Using Zeek Rewards as a pure investment program?
Following the Zeek Rewards review I published yesterday, I got into an interesting discussion with BehindMLM reader ‘Colsta’ about the way he was using Zeek Rewards (you can read the discussion in the comments section of the review linked to above).
Completely ignoring the MLM business opportunity or penny auction side of things, instead Colsta (and presumably many others like him) chose to work the Zeek Rewards compensation plan as a pure investment opportunity.
I’ll go into exactly how this works in a bit, but after looking over the methodology involved… I can’t help but ask how this is going to be sustainable in the long term.
Not withstanding some pretty dodgy looking practices being undertaken by Zeek Rewards and Zeekler themselves.
In order to completely ignore the MLM and penny auction side of things and treat Zeek Rewards as a pure investment opportunity, all you have to do is sign up to the program as a Silver Affiliate.
Once that’s done, you can then purchase what are called VIP bids. Zeek Rewards members must give these bids away in order to receive what are called VIP reward points.
As an income stream for members offered through the compensation plan, a commission percentage based off these reward points offers members a daily return.
The percentage value of this return is determined by Zeek Rewards on a daily basis depending on the total VIP point sales volume of that particular day.
Now, here’s where it gets interesting.
The VIP points themselves are a kind of virtual currency, and Zeek Rewards pay members a percentage of the point value a member has. This effectively means they have a liquid virtual value that is constantly changing.
In order to increase the amount of points a member has, and effectively automate the investment process, members can opt to re-invest the daily investment return Zeek Rewards pays its members out daily.
The way this works is via an advertising co-op that Zeek set up last month in August. You see, in order to give away their VIP reward points, Zeek Rewards members need customers to give them away to.
Instead of having its members go out there and advertise the business themselves, Zeek instead have opted to do this for members, or so they claim.
Through an advertising co-op, Zeek Rewards claims to supply a steady stream of customers to its members.
This advertising co-op apparently puts the Zeekler penny auction website on a ‘‘customer registration rotator with a fantastic “Receive UP TO 500 Bid Give-Away” splash page‘.
The specifics of this marketing campaign are unknown but from the looks of it, it appears to be company wide effort to spam the crap out of the internet (starting with the requirement of Zeek Rewards members to spam the internet with daily ads in order to receive commissions).
Due to the nature of this marketing campaign, which relies on a demand for penny auctions itself, Zeek Rewards are counting on bringing in enough new customers to cover the re-investment demands of their existing members.
The problem?
Whether there are customers or not, Zeek are selling these customers to members on a pre-allocation basis.
When a new customer registers they will be rotated out to the next affiliate in line that has pre-purchased customers.
The important thing to take away from that sentence are the words ‘in line’. Zeek admit there’s a waiting line for customers by their members but instead of balancing their new customers with member orders for new customers, they’re just letting their members purchase new customers and continue to grow their VIP point investments.
What we have here are members purchasing VIP bids, giving these bids away to company supplied customers (who most likely don’t exist), getting reward points off these customers and then being paid out a daily commission on these reward points, which is then re-invested into the system to purchase more VIP bids to sell again.
So what’s wrong with that you ask?
Well without actual customers, where are the daily returns coming from?
As long as everybody is busy re-investing their daily returns in order to increase their VIP points to in turn increase their daily returns, Zeek Rewards don’t have a problem.
But that doesn’t mean one isn’t building.
In tying their daily returns to the guarantee of daily new customers, Zeek Rewards inevitably set themselves up for catastrophic collapse.
Think about it. Hypothetically, let’s say one day no new members sign up to Zeek Rewards via their advertising co-op. Members of course are still able to purchase customers (even though they don’t exist) and are put in a line waiting to be allocated.
In the meantime they receive their VIP points and a calculated percentage return for the day.
The next day this happens again. And again, and again and again.
Even if we’re a little more forgiving and change zero customers to ‘well below the amount needed to sustain member return payouts’, after one week, one month, hell a YEAR of not having enough money to actually pay out everyone (because there’s not enough actual customers!), what happens when everybody eventually wants to cash out?
Where the hell is the money going to come from??
And don’t forget, the entire time this is going on, every member’s VIP point balance is exponentially increasing as the size of their returns organically increases along with the amount of points they are able to purchase each day.
The whole time of course Zeek Rewards is collecting a monthly subscription from everyone, and when combined with whatever revenue they make from the penny auction side of things I’m sure can cover the odd person cashing out, but everyone?
Not a chance!
Unless I’m drastically missing something here, everybody participating in Zeek Rewards as a straight investment opportunity is counting on cashing out before everybody else does… but without knowing what everybody elses personal payment threshold is.
Gambling much?
One thing’s for sure, with a virtual customer waiting list and payments being made daily exponentially increasing demand for customers to the point they inevitably won’t be able to keep up (if they ever were in the first place)… people simply aren’t going to be paid.
Way wrong here.when you first sign up you get 100 points for free if you join as a free member.you place your ad each day and build these bonus points to around 250.the original points will drop off after 60 days.now these points are VIP points which will earn you points for 90 days and then those points drop off.
While doing this you just keep reinvesting to get your VIP points higher. Eventually to a point where you want to get cash.
Nobody! Cashes out in full or they are done.you set your repurchase to’80% and cash out 20% daily.read up before you put out this garbage!
Is there anything actually stopping you from cashing out 100%?
And do you honestly think people are going to give a damn about a ‘goodwill’ system if they think the program is unsustainable? Of course everyone is going to cash out 100% if they think it’s about to fall apart, what hippie horseshit world do you live in?
How about you come back down to reality?
You CAN’T “Cash out in full” So this pointless point is a non-issue. You PURCHASE VIP points, you have made a purchase, you have bought something.
Those points are a gauge on which to determine your revenue share. Each day that you place an Ad, (as an aside placing an Ad is not “spamming”, classified ad portals exist for… Wait for it… The placing of… Wait again… Classified ads), you are rewarded with a % of the profits generated by the company.
Pretty ingenious actually when you consider the traction achieved by 10, 20, 30+ THOUSAND people placing ads for you. As opposed to what it may cost if you were to approach an ad agency and ask what they would charge to have 10s of thousands of ads, many with different, “personalities” placed daily in 1000s of venues.
Now, on to your other pointless point… Non-existent customers… Much like your statement “Not withstanding some pretty dodgy looking practices being undertaken by Zeek Rewards and Zeekler themselves…” You simply throw it out there without anything but the effort to type it. As though merely typing it makes it a stand alone fact.
On one hand you are decrying your definition of spamming, right after decrying “Well without actual customers,…”. Much like the red herring “In tying their daily returns to the guarantee of daily new customers…”. They are doing no such thing, they tie the revenue sharing to… Wait for it… Revenue.
Just like literally EVERY company that provides “profit sharing”, “revenue sharing”, …et.al.
So lets look at the hypothetical that you laid out, but we will adjust for… reality. Since the revenue sharing has little to do with “New customers”, and everything to do with company wide revenue. If one day there were no new customers, there would still be revenue, (please pause here and look up that word), so the revenue sharing would be lower for that day.
THEREFORE the amount gained by each individual would be… LOWER… IF one day there were NO revenue… The amount gained by each individual would be… $0.00, What does that do to the amount of points by which the return is gauged?
NOTHING… You simply gain nothing… And since this ISN’T an investment and no gain is guaranteed… Simply hoped for as all profit sharing plans are…
You quite are obviously simply making up “facts”, to back into your needed conclusion. Why don’t you come clean and state what MLM you promote and needed an article to send people to that may be interested in Zeek?
Since nothing that you stated is based in fact, your conclusions are likewise faulty.
But since the only way you could find to disparage the company was to, quite literally make up your own reality in regard to them…
You should probably join with a quickness
The more I pay into the system, not how hard I work, determines how much I get OUT of the system? Sounds pretty fundamentally flawed already, and already shady and potentially illegal.
On the other hand, anybody trying to band 10-30 thousand people will have a hard time. Sounds like astroturfing advertising campaign to me. 😀
It’s inverted spamming. Instead of a few guys sending out 10000 spam, it’s 10000 people sending out a few spam (each). The result is the same, albeit a bit more distributed.
Anyone who thinks Zeek’s process is flawed is flawed in their own narrow mind’s judgmental little bubble. Unwarranted and unfounded, as refuted irrefutably by LearntoRead.
Anyone browsing here who gleans their “Truth” from anything but an intelligent post such as LTR’s is just… a Kool Aid drinker who would have been susceptible to taking a swig just because they happened to be thirsty and couldn’t wait.
One individual posting 1 daily ad does not constitute spam in any capacity. Multiple people are allowed to advertise the same product or service. By the classified sites’ own TOS, spam isn’t being committed.
Sorry, Charlie. There isn’t even any gray here for that argument.
Wrong again!… Buying VIP bids directly is simply 1 method. Others are attained by either people under you buying them, people joining under you…
You would think you would know this since there surely aren’t people thick enough to just spout out regarding things they know nothing about… I mean… THAT would just be stupid
WOW we are even making up terms with which to disparage… PAYING distributors to market for the company… is “astroturfing advertising”
Heck the company you work at the counter for does it all the time… EVERY McDonald’s is given discounted advertising by utilizing specific ad agencies. Each one does their own marketing, (packaged and provided by corporate) as well as pooling together for co-op advertising. Go ask your manager… That kid can tell you all about it.
“inverted spamming”, read; since it isn’t spamming and I just revealed that Im a moron, we are going to invent a term as a safety net and hope everyone is as illiterate as I am and doesn’t notice
Don’t forget to ask “Would you like fries with that”, working for 16 yr old HS students… Ya gotta be on your toes
Is this how you usually argue? Cite incomplete information, bait someone’s comment, then claim the other side is wrong by revealing yet MORE information?
What good is a VIP bid any way other than access to “VIP Auctions”? It’s a BUYERS PREMIUM, or a surcharge. Skip the fancy name.
Better than deceptive.
Not comparable. McDonalds don’t make their employees post free ads about McDonalds on Cragslist or free classifieds with promise to “share the profits”.
@LearnToRead
Sorry, WHAT?
Just what the hell are you buying? Virtual currency?! VIP points isn’t a bloody product! It’s virtual numbers that are given a made up value that holds no real value outside of the company itself!
All you’re doing with the purchase of VIP points is in reality not purchasing anything at all. You’re simply handing over money to Zeek to participate in their scammy little money game.
And what do you mean you can’t cash out in full? Zeek is some self perpetuating virtual currency investment scheme you can’t get out of?!? What a crock!
Zeek is withholding commissions unless people flood the internet (collectively) with their ads. Mate that’s spam.
Whether you hire an advertising agency to flood the internet with bulk advertisements to the same places or force those participating in your money game to do it, spam is spam.
Not really, you buy software to automate the process and mass spam classified services with ads from proxied ip addresses. And spam has been around as long as the internet has, there’s nothing ingenious about it.
Zeek needs new members to feed the existing money game machine so they force their members to spam the shit out of the internet to attact them. That’s the only reason their plebs are publishing ads daily.
Horseshit.
With no products (virtual VIP points with no value outside of the company’s money game is not a product), you have no customers.
Period.
Those doing the spamming are not customers, they’re participants in an unsustainable money game scam that will inevitably collapse (when the daily revenue being generated in interest exceeds the money coming in via new memberships).
From where?! There is no revenue being generated, only fantasy VIP point value – which is not revenue, it’s imaginary!
It doesn’t matter if it’s lower or higher, so long as it’s greater then $0 you’re creating virtual revenue out of thin air!
EXACTLY! Yet Zeek are promising cash out on these imaginary gains!
You attempted to rip apart my facts, and then came to the same conclusion I did. People are generating returns with Zeek, with a real world value of ‘nothing‘.
How the hell is this going to continue on when enough people want to withdraw their ‘nothing’ and stop re-investing their imaginary virtual returns back into the company?
The only fact that people need to consider is that you can’t create money out of thin air. VIP points are virtual and not real money. Zeek therefore cannot pay continue to pay out returns over the long term if nobody (new members) stop injecting enough money into the company to cover it (they don’t care if this happens or not, they’re crediting the returns regardless).
That old chestnut?
Please.
@Haters
Yes, because we’re all on the outside. Only Zeek’s members ‘get it’ and have come to accept that unsustainable money games in actuality are sustainable.
Irrefutable? Either you’re gullibly incompetatant or gullibly stupid. LearntoRead’s entire commentary fails on the fact that you can’t create money out of nothing, and he’s deluded himself into thinking that VIP Points are an actual product.
That’s not irrefutable, it’s horseshit!
You cannot pay out interest on the total number of VIP points people have daily based on the daily sales of VIP points.
Quite obviously when people’s stored points they are being paid a return on vastly exceeds the daily money coming in via re-investment by existing members or new members purchasing VIP points, Zeek is paying out on money that doesn’t exist.
They take your real money, and give you virtual money that doesn’t exist, as long as you re-invest. What the hell happens when people want to cash out?!
It does if they’re only doing it to be paid a commission!
Do they explicitly mention people being paid to spam?
Didn’t think so.
@LearntoRead
Yes, yes, everybody else works behind a counter. Only you and your Zeek buddies truly get it.
No it isn’t, it’s the only way to use Zeek Rewards as an investment program. Y’know, the whole point of this article?
Yet… here we are, with scammers trying to convince people that you can create returns out of nothing and how intelligent people who believe so are.
Nothing Kasey has stated is made up. If the terminology used falls outside of your vocabulary, that’s hardly his fault.
Zeek is not an ad agency and Zeek’s members are not sole trading advertising agencies either. There’s a difference, the difference of course being that you are spammers.
Advertising agencies are paid to advertise, Zeek members are advertising as a pre-requisite to earn a commission on actions (participate in a money game scam) unrelated to the advertising entirely.
WOW…
Quite a lot of VERY unstable people here…
A)There are many ways to acquire VIP bids
B)Please familiarize yourselves with the facts before continuing to embarrass yourselves. I thought I was communicating with people that had at least a passing familiarity with the program but with statements such as
“No it isn’t, it’s the only way to use Zeek Rewards as an investment program. Y’know, the whole point of this article?”
It is obvious I gave you more credit than you warrant
C)”Zeek is not an ad agency and Zeek’s members are not sole trading advertising agencies either” Wasn’t aware that ad agencies had rights unavailable to private citizens… Interesting…
D)”Nothing Kasey has stated is made up. If the terminology used falls outside of your vocabulary, that’s hardly his fault.” Not at all… Just your versions of meanings to back up your points
E)”Yet… here we are, with scammers trying to convince people that you can create returns out of nothing and how intelligent people who believe so are.” Not trying to “convince” you of anything. Just hate it when idiots spin things to misinform
F)”From where?! There is no revenue being generated, only fantasy VIP point value – which is not revenue, it’s imaginary!” As I said earlier… It didnt occur to me that I was talking with people that were so thick they didn’t even realize that Zeek has NUMEROUS other revenue streams, i.e. Penny Auctions, online Retail Sites, etc… Again… Please look up the word “revenue” you will find “VIP Points” no where in the definition.
G)”EXACTLY! Yet Zeek are promising cash out on these imaginary gains!” Please show me where this is “promised” Or are you just making stuff up again?
H) “You attempted to rip apart my facts, and then came to the same conclusion I did. People are generating returns with Zeek, with a real world value of ‘nothing‘.” Please show me where I came to the same conclusion as you… When you can’t… Please go back on your meds
There ARE obviously people, and they are well represented here that believe that anything that doesn’t have a timecard and a set paycheck is a scam…
Sorry to burst your bubble, but not everything is a scam…
You can select single aspects of a multi-faceted business and pretend that they are stand alone and then pounce hoping nobody exposes your con.
