The Advertising Net Review: An MLM article directory?
The last year or so has seen the world’s largest search-engine Google wage an all-out war against content farms. Believing the bulk of them are chock-a-block full of shallow low-quality content that exists solely for the purpose of SEO, through their “panda” updates, Google hit content farms and hit them hard.
eHow, one of the largest article directories on the internet experienced a 53% drop in search visibility, with its UK variant slugged with a 72% drop alone.
Following the Panda aftermath, eHow’s parent company Demand Media announced a 6.4 million dollar loss in the 4th quarter of 2011 – largely accredited to Panda’s search algorithm changes.
What does any of this have to do with MLM? Well when the largest websites of the article-directory niche are taking heavy losses due to their perceived low value they deliver readers, you’d think one would step up and take notice.
Not The Advertising Net. Combining an article directory with an MLM compensation plan, the Advertising Net are still heralding article marketing as the cornerstone of SEO marketing and online revenue generation.
Read on for a full review.
The Company
The Advertising Net lists its CEO as Jim Perkins.
Jim was first Introduced to Network Marketing through NSA. He became one of the top three earners with Symetics and then went on to become a Platinum Distributor for Nutrition For Life.
Having retired from running two successful businesses in plant hire and haulage and spending quite a few years working with the management of Networking companies, Jim decided to return to Network marketing, and for the last two years has worked closely with Dave Coxon developing a project he first created 15 years ago.
He had huge success with the concept back then, and felt the time was right to revisit the idea again but this time using the Internet to create a Company that would be here in 30 years from today.
The company also lists David Coxon as its Techincal Director and Paul and Cynthia Gregory and Paul and Fiona Smith as its Directors.
The Advertising Net Product Line
The Advertising Net has no product or service to sell. Instead, existing members market membership to the company to prospective new members, earning commissions each time someone signs up.
Membership to the Advertising Net includes the ability to create an article that the Advertising Net host in their online article directory.
The company also provides members with ‘access to online training and online videos for marketing advice‘, although no further information is provided as to what this training is or by who.
The Advertising Net Compensation Plan
The Advertising Net compensation plan revolves around a series of matrices that once full, pay out a cycle commission. These cycle commissions differ slightly from your traditional once-off payment in that they are paid out each month as long as a matrix is full.
If a member drops out they are eventually replaced by a new member, and at the end of the month if a matrix you’ve already completed is full, you receive another cycle payment for completing it.
New members are fed into the first matrix and once they cycle out they are in turn fed into progressive matrices (ten in total).
The first matrix (Bronze) is a 2×3 matrix (14 positions to fill) with the other matrices all being 2x4s (30 positions to fill).
Here are the various cycle payouts for each of the Advertising Net’s various matrices:
- Bronze – $150
- Silver – $300
- Gold – $600
- Platinum – $1,200
- Diamond – $2,400
- 1 Star – $4,800
- 2 Star – $9,600
- 3 Star – $19,200
- 4 Star – $38,400
- Royal Diamond – $76,800
Total = $153,450.
In order to receive cycle commissions members must be qualified. If on the Single Pack membership (explained below), members must recruit 2 paid Advertising Net members.
If on the Tri Pack membership, members are automatically qualified as they themselves purchase the two required membership positions below them (effectively recruiting themselves to qualify).
The Advertising Net also offers what are called ‘Lifestyle Rewards’ upon completion of certain matrices. These Rewards include car and mortgage payments, money towards holidays and a cash bonus.
Qualification for the Lifestyle Rewards bonuses is the recruitment of 3 new members. These members must maintain their monthly membership for at least 3 rolling months (the company advises you recruit more than three in the event one member cancels their subscription and temporarily disqualifies you).
Joining The Advertising Net
The Advertising Net membership comes in two varieties:
- Single Pack Membership is as the name implies a single matrix position (starting off in the Bronze matrix) at a cost of $55.
- Tri Pack Membership is three membership positions at a cost of $160. Your first position is the same as the Single Pack membership, with the two additional membership positions purchased sitting directly under you (forming the 2nd level of your initial Bronze matrix).
Both membership fees are recurring monthly charges ($55 and $160 respectively).
Conclusion
The first thing that struck me about the Advertising Net was the high monthly ongoing membership costs.
Competing in a niche where their competitors usually pay per article or run a revenue share based off the advertising revenue generated by the articles written, expecting members to pay in excess of $100 a month seemed steep.
Then when you realise that the matrix commissions are paid out monthly and are not simple once-off cycle bonuses, it all starts to make sense.
For example, the Silver matrix pays out just $300 yet requires a staggering 240 new members each time existing member cycles out of it. By the time we start talking the higher end matrices, the recruitment numbers required to fill the matrices are staggering (Gold for example is 7,200 new members a cycle).
