Penny Matrix Review: God & $7/month membership
There is no information on the Penny Matrix website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The company’s website domain (pennymatrix.com) however was registered on the 12th of January 2011 and lists a “Michael Dodd” who is apparently the “MD” (Managing Director?) of something called “Operations Corporation”, which appears to be a division of “World Light LLC”, with World Light LLC seemingly operating out of Tennessee in the US.
Through World Light, Dodd (photo right) appears to have launched a previous venture called “World Light Funding” back in late 2010. World Light Funding was a recruitment driven single line matrix pyramid scheme that is no longer operational.
At the time of publication of this review, the World Light Funding website (worldlightfunding.com) redirects to something called “World Light Plus”, which appears to be a religious centered business opportunity of some sort. The income opportunity section of the World Light Plus Website (under “reseller”) simply requests visitors “check back in two hours!”
How long the World Light Plus website has been displaying this information is not known.
Meanwhile, the “about us” section of the World Light Plus website is somewhat of an amusing read:
World Light Plus, the Company, is a unique for-profit enterprise founded in 2012. World Light Plus (WLP) is completely oriented towards and controlled by its membership, as stated by its slogan, For the Members and By the Members.
The actual history of World Light Plus (WLP) begins with THE VISION of the late Ronald Mashal, who passed away on July 6, 2008. He was generally described as soft-spoken and ‘easy-going’. His closest friends say he was also quite humble, yet inwardly a spiritual giant whose soul could “light up the world”.
One day, a critical medical condition caused him to be rushed to the hospital, where he was officially declared dead. However, in that mysterious place between pure spiritual life and physical death, between God’s heavenly realm and Earth, a VISION was revealed to him.
Ron was then shown the image of a ‘system’ that would create an easier path for not just surviving these conditions but eventually improving the human condition on Earth. He then asked Ron to go back and serve humanity by implementing THE VISION. Ron obeyed.
Like people in biblical times, Ron did not ask for his mission. Yet, it became sacred to his heart, mind and soul, despite the many travails and extreme sorrows he had to suffer.
Friends turned against him; some thought he had been smitten by madness. Fortunately, he had personal savings to sustain him while he devoted the remainder of his life to this mission.
Yet, he watched them slowly dwindle away as banker after banker who used to be his friend turned their backs to him. He especially needed help in designing computer programs that would model THE VISION in each of its aspects.
Yet, pseudo-computer experts who claimed to possess the necessary skills would all, one by one, prove their incompetence.
Still, he persevered as if driven by an equal degree of love for THE VISION’s Author and a heart-felt desire to carry out His will. As if possessed by a new, indefatigable spirit, he gradually overcame every obstacle in constructing THE VISION’S mathematical model on paper.
Ron succeeded! WLP now serves as the access door for an inspired and faithful variation of Ron’s original VISION.
WLP truly believes that its matrix compensation plan contains both its ingenious essence and global reach.
So some guy died, rose from the dead and continued on god’s mission for him… which was supposedly to launch various dodgy looking MLM businesses under the World Light brand?
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Meanwhile back in reality, the YouTube account used to host Penny Matrix’s promotional videos is ‘mikedodd22’, with this same account used to host World Light Funding’s marketing videos back in late 2010.
To tie everything together and cement that “Mike Dodd” is behind World Light Funding and Penny Matrix, here’s a Twitter account tweet that does just that:
A recently deleted LinkedIn profile (Google cache screenshot below is from October 2nd, 2012), also shows Dodd listing himself as the CEO of Penny Matrix, under the username “worldlight”:
Why Dodd is claiming that World Light only launched in 2012 and why the Penny Matrix website does not reveal who the ownership of the scheme is not known.
Read on for a full review of the Penny Matrix MLM opportunity.
The Penny Matrix Product Line
There are no retailable products or services available through the Penny Matrix income opportunity. Instead, Penny Matrix affiliates are only able to market membership to the company itself.
An ebook store is present on the Penny Matrix website, however attempting to purchase any books results in a request for a visitor to sign up to the company.