The VIP Points are merely 1 aspect of the business and exist as a method of compensating members for marketing.
IF your assertions were accurate that A. That is the only avenue for revenues B. There is a marketed “investment”, C. There were a “cash value” D. That multiple people marketing the same thing individually were “spam” E. That Zeek “withholds commissions ” unless you place an ad THEN you would have a point.
NONE of those assertions are accurate, therefore your simply embarrassing yourselves
At LEAST have the intellectual honesty to read what the program is rather than simply get your information from others with your viewpoint… I realize that life is easier when you do that… But you are rarely correct when you do that
PS
They and most other franchisors most certainly do that exc=act thing.
They provide pre-written ads of various types and connect %s of revenue to the placing of those ads. Virtually EVERY Franchisor does this. As well as virtually every stand alone supplier, Insurance companies, Auto makers, et.al.
Are THEY guilty of spamming in your eyes? GM has over 7600 Dealers wordwide, ALL of which are required to advertise, is THIS spam? Is Toyota safe from your definition since they only have 1400?There are over 20,000 Allstate agencies ALL receiving the same pre-written ads… They MUST be spammers!
@LearntoRead
Yes yes, anyone who ‘doesn’t get’ your silly investment scam is obviously unstable… yawn.
And? This article specifically deals with the ability to use Zeek Rewards as an investment scam via the direct purchase of VIP points. Whether you can obtain VIP via other means doesn’t negate the fact that you can also purcahse them.
As for B, see above.
This particular article specifically deals with using Zeek Rewards as an investment money game. I don’t care about the other aspects of Zeek as they’re not relevant in this particular instance.
Zeek members aren’t advertising as private citizens, unless you’re inferring that each members owns Zeek Rewards? They’re acting on behalf of the company, which requires them to do so in order to get paid.
With Zeek not being an ad agency, this equates to paid spam.
Yes, because we’re all using customised meanings here. Again, your failure to understand terminology used and their respective meanings is your own shortcoming.
Again, irrelevant!
Zeek is currently being used as an investment opportunity, and even if we take into consideration these other revenue streams, the company can’t guarantee this business will cover paying returns on everyone’s total VIP points.
Now you’re just talking nonsense. Members purchase VIP points with CASH. This is revenue for the company, duh.
Zeek promise to pay you out a return on your total VIP balance, based on the current days trade. This occurs regardless of whether or not the current days trade falls well below everyone’s point balance.
Now it’s working, because the program is barely a few months old and the points aren’t enough to cause problems for the company. But what about after 12 months and longer?
More people joining the company and people reinvesting 100% of their returns back into even more VIP points means sooner or later the system will collapse – even with the additional revenue streams!
Mathematically it just doesn’t work.
Zeek can’t create commissions out of nothing, yet that’s exactly what they are doing. You yourself stated they can’t create returns out of nothing.
If enough members have considerable VIP point balances and the current days trade falls well below enough to cover paying a return on everyone’s point balance, how is this going to work?? You can’t claim that the other revenue streams will indefinitely cover this return payout as that would be assuming that these other revenue streams are guaranteed to grow – which is bullshit.
Of course, but Zeek Rewards as an investment program certainly is. Sooner or later this investment side of the business is going to drag the rest of the company down financially. Now it’s just a ticking time bomb while everyone promotes the opportunity and grows their VIP points balance.
A was never claimed.
B is of course true, you’re advertising the business with each spam you publish onto the internet. Zeek can be used as a straight up investment program and that’s a huge failing of the compensation plan.
C – VIP POINTS HAVE NO CASH VALUE OUTSIDE OF THE COMPANY! They are given an arbirtrary daily return value by the company. They can make them worth $10, or 1c it’s entirely a virtual currency with no real world grounding.
As I said, the entire thing is a scam, you pay Zeek real dollars and they give you virtual currency with promise of a return on your investment. If the company collapsed tommorow there’d be nothing to recover, it’s all virtual money bullshit tied up in VIP points – which are just numbers on a computer!
D I’ve addressed above. Individuals aren’t acting on their own, their being forced to publish ads by the company, it’s paid spam.
and E, Zeek do ineed withhold commissions if you don’t publish spam for them. The daily publishing of spam is clearly laid out as a requirement in the compensation plan.
Oh I did, and I suggest you go do the same. The investment side of Zeek isn’t the only way to participate in the company, but it exists and is a huge liability as it’s hugely unsustainable as everyone’s VIP point balance grows.
But by all means, please continue to throw in your silly jibes and insults. Obviously anyone who doesn’t believe in simple mathematics and money games is a moron.
No they don’t. As part of your franchise agreement you actually pay McDonalds to advertise for you. Corporate takes care of the advertising for the business, not the franchisee.
GM and Toyota dealerships themselves might advertise, but it’s not a requirement set out for them by corporate. Neither do corporate withold any and all profits the dealerships make if they don’t advertise.
That’s the difference between true franchiseeships and bullshit money game investment scams like Zeek Rewards.
Phew! I just came back to this site after a few months and see there’s been some heated “discussion” re zeek, following this article which referred to my earlier comments way back in September. In case you’re unaware…I’m a zeek affiliate.
I won’t be calling anyone a moron or unstable or anything unsavoury. And I don’t refer to zeek as a scam. But here’s my thoughts on a few issues:
1. Spam or not spam?
In the end, a classified ad site determines what ads it will accept and how often etc. I thinks it’s pointless arguing over the definition of spam when evaluating the zeek business. If a classified site has a problem with a zeekler ad then it can have it removed.
2. retirement of points and sustainability
When i wrote comments here over a month ago i was actually unclear about how the retirement of points worked (and had received only unenlightening responses to my queries from my upline). When I worked it out I was initially disappointed because my too-good-to-be-true scenario turned out to be, well, too good to be true. On the flip side, I’m now more convinced of the programme’s sustainability precisely because it’s not as good as i first thought.
3. Points earned retire after 90 days.
That means that if i earned 20 VIP points today in the Retail Profit Pool, they would disappear from my account in 90 days.
If you have any mathematical smarts and a bit of skill with microsoft excel (which fortunately I do), you can project future earnings based on variable RPP rates. Over the last 3 weeks the RPP has been averaging about 1.5% (I only started collecting my own data then). This is a slow slow way to grow once points start dropping off, particualrly if you are withdrawing cash. A sustained average of 1.1% or lower will result in a declining ponts balance. an average of 1.75% or higher would be very profitable.
4. Customers? real or imaginary?
I am in the customer co-op. it costs $10 for 5 customers. So far i have been “rotated” 4 to me. If they’re imaginary, the company has also made up their usernames, which is possible i suppoese, but I don’t think likely, given that one actually bought more bids off me and delivered me a $$ commission! I haven’t as yet directly obtained any customers myself, and am not actively seeking them.
5. Can this be an “investment only” business?
Not having to recruit or find your own customers was the only reason i even considered joining zeek. We’ll see. Clearly there are more $$ to be made if you can fill your matrix, amnd find your own customers.
6. thanks for the thread, Behind MLM.
Zeek affiliates shouldn’t feel threatened by the only site discsusing zeek (that i know of) that isn’t just a fan club of the program. Let’s keep discussion clean and courteous all round (you too OZ).
@Colsta
This is like saying email gateways allowing spam through their servers approve of the messages being sent therefore those viagra pill emails are not spam.
Zeekler know full well if they themselves published the amount of advertising volume they get their members to do for them, that they would be banned from any such services.
As such a whole bunch of randoms from different geographical locations doing it is much less likely to get flagged. Not to mention the quality of sites they advertise on is garbage. Pretty much any classified site that allows mass advertising in bulk on a daily basis with little regulation is either a link farm or never going to rank.
At the end of the day if you’re only publishing daily advertisements because some company requires you in order to receive a payout… it’s spam. They’re just getting you to do their dirty work for them.
Other than that, thanks for the update on your Zeek experience. Should be of some use to those looking into the opportunity.
I guess the big question is if you were to invest say $1000 and were to reinvest at 100%, how long would it take to re coup your original investment? And how long would it take to recieve $300 per day from the original $1000 investment? 10 years???
And I still don’t quite understand this rule about retiring points after 90 days. Surely that would mean you could actually start losing your investment unless your profits increased dramatically everyday after 90 days unless I’ve missed something!
You could but I guess the idea is that you’d want to be making more back in returns than your initial amount. I suppose the ‘smarter’ investors have worked out what the minimum investment amount is for this to happen over 90 days.
Hi all. I haven’t joined Zeek yet but have spent some while checking it out.
One aspect doesn’t appear to have been discussed here. Zeek put 50% of each days profits from the Auctions which are being advertised, into a profit sharing pot, so isn’t this where the money is coming from to fund the affiliates?
I’d be interested to hear your comments.
@David
The penny auction side of Zeekler is non-existant. It doesn’t take long for people to catch on that the only one who benefits from penny auctions are the auctioneers themselves.
After a few auctions people usually lose interest with penny auctions as they walk away with nothing (unless they’re lucky) and lose money. The fundamental flaw with a penny auction is that many people walk away with a loss whilst only one person actually has something to show for it.
There’s no way the penny auction side of things is providing Zeekler a profit and paying for their investment scheme. The revenue for the scheme is a combination of new investor’s actual money and a virtual return Zeekler invent.
It’ll keep going till enough people want to cash out and run… then we’ll see some fireworks.
Here is my experience with zeek rewards.
I signed up under them to prove to my mother that it was a scam before she went and invested the 10k that her “sponser” was trying to pressure her into investing.
I only put $100 in that way if it turns out to flop I wouldn’t have bankrupted myself. I am not actively recruiting anyone because I don’t trust the site 100% and don’t want anyone to get screwed over if this turns out to be a big ole scam. It does seem “too good to be true”.
My sponsor put a lot of money in and has been doing some kind of thing called an 80/20 split so that she gets money out but they do this thing called a 2 week drag so it takes a while to receive a check from what I hear.
She did show me a check she had received, but hey – it’s the internet and it’s not very hard to create a fake pay check.. For right now it all seems to be working, my account is growing daily, I got all of the bonus points that I was told I would get etc.
However, I do agree with some of the things I read here about the site falling apart and people possibly not getting paid if everyone tries to cash out at the same time. I guess I will find out soon enough.
Some things that I do think are bogus though:
I decided to play around on the zeekler (penny auction) side of the site and I won an auction with some free bids that were given to me by my sponsor. Hooray right? wrong!
It was going to cost me almost $12 to have a gift card shipped to me!!
I decided that, that was ridiculous so I clicked the “cash out” option. (For those of you who aren’t familiar, if you don’t want the auction you won, you can cash out and they will give you a certain percentage of what the auction was valued at and pay you via paypal). So anyway, when I clicked on cash out it said they would pay me $30 for the item via payal..
I filled out all of the info for them to pay me via paypal then get to the final screen and it explains that I have to pay $3.09 (what the auction ended for) plus the shipping and handling (almost $12) for them to send that $30 to my paypal. So for me to make $30 I have to pay them over $15! What really blows my mind about that is they want me to pay shipping on an item that I wont even receive because I told them I didn’t want, so in return they were giving me a cash value and turning around and reselling the item. How is that even legal?
Needless to say I did not complete that purchase and just left the item sitting in my account – unpaid. I imagine they will eventually take it back if I don’t pay for it within so many days.
Another thing that I think is strange is that there is no rhyme or reason for the daily percentage that shows up in your report. I started on the same day as another woman that I became friends with, we put the same amount of money in, have the same monthly subscription and both have it set to put 100% back in to bids daily yet somehow I make 1.4%, 1.3%, 1.5% etc. while she is making 1.1%, 1.2% etc. Her daily percentage is ALWAYS lower than mine.
If we are doing everything EXACTLY the same, then how could it possibly differ like that.
One of the BIGGEST issues I have are with the sponsors themselves. They are really pushy and always are trying to get you to put in the max (10,000). Of course that is to be expected because they make a commission off of that, however the way they go about it is very deceitful.
For example, I hear them say the word “investment” repeatedly. When you first sign up for zeek it clearly states “This is NOT an investment, or stock etc etc. and that you are just buying BIDS” I really think that alot of people that sign up for this don’t understand that you actually have to try to turn those bids you purchased back into cash after 90 days (you cant take money out before 90 days) by changing your account from 100% repurchase to an 80/20 split or whatever number you choose.
If you don’t do that then you are never actually getting CASH put into your account. Your account will just continue to buy BIDS.
I think it’s pretty obvious that I am skeptical but will let you all know if I am ever able to actually redeem some cash after 90 days. It’s projected that my initial $100 should be worth $800ish then but I highly doubt it.
Thanks for sharing your experience with Zeek Mel.
As I’ve mentioned earlier, people play around with the penny auctions but once they understand the mechanics of it – even if they win it’s usually a one time thing just to play around. Nobody really heavily invests themselves in them or takes it seriously as a viable means to purcahse items.
And charging shipping on a Paypal cashout is just flatout ridiculous.
Thus it’s kinda ridiculous to assert that Zeek are making enough from their penny auctions to cover the investment returns side of the business.
The difference in percentage payouts is a bit of an eye opener too. Perhaps it’s got something to do with how much money is invested by your uplines? Otherwise that I can’t explain.
Looking forward to hearing how you go in 90 days!
Even the “idea” that you can “win” an auction, but allow it to be resold and cash out the points means auction is merely camouflage for the “investment”. I predict a short life to this “venture”.
Yeah and on that note, where is the money coming from to pay for the ‘cash out’ option?
Zeek haven’t sold the actual product, so they haven’t generated the revenue for it and the customer is paying them for exactly?
Let’s say you win an auction for a $50 gift card, if you don’t want the card then what, you can choose a cash out option which will return you a portion of the $50 value of the auction… and you still have to pay Zeek a shipping fee?
You’d want to hope you got the gift card at a ridiculously low price otherwise that auction model makes no sense at all from a customer viewpoint!
I haven’t read through all of the above rhetoric but Zeekler’s online store (Zeekler Rewards members’ stores) don’t seem to have been included in the equations. Don’t these stores make a profit, too?
Zeekler seems to consist of three inter-linked companies, Zeekler Rewards, Zeekler Penny Auctions and Zeekler FSC stores. Presumably they’re intended to benefit from one another.
Thesurveyor, Do you mean the wholesale store that you are provided? You do get a commission from any sales that happen in your wholesale store – however the products in there are pretty undesirable so getting someone to actually purchase them is another story.
As the store “owner” you can buy the products yourself at the “wholesale” cost. So if you have something marked to sell for $30 but the wholesale cost is $4.00 – then that’s all you have to pay as the owner. However, shipping & handling is also overpriced there.
You can also set the prices in the store to whatever you want (as long as it is at least at wholesale cost) so you could try to bring in customers that way, but then if you set the prices too low you aren’t making a profit so it’s counter productive.
@the surveyor
If the ‘deals’ found in the penny auctions are anything to go by, I’d say apart from the odd sale here or there no.
Certainly not enough to contribute significantly to investor returns anyway – Zeekler is hardly a retail powerhouse.
Hey, Do You Know, How do I stop paying zeekrawrds every month?
I want to quit, but they keeping thaking money from my account. Thanks
@robert
Contact your bank, and ask them to stop the payments.
It is also possible to use chargeback (reverse the last payment). I have never used this method, so I don’t know how it works.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chargeback
It’s worth asking your bank for information, but I don’t know if it’s worth using a chargeback.