The Advertising Net do try to negate some of these recruitment numbers by allowing members to recruit themselves (the Tri Pack), however this doesn’t change the fact that 100% of the commissions are driven by recruitment and paid out of membership fees.
There is nothing to retail with the Advertising Net and with their competitors offering free article directory services it’s pretty clear the only people who are going to be using the Advertising Net, will be doing so solely to participate in the compensation plan.
In an age where search engines are heavily penalizing free article directories for serving up wafer thin and useless content, it’s pretty much a guarantee that most Adverising Net members are going to be uploading advertisements to other MLM opportunities they might be in.
And that’s if they even bother to use the article service at all.
Hundreds if not thousands of replicated advertisement “articles” is ultimately only going to spell disaster for the Advertising Net’s directory and will deliver little to no SEO value. SEO being something the company apparently seems to be trading its online directory’s credibility on.
Article marketing is largely seen as dead these days, and once the new recruits stop signing up – I imagine so too will the Advertising Net MLM opportunity.
Update 21st May 2015 – The Advertising Net relaunched itself with a new compensation plan earlier this month.
For an up to date review of the opportunity, check out our The Advertising Net v2.0 Review.
Hi,
Thanks for the review. An aquaintence I know is trying to get me into this company. Is this something you would recommend? I really do not know much about MLM.
Thanks,
Jane
After a quick overview: NO. This one seems to require a very specific personality.
The Advertising Net seems more like a money circulation scheme than a real business, so unless you are very heavily focused on recruitment this doesn’t seem like a good choice for you.
Oz pointed out a few interesting points:
This business doesn’t seem to be about products or services at all. It’s all about recruitment, and building a huge downline under you. This is also reflected in the owner’s CV:
I’ll guess his previous business experiences has been related to autoship of products, based on one of the companies’ name. These models are basically recruitment schemes with monthly payments, to support payouts to upline and the company.
These models needs some products/services that people really are interested in, something that makes them willing to pay their monthly fees for a while even if they’re not making any money – some “true believers” rather than “income opportunity seekers”.
MY IMPRESSION
My overall impression is that the owner is skilled in recruiting, but less skilled in understanding how a business really works in the lower levels of an autoship-model. People needs something to defend their monthly expenses, something to convince themselves that they’re doing the right thing, and are getting some value in return for their money.
Another impression I have is that the owner tries to “re-live” some previous successes, that he’s trying to repeat a formula from “the good old days”, “when he made it to the top” (or something similar). A major difference is that he had products people were willing to believe in (nutrition) in his previous successes, and followed concepts designed by someone more skilled than himself.
I have certainly not the right personality to join something like this. I’m dependant on having a good concept, something that is less dependant on personal skills and specializing.
*
You will find an example of “a true believer” in the thread about SugarMums (Mannatech). I consider people to be more than true believers when they are willing to write 200 comments about nutrition in a blog. 🙂
I personally find the field of MLM “very dangerous” for people who are new to it. I’ve summarized my thoughts in this article:
http://kschang.hubpages.com/hub/Networking-Marketing-is-doomed-to-failure-its-all-about-the-dream-not-reality
I was not going to reply to your review but as it has so many mis conceptions to give people a fair look at a great opportunity.
First of all the fact that you state that there is no product at TAN means you do not understand the business. Second as you relate the business product to writing articles and article reviews displays further ignorance.
The product is a website – a very important product for many businesses and the second thing is that the website is simple to build and comes with the SEO ability.
One of the most costly mistakes many businesses make is thinking they can operate without either being online or just having a simple website that no one can find.
Once people understand that MLM is a business and just like any business one must understand the product and the customers then people will be less likely to write such one sided reviews and worse off tout them online.
You don’t buy a website in The Advertising Net, you buy membership which provides access to the article directory (submission of an article).
This is the reality of the opportunity, in that members are simply paid to recruit new members into the scheme.
Less waffle about imaginary misconceptions and more focus on the facts please.
The business model is a pyramid scheme with an invaluable service attached to it. “Invaluable” is because you’re RENTING “webpages” for a short period of time.
Commissions are generated 100% from recruitment, from new participants joining after you, filling out matrices and generating payouts.
People are attracted to pyramid schemes because they believe enough people will join after them, i.e. the “bigger fool theory”. And sometimes they ARE able to find bigger fools, generating payouts for themselves.
Looks like David Coxon is back to continue his scamming ways, and now has the assistance of ponzi pimp extraordinaire, Michael Colucci pimping on the MMG forum for him.
moneymakergroup.com/Tan-Marketing-Theadvert-t492521.html&pid=1109231266#entry1109231266