The Penny Matrix Compensation Plan
The Penny Matrix compensation plan revolves around a 2×14 matrix, which Penny Matrix members must fill with recruited members.
Members can be added to a Penny Matrix affiliate’s matrix either via direct recruitment or the recruiting efforts of their upline and downline.
A 2×14 matrix places an affiliate at the top of the matrix with two membership positions directly under them (level 1). In turn, these two positions branch out into two new legs (level 2) and so on and so forth down 14 levels, with the first few levels of a 2×14 matrix look something like this:
Using this 2×14 compensation structure, Penny Matrix pay out on even numbers of the matrix, with affiliates paid 30 cents per member on any even level.
Additionally the company also offers affiliates a 100% earnings match on the matrix earnings of any personally recruited affiliates.
Joining Penny Matrix
Penny Matrix membership is $7 a month recurring.
Conclusion
Penny Matrix pays out 100% of its commissions out of membership fees. Along with the fact that no retail products are marketed or sellable by company affiliates, this equates to Penny Matrix fitting the definition of a pyramid scheme.
And with the company keeping half the income possible via recruitment into an affiliate’s matrix, not even a marketable pyramid scheme at that.
New members rely on recruitment in order to earn commissions and those already in the company rely on new and existing members to continue to pay their monthly memberships in order to get paid.
If members stop paying their monthly membership fees, nobody gets paid and the entire scheme falls apart.
An argument could be made that the ebook side of things legitimises the Penny Matrix opportunity, however with commissions not dependent on the sale of ebooks and ebooks not being available at a retail level, the ebook side of Penny Matrix serves as nothing more than a token inclusion to attempt to legitimise what is quite obviously a recruitment dependent pyramid scheme.
Or as Mike Dodd described it just last Monday on Facebook, a ‘tell 2 friends that tell 2 friends thingy‘.
I tried to run the “World Light” program that come from Ron Mashal, who lived and died in Canada, (and did NOT come back to life). We paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions and gave most of the rest to charities and needy families.
I, Mike Dodd, was not able to innovate the World Light Funding program that way it needed to be. It was sold to Bret Littlefield of Florida (for very little).
At the time of this review and the time of this writing, (Oct 18, 2012), the Penny Matrix is not fully programmed. Yes, the general public WILL be able to buy without any push to become a members at all. (We don’t have that platform progammed yet but are working on it.)
We we are finished, PennyMatrix.com will be the best program on the planet. We welcome all.
I can understand that if you’re religions, you had a near-death experience and you’d see angels and whatnot.
But what sort of religious person had a near-death experience, and decides to start a pyramid scheme? 😉
Maybe it’s NOT God that he saw…
Well, Ron, is deceased now and everyone can only go on what he said while he was living.
(Ozedit: removed spam)
This fellow appears to ripping a page out of the Scientology playbook. Maybe Tom Cruise will join up. Weird. The founder is “Ron” after all!
Penny Matrix seems to have launched early 2011… and you’re “not finished” yet?
Rightio.
“Not finished” mind you is no excuse to be running a non-retail pyramid scheme.
Sign me up! Best mlm on the planet. Xenu says so! Been channeling and got the green light.
Apparently Mr Dodd is some sort of self styled internet SEO “guru”
From his webpage: ourverybestoffers.com/
“That’s okay though because I can back it up! If I decide to take you on as new consulting client I guarantee that you will get much more traffic (targeted traffic) than you ever dreamed possible or you can cash in our massive guarantee*!”
A pyramid scheme from beyond the grave. Interesting.
I also did a little checking when I received my Penny Matrix welcome letter from a company called WorldLight.biz that thanked me for joining Penny Matrix “early”.
I guess the use of the word “early” got me a little concerned, so I looked up the WLB domain name and found it to be a GoDaddy registered and hosted page registered to a Bobby Carter of BRCA, INC. of Ft. Worth, Texas. The original domain registration date was Jan. 17, 2009 and was updated Jan. 17, 2012.