It is obvious that most of the people writing here know very little how zeek works. What is encouraging is that the posts have dried up so that kind of proves things really are working at zeek.
For the guy that did not take the $30 for $15 in the cash out of the auction, please send me your username and password I can use the $15 profit.
Now for the truth. Profit share is based on the profit at the auction not on the purchase of VIP bids. If there is NO profit in the auction there is NO profit in the pool no matter how many bids you have. If you do not believe the auctions are working, sign up for free and get some bids and prove to yourself when you bid you show up just like everyone else bidding. If you learn penny auction skills you can win with your bids.
Just because you buy VIP bids does not mean will make any profit that day. Your bids only represent the ratio of your potential profit in the pool.
Finally, the guy that said he has different accounts paying different percentages, he either is not comparing the same days or he has been known for other factual inexactitudes in his communication. (That is a nice way to say he lied.)
PS – When I see bold print, and profanity, it is obvious you are a person ruled by emotion instead of logic. Just because you yell does not make you right.
If you have information, please share it. Else…
Now how does THAT logic work? People stopped coming to defend it or denigrate it and your conclusion from that is “it’s doing great”? Please enlighten us of your thought process.
The problem is not with bids showing up or not, but with the “MLM side” of things. Thus, asking whether bids work or not is irrelevant. You can attach a pyramid scheme to any sort of legal business. It doesn’t make the pyramid scheme legal (not saying ZeekRewards is a pyramid scheme, merely an example where such a logic doesn’t hold).
Neither does normal speaking.
@The Hat
Agreed, yet members such as yourself continue to come here rant about how ‘nobody gets it’, then fail to explain what isn’t being gotten. It appears the only people who know very little about how zeek works are the members themselves.
Or enough people haven’t cashed out yet.
No it isn’t. You “sell” your bids to Zeek’s virtual customers, you get a return in virtual shares.
There’s absolutely no requirement on your part to make sure your VIP bids are used. You earn on giving them away.
You have no way of knowing that once you’ve “sold” your bids to Zeek themselves, what they do with them.
The premise that Zeek is able to provide a stream of actual company-generated customers to meet the growing demand of members to “sell” their points to Zeek is extremely dodgy.
Considering their just issuing virtual shares, it’s highly more likely they’re just paying out on the new injection of funds by people who see virtual returns of existing members and then get all excited and invest themselves.
That’s all this is, an elaborate ponzi scheme attached to a penny auction front.
I have replied to you in other forums. For your information MLM IS LEGAL and taught at the Harvard Business School. Your opinion that it is a scam is just that an opinion.
I have asked elsewhere for your legal certification on your authority to speak on if MLM is legal or not. Once again, no one would write about something they knew nothing about would they? That seems just plain stupid as I believe I have said elsewhere.
No sir, I do not need to tell you how the program works or defend it. I replied to your concerns and you replied with opinion and not fact. PS – zeek is NOT and investment program.
Just because you call it one does not make to one. It is a profit share program just like a 401K or any other profit share with other companies. All have their various ways of sharing.
Just because you put up a blog saying a car is an airplane then try to ignore people saying your premises is wrong does not justify the title.
Well that’s interesting, on which ‘forums’ and when did this happen?
Again, no shit sherlock. You implication that Zeek is MLM and therefore MLM being legal means Zeek is legal is no more valid than ponzi scheme is a business model, business is legal so ponzi schemes are legal.
At this point I’m going to ask for your intelligence certification as I’m not quite sure you’re all up there. Although being a Zeek member that doesn’t surprise me.
Well then stop wasting my time because ‘waah you just don’t get it’ is not a reply. My opinions are based on the facts as presented in the article I originally wrote, which was based on research into the Zeek opportunity. More research I’d wager then you or most of the Zeek members put into these scams before they sign on the dotted line.
Considering that’s not what happened, why bother stating so?
Ohhh so it’s not MLM anymore, it’s a ‘profit sharing company’.
Fact: Zeek pays commissions on the recruitment of others.
Fact: Zeek pay out virtual shares on virtual profit (absolutely no verification where the ROI comes from) after members part with real money.
Fact: In offering to purchase member’s VIP points, Zeek promise returns to investors, even if there are no customers purchasing and using these points. Not withstanding the fact that there’s nothing stopping the company creating virtual customers to purchase virtual points to create virtual revenues which the company then rewards members with virtual shares in a daily virtual revenue pool which most members re-invest back into purchasing even more virtual points…
Well Oz, not only do you not know what you are talking about, you appear to be a little senile too. You reply to me in the other forums and cannot remember.
My IQ? Once again, I could divide mine by two and it will probably be greater than the sum of you and your puppet K. Chang.
I am certified on a full IQ exam as not missing a single answer. What is YOUR IQ? I did answer your questions and all you do is whine, swear and print in bold offering nothing but lack of knowledge and opinion on how the program works. Your opinions are not facts.
Some are outright lies or uneducated misunderstandings because you are writing about something you never researched correctly. Have you joined the program? Have you read all the rules, disclosures, FAQs, watched the videos and studied the FULL compensation plan?
I can answer that for you. No you have not because it would be stupid to make statements of so called fact when the opinions are obviously in error to anyone that has read and studied the material. Your opinion that zeek is a scam is just an opinion. Opinions are like —–.
I am not going to say it but your vocabulary is full of it showing a true lack of knowledge. FACT – zeek promises NOTHING in return for your VIP bid purchases.
They claim “if you run a certified ad you qualify to earn a profit share based on your VIP bids given to others used in the auctions and the daily profits from the auctions.” There is NO guarantee that the auctions will have a profit, therefore there is NO guarantee of income.
I agree that there is nothing keeping the company from creating fake bidders just is there is nothing keeping you from talking about something you know nothing about.
There is one exception for the company though. Since they make about 50% of the profit, they would be real stupid to create a situation that would spoil their business. Cheating the system just does not sound smart.
False – Zeek promise a daily ROI based on virtual profits because they themselves are purchasing the bids. Or as you put it below…
Thankyou ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case.
No it doesn’t, yet here I am arguing the viability of Zeek with you…
I rest my case. Please readers, check what I wrote and not just the snippets. Zeek promises NOTHING contrary to the posted opinion.
As I said, there is nothing keeping zeek from creating fake bidders “if they were blooming idiots destroying the goose that laid the golden egg.” I have NO idea what your last comment means.
I stated the company would be idiots to cheat the system and destroy what they have. PS – zeek might fail just like 80% of the businesses in America when people voted in Obama.
Stuff happens. But I did open new businesses that are profiting in spite of the idiots that are trying to destroy them.
Hello
There are lots of comments here on Zeek Rewards, some based on knowledge, most are not.
I have been in Zeek Rewards for nearly 6 months and I absolutely love the business model. I suppose anything can happen in regards to whether it will be considered legal or not, I for one believe wholeheartedly that it is.
Paul Burke has an awesome legal team and does everything he can to be compliant with the FTC.
VIP Points are not virtual cash, they are the result of purchasing bids for the zeekler auction site to be given away as samples to customers. No different than being a Mary Kay or Avon distributor and buying perfume or make up samples to give away to potential new customers. It’s a marketing technique – one that is proven to work.
Placing ads daily on the hundreds of classified sites is NOT spamming, that is what those venues are for. Spamming does not even fall into this.
Next most of you have heard of Walmart and Sam’s Club, are any of you aware that they too have a model similar to Zeek Rewards offering commissions to affiliates who promote Sam’s Club ads online and when that person becomes your customer through your ad you receive rewards.
Let’s look at the Sam’s Club model and tell me how that is legal and Zeek Rewards is not. In order to be a “member” of Sam’s Club to purchase product at discounted prices you must pay a membership fee, this fee is not cheap.
You pay this fee simply to get through the doors so that you can purchase product from them. Here is the kicker to Sam’s Club – you might save money on the overall price of an item, but to receive that benefit more times than not you have to buy multiples of that one product or you buy a much larger quantity than you otherwise would.
For example let’s say you go to your local shopping market and you buy a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, you most likely would pay a buck for that box. If you go to Sam’s Club you might get that same box for .75 cents but you have to buy 12 boxes in order to receive it at that price.
Ultimately you might save a few bucks, but you end up spending more each shopping trip because of the quantity you have to purchase in order to receive the savings. To me that should be illegal.
Sam’s Club also has an affiliate program that pays commissions. Check this out… http://www.samsclub.com
Program Highlights:
* Commission Structure
1.75% revenue share on Sales
$3.25-$7.50 per Qualified Customer Sign-Up (details on application page)
* $250.00 average sales order
* Commission duration 60 Days
* BYOL available
Sam’s Club bring’s their members the highest possible quality products and services at exceptional values. Sam’s Club offers more than 4,000 discounted items, including bulk office supplies, food, electronic goods, jewelry, outdoor living, Member’s Mark store-brand products and much more.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, however they should be based on facts and not clouded with information that is not accurate.
Also, I would like to comment on the withdrawal process. You purchase bid samples to give away, these register as free bids to your customer, and as points in your back office.
You cannot earn profit sharing on VIP points (bids you have purchased) until you give them away. Once this is done you then earn profit sharing based on the points you have in your account, if you are qualified. To be qualified you must place an ad, you must give the bids away.
You only earn profit sharing on those points for 90 days, at which time they are retired. You do not earn profit sharing on the same points until the end of time. This does make the company sustainable.
You determine whether you withdraw your profit sharing or whether you purchase more VIP sample bids to “give away”.
Revenue is not created from the members, Revenue is created from product sales at the Zeekler auction site and the Free Store Club (an e-store that each member has to sell products from and earn a commission)
This is truly one of the best businesses on the net and you would all do yourself’s a wonderful favor to get involved.
@Lynette
Of course they are. Outside of Zeek they have no value whatsoever.
VIP points are entirely a virtual currency self contained within the Zeek business model.
It is if a company is witholding your commissions unless you do so.
Yeah that’s kinda like saying ‘money laundering is perfectly acceptable because it usually in some way eventually involves banks, and transferring money is what banks are for!’
In terms of spam, neither Sam’s Club or Walmart withold your commission if you don’t advertise the business. The iniative is entirely up to you – there’s no coersion on the company’s behalf.
Exactly, ‘product’.
Zeek trade in virtual currency… that’s not a product. If I buy a product at Sam’s club I can sell it outside of the business model because it has retail value.
Zeek’s virtual currency has no value outside of the company. You pretty much killed your entire Sam’s Club comparison in your opening sentence.
And this in itself isn’t a negative. What is though is that Zeek themselves offer to take these bids of you and dsitribute them to a never-ending supply of customers they have waiting in line, who are in all likliness non-existent.
Thus you have people giving away their bids to the company, the company pretends to give them away to customers, pays out commissions on the new money invested that day, members see this as “proof” the scheme works and then go out and get new members to join, thus investing more real money into the system.
So you say, but can you prove it?
Penny auctions are unattractive to the end consumer, as per the example cited in the original article above. After one or two auctions, customers soon wisen up and realise that they are parting with money and receiving nothing in return. Thus penny auctions heavily favour those running them financially (you take money from people and don’t have to sell them anything).
Where are Zeek getting this never-ending supply of moron end-users from who have no interest at all in the business opportunity?
It’s far more probable that they are just disposing of the points and paying out on new real money injected into the system. All the penny auction and retail store nonsense is just a cover to appear to make the opportunity look legal.
@Lynette
Free Store Club?
Do you mean “Shopping Daisy” or something?
Do people actually sell anything at all through those kinds of “shopping solutions”? Most people seems to place an affiliate link on their website, and then focus on the real opportunity instead? Did you sell anything at all in this Free Store Club last month?
Having affiliate links on a website won’t generate any revenue unless people really use those links, and some of the clicks converts to sale of products. “Shopping Daisy” seemed to be pretty dead.
Here’s a quote from one blog:
“My primary focus has been on the Retail Profit Pool” describes where the money is generated in this system.
@ Oz
VIP Points are not virtual cash, Points cannot be withdrawn, only the profit sharing that is earned based on those VIP Points that are in the back office – You need to get your facts in order before you post something that you don’t seem educated enough on the subject to comment.
Zeek Rewards does NOT withhold commissions if you do not place an ad. Where you got that notion I have no clue, but it just goes to show that you don’t know what you are talking about. You get your commissions whether you place an ad or not, it’s the daily profit sharing that you are not qualified to earn if you do not place an ad.
There is a difference between commissions and profit sharing, if you would go and read “how it works” you will clearly see how the business works, I highly suggest you do this.
Oz please, please, please do tell where the heck placing an ad on a classified venue has anything to do with money laundering – you are truly reaching with your pointless analogies.
Oz just to clear the air once again – Zeek does not “offer” to take these bids off the affiliates and distribute them. People do not give their bids away to the company – where did you ever get that notion? Do you just assume things? I would suggest getting the facts first.
How do you know that the company “pretends” to give these bids away – do you have inside information that the rest of us don’t have? Zeek Rewards has an awesome business plan, what purpose would it serve for them to have fake customers, take the bids off the members, and only re-use the same money – Do you seriously believe that?
You have to have product sales in order to pay profit sharing, if you don’t then there would be no money to share from profits. You literally make no sense.
The business would have belly flopped a long time ago – Please educate yourself on the business, I think you would be amazed if you actually knew what you were talking about and most likely would become an affiliate as well.
Oz, you ask me to prove that revenue comes from product sales at the Zeekler Auction site and the FSC store, let me ask you – can YOU prove that it doesn’t, or is it pure speculation on your part?
You claim that Penny auctions are unattractive to the end consumer, that may or may not be true, personally, if this is true then I guess, Bid Cactus, Deal Dash, and the others out there bet get ready to close shop, because YOU said it, it’s unattractive to the end consumer.
I am quoting what you wrote here…. “Where are Zeek getting this never-ending supply of moron end-users from who have no interest at all in the business opportunity?”
I personally know more people that are using the Zeekler site, and are NOT in the business opportunity, so I guess there are more morons as you call them bidding and buying than there are placing ads.
That’s our goal as affiliates, you see the more customers we have, the more product is purchased, the higher the profits, the better the profit sharing – Now what about that concept is so hard for you to grasp.
Then you stated It’s far more probable that they are just disposing of the points and paying out on new real money injected into the system. All the penny auction and retail store nonsense is just a cover to appear to make the opportunity look legal.
How unprofessional and unfair for you to make statements that you have no proof to back up. Let’s put the facts out here – this way people are not wasting their time filtering through all the rubbish.
@ M_Norway
I have purchased product from the FSC store, I have purchased bids outside of the opportunity to participate in the auctions, and I do promote the products, store and auction site.
I for one believe in what Paul Burke has designed, it’s a complete package. I believe in promoting, selling and buying and using the product.
I for one want to see this business be around for a lot of years and so I will use it and promote it the way it is intended to be promoted and if all the affiliates do the same thing, Zeek Rewards will be around for a lot of years to come.
@Lynette
Once the points are spent by customers who may or may not exist, allegedly this ‘return’ is what is shared amongst members.
It’s a virtual currency. The “customers” spend the points and you earn a commission.
Sure they do. If I join now, buy some bids, “sell” them to the company and then don’t place an ad, I don’t get a commission.
In an article titled ‘Using Zeek Rewards as a pure investment program’, what else are we talking about?!
Nobody said it did. You do get what an analogy is right?
Oz: ‘I can use a car to get me from A to B, just like I can a bicycle.’
Lynette: ‘ZOMG, OZ SAID CARS ARE BICYCLES!’
Comprehension fail.
Yes they do. The company claims to have a never-ending supply of customers members can give their bids away to.
To keep the scam going duh.
