Mobile Blog Pro Review: $29.95/mth mobile blog app
There is no information on the Mobile Blog Pro website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The Mobile Blog Pro website domain (“mobileblogpro.com”) was registered on the 29th of January 2013, however the domain registration is set to private.
Further research into Mobile Blog Pro reveals affiliates of the company naming Rune Fjortoft as the owner of the company, with Fjortoft offering unofficial tech support on various MLM income opportunity forums.
Fjortoft (photo right) has a history of involvement as an affiliate with several dubious affiliate programs and MLM companies, including Traffic Buddha, Just Been Paid and FastCashLevels.
Fjortoft’s last MLM venture, Instant Cash Matrix, was launched in November 2011 and paid affiliates roughly $2.33 per new affiliate recruited each month.
Just over two months later, the scheme collapsed with Fjortoft sending out the following update to the company’s affiliates:
Hi, I am really sorry to tell you all, but the site is gone forever.
Something happened at the hosting company I was using
resulting in me loosing (sic) the website and all backups were compromised as well.A bit of an ironi (sic) as one of my arguments when promoting the site was it’s quality hosting and my professionalism.
Well, life is funny sometimes. It never pays of to be high strung.
My humble appologies (sic) to all.
Rune F
Read on for a full review of the Mobile Blog Pro MLM business opportunity.
The Mobile Blog Pro Product Line
Mobile Blog Pro has no retailable products or services. Instead, affiliates of the company are only able to market affiliate membership to the company itself.
Bundled with Mobile Blog Pro affiliate membership is a mobile app that allows affiliates to “blog from anywhere”.
In addition to blogging, Mobile Blog Pro state their app will also alow users to
post, edit, attach pictures, include video and even share your latest posts on your social networks, all with the click of a button!
It is unclear which blogging platform Mobile Blog Pro are using for their backend.
Mobile Blog Pro charge affiliates $69.95 upfront and then $29.95 a month thereafter for access to their blogging app.
The Mobile Blog Pro Compensation Plan
The Mobile Blog Pro compensation plan revolves around affiliates recruiting new affiliates, offering an upfront recruitment commissions as well as residual earnings.
Recruitment Commissions
Mobile Blog Pro pay out members on the recruitment of new affiliates down three levels of recruitment.
For every new affiliate recruited the recruiter is paid $25 (level 1). Any new affiliates brought in by directly recruited affiliates (level 2), generate a $5 commission. If any of these level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates of their own (level 3), a $3 commission is generated.
Residual Commissions
Residual commissions are offered in Mobile Blog Pro using a binary commissions structure. A binary compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of the structure, with two legs branching out from under them:
These two legs are the start of two teams, with positions under them able to be filled either via direct recruitment or the recruiting efforts of an affiliate’s up and downlines.
Residual commissions are paid via pairing, using a 1:1 ratio between the left and right teams. Every affiliate you have on your left team paired to one affiliate on your right team generates a $10 commission each month.
In order to qualify for Mobile Blog Pro residual commissions, an affiliate must have at least two affiliates in their binary (one on the left and one on the right).
Joining Mobile Blog Pro
Affiliate to Mobile Blog Pro is $69.95 upfront and $29.95 a month thereafter.
Conclusion
The major problem I see with Mobile Blog Pro is the complete lack of a retail option. No retail means no retail customers and ultimately that means an MLM company full of affiliates, with affiliates generating 100% of the company’s revenue via their own funds.
Nothing is being sold to retail customers.
One possible reason for Mobile Blog Pro not targeting retail customers could be the price of the app. $69.95 for a mobile blogging app sounds a bit steep, given the plethora of free alteratives.
What blogging platform Mobile Blog Pro are using to power their network isn’t known, but regardless I see it as a hard sell without the attached income opportunity at the current price point.
When you combine no retail customers with a compensation plan that pays out commissions when said affiliates have ‘paid their monthly membership‘, what you end up with is an MLM opportunity that requires affiliates to recruit new affiliates to earn.