The WorldLight.biz domain is set to expire on Jan 16, 2013. So I do not know how Mr. Carter and WorldLight.biz relate to Mr. Dodd of PennyMatrix.com or to Mr. Littlefield and WorldLightFunding.com. However, I did try to visit the WLF website and it is now defunct.
There is a new site called WorldLightPlus.com and seems to be involved with reselling products to aid charities. And when you go to WorldLight.biz you are re-directed to the site named sheckles.worldlightplus.com and it is essentially the same as WLP.com.
I guess we (as Penny Matrix members) can only hope that the opportunity is indeed credible, sustainable, and will experience longevity. And at $7.00 per month, I guess the risk is very minimal. With fingers crossed………
Most people who have NDE’s see the light. Ron saw a bright green dollar sign.
Why do you think it is a ponze scheme? I think a ponze scheme is when the people at the bottom has no chance of making money.. Here, same rules for everyone…
Besides, if i ONLY bring in Two, and those two decide to bring in 100 each they will make a lot more money than me and I am above them, so, it isnt a ponze scheme….plus, they have ebooks….
Here is a way to look at it people:
$7.00 Monthly Membership Fee for eBooks
Making commissions, plus 100% matching commissions But, you can make a huge profit by helping others
WHERE DO I SIGN UP! 🙂
Only $7 bucks, beats $500 a month…
Well there’s your problem right there.
Nope. A Ponzi scheme is where you are paid with fellow member’s money. As you are paid more than you put in, it means someone else is LOSING money, even though they are gaining money through whatever activity they *thought* they are doing, thus, it is FRAUD.
Ponzi and pyramid schemes are related in that they are both fraud, but organization and operation are different, but they both rely on influx of new money (i.e. new members) thus both are recruitment-based scams.
I agree with 1drcteam. Pennymatrix it’s an internet marketing company so all the procedures are made online. They have a product! A huge pack of ebooks are available to download!
ITS NOT A FRAUD. Pennymatrix is a legitimate online company! Members are making money there and not only the onwners of the company!
As far as an MLM business goes, if I can’t buy it it’s not a “product”. If you’re bundled an ebook library with membership and membership is therefore the only thing people can buy, that’s your product.
If membership is your product and you’re paying out commissions on it, you’ve got yourself a pyramid scheme.
Thanks so much for breaking this down! This is a pyramid scheme through & through!!
Smh & to use God in it….
I have reported Mike Dodd to the Tennessee State Attorney General for this program. It is clearly a pyramid scam and the authorities need to know.
He is also partnered with long time cash gifting scam artist Jon Scherling.
Bo, what is your problem? Why do you want to destroy the tool for people to make a little money. $7 is only the price of a piece of sandwich. Nobody will get hurt throwing $7.
Leave the people alone. Let them have a little hope in their poor miserable life. You do not have to join if you do not want to.
Please check your motive for your evil desire to destroy the little hope that the people have. Don’t be pompous with your better than thou attitude you have.
it looks like a resell deal to me, you pay $7 a month for access to ebooks that you can read at your leasure. God forbid you get a commission if you find someone else that would also enjoy the same deal.
You want scams? Look at all the mlm companies selling products that you can get at the corner store for less than half the price of what these companies sell their oh so special products for.. And your autoship is $100 a month and ya better not miss a payment or ya lose your commissions!..
there is risk in all business decisions but when the risk is equal to a happy meal.. well, we all could lose a few pounds anyway i think..
P-p-p-pyramid scheme. Without the attached MLM income opportunity you’d have a straight up affiliate offer. With it, all you’ve got is recruitment commissions.
Nobody wants scams and discussion about “all the mlm companies” is irrelevant.
Risk is not a determining factor in whether or not an MLM company operates as a pyramid scheme.
If the books were overpriced, I would DEFINITELY have a problem with it. I have a problem with 95% of the mlm companies because of their overpriced products and never joined because of that.
Most MLMs start at $40 a month autoship. So what if you can re-sell the opportunity to someone that sees the value in paying $7 a month to get access to them ? To put this in the same league as those MLM pyramid schemes with high priced autoships is just ridiculous.