Do you seriously believe there’s some untapped resource of never ending penny auction customers just waiting to purchase tens of thousands of dollars collectively in Zeek member’s bids?
I don’t claim so, it’s a fact. Again, look at the example cited in the article. Mathematically only 2 parties stand to profit in penny auctions, the penny auctioner and the winner. Everybody else loses money.
No you don’t. You just pay out existing members with new real money injected into the system by new members. How do you think scams like this work?
Sorry, you can’t prove something by asking another question. You made the claim, prove it.
Customers we have?! Statistically penny auction bidders are bidding against a stacked deck and only stand to lose money. Probability dictactes they will lose more auctions then they win and this money they use on lost auctions is dead money to them.
Now, outside of your replicated retail stores (which don’t kid yourself, aren’t making any money), how does this make these people your customers anyway? They’re participating in auctions, or did you mean they’re buying bids of you?
Bids aren’t a product, they’re virtual currency as outside of Zeek they are worthless. You’re not selling anything, you’re just convincing people to pump new money into the system so you and your buddies can profit share of it.
If I buy $500 of bids and lose every auction I partipate in, what exactly have I bought?
@Oz
Zeek Rewards obviously is not for you, and that is your choice. I believe in the business, further than that, I will leave it up to those better and knowledgeable on the subject such as Zeek Rewards Legal team.
In the meantime – I am promoting Zeek as it is intended to be used and wish everyone great success in anything you choose to do.
It’s been a pleasure Oz, I personally have much better things to do than to continue to re-hash or beat this subject to death as you and I will never see eye to eye – on this subject.
Much luck to you and your debate on Zeek Rewards.
Cheers Lynette, see you when Zeek collapses I guess.
Hey there Oz, I do have something I would love to get your input on – Now these businesses I do question – and would love to see what you have to say – as they seem to have the model you describe – inside money constantly being recycled with no product.
What is your view on JSS Tripler and Ultraxproject?
I’ve had a few requests for JSS (and Just Been Paid before it). From memory when I looked at it I saw it was just an investment opp so didn’t bother looking any further.
UltraXProject is demanding a referral ID as soon as you load the website (won’t let you do anything until you provide one) so it’s safe to assume that’s some sort of recruitment scam (no retail).
@Lynette
My question was “Did you sell anything at all in this Free Store Club last month?” You have already answered the question when you used the expression “I have purchased”.
I guessed you had some similar solution to the other site I checked, an affiliate link leading to some “Free Shopping Daisy”. I didn’t bother to click on the link. These stores doesn’t seem to be very active?
If members are the only customers these stores can’t generate much revenue?
Most of the “income” in Zeek seems to be money invested from members? Any possible “external sources” for income seems to partly faked. It seems more like they pretend to have external sources, but in reality they’re using the members own money to pay.
A wise decision would be to withdraw some of the money, an amount equal to your initial investment. I believe the money will be safer as real money than stored as VIP Points. Those VIP Points will have no real value when/if they can’t attract new investors.
@Oz
Using the old tricks “site:ultraxproject.com” should do the job? I use this method on all sites that requires a password to view some of the contents.
Programmers and webdesigners are usually stuck to one idea, that all users will follow a specific “route” when they visit their website. They may protect some pages through the menu system or through some login system, but they forget to protect the pages from other methods.
Here’s one example:
*** www[dot]ultraxproject.com/tour.php?page=plan
Another example:
*** www[dot]ultraxproject.com/index.php?page=welcome
@ M_Norway
I have NOT sold anything out of my store. However, I will say that I do plan on really stepping that up a notch. One thing I do love about the store is that it is listed at wholesale prices, therefore like Sam’s Club I can increase the price to a retail charge and make the additional money.
I love the fact that I can upload and sell the Jewelry that I make on my store, I have been working on getting the pictures ready and hope to have my full store launched by this weekend at which time I will begin my marketing campaigns full force and I hope to begin making sales on my store front.
I don’t agree that sales are not made through these stores, there are billions of people on the internet globally shopping and they do use the FSC Stores – in fact there millions of customers that do shop there.
We can speculate all day long as to whether the stores have customers or not, and neither of us have the accurate answer to that. Above you seem to discount me as a customer because I also am an affiliate of the business,is it not ethical for me to purchase from the resources available to me?
@Lynette
Of course it’s ethical to purchase from whatever resources you like. I was only trying to calculate if these FSC stores contributed with some revenue, preferrably real money from external customers. As far as I can see they’re mostly used within different network-solutions, meaning that you’ll need a downline as customers.
Money paid out will have to come from somewhere. As far as I can see lots of money seems to come from investors, so there’s possible that they use money from new investors to pay old investors, and we both know what that means?
It means that at some point most of the investors will have worthless VIP Points instead of money, while the organizers will have money instead of VIP Points.
Penny auctions haven’t exactly been very popular in the last few years, so I doubt this will create enough revenue to pay investors. The other so called income streams doesn’t seem to be very active, either. The most active stream of money seems to come from the investors.
Cheers M_Norway,
Looks like it’s a similar model to Zeek but instead of purchasing bids for penny auctions to give away you “buy” things from an internal store to keep money pumping into the system.
I’ll slate ultraxproject for a review at some point.
@Lynette
Of course you haven’t and neither has anybody else. Zeek is all about purchasing bids from the company, giving this bids back to the company to give to imaginary customers and earning a daily ROI.
Good luck with that, replicated websites can have all the marketing in the world lavished on them, they still don’t rank for anything.
Also I know I covered this when initially researching the company but uploading your own items and selling them through your Zeek store doesn’t really count as a retail sale within the company. Do Zeek take a cut of the profit you make?
Who needs to speculate, it’s blatantly obvious everybody is just using Zeek as an investment scheme and ignoring everything else.
Look at any advertisement for it (not the compulsory spam ones where Zeek wrote the copy for you to cut and paste) and all you’ll see advertised is the daily ROI investment program with VIP bids.
M_Norway
I’m putting my trust in the Admin of Zeek Rewards, and their Legal Staff – I don’t believe that Paul Burke would do anything to jeopardize his company by being a fraud, scam or a cheat of the system.
I’m riding the wave. Right now it’s the thrill of a lifetime.
Lynette
If you asked every single person who ever invested in a ponzi scheme since the beginning of time why they did it, this is the answer you would get.
I’m not singling you out here, just making a point.
You can have all the trust in the world, but if a busimess model reeks of suss – trust means jack. You yourself are using Zeek like an investment opportunity.
And when the people who come here telling us it’s not an investment opportunity are using it as one… what does that tell you about how the greater Zeek member population are using Zeek at large.
@Lynette
My concerns wasn’t about your trust, it was more about your money. 🙂
Most of the experienced networkers use to withdraw their initial investment at some point, as a guarantee against loss if the system collapses. Most unexperienced networkers are usually “all in” all the time.
Keep your trust in the Admin and the Staff, but keep a part of your money away from there. I believe lots of people will be an experience (and some VIP Points) richer if the recruitment slows down.
@Oz and M_Norway
When I say that I put my trust in the admin of Zeek and their Legal staff, I mean that in the sense that they have given us no reason not to believe that this company is nothing but 100% compliant and that they are doing everything that needs to be done to remain compliant, I trust that they know the laws more than any of us.
I have been in this industry for a long time and personally after seeing how Zeek has designed the company it gives everyone an opportunity to make money.
It’s important that people understand that Zeek Rewards is NOT an investment. You are purchasing samples and giving them away just as you would if you were an Avon or Mary Kay Representative.
If people do not work the business as it is intended then it’s unfortunate for everyone. This is not a get rich quick business, it takes time to build it, just like any other business would. There is product, and every affiliate should be marketing the product as well as buying and using the product – This is not an investment opportunity – it is a business and should be treated as such.
Nobody should purchase more sample bids than they can afford to purchase and give away. There is no guarantee with any business, nor is there a guarantee with Zeek Rewards.
There is no virtual cash, trust me it’s all spendable in liquid form – I have withdrawn commissions, I have received my checks as promised and they have cashed and spend the same way your money does – there is nothing “virtual” about that.
Seeing as the business model is entirely constructed by the company, if the business can be used in an illegal manner, the company itself is entirely responsible.
Zeek offer to take your bids and distribute them. Given the probability of a never-ending supply of customers willing to buy everyone’s bids daily as being low to non-existant, it’s far more probable they simply don’t exist.
Buying bids and giving them away to the company is by and large how everyone investing in Zeek plays the game. The fact Zeek have this built into their business model is entirely on them.
I’d imagine if they weren’t taking everyone’s bids (money) the entire thing would collapse tommorow.
Here’s the definition of investment:
You give money to Zeek who in turn give you points. You then give these points back to Zeek meaning the end sum of the transaction is you’ve invested money into Zeek on the promise of a return.
Zeek then tally up the total money invested by all members in this manner for the day and give you a return baed on how much money you’ve already invested into the system (the tally of your VIP points).
At it’s simplest, it’s an investment. End of story.
Until you withdraw it, it’s virtual. You don’t play with cash inside Zeek, you play with vip bids and points. These bids and points have no value outside of the investment opportunity itself, hence they are virtual.
@Lynette
I was using “ducktyping-logics” here.
“If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck …”
… then it’s an investment, even if we call it something else.
The external sources for revenue doesn’t seem to be able to cover ROI. The main source of money in this system seems to be money paid IN by participants, and this makes this opportunity very similar to a Ponzi scheme. The only difference is that you have to do something (buying bids, recruiting new investors). Having to do something or attaching some products doesn’t make a Ponzi scheme more legal, it will still be “a Ponzi scheme with something attached to it”.
If recruitment slows down, and people starts to withdraw their “investments”, then most of the “investors” will probably be one experience (and some worthless VIP Points) richer. The VIP Points seems to act as a virtual currency within this system. It is neither a product nor a service, so people are mainly buying them for some kind of function they may have.
They may call it by other names, but I usually call it an “investment” when people pays money IN to a company, and their main objective is to get Return of Investment. I don’t think people buy bids or VIP Points because they’re very interested in such stuff. They buy them because they’re part of a solution in an investment scheme, and they act as a temporarily storage of money invested. They act much like a virtual currency, only valid within a system.
The risk here is that the recruitment can slow down, and the VIP Points will then be worthless. There’s also a risk of being shut down by authorities as an investment fraud. It IS actually an investment fraud if the ROI comes from new “investors”, instead of from external sources of revenue.
By the way, most companies of this size doesn’t have “Legal Staff”, a lawyer or something similar employed by the company. Usually the “Legal Staff” is the owner himself acting as a hobby-lawyer. Very few companies will need a full time lawyer or a “Legal Staff”. Claiming to have one is a red flag for most businesses of this size. I’m trying to test this “Legal Staff” right now, with a few of my statements.
@Lynette
So how long have you been trusting them for?
This blog post regarding complaince over at Zeek was only put out on the 10th Jan:
From the sounds of it Zeek, in a legal sense, Zeek was a free for all monkey game beforehand and now that they’re big enough the admins are worried about regulatory action.
Of note in the new compliance list:
Ruh-roh, looks like Zeek are going to either stop buying everyone’s VIP vids… or remove the investment scheme altogether.
I guess finally the invested money each day was less then the daily payouts and so now it’s time to bring in the lawyers to “clean” everything up and get management off the hook.
Either way, now that the Burks has suckered you all in and made their profits from your investments – the party’s over.
@Lynette
Do you believe the money paid out comes from real revenue, or from the money paid in by the investors?
This includes of course the statement that “penny auctions are very popular, and there’s a growing demand for them.”?
* “a stable and increasing group of customers, eagerly awaiting more bids to be released each and every day, fighting for the right to buy more bids before the supply is emptied.”
The internet should be overflowed with forumthreads asking for where they can buy more bids, and blogs dedicated to share information about where people can buy bids and how they can win auctions. Instead, internet seems to be overflowed with “penny auctions scam”?
You may not like it, but I’ll guess you should get off that wave you’re riding, “the thrill of a lifetime”, and test your own sense of reality and your trust in people.
* Try to visualize all the people eagerly awaiting more bids to be released each and every day?
* and then try to visualize them fighting for the right to buy more bids before the supply is emptied?
* include more images from your own imagination, like people having to wake up earlier in the morning and get in line before the bidshop opens?
If these pictures feels normal to you then call a shrink.
@Lynette
“Right now it’s the thrill of a lifetime. Lynette”
O.K. -What about when the thrill is over? What about the people that get in too late and lose their money? It might be a thrill for you but the reality is that other people will suffer because of your “Thrill”
Alright, who is pretending to be me?
Yeah wasn’t sure if that was you. Appears to be a first time commenter so I’ll just change the name for now as it’s a legit comment.
If they come back they can change it themselves.
Interesting that Lynette also posted almost the same comment on Troy Dooley’s mlmhelpdesk (where Troy linked to you, of course)
Troy was a bit more circumspect, but he again points out the red flags in compliance, because Zeekler has so many different aspects of business that can attract the attention of regulators.
it’s also interesting to note that according to one of the commenter’s on Troy’s blog, Zeekler have stopped taking credit cards to buy bid packs. This is unverified though.
I spotted an explanation of Zeek as an investment opportunity which perfectly highlights the problem of the business model:
Zeek are selling you customers that don’t exist and paying you a daily ROI on your investment from where???
The new money being invested of course.
not in this company but have been reading up on it alot lately
i just have a few things to say
A. I believe many of the people claiming this is a scam under estimate the greed of Americans(and for that the rest of the world) and over estimate the intelligence of these same people. Who doesn’t want to win an ipad for 30% of cost. I know I sure as hell do along with everyone else I know. Now of course i realize the odds of the win so i neglected to participate. I am much more thorough than most.
But, Seems to me these penny auction sites have got a damn good thing going here.
For the consumer: buy bids for cash… use bids to win… pay for product at fraction of retail… rinse and repeat!! ***and if you don’t win, credit for $$ in bids lost during auction toward final purchase price of item you didn’t win… no loss if you were buying anyway. If not, you gambled and lost.
For the company: for example, sell bids for for $.50/bid… get 5000 bids on ipad… sell for $50 to winner plus 5000 bids @ .50 is $2550 for an ipad. I sure as hell know they made profit on that ipad. Now take ROI and multipy = $$$
B. For those who think that money is coming from the investors….. it is!! So does money you borrow from the bank. You deposit your money into bank, bank holds federal minimum in bank vault and/or the fed… the rest well they make money by giving it to someone else for more money… sound familiar??
@just passing by
Your bank example under point B is pretty irrelevant, since we’re talking about 2 different models here. I’ll believe you know very well how a Ponzi scheme operates? And the differences between banks and Ponzi schemes?
Penny auctions are most popular within the first 2 years after they’re introduced in a market, and then the market will decrease to less than half. Usually only a few companies will survive the decreasing market. In an increasing market you should normally see lots of newcomers starting their own business and be able to make money in the market.
ZeekRewards tries to pretend there is a fast growing market out there, with a steadily increasing number of new customers, all waiting for new bids to be sold each and every day. The customers are literally fighting for the right to buy more bids, before the supply of bids available is emptied each and every day.
The picture Zeek tries to paint here is simply not TRUE. Penny auctions doesn’t have a fast growing market of new customers. These auctions have less customers now than they had 2 or 3 years ago (or whenever they were introduced?).
Except that’s the Zeekler side of the business, but we’re talking about ZeekRewards, the OTHER side.
Except ZeekRewards is not a bank, so you’re WAY off topic.
Thanks for your observations, even though they don’t really have any relevance to our discussion.
