocity affiliate program. FREE. What does that prove? Absolutely NOTHING. Heck, the scam TVI Express had that too!
Sure, and Paul “ZeekRewards Ponzi” Burks had been in the industry for two decades and was “successful” too. “Appeal to age” fallacy.
Now you’re just throwing around petty insults. FAIL.