You’ve got recruitment commissions yes but you’re BUYING access to books. If you don’t like the product or see the value in it, you’re not going to buy it are you? I think people are smart enough to determine if the books are worth $7 a month even if they dont attract anyone to join them and whether this will ruin them financially.
You can call most of the high priced MLMs companies where people overpay for the value of the products, pyramid schemes. You can call this whatever you want.
At $7, you’re playing marbles and can’t put this into the same league as the companies I’m referring to here and doing so would just be mean and ridiculous for the sake of making a point.
You’re not paying for the books, you’re paying a monthly membership fee that permits you earn commissions when you recruit new members who also pay their monthly membership fee.
P-p-p-p-pyramid scheme. The “opportunity” is not a viable product in MLM.
A “recruitment driven pyramid scheme” works for me. Cheers.
What a pyramid scheme costs to participate does not make it a pyramid scheme. Business model and compensation plan Penny Matrix is no different to any other pyramid scheme out there.
You’re not paying for books? Yes you are, instead of keeping them on your desktop to re-sell them to others that want to read them, you refer them to the website and they pay you for that.
You’re just playing with words. Knock yourself out Champ. Sad and mean that you want to prevent people from earning money. As long as the company’s honest in their dealings, I don’t see the point.
Only if they pay for affiliate membership (the income opportunity). That’s what being purchased here, not ebooks.
Delicious, delicious irony. Free of charge too.
Pyramid schemes are never honest.
Well instead of labeling them, how about giving them a chance to prove you otherwise? Good night.
And they paid whoever referred YOU to the website.
You don’t see a problem with that? Care to review the definition of a pyramid scheme? Esp. a “product-disguised” pyramid scheme?
You’re not doing that? Phooey. 🙂
When your business model pays on the recruitment of new affiliates, out of membership fees paid by said affiliates, there’s nothing to prove other than you’re running a blatant recruitment driven pyramid scheme.
You’re barking up the wrong tree.. its not even a tree! It’s a sunflower!! Nothing worth barking at.
Hello People,
Get a life or get off the planet. Let’s think about this a minute.
If I buy cable which is a service, and I want to get a kick back on my monthly bill I might want to tell a couple people and give my ID# so I can make good on it. The more people I tell the less I have to pay on my bill. WOW!
When I purchase a cell phone with service and I want to get points to purchase other products I tell a few people. If I sell you insurance, And tell you, you can save $10 by giving me 3 or 4 people who else might be needing insurance and if they join you save 40 on insurance every month they stay a member.
I could go on, but I think you will eventually get it.
😉
Penny Matrix does none of those things. They pay you to recruit new members and for as long as they pay their ongoing monthly membership fees.
Trying to compare MLM to non-MLM business models? Complete and utter fail.
Forget about getting a life, try getting a clue first.
Apparently PM does sell retail now… pmebooks.com
Legit scam now?
That appears to be a separate website external to the PM MLM opportunity, which still pays commissions on the affiliate membership fees paid by participants.
The company selling retail on another website is irrelevant, unless your affiliates are actually selling products at a retail level to customers (the presence of retail is not enough), you’re just shuffling affiliate money around.
The sign up process is completed at PMebooks. com (you can purchase an ebook immediately without becoming a member)
The Pennymatrix. com sites are basically replicating sites linked directly to a retail store where you can purchase ebooks/ become a member…
Legit scheme?
I don’t think there is even an entity named PM (MLM). PM is the commission structure, PMebooks is the product, World Light is the company… (I think that’s how it is set up…).
… but I don’t think there are any commissions paid on retail. Soooo, they may not be legit.
Like I said, just putting up a retail store isn’t enough, you need to have actual sales to (non-affiliate) retail customers.
I think the obvious lack of value at a retail level of resellable PLR ebooks speaks for itself.
Revenue wise Penny Matrix is still just paying affiliates to recruit (membership fees). Introducing a separate ebook retail storefront doesn’t change that.