Other, more legitimate penny auctions offer this option, but Zeekler does not. Even if Zeekler did offer this option, it’s all a smoke screen anyways.
The “retail cost” you see for any auction is way over retail. Look at any auction item and do a search on ebay or google and see what the real market value is.
Let me see… a bank offers FTC insurance so my funds are protected if the bank mysteriously disappears. With a bank, I can withdraw 100% of my money at any time.
With a bank, my funds do not “expire” after 90-days. With a bank, if I do something “non-compliant” like post a comment on a message board some where they cannot confiscate my entire balance. Oh, so similar, indeed.
I have read with interest all the disccussion about Zeekrewards and I would like to disclose I am a small distributor with Zeek.
Now looking over all the discussion here I find that the main argument used by the critics against Zeek Business opportunity is that Zeek is a Ponzi taking money from Distributors to Pay Distributors to Pay Payouts.
It is obvious to me participants of the thread are very knowleable about MLM but have very little knowledge about how a Penny Auction works and what is really all about. Looking over at PennyAuctionwatchdotcom I find that Penny Auctions came about 3 years ago. Now the question is what brought about Penny Auctions?
I will tell you what. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006 (or UIGEA) made very risky to participate in Online Gambling.
As a result the biggest gambling market in the world suddenly came to a screeching halt. Sports,Casino and Poker participants found themselves pretty much unable to do at home what they loved most,gambling in the privacy of their homes.
You know the saying in Business “Find a need and fill it”
Somebody comes along(I dont know who but it must be in the net somewhere) and makes out of auctions ,that already existed, a gambling outlet . Everyone knows Gambling is an Extremely profitable Businnes (just look at Vegas)
A big share of the restless Gambling types that used to Gamble online shifted to Penny Auctions.
Some have said here Penny Auctions are a mature industry that is bound to dissapear. How can anybody call a 3 Industry MATURE?
There are dozens of Penny Auctions out there and you can even buy Penny Auction software and join the fray for the gambling dollar.
And I’m gunna cut you off there.
When I can invest money in Zeek Rewards for VIP bids, give these bids back to the company who in turn then pay me a return on my cash investment without actually having even given my bids away to actual customers yet – how penny auctions do and don’t work is entirely irrelevant.
How can anybody call a 3 year Industry Mature???
Unless Laws change dramatically Gambling and Penny Auctions are here to stay by many years to come and with it the big Profits it brings for Owners and distributors.The big loser as always is the gambler
a question for regulars of the site
how do I quote something some it comes out green?
If you want to quote the whole comment click the (Quote) link that appears with each comment. If you want to quote something specifically you can wrap it in blockquote tags.
(I should probably write a commenting guide for here at some point)
blockquote tags????????
Sorry blockquote tags are the words blockquote and /blockquote wrapped in <>‘s.
I can’t show you directly because WordPress tries to run the code if I do. If you click (quote) on any of the comments and look at what appears in the comment box you should get an idea of how the blockquote tags work.
Basically it’s blockquote (wrapped in <> brackets) before the quoted text and /blockquote (again wrapped in <> brackets) after the quoted text.
it is actually very relevant. Zeekler and Zeekrewards are the same company
Explain to me then where as a member of Zeek investing into the scheme, penny auctions are of relevance to my payouts:
Zeek are paying me a ROI before my bids have even been used in the Penny Auctions (with no proof or verification that they ever will be).
If you open the Zeekrewards website you will find the page is divided into 2 main blocks upper and lower divided by a big flat line
The first thing you will read in the lower part is the description of the Zeekrewards opportunity
OK so a Company that is figthing for market share in an inmature and competitive but very PROFITABLE is ready to share profits with thousands of distributor who spend time and effort advertising the Company. So what is wrong with that?
I have seen the words “SPAM” and “SPAMMING” bandied about here about the advertising efforts of the Zeek Agents.
I myself have advertised in about 8 different Advertising Venues. Each have different venues and if you do not follow their rules they can always Ban you and delete your ads.
I have actually PAID in 2 different Classifieds sites for the privilege of having my Zeek ads run. So where is the Spam? Well,there isnt.
I have actually seen Distributor run PAID PTC advertising in sites such as Clixsense and run PAID campaigns using Advertising sites such as Planetsolos. So what is wrong with that ? isn’t it what you are suppossed to do as a Salesman for a Company?
The more a promote my company the bigger their profit,the bigger my share.
Hi!
I know that this thread is supposed to be “using zeek as an investment program” but the question of the profitability or sustainability of the penny auction side of zeekler strikes me as an important conversation rather than irrelevant (a seperate thread perhaps?).
Oz, I know you’ve stated something like ‘people try it, lose and then move on’ and K.Chang believes that they have a life of 2-3 years or something lie that, but does anyone have any actual evidence that zeekler penny auctions aren’t making momey? or that penny auctions in general are failing rather than expanding?
It’s a worthwhile discussion and IMHO shouldn’t be dismissed (unless you pedantically want to direct the discussion to another thread).
As a zeek rewarder I remain deeply suspicious (and bemused) of the fact that I’m making money at the moment (not much, but I am) without having actually contributed anything much apart from my own purchases and subscriptions (and one customer who spent $50 on bids). And thank you Behind MLM for the healthily sceptical analysis. So far.
However it’s possible (as my upline insists) that the penny auctions are providing the retail profit. Can we debate that some more without shutting discussion down?
gee, it took me so long to post the above that someone got in before me!
You say Zeek is an an Investing scheme.
Open the zeekrewards page The first thing you will see is
Nowhere is there a mention of Investments or ROI. You are saying that
I am getting paid as an Advertising agent, a share of Company profits. The specific mechanics of it are really irrelevant
If the RPP is dependant on the profits of the penny auction as the company claim, then it’s very relevant. If it’s not, then it’s also very relevant.
aren’t you placing ads everyday?. If You are not,then you are defaulting in your agreemnet to promote the Company in exchange for a Profit share. I am deeply suspicious of YOU.
Do not punch in the time Card and go sleep. Promote and earn your share
Yeah, I’m doing everything that I’m required to do. I place an ad daily promoting the site, but nothing else. If it just seems too easy, then forgive me.
Aren’t I the perfect advertisement for an affiliate though? a cynical, lazy turd who still makes $$ from zeek? If I can…anybody can…
@Colsta
Probably not. Zeekler or Zeek Rewards won’t release the figures earnt from their Penny auctions as then people would most likely realise the daily share doesn’t match.
That’s pretty much the story with anyone involved in Zeek Rewards… yet they continue to suspend reality and believe Zeek is legit.
We’ve had a few people come in here now and harp on about retail customers and retail stores… but at the end of the day they make their money from the investment scheme and giving most of their bids away to Zeek in exchange for points, same as anyone else.
Ask your upline how many customers they give their bids away to vs. how many they give away to Zeek.
(I’m serious, ask them – and ask for proof).
@stewair
What the company says is irrelevant. Their business model is all that matters here and if I can join Zeek, invest money and receive a return, regardless of whether I have to spam the internet it’s still an investment and Zeek Rewards are still paying me a return.
No I am saying you invest money in Zeek, they give you bids, you exchange the bids for points and you get a ROI.
Spamming the internet is just a meaningless task they have to appear to reassure people who are easily led they’re actually doing something to “earn” their return.
To both of you regarding the penny auctions, Zeek could prove the revenue comes from there by stating what the daily revenue generated by the penny auctions is.
They don’t do this though, and you both know why.
@Coltsa (regarding spam)
a bunch of marketing spiel. This is why I primarily rely on analysis of a company’s business model, rather then what they say they do or don’t do.
As it stands Zeek Rewards have done nothing to prove that they aren’t just paying everyone a daily share of any real funds invested into the company by new and existing members.
Their claim that they share penny auction revenues is only weakened by the fact that I can give my bids to the company to disperse and receive a return on my investment before they’ve even given my bids away to an actual customer.
This strong indicates that the revenue share has nothing to do (or a severely diminished relationship) with the penny auction side of the business.
The extra advertisement might not be spam, and that’s fair enough. It still doesn’t change the fact that the company forces members to advertise for commissions. Publishing pre-made scripts (you can’t actually use your own advertisement copy now) all over the internet because the company makes you do it is spam.
Furthermore classifiedads.com and Craigslist have already banned any advertisements from Zeek Rewards members due to spam.
Again what do I care about the internal mechanics of it.I am a Company agent promoting the Company by any and all means possible,so I get paid a cut of the profits. Period
I am not being forced, I am being PAID. The day and do not want to advertise any more I set my repurchase % to 0 and 20 days time I will have pulled out every dime I got in Zeekrewards “Virtual Money” as You call it. “Virtual money” that turns into “Virtual dollars” Pretty Fast.
Wake up ,this is the 21st century and there are 1000’s of advertising media out there both online and offline
Classifiedads and Craiglist? Big deal
If you don’t care how you’re getting paid, that’s your business – but don’t shit all over the fact that you’re participating in an obvious scam.
Quite obviously you do care that Zeek is nothing more than an investment scheme shuffling members money around otherwise we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Who banned them wasn’t what was relevant there, it was why they were banned that was.
Forcing your members to publish ads on the internet to recieve their commissions equates to spam.
Why do you partipate in Zeek Rewards?
A: To get paid.
Do you get paid without spamming the internet? No.
You wanna get paid and Zeek says the only way that’s gunna happen is if you spam the internet. So whadda ya do? You spam the internet.
Doesn’t change the fact it’s spam just because you convince yourself the ads mean a damn, which they don’t because it’s the money being invested you’re receiving a return on, it has nothing to do with the penny auctions you’re “advertising”.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
I’m sure Bernie Madoff just thought he was helping people out too.
And that my friends is called an investment. It’s also why this scam has lasted so long, everybody’s working towards building up their virtual balances and the real cash hasn’t caught up to the fractional returns being paid out yet.
When that happens… kaboom!
Why do you have this web site ?
to make money ,of course.
Why I would promote a company if I will not make any money off it.
You insist in ignoring the fact that Zeekler is mainly and primarily a Penny Auction Site and Penny Auctions along with other gambling businesses such as Casinos,Poker,Bookies are very profitable .
Zeekrewards is only a means of having a highly motivated and dedicated sales force out there promoting the company getting the word out there in such a way a small company like them with limited resources would not have been able to do.
And We the Zeekler sales force have succeeded
Just fire up Alexa
Zeekler World Rank:780 and climbing
BehindMLM World Rank :123,875
Numbers do not lie
I rest my case
And to back up your claims that Zeek’s penny auctions are “very profitable”… you are going to cite what exactly?
The company craps on about compliance and how it’s not an investment scheme because members are paid from the penny auction profits.
They go and hire a bunch of lawyers yada yada yada, when all they have to do is release a daily profit statement stating exactly how much revenue was generated from the penny auctions.
Yet Zeek don’t do this. Why?
Trouble is you’re selling the income opportunity. With new members investing more real money into the system the scheme perpetuates.
At the end of the day with VIP points not being given out to customers before returns are paid, if we froze the company right now there’s a good chance that Zeek wouldn’t have nowhere near enough funds to pay out a profit share if the VIP bid balance stored at the company was actually distributed to customers.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the point bank over at Zeek was sitting in the millions by now. Mind you, all of this is virtual currency held by the company with no real value so it really doesn’t matter. Still doesn’t change the fact though that you’re being paid out of new members investment funds.
But please, continue to delude yourself into believing you’re participating in a ‘sales force’.
Sales force, please. Zeek Rewards is no different to the other MLM investment scams popping up all over the place at the moment. They’ve just kicked it up a notch and instead of a simple advertising network to mask the scam they’ve set up an elaborate penny auction model with vip points and bids instead of ad credits.
Same scam, different smell.
Yeah, because Alexa rankings are indicative of whether or not something is a scam. As opposed to y’know, the business model they use.
Good one son.
Trouble is you’re selling the income opportunity. With new members investing more real money into the system the scheme perpetuates.
You say we are selling an income opportunity
but let me post my recent ads
I do not see myself pushing an Investment to anyone.May be somebody else does,but not me. But If they did, isn’t what MLM and this site is all about.
Companies with products recruit a sales force to promote for them and make a profit in the process?
How else do you think Zeek got to 780 World Rank,just running a little scammy Website?
Sounds like the local Citybank. If thats what you call a scam then The Federal Government,The Federal reserve and Social Security are huge big scams.
Thats what many economists say,precisily. Governments,Banks and the Stock Market create money out of thin air. Then they sell you BONDS,STOCKS,WARRANTS,OPTIONS and other worthless junk that exist only on paper or as an entry in some electronic ledger
what company would survive being frozen??
Auction is hardly immature. Auctions have existed long before the Internet and eBay was founded back in 1995.
That is what they CLAIM (advertising Zeekler by giving away Zeekler bids), but is that what they really *do*?
Oh, I’ll admit that some of that is a bit overboard. Posting in free classifieds or even pay for PTC is admirable for all of you participants, but here’s the question you need to ask: is it LEGAL?
Think about it: if they simply PAY YOU for posting those links (and as you have to “report in” those links for it to count for you) that’d be absolutely legal, no question about that.
But they don’t just hand you a check. They go into fancy shmancy “VIP ProfitPoints” and all that fancy language. In fact, they claim 6 ways to earn on their webpage:
https://www.zeekrewards.com/getpaid.asp?username=Master
Let us analyze it one at a time:
Legal, paying commission DIRECT on customer purchases.
Legal (though fix those typos!)
Legal, as they are paid on purchases made by others.
Probably legal, paid on purchases of others, though the word “affiliate’s subscriptions” gives me pause, as whatever this “subscriptions” is supposed to be was not very clear. Is it tied in with that “matrix pay” below?
Sounds like a variation of ShoppingGenie, which is kinda spammy but legal.
This is the big problem, as Silver / Gold / Diamond are paying into the system (like you did to qualify for the payout) and THIS IS where it is very likely to be a Ponzi scheme.
Grimes and Reese, MLM lawyers (the very one Zeekler supposed hired for their own compliance) says on their own website:
http://www.mlmlaw.com/library/guides/Primer.htm
Substitute in a few words, and you have
Is that an accurate statement? I believe so. There’s some CYA language about “give away bids” and “place ads” in addition to enroll people, but that doesn’t change fundamentally what’s going on, does it?
Except those are legal, and ponzi/pyramid schemes are illegal.
Zeekler would survive as it will keep doing auctions, but without the various rewards its growth will be reduced. However, ZeekReward wouldn’t survive as it can’t enroll more advertisers.
The “what if company stops enrolling more people” is a test to the legitimacy of any MLM-style scheme. True business will survive as they can keep on retailing whatever product or service they sell. Fake ones will simply stop working.
As explained above, Zeekler will survive, but ZeekRewards is done for if that happens. So this points to Zeekler being legal, and ZeekRewards being suspiciously ponzi.
Hello!
I have invested 200 usd in zeek R. This thread is very long. I just have to say, those people who belivies that zeek is a long term company that will pay in the long run, sorry but wake up.
It does not requrie for a PhD degree to understand that this is not working in the long run. For those who need figures.. here u are.
1.Let us assume that Zeek R, has 10000 affiliates (moderate count)
2.let us say that those people in avarage invested 500usd ( very low ammount)
then we we assume that they let their profit compound in the profit pool for 12 months..