If the recruitment stops, newly joined affiliates will stop paying their monthly membership fees. When that happens those above them will stop paying their fees and so on and so forth.
MLM companies that rely on the constant recruitment of new members to pay out commission are commonly referred to as pyramid schemes.
He’s trying to clone EmpowerNetwork, except with the “mobile” buzzword.
With WordPress, Blogger, and other blogging platforms easily available on all mobile phones and pads, who the **** would pay $30 a month for a blog, except for the promise that if you recruit you get paid?
MORE than 2 months? That was impressive. He had around 14 members after 2 weeks, if I remember it correctly.
I checked the project frequently for a week or so, and it was like watching the grass grow.
Note:
I was talking about his former project, InstantCashMatrix.
The only other program I know his name from is That Free Thing in 2011, where he was on top of the local Norwegian foodchain for 3 or 4 months, with up to 1,500 members in the last month (before most of them dropped out).
Maybe he’s reinvesting the money from TFT or ICM? He probably made a few hundred bucks on them.
I had a quick look at it, and it doesn’t look too bad (his former project InstantCashMatrix did).
The only thing I looked for was whether or not it potentially can meet a market in the “normal part of the population”, i.e. a mixture of different people rather than hardcor income opportunity seekers.
It has a thread on the MoneyMakerGroup forum, (mis)placed under “HYIPs, Autosurfs …” –> “MLM and referral programs”.
Rune Fjørtoft will need to work with his communication skills and -methods, both his personal and the ones built into the program.
My previous statement “it doesn’t look too bad” was related to that it didn’t look like a hardcore income opportunity. As an income opportunity it looks rather boring (but simple), “recruit recruiters in BOTH legs and you will get paid”. So it didn’t exactly find the right audience under “HYIPs / High Risk programs”.
Communication flaws in the program is about communicating what people needs to know about something, e.g. about the payment process. The program will need to communicate the payment PROCESS better, e.g. add one or two “paid out” information columns to the existing ones.
The problem?
People could see they had earned some minor amounts, e.g. $200 or so. Suddenly the earnings dropped to ZERO when it was in the middle of the process of being paid out. The program will need to SHOW why the earnings have dropped to zero, e.g. “transferred to eWallet this month/week”.
The program will need to communicate things like that more professionally.
The second problem?
Answering support tickets is probably a good idea. 🙂
The problems I have mentioned here are from MMG:
He DID post a correction when he received payment two days later.
The program has several “issues” like that. It’s mostly about poor communication methods rather than about real problems.
They will need to fix the communication process there.
When people eagerly are awaiting their first payout to see if the program really pays out anything at all, they will need MORE communication than what they currently get.
“My earnings show 0” will need a “$xxx has been transferred to your account” message to solve that part of the communication problem.
I have a suspicion that he has bought this program as a “script” from the same source where he bought InstantCashMatrix.
A problem with that is that you will get “standardized” solutions rather than solutions designed for specific markets. Another problem is that competitors will pop up around you using exactly the same software.
Here’s another problem picked up from MMG:
I’m not an expert on compensation plans, so I won’t dive too deep into it.
From the viewpoint of an income opportunity seeker, the binary pairing compensation plan can have some issues. Tou can have hundreds of people in downline, but you won’t earn a dime if they’re all in the same leg of the binary plan.
RuneF has a website mlmpronews.com, a relatively inactive blog with few new posts in 2012 and 2013.
Mobile Blog Pro
Maybe that’s why he’s so eager to tell the world how professional he is. It’s obviously one person or more who believes in it, and he has to repeat it frequently so he won’t forget it.
I checked the website now, and it looked completely dead (no activity). “Top recruiters this month” contained absolutely no names.
The idea in itself isn’t too bad – “offer a blog platform designed specifically for mobile phones”. But it becomes bad when the only service attached to it is a pay to play income opportunity.
The idea isn’t too good either (to be realistic). 🙂