Hello ,
you do not understand anything guys !!!
it is not a pyramid !!! F…!
Just buy and resell ebooks like Amazon !!
Hey ! open your eyes it is legit !!
many members make money, these are affiliate commissions they earn and membership for this service is legal .
Please do not break all you do not understand, you pay for a product and service and it is so legal.
MLM is legal all around the world !!!!!! (Multi Level Marketing ) there is a product (digital ebooks) and service, you can sell your own ebooks in their shop.
So what do you want more ???!!!
Regards.
And what, ignore the recruitment commissions paid out of affiliate membership fees that make Penny Matrix a pyramid scheme?
You can’t selectively choose to ignore parts of the compensation plan that are clearly recruitment-driven commissions. Especially when it’s the core of the business (nobody is selling PLR ebook trash in any significant numbers).
And this statement is based on what?
Their “product” is somebody elses product. Charging membership fees, paying commissions on said fees using an MLM compensation plan and reselling other people’s products on the side is not a viable MLM business, it’s an unsustainable pyramid scheme.
Do you consider Netflix a scam?
Because this company do use other company and studio movies to his members and do charge a monthly fee of 8$ ???
They also have an affiliate program for his members to refer and earn a commission!
my 2 cents question…
Nope.
is not an MLM company and thus is entirely irrelevant.
which is single-level and has nothing to do with MLM.
Don’t expect any change.
Read your replies has made me chuckle Oz!
It is crazy how people within a MLM system will defend it to its core. They talk about “the opportunity” or “its the vehicle”.
I’m going to set up my own MLM scheme. only $5 to get in but similar payment to Penny Matrix. Each month I will record a video about online marketing worth $197 (coz I am that amazing)
One a serious note Oz, have you reviewed many… scratch that .. any MLM opps that aren’t “Pay $x for this bag of air and get others to join and you can make $$$”?
@Andy
There are a few. By nature of what owners and admins launch though (a symptom of the easier nature to launch dubious opportunities over legit), I find myself covering far more MLM opportunities of the nature you describe.
Hi,
Okay so everybody thinks that PM is a ponzi scheme, that’s okay.
In the first place it’s my money and second you must have gotten scammed along the way and are very upset about it, I under stand so have I. I don’t know if you know this but you can purchase referrals because I know for a fact recruiting can be very depressing.
So they made to where you can purchase your referrals so you don’t have to wait to make money. This opinion is aimed at those that think PM is a scheme. If you really think about it who can you really trust now days on the computer????? Very body has an opinion, but remember it’s our money so relax get a life.
Actually it’s a recruitment driven pyramid scheme. There is nothing “okay” about either Ponzi or pyramid schemes.
Irrelevant. You can buy a guy, that doesn’t mean you can use it as you wish. Ditto a car.
If it makes it any easier to accept the fact that you’re participating in a pyramid scheme, make up whatever fiction you like.
Why am I not surprised.
Ah so they’ve started selling fake email addresses, ala Zeek Rewards. Still a pyramid scheme, just shadier now.
I suggest you don’t base your MLM due diligence on opinion, base it on facts – facts like Penny Matrix’s compensation plan, which is that of a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme.
MUST ?
I don’t know about you, Richard, but I can think up a whole pile of other reasons for people pointing out fraud when they see it, other than them having been scammed themselves
I joined penny matrix and after awhile decided it wasn’t for me! I got out of penny matrix last year and they are still charging me $7.00!
Not only that they are charging me $7.00 several times a month!
Can I get ahold of someone? Nope! Has anyone messaged me back? Nope! Will I ever see my money again? Probably not!
I CANCELED A YEAR AGO. Been charged $7 a month still.
Give me back my money NOW, i will report to BBB. Feel free to contact me ASAP TO FIX THIS.
A year ago?!
You didn’t think to call up your bank or credit card company after the first few months???
Tracy Davison is a scammer and ran to the Philippines. He is the originator of PennyMatrix. It’s a SCAM! Run from this like the plague!