Then all 10000 would like to withdraw their money after 12 months.. if they got 1.4% for 90 days = thats aprox 242 million usd dollars who needs to be paid out..
just imagane, if there is 1000 people who invested 10000 usd, and let the grow for 12 months…. 1.4% in 90 days
yepp..they should then together from zeek get 484 359 624 millon us dollars…
then just assume that 100 persons who invested 10000 usd would like to compound their money for 24 months.. haha yes they will then get 1.9 billion usd dollars to share…
Do u really think that zeek and zeekler will have billions of dollars to hand out in 24 months… And yes i have calulated with vip drop outs.. this programe will work fine in the short run, but will die in the long run..
just ask your self if the numbers i present here are sane… your mone grow by the factor of 2.49 every 90 days.. (vip point drop out included) i se the 1.4 % growth rate daily basis…
just count for your self…
cheers!!
Ok,legalized ponzies that still can come crashing down like all the Huge Ponzi banks the Government had to bail out recently and our own Government’s Debt being downgraded because it spends 2 dollars for each dollar it takes in in taxes
what are you talking about ? We are not talking here about Eastman Kodak or some other multibillion Dollar Multinational Corporation but a small Corporation
From the website:
If Zeekrewards goes Zeekler goes
Those who done their research… Rex Venture Group LLC, a subsidiary of Lighthouse America, US (NV) company.
Both companys are Inactive and they do not run any business what so ever.. no sales has been reported in those companies ever..
They also lie about, them being a subsidary to lighthouse america.. NO such legal connection exist.. those companies is just a way of sounding fair…
ask paul burke of their annual report for 2010 and 2000…. if they been around 14 years… or ask him to present a Dun and Bradstreet report regarding his own company.. Yes, it shows what i told u here.. no active company, payl burke is not registered as owner or ceo ….
@stewar
I think you’re grossly overrepresenting the effectiveness of your ads vs. those using the investment scheme to lure new members in.
Out of curiosity, how did you stumble across Zeek and did you start off with the investment scheme or did you start with penny auctions as a customer?
Be truthful now.
Not when the investment scheme is just the re-shuffling of member’s money, no.
Citybank are a bank, Zeek are not. Banks are subject to different rules and regulations then Zeek so comparing the two is irrelevant.
Furthermore existing members don’t receive commissions just for bringing new members to the bank.
Not permanently, I meant as a snapshot – just to tally up the balance of bids Zeek were sitting on that they’d already paid out profit share on despite not having actually given away the points (fraud?)
Why? That would mean money from Zeek Rewards was going into Zeekler (why would this be?)
If Zeekler can’t survive on its own that’s only further proof that Zeek Rewards is just paying out money invested by members into the investment scheme.
Zeek claim to be obtaining customers via their own advertising, if Zeekler isn’t generating enough profit to be viable without Zeek Rewards, that would mean they aren’t generating enough customers by themselves to use in the company co-op.
Yet this is the same company taking in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of bids a day to give to customers it is supposedly generating??
Doesn’t add up now does it.
k chang said presented for us Six different ways Zeek distributors Earn Compensation and finally he says quoting from some legal website
the key word here is merely As anyone can see in the website Zeekler is not compensating anyone merely by introducing other participants to the program:
You can just concentrate in promoting your Webstore and trying to get customers for the Zeeler Penny Auction(what I do).Actually haven’t tried to recruit anyone as distributor(too difficult) or whatever. Just place your ads and drive traffic to Zeekler
So Stewar, how many points do you give away to Zeek vs. give away to actual customers you have generated?
Be honest now.
What you can and can’t do is irrelevant if it’s not how the majority of members are using the program, that is to invest money, give bids away to the company and receive a ROI.
Let’s not kid ourselves please.
johnny r
got to admit the figures jhonny presents are pretty shocking assuming they were real. Pulling up my Excel Spreadsheet I find that the growth for a 1.4% for 90 days VIP point expiration included is just 1.44 times initial VIP balance but see It still unrealistic because Zeekrewards is Daily Profit sharing not fixed % like Justbeenpaid or other HYIPs out there.
I pulled my VIP Retail Profit Pool Report and found out that on Weekends Profit Share actually fell to 0.8% or less so that exponential growth jhonny shows is actually not going to materialize in anybodys account.
Internet is full of lies but the first thing my mom taught me was lying was a sin so here I am going to spill my guts.
I came across Zeek while clickin ads on PTC Clixsense.
What was presented to me by my sponsor is what you see in the Zeekrewards website a way to make a buck promoting from some MLM were I was going to make money “from Multiple streams of Income”,the usual MLM hard sell.
Nobody told me about any investments. Don’t have anything to invest,anyhow. I liked it specially for the fact that It was related to a Penny Auction that I know for a fact were high profit ventures.
I checked and saw that no other Penny Auctions were running a similar deal so I jumped in. Since to be a Real Distributor I had to be Siver I did that and since to get Profit Share I had to have VIP Bids, I bought 10 and later bought 50 more.
If Zeek crashed and burned tomorrow I would be out pocket $100 tops including advertising. So not the end of my life,precisely.
No lies,Honest
You are a lot smarter than I am ,how did you find out all that stuff. Maybe then Zeek is just run by a bunch of kids off some basement somewhere like this Kid who started Facebook.
So then why do you have an Excel spreadsheet projecting and recording the returns on your investment?
So you were looking for an income opportunity… and weren’t interested in penny auctions (as a consumer).
Of course not, they suckered you with other language and selling points. I mean hey, despite the business model if Zeek Rewards members say it’s not an investment scheme then it’s not, right?
Uh, what?
So you didn’t “have anything to invest” but then went ahead and detail how you invested in Zeek Rewards?
Uh, alrighty then. Out of curiosity did you give these points to your own customers or the company?
Ladies and gentlemen, once again behold how Zeek Rewards effectively works. New members join the company because of the promise of profit from the investment scheme, invest money and then run around the internet trying to convince everyone who observes this that Zeek Rewards is all about penny auctions.
That’s because people’s invested VIP point balances are getting too high to sustain the program and simultaenously the real money being invested by new and existing members has tapered off.
It’s what happens in all ponzi schemes, honestly – do you think it’s just a massive co-incidence management are trying to erase any mention of Zeek as an investment scheme on the internet before they pull the plug around the same time the daily profit share plummets?
Yes, because that’s all that matters – how much you’re out of pocket as opposed to whether or not Zeek Rewards is actually an investment scam or not. No really.
yeah I also play golf with Warren Buffet every Sunday 🙂
Me looking for investments opportunities in Clixsense? surely you are jesting.You probably then haven’t met the crowd that hangs around Clixsense. Let me see my clixsense earnings for today oh yeah great 6 cents.I am gonna run and buy more ZEEK VIPS or better 100 Google shares 🙂
that is what management in any company is there for,to insure the survival and profitability of their company. The profit pool should be cut to 25% of company profits not 50%.
and no Zeekrewards was never promoted as an INVESTMENT in the Company Website nor any fixed income of any kind was promised
From the Zeekrewards site
the same way it looked last year when I signed up. They could set up their profit Pool at 10% of Company profits or whatever .No income or fixed yields offered anywhere,ever.
Maybe some overzelous Rep somewhere did it.who knows? I am not God.Never seen anything like that at forums or ads.
whatever if Zeek is scam only time will tell,stay tuned
Nobody said you were using your Clixsense profits to participate in Zeek Rewards, just that you first came across Zeek as an income opportunity, rather than as a penny auction website.
That yourself you’ve admitted.
So?
If a car company puts out an ad for a product with four wheels, an engine, a metallic body and a steering wheel but stress that it’s not a car – does that change the fact it’s not a car?
It’s the business model that defines what Zeek Rewards is, not the marketing crap the company puts out.
Again, time doesn’t determine whether something is or isn’t a scam (or investment scheme, or both), the business model does.
When I can join Zeek, invest money for bids, give bids back to the company who then pay a me a return based on how much money I invested, claim this return is based off of the retail penny auction profits using bids they haven’t even given away yet, that’s not legit.
PS. You didn’t answer whether or not you give your bids away to customers or to the company (like everyone else)?
And they’re not really relevant to our current topic.
ZeekRewards is a REWARDS PROGRAM for Zeekler promoters. Zeekler would work fine without ZeekRewards.
Then you need to read the article I linked instead of trying to look for one word that “seem” to help your position.
The real question, on the FTC level, is… what is are the “affiliates” being paid to do BESIDES enrolling more affiliates? If it’s NOT to sell things, then it is very fishy.
So what does ZeekRewards say what “qualifies” an affiliate to get paid? From the same link:
Are ANY of the 4 activities that qualifies one for payment actually selling anything? No.
There is your problem.
You can just concentrate in promoting your Webstore and trying to get customers for the Zeeler Penny Auction(what I do).Actually haven’t tried to recruit anyone as distributor(too difficult) or whatever. Just place your ads and drive traffic to Zeekler
This argument on its face is invalid. Why would any business overpay such a high premium for a bunch of useless free classified listings? Even if you believe that Zeekler wants to pay you for advertising, why couldn’t they acheive the exact same thing spending a fraction of the cost on cheap outsourced labor?
If Zeekler really did care about advertising they would take the million dollars (or whatever it is) in daily profit share and spend it on advertising. Think about all the banner ads they could get for that. The only reason they recruit a “sales force” to advertise is to get the “sales force” to invest money, aka ponzi scheme.
Look at it another way – if they really wanted the feet on the street advertising force, why not just pay everyone $10 per ad placed?
That would still cost them a small fraction of what they are paying in daily virtual currency, and I bet that I could get a million people to sign up to post a free classified ad for $10/day.
With a bank I have insurance that my funds are protected even if the bank fails. With a bank I can withdraw my balance in full at any time, and not suffer some virtual deflationary spiral.
You don’t even have to take it to that extreme. What happens if Zeek Rewards no longer accepts new distributors?
Zeek Rewards closes all new distributors and only pays daily profit share. All existing distributors would love this, right? Think about it, no more new distributors to dillute the daily profit share. Except if you did that, there would be no new “investment” money coming in, and since the Zeekler retail profit is insignificant, no one in Zeek Rewards would get paid at that point.
It all dies without having to “freeze” the company, just the enrollment of new distributors, which is exactly what a ponzi scheme relies on.
Actually, that’s not what is going on here (not yet anyways). The 0.8% is the weekend rate. If you look at the average over the last 4-months it has been 1.48%. On weekdays, they pay out around 1.8% to 1.9%. On weekends they pay about 0.8%. What is amazing is that the payouts are so evenly distributed.
If you are comparing penny auctions to casinos and poker rooms, all of these gambling business have large variations day to day, weekends, holidays, seasonal patterns. But Zeek seems to pay the same amount whether Monday is a normal businses day or a holiday.
And none of the big promotions seem to affect profitability either. The daily profit rate is slow and steady.
yes,actually i do give bids to custumer that show in my sponshorship list. That is not a problem becaause of my tiny bid bank. If You have a bigger bank,like 10000 bids you have to upgrade to gold and then just give lot more bids for each customer.
I actually played around in the Zeekler site with the bids given to me when I signed up.Lost them all and did not win anything. I have to go look if I have more bids in my Zeekler account , because my sponsor must be giving me more bids.
The gambling types must be having a ball with all this free gambling. Read somewhere in a forum Moneymakergroup i think of people actually winning stuff at the site
First question – all you Zeek supporters, please explain to me why they stopped taking credit cards in Dec for distributors purchasing VIP bids, but still accept credit cards for everything else?
Corporate says it is due to fraud, but no one person has yet been able to explain to me exactly what this fraud is. How can there be fraud for virtual currency?
If your answer is someone uses stolen credit cards to buy VIP bids and then cashes it out, then why hasn’t Zeekler stopped taking credit cards for retail VIP bids?
They actually distribute more virtual currency for retail VIP bid purchase than distributor VIP bid purchase, so wouldn’t the fraudsters just buy retail VIP bids and continue with the same fraud?
Perhaps it is because buying VIP bids directly for an investment has banking law restrictions while buying retail VIP bids in the auction is not?
So Zeek is more worried about being in violation of banking laws than MLM, because fraudulent investment schemes are much more likely to get shut down and result in jail, and are easier to prove in court, whereas MLM schemes which are ponzi’s result in drawn out littigation that often result in a settlement?
Second question – as a prospect looking to join Zeek, does it scare you that your funding options are offshore third party credit card processors that often get their merchant status suspended?
AlertPay cannot process credit cards any longer, but you can send them a bank wire or echeck. SolidTrustPay charges 6.5% fee + $1.50 per transaction and has a scam warning on almost every page. Doesn’t it scare you that these types of processors are the same ones used by many other investment scams?
Why couldn’t Zeek just process VIP bid purchases from distributors using credit cards with a normal merchant processor in the US like every other legitimate US business? I can use my credit card with Amway and WMI.
Maybe this guys didn’t have the millions of dollars to spend on Traditional mass market advertising so thay came up with this set up.
what you call useless advertising has Zeek in the top 1000 websites in traffic worlwide (780) even above multibillion Intel(968) .How much would have cost Zeekler, a smal operation to reach such a rank ,assuming the had a budget for that.
Instead they have a viral force advertising all over Facebook,PTC sites,REP Websites, Blogs, Classifieds, Forums, Banners, You Tube, the town newspaper and the church weekly. You name it,there will be Zeek advertisers.
How this Burk guy or whatever would achieved worlwide exposure just paying ads out of pocket or out a fledging Penny Auction site.NO WAY.
You have the DOW JONES 30 ,20th Century Mentality.If we dont have a 100 million to advertise, we dont do a thing.GIVE ME A BREAK
who knows all business face growing pains. A while ago somebody broke into Microsoft supercomputers and stole part of the Windows source code.
if that happens to MSFT imagene what could happen to a small company that seems to have so many enemies ,(from what I see in this website)
I would hardly call Alertpay or Solidtrust offshore. You can hop in your car in the US and drive all the way to the Alertpays and Solidtrust offices. They are located in Canada.
So Alertpay is suspended because Canada has some of the strictest banking laws in the world and because Alertpay very wide customer base they get in trouble
The problem when you use a payment processor is such charges cannot be reversed. There’s specific clauses in the agreement that says if you try to dispute it through credit card company they’ll charge you an extra amount (between $50 and $150 I think) as penalty.
Dont know why somebody who spends money into a gambling site such as Zeekler or Zeekrewards should have the privilege of disputing the charge with anybody.
The other day I read about this woman that spent like 25,000$ on her credit cards gambling online.then she came about and sued her credit card company for allowing her to blow her money gambling.what idiocy.where is personal responsability then?
Anybody who is afraid of losing shouldnt be putting Money in an MLM ,Zeek or otherwise .Just put it in Your Passbook Savings earning 1% a year or whatever. or stick under your matress. Just make sure your house doesnt catch fire.
Everything in life is a risk.and Please dont ride a Car or eat Ice Cream .You can have wreck or die from a heart attack
yeah ,funny who knows how that algorithm they run works.
has Jimmy been a Casino employee to know about know wild fluctuations in Earnings for Casinos? I do not know but if you open any online operation like WilliamHill or 5Dimes you will see they offer Casino,Poker,Games,Sportsbook some bookies even Financials.
The Casino,Poker,Games and Financials run on software that has a edge for the house 24/7
The sportsbook also run a on a VIG for the house and evry bet is hedged. The house never loses.Doubt this guys have any fluctuations or losing runs.The customer always loses the house always wins.
Go take a look at Vegas and then call tell me they build all those fancy Casinos taking risks and fooling around.Thet win 24/7 .and thats the same principle with Penny Auctions.The same
Oh, really? Have you deposited any money with them? Check your credit card statement. It will show Podgorica. Their “offices” are in Canada, but their merchant services are offshore. It has to, otherwise they would get shutdown.
Even if that was true, why does it make sense now to pay out millions for crappy, useless advertising when you can pay a fraction of that for real advertising? Newspapers, magazines, banner ads, Adwords, content networks, sponsored blog posts, you get the picture?
You fell for this marketing trick. Do you know how Alexa rankings are counted? It’s based on the number of visits. The Alexa rankings the Zeek touts is for zeekrewards-dot-com, NOT zeekler-dot-com. zeekrewards-dot-com has a high Alexa ranking because they force all of their distributors to log in daily to post ads.
So they get a point every day for every distributor visiting. The other MLM’s that are compared against zeekrewards-dot-com do not have the same traffic volume, because there is no compulsion to visit the site daily.
Go to the Alexa ratings for zeekler-dot-com and look at the “trailing 6 months” traffic volume. They had a spike in Oct-Nov but the traffic has been fairly steady in Jan. Now look at the growth curve for traffic at zeekrewards-dot-com. Now tell me where the money is coming from? The investors, not the retail auction.
Take it one step further – tell me how Zeek can pay such a steady daily profit share where their day to day, week to week, and month to month volume has such variance, as it should.
It’s not amazing if you take into consideration Zeek are paying out less than what they’ve been taking in.
Ie. only paying out xx% of the money people invest via the profit share rather than 100% (with slight variations in the percentage so it’s not too obvious what’s going on).
@ stewar
my numbers are correct. Try it yourself,
asumme you start with 100 usd. with an Avarage profit of 1.4 % a day.
100*1.014^90 = 349 usd then reduce the 100 initial usd = 249 usd dollar. (google.se/search?q=100*1.014^90)
proft factor = 2.49
I do not know how you done your spreadsheet, but i promise that the figures are accurate that i present (1.4% a day)
I have the possibilty to use Dun and bradstreet at my work, i Tokk a report on thos e2 companys mentioned.. Dun and bradstreet are the largest rsik och credit information company in the world, I think they are more trustworth than what zeek and paul writes on the homepage.
cheers
No cannot deposit to my Alertpay account using Credit card. But the same Bank will let me deposit 10,000 € with 0 charges if I so wish.Go figure
Like everything also in the West,manufacturing and Customer Service Moved and Outsourced to China and India
my answer:
This doesn’t add upp. I am a member of this downlinebuilder called Reality-networksdotcom I log about 20 times to my account everyday in an effort to build and manage my downline. I log on to my account like 30 times a day in effort to buid and manage my downline.
Keep checking on my referrals process and contacting them. They claim to have millions of members (doubt that’s true) Any way Reality-Networkers traffic rank 26500. I log into my account to look around and report my ads once a day.
There is not much to do inside Zeekrewards Members area once you have been a member for more than a month. I doubt 40,000 distributors login in once day are going to place Zeek in the top 1000.
I will tell you what put them there
@stewar
The odds are irrelevant, it’s the money being spent that dictates the return.
What’s more probably, that each and every day within a few percentage points the exact same money is being spent by penny auctions customers or Zeek are just making it up (with slight xx.x% point variations so as not to completely look like a scam)?.
You’re kidding right?
Apart from posting the ad link, people are fanatical when it comes to money on the internet. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if members were logging in dozens of times daily to check if they’ve been paid yet and if so how much.
Especially those who’ve invested a large amount and are using it to generate a salary.
You used those advertising methods within the context of Zeekler. If Zeek Rewards advertising is responsible for Zeek’s Alexa ranking, then it is the opportunity being advertised which only strengthens the ponzi scheme argument.
And lets not forget that Alexa rankings can be easily faked either. Most SEO circles and metric analysis doesn’t even bother with it.
Oh, give me at least a good attempt at an answer instead of this irrelevant answer.
If you go to Walmart and pay with a CC and you go home and see that the charge was from some company in Podgorica, do you think “why is Walmart hiding behind overseas merchant services” or do you drink the koolaid and say “oh, they probably just have some administrative staff working in Podgorica processing my payment”. Please.
Alexa rank, back-office, canada, podgorica, poker, casino etc, the disucssion is wide and large.
But the fact is simple, a penny auction site such as zeekler (just take a look at the interface of that page, it is horrible, just compare it to other internet services such as amazon, apple etc and u ca tell straight a head, that this site is not made in a professional manner..)
Zeek R will not pay in the long run, they do not have the mone tp do it. I admit that the have a income stream from the auctions, but just count how many actions do they have live every 24h?
Ieg, the have around 30 live auctions running today.. many of the product are low end stuff, and just say that they will go for an avergae of 10 usd dollars..(very high estimate, since many of the products/auctions ends in the range of 0.2-2usd)
It means that they will have totally income from those auctions of 30000 Us dollars (every bid cost 1 us dollar, but rices the price with 1 cent) 300 usd dollars *100 =30000 dollars.
the split this income with the affiliates so 15000 usd dollars goes to the profit pool ( I have even counted in the cost for them to buy the stuff the have on the auctions..)
Just take 10 seconds to think, log in on your account, what is the actual ammount that you getthis week for every day? in my case its around 9 us dollars per day. 15000 usd dollars divided with the numbers of affiliates will be almost zero per affiliate….
let say that zeek have 1000 affiliates (ver very low count) it then means that they in fact shoud get 15 us dollars a day. I have not even the counted that many have bought large ammounts of vip bids.. I guess that a lot of you guys here has a profit amount that is larger than 15 usd a day?
Ieg I know 5 people that has VIP balance over 2500 Us dollars, they should get around 35 usd/ day (with 1.4% growth rate).. Just imagane how many affiliates how has larger vip account than 2500 us dollars..
the money zeekler make a day, is not by far measuring up to how much every affiliate “gets” in the profitpool every day..
To be able to actually pay out the money from the profit pool, zeek r need to have a daily incom of several million usd dollars.. if they have 10000 active affiliates who invested 100 usd per person six months ago (many joined later, many joined eralier..) the would have invested totalt 100*10000 usd = 1 million usd. per 1 of february this would be a totally VIP balance of aprox: 6.2 millon sud dollars.
With a daliy profit of 1.4 % this menas that zeek needs to get net income of around 87000 us dollars.
This might sound as an fair ammount to get from the penny auctions… but be aware of that this is for this week, with the compunidng, it means that in may 2012, the need to get aproz 216 thousand us dollars every day… this ammount is increasing in the same speed as yoru vip balance is compunding.
in february 2013, Zeek r need to get on a daily basis aprox:
3.4 million usd dollars per day… and counting up every day…
and u need to dubble up the ammounts cause the only let 50 percentage go into to the profit pool..
So to be able to pay your vip profit that u get every day in your back office in february 2013, zeek needs to get an income of aprox 7.5 millon USD a day!! (and now i have calculated with intital vip boughts of 100 usd 8very low average) let say the avarage deposit is 1000 Us dollars, yepp then the need aprox 75 millon USD every day to be able to pay you.
As a compariosn, Apple announced their quartlery report for okt-dec 2011 a couple of days ago..
They made a net Profit (after taxes and all other being paid) of 13 billion Us dollars. divided this by 90 days. then u see what apple is making for a proft on a daily basis. apple 140 millon usd per day… this is of courde much more tha zeek..
but be honest, do you reallt think think that zeek will do around
so zeekler in 2013 february is making what..75 millon us dollars (1000 us invested in zeek from the beginning) or 7.5 millon usd a day (100 usd invested from the beginning)
please, confront me, but even how yo calculate this is just to good to be true..
Cheers!
The answer is really simple… your VIP points are virtual, elastic, relative currency. It is not an account balance like a bank. The value of the daily profit share is formulated on the total amount of withdrawals per day. If only a few people withdraw, the rate will stay high. If a lot of people start withdrawing money, the daily profit share drops.
All Zeek has to do is drop the daily profit to say 0.1% and they no longer have to bring in 7.5 million per day. Of course, that would kill the business, but that is now they can offer virtual points, because they convert points to cash using a formula that protects Zeek Rewards, and puts every distributor in competition with every other distributor to guess “when will the run on the bank happen”.
agree with this statement completely
From the Zeekrewards website
Anyone that approaches Zeekrewards as an investment opportunity and not as Business opportunity is a fool
jimmy
Correct!
I just do all these calculations so that people in doubt, will understand that this is scam and that their is no real money in this.. at least very small ammounts..
With the vast majority of commissions being earnt via the investment scheme, the investment opportunity quite obviously is the business opportunity.
I challenge you to find me one Zeek Rewards members who isn’t just dumping the VIP bids they buy with the company. Naturally having one retail customer or several and still dumping the majority of your VIP bids daily with the company doesn’t count.
Nor does creating your own “customers” yourself with fake email addresses.
Actually, Alexa rankings can be boosted through use of the Alexa toolbar.
FYI, as of today, Zeekler.com ranking is in the 3000 range, and ZeekRewards.com is 760, when it should really be the other way around.
According to Alexa, over 3000 sites are linking to ZeekRewards, but only just over 2000 sites are linked to Zeekler itself.
This only illustrate the upside down nature of this business: the “rewards” program is supposed to promote Zeekler, but instead has supplanted it.
Additionally has anyone ever seen an add for Zeek Rewards penny auctions outside of the free classified ad directories Zeek Rewards force their members to spam?
Every ad I’ve ever seen for Zeek outside of these directories has been for the Zeek Rewards income opportunity (the investment scheme).
Kind of makes you wonder where Zeek are getting all their “customers” from to distribute the thousands of VIP bids their members are dumping on them daily. The effectiveness of daily spamming daily classified directories with penny auction ads is laughable, who goes to classified websites to find out about penny auctions?
Zeekler aren’t even on the first 10 pages of Google for the keyword “penny auction”.
I have seen the Zeekler Splash ad being run on the the Clixsense Grid Box.Cannot tell you if it is the company running those ads or a distributor
I do not understand why You insist in Calling Advertising ,Classified or otherwise, SPAM .If the Websites where those ads are placed do not consider them SPAM,how then can You?
Now if I place an ad on Craiglist for Zeek It would be SPAM,because It is not wanted. By definition the word SPAM is about UNWANTED information. Are my posts here supporting Zeekler SPAM then?
I just looked at the clixsense website and it’s paid to view advertising, ie. it’s utterly useless.
Advertising works when people are genuinely interested in what’s being advertised, not when a company is paying them to look at ads.
I don’t. Zeek Rewards forcing you to post ads to earn commissions is spam.
Killing a chicken for food and killing a chicken for fun are two very different things. Both however require the act of killing a chicken.
Same deal with advertising, Zeek Rewards and spam.
And just because a website doesn’t ban it doesn’t mean it’s not spam, it just means they tolerate spam. The ones that don’t have already banned Zeek Rewards ads (and no doubt more will follow over time) – so there goes that justification anyway.
NOPE. Difference in opinions are usually welcomed on this site, within certain limits. They should usually be on-topic, related to the topic or related to the general idea of this blog. Or related to a former comment in the same thread. Or meaningful in other ways for most readers.
Or whatever Oz might accept, if he’s in doubt of the ‘value’.
This Zeek Rewards is a total SCAM There are just too many naive people and they will end up holding the bag. Anything that is too good to be true…ends badly…always!!!
Say good-bye to all those dollars..I mean points…or I mean VIP Bids.
I insist ,Zeekler is not forcing me or anyone to post ads,we post the ads because we WANT to drive traffic to Zeekler.We do it because it is our job as Distributor.
Just like your job as webmaster is to watch this site.Is Google forcing you then to work? Without adsense your site would be dead,without advertising any company is dead.So I advertise Zeekler because I WANT and I profit from it.
The advertisers that spend Tens of Thousands of Dollars a Day in PTC sites(myself inclueded) Would disagree strongly with you,OZ. PTC advertising works,OZ.
I have found that out first hand .Many people surf the PTC sites not for the few cents you can make there but to see what is being advertised and sometimes buy stuff and join the programs advertised.
In a Capitalist System if something is “utterly wothless” like you say then logically its value would be Zero $. We advertisers keep coming back to PTC sites because they make us money. PERIOD
Then you’ve been sadly mislead (or misleading yourself), as it was stated very clearly as one of the qualifications (i.e. requirements) to get paid in ZeekRewards.
https://www.zeekrewards.com/getpaid.asp?username=Master
@stewar
Why do you participate in Zeek Rewards?
A: To make money.
Zeek Rewards do not allow you to make money unless you post ads. Ergo they are effectively forcing you to do so and it qualifies as spam.
Comparisons between Adsense and Zeek Rewards are irrelevant. Google don’t make adsense publishers spam Adsense ads around the internet and withhold their commissions if they don’t.
Sure they do.
Where are all these ads and on what networks are they operating?
Nobody is visitng pay to view advertising sites for the advertising. Don’t be so naive.
Why do you think all these MLM ventures that bring nothing new to the table, slap on some advertising and then wonder why they don’t make any money fail (think Wazzub)?
Because nobody visits the website out of genuine interest, just those doing so because they believe visiting the site will boost their income.
Considering Zeek Rewards’ commissions have nothing to do with the penny auctions, within the context of your Zeek Rewards commissions, your advertising for Zeekler is exactly that – worthless.
That is not what you said.You said PTC adverting is useless or worthless.Again I say WRONG
Only with if used to advertise Zeekler… seeing as the promotion of Zeekler has nothing to do with your Zeek Rewards commissions.
Stellar reasoning there.
your reasoning is as stellar as mine,OZ 🙂 🙂
According to you if any kind of advertising is used to promote the Zeekler/Zeekrewards business(one Comapny) it becomes utterly useless. Following your line of reasoning ,I will go into my Google Adwords Account and place a Google Adwords ad(Glorified and overpriced classifieds) .
If many of Zeek affiliates follow might example Adwords will become useless and Google wil go bankrupt because when any form of advertising is used to advertise Zeek,it becomes “useless”.
Ludicrous to put mildly!!
@stewar, if you use Google Adwords to place an ad, you will be placing an add for Zeek Rewards because you earn money from others joining and investing money. You would not place adds for Zeekler Penny Auctions. Oz is saying the advertising is worthless. If you ran a business you would not pay millions per day for worthless free classified advertising, unless the act of advertising is meaningless and is trying to disguise the ponzi scheme as a legitimate work from home opportunity.
Except that they’re not one company, they’re allegedly owned by the same company.
Promoting Zeekler is useless for Zeek Rewards members, as the success of Zeekler has nothing to do (or at most a neglible) impact on Zeek Rewards. Indirectly though I suppose the closing of Zeekler would expose the Zeek Rewards scam but well, that’s hardly valid justification to promote it.
The advertising itself is useless, not the network. The act of advertising Zeekler as a Zeek Rewards member is what’s useless. Why do you think Zeek Rewards force you to do it?
Shouldn’t Zeek Rewards members be advertising Zeekler themselves willingly instead of the Zeek Rewards investment scheme (indirectly or otherwise) if that’s where the commissions were coming from?
And I’m not talking about ‘oh but I posted an ad three months ago on some PTC network nobody uses’, I mean the same level of effort put into advertising the Zeek Rewards income opportunity used now being put into Zeekler.
Of course that won’t happen and instead Zeek Rewards itself will be what’s advertised. Why? Because getting new Zeek Rewards members to invest = more commissions for everyone.
What are you god ? to know what everyone is doing? I myself have placed abot 100 adds for Zeekler and 2 for Zeerewards. That is consistent with what I have seen around. In fact I have not seen a Zeekrewards ad inover a month as far as Traffic Exchanges,Classifieds and PTC goes.Already anybody uses the Advertising Networks like Google,Yahoo,etc to advertise Zeekler. I have not seen any. They must be useless then
Post a link here to a zeekrewards ad you have seen in the last month or email to me. You must use a different Internet than I .I just cannot find those Zeekrewards ads. Zeekler ads yes by the ton
@stewar why don’t you share with us how many retail customers you’ve referred using your 100 Zeekler ads? How many days have you been doing this, 100+ days? How many bids did they buy? You should have received commissions for any bids.
Multiply your lack of results times hundreds of thousands and you’ll realize how useless the Zeekler ads are.
heck jimmy i did sign up one. now that is pretty good.I have run advertising for other programs I have done like 3200 hits on my link to get 2 or 3 referrals .advertising is a numbers game,I guess
And how much revenue did you get from the bids that were given away? I have heard stories from distributors with 20 or more customers and they haven’t received any commissions. Perhaps it is because no one, or so few that it is insignificant, actually use Zeekler as a penny auction. The revenue comes from new distributors “investing”.
play the lottery waste your money on that scam. maybe that will suit you. people gamble every day.
*** PLEASE READ***
Hi, I would like to say something.
I just want to say that Im not biased, and i just want your perspectives.
Im going to argue FOR zeekrewards even though i am trying not to be biased. the reason for this is because even though i am not yet convinced that zeek is legit, i am hoping that it is and i would like to be proven wrong.
basically, the non-supporters have the following arguments:
1: where does the money come from?
– the money comes from the penny auction. if you think about the rewards program as paid advertising then it makes sense. you make money because you are advertising their auction, so they pay you a share of their profit.
the REAL money comes from the penny auction itself. when something is sold for $30, zeek doesnt make 30, but hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. why? because of all the people that DIDN’T win the auction. remember if they dont win, they lose their bid “fees”. so for every item that ends up being sold for 30 or 50, the company actually made 100s or 1000s.
2. regarding spam.
– i think its irrelevant whether or not its spam. the only thing that is relevant is whether or not classified ads allow this “spam”. as long as they continue to allow people to post zeek ads, there is no problem. if you really want to call it spam, fine, its spam. so what? its still working.
3. no actual product.
– penny auction is selling products.
– wholesale / retail department is selling products.
– the VIP BIDS themselves are products. yes they are virtual, but they are still products, because they get consumed. just because it is intangible doesnt mean its not a product. online games sell virtual characters and costumes for rediculous amounts of money. MERE PIXELS! but still products. people buy bids and consume bids.
4. customer co-op A.K.A. virtual customers
– could be. but you cant prove it. maybe they are feeding us fake customers so we are really just giving the points we bought back to the company. OR maybe they are real customers. you cant prove they are fake so this point is null.
conclusion: please tell me what your thoughts are on what i’ve said. thanks.
Honestly, do you think people are stupid?
How long do you think people are going to stick around when they’re spending money and having nothing to show for it?
Furthermore do you think it’s plausible that the penny auctions have thus far provided a relatively stable % payout over time?
I can tell you one revenue source that has remained stable and most like grown over time: the money being invested by Zeek Rewards members.
The internet already has enough spam published to it daily. It doesn’t need more from investment company members only publishing ads because they don’t get paid if they don’t.
Penny auctions are through Zeekler, not Zeek Rewards. Zeek Rewards pays out when bids are re-invested back into the company for points (whether or not they are given away doesn’t matter, Zeek still pay you a return on your investment).
Regarding the department stores, show me one Zeek Rewards member making the majority of their commissions from them.
We’ve had a few members come in here and harp on about the stores, only to reveal they make their money from giving their bids away to the company for points – just like everybody else.
Zeek will happily take my points and pay me a return without even giving my bids away. It’s not feasible to suggest that the company can continue to consistently keep giving the bids away (when they already can’t meet demand) as everyone’s daily point balances increase.
Yet this is exactly what they are doing?
1. Regarding people + stupidity
– Einstein: “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
– people buy rolex watches, do they not? 10k for a watch. do you think that person is stupid?
– if i can buy a wal-mart watch for $20, but instead i bought a rolex for 10k, would i not in some sense have lost $9980? so why don’t people realize this? why is rolex still in business?
– games. online games. EG. EVE Online. people spend a premium buying costumes, avatars, skins for their virtual characters, which is worth nothing outside of the game itself. $$$ for imaginary items. is that not similar to these VIP bids that zeek is selling? so why does the online gaming market continue to exist and bloom even, if people aren’t stupid and eventually realize that they are paying for NOTHING?
2. Spam.
– you are right that the internet already has too much spam and it doesn’t need more. but that doesn’t mean there will be less spam on the web just because you think it.
– i hate recieving piles of fliers and ads in my mailbox each week. but i still get them. people still deliver them. companies still print them.
– you dont have to agree with it. but you have to ACCEPT IT, because it is being done. its a fact. its reality. and there is no law or regulator that says “hey, you guys can’t advertise the same products just because you company is telling you to.”
3. Retail
– how would the zeek retail store be any different than say, an ebay store? does ebay make money? if so, then zeek COULD potentially make money too.
– how do you know zeek doesn’t deal with other companies and business customers in wholesales? they could very well be selling shoes and pants in bulks to wal-mart. (FOR EXAMPLE. IM NOT SAYING THEY DO.) so the next time you shop at wal-mart, you are ultimately buying something from zeek.
– maybe alot of people are skeptical just as you and i. so instead of forking over $2000USD to zeekrewards, they prefer to make less money, but safer money. so they buy products from zeek for extremely cheap, and sell them, and they make whatever they manage to sell minus the wholesale price they paid.
next point is going to be a little long, because i think there is some misunderstanding. either you misunderstood the way VIP points work, or i have. either way i want to discuss it. so ill make another post about it.
Relative value. People believe those are worth the $$$ to THEM. Whether other people share the view is of no concern to them.
However, your question is irrelevant, because the business model of Zeekler is not the concern here. Penny auction is still auction, and auction is merely another form of sales. The question here is ZeekREWARDS and its MLM business model, which is NOT auction or sales, but PROMOTION and RECRUITMENT.
One one hand you wrote “there’s too much spam”, but the other hand you condone people sending more spam as part of business model. Are you… conflicted?
Again, not relevant. The question is NOT about Zeekler, but rather, ZeekRewards and its non-retail MLM nature.
1. then in this case, people believe zeekrewards VIP POINTS are worth $$$ to them. and in fact, it is worth $$$ because you can make $$$ off of having VIP POINTS. “The view of others is of no concern to them.” (this 1 sentenced has pretty much summed up why we have people arguing here.)
2. zeekrewards isnt a business though. i think it is a marketing program. and it advertises ZEEKLER, NOT ZEEKREWARDS ITSELF. zeekrewards is the marketing branch of zeekler, it is not a standalone business. zeekrewards members advertise *ZEEKLER*. and they get paid to advertise zeekler.
3. yes, i am conflicted. everyone is. life is. there are many things in life that you simply dont like or dont agree with, but is still being done. SPAM is just one of those things. i dont know why you guys decided to single out this 1 topic and argue about it when it is irrelevant what our opinions are.
4. as i said before, zeekrewards is paying its members to advertise zeekler using profits that are made as a result of the advertisements that are done by zeekrewards customers.
Does the above make sense?
@Peter
The statements makes sense, but are they TRUE?
Do most of the money paid out from ZeekRewards come from the Penny Auctions and Free Stores Club, or do most of the money come from new “investors”?
I haven’t checked “the daily ads”, but I have checked homepages for participants. Is it true that they advertised ZEEKLER, or did they advertise ZeekRewards in most of the material?
I used “did” and “advertised”, since I haven’t checked any websites recently. I checked them before the compliance changes.
I will prefer statements close to the truth rather than statements that makes sense. Statements that only makes sense are of little use for most people.
But that’s not what’s in question here. The question is whether ZeekReward’s MLM nature is legal or not.
Exactly, so why does ZeekRewards reward members for recruiting additional members, and in fact, made it a requirement to get paid? (See reply 4 below)
But which other company would pay 10000 people (or however many in ZeekRewards) to post ads promoting something else by posting ads using their own names, not the company name? A single company doing this in their own name would be banned, but using 10000+ people you can’t ban 10000 people…
Then why does ZeekReward package specifically says you only get paid if you put up ads (or spam, depending on viewpoint) AND must have paid in AND have recruited people?
straight quote from http://www.zeekrewards[dot]com/getpaid.asp?username=Master
If you paid, and recruit people who also paid, and get paid for it, it’s a pyramid scheme. It doesn’t matter what ELSE (and you also have to post ads!) is attached to it.
As I remarked before, ZeekRewards should be a straight “we pay you if you help us advertise”. it doesn’t need the MLM structure. The MLM structure makes it potentially illegal.
@Peter
Rolex and watches are a tangible product not an investment (not literally anyway), so the compairison is invalid.
Regarding online games, they don’t pay you out a commission based on an investment into the game (unless you’re a shareholder).
Again, invalid comparison.
No I don’t. Zeek Rewards member’s spam is a blight on the internet and I wholly choose not to accept it. Who are you to tell me otherwise?
Additionally several companies have also already refused to accept it. Hopefully over time more will follow (those that aren’t just spam havens masquerading as classified ad portals anyway)
Because the eBay store is actually used. It’s not just an attachment to a much more lucrative shady investment scheme.
Because that’s not their stated business. Zeekler run penny auctions, Zeek Rewards run an investment scheme and replicated online storefronts.
You can’t switch and bait in business or mislead customers/members, it’s illegal.
Except that’s not what’s happening. Instead, close to 100% of the commissions in Zeek Rewards are being generated via the investment scheme.
The retail storefront is just there in an attempt to satisfy any regulators that start poking around. Like those companies that bundle products with membership, but ultimately pay commissions on membership and not the product.
This discussion is really simple to resolve. If Zeek Rewards were just a marketing arm and its distributors were just performing work for pay, why is your virtual profit share dependent on how much you invest initially?
Why doesn’t Zeek Rewards pay the same to everyone regardless of whether they invest $10 or $10000? Because they are running an investment ponzi scheme dressed up with virtual points so they can claim it is not an investment.
When they drop the daily profit share under 1% and everyone loses their money, they can then hide behind legal disclaimers that everyone agreed they were purchasing virtual points and not equity and not an investment.
If Zeek Rewards were really just marketing, they could hire 10x the number of people they have and pay 1/10th as much. Think about it how many people on odesk or mturk could you hire to do the same worthless free classified spam?
@Peter
What people believe or not is irrelevant. The fact is that VIP points are a virtual currency worth absolutely nothing outside of the Zeek Rewards opportunity.
They have a virtual value assigned by the company and no real dollar value.
Again, what you think is irrelevant. The majority of Zeek Rewards members are using it as an investment scheme (business).
Invest money in VIP bids, return bids to company to get VIP points and then earn an immediate return on your original investment.
Absolutely nothing to do with customers or retail stores…
Quite obviously people are marketing Zeek Rewards otherwise nobody would know about the website. The required spam efforts aren’t the only advertising Zeek Rewards members are pushing out there.
Furthermore, traffic data indicates that the Zeek Rewards website is far more visited than Zeekler. Zeek Rewards is being advertised much more heavily (and effectively, because nobody reads spam filled classified directories anyway) then Zeekler.
Members understand that the more people who invest into Zeek Rewards, the more money they make. Hence outside of the required spam they have to put out, the rest of their marketing efforts are put into advertising Zeek Rewards (those that advertise, anyway).
Because it’s indicative of the entire scheme at large. Getting members to do pointless tasks that have no affect on their commissions just because you think it makes your business appear to be legal isn’t a sign of a credible business.
Anymore so then bundling products with membership and claiming that people are buying the products, rather than membership.
Then why are the commissions generated out of the investment scheme? Why not set up an advertising network, provide affiliate links/banners and use pay per click or some such – that’s what an actual advertising network does.
(And I wonder why people would conclude that we think alike… we have widely divergent views here!)
You don’t have to sign up anyone to qualify to be paid VIP points. No where does it say that. Signing up new members is ANOTHER way of making money at Zeek. NOT a requirement.
There are6 ways to make money in Zeek. Are you guys aware that the S.E.C and FBI have already looked into this company last year. It’s met the requirements to continue running. If it didn’t, they would have shut it down long ago.
@Rod D
That’s the problem.
You give your bids to the company and they pay you a return. Thus with no third parties involved, it’s an investment.
Yeah so I’m calling major bullshit on this one.
The SEC don’t release information about their investigations unless they undertake public action and the FBI?… lol.
The new ruling just announced.. bad move by zeek, we have problems now finding free customers let alone paid ones. They did mention a guaranteed sign up service, any ideas on this anyone?
And my own opinion for what its worth, this is going to cost them big with many people doing mass withdrawals as they are unable to find customers….
Also I have 5 support tickets that they dont answer due to excessive bid retirements that I was never even awarded, I hear of other people with the same problem…Time to move on I think, Zeek was good while it lasted
@Dave
I don’t think you will see mass withdrawals. Checking other forums, the issue doesn’t affect most affiliates. Just business as usual for many.
This was great! It filled in the blanks and brought up more questions regarding the 1099’s and the taxes due at the end of the year….on $ not distributed or withdrawn.
If it is not considered an investment, why are taxes owed if all the profits are plowed back into Zeek rewards?
The company seems to be in limbo waiting for the next shoe to drop on the new 5cc rulings. Any thoughts as to where this could possibly head?
I know people wanting to borrow from their credit card to “invest” in the great scheme. Sad that our economy has pushed people over the edge to risk it all for this.
How can someone get around the anti stacking rule with zeekrewards ? Each of my computers at home use a different IP address, together with using PO boxes for the different accounts, would that be enough ? Thx for the feedback,
Kelly
@Kelly
The no-stacking rule applies only to signing up new affiliates, not customers. So you don’t need a separate address for customers.
The IP limitation on signing up new affiliates or customers is only enforced at sign-up time, not access time. So if you have 5 affiliate accounts you wish to login and do something (such as place a daily ad, or conduct training at one location for all affiliates), you can login to each one.
In fact, the way Zeek Rewards embeds the session ID in the URL string (not secure if someone is sniffing the network), you can open up multiple browser tabs and login to multiple Zeek Rewards accounts at a time.
@Jimmy
Thanks for the response and for all the great info and insight you have provided on this forum and others.
Despite the red flags and warnings of impending doom I am joining ZR tonight with a some money from my tax refund in hopes of making a few bucks short term.
I wanted to ask for a short tutorial on how to work around the PRC requirements in order to benefit from the matrix and RPP.
As I understand it I can make up to 3 “customers accounts” per IP address on the Zeekler sight to give my sample bids to ?
How many sample bids could I give each account?
Do I have to actually use the bids in the auction?
What would be the easiest way to get 6 diamond affiliates under me in order to be eligible for that bonus pool?
I know some of the answers have been mentioned in previous post but I wanted to ask again for clarification.
I appreciate the help and hope ZR holds together long enough for me to hit and run.
Well not much of an investment lately. The daily profit pool is not even half of the points retired. Always suspected the auction did not produce enough for the amount of affiliates in zeek rewards.
Have fun posting your mandatory ad and losing precious vip points. lol.
I am a newbie and have found the posts from OZ to be the most enlightening. After reading every blog I was hoping I would come across an “investor” who could detail perhaps spending $2,500.00 through a sponsor, stayed with the program for over 90 days and then cashed out.
Actually, any initial expenditure example that can illuminate the bottom line would be a help. What are the outflows and inflows of money experienced?
Actual $$? I’d just like to clarify that I am looking for an accounting example.
Can anyone tell me if they think this will last for a good 12 months?
My mother recently invested and is doing rather well as she found out through a trusted work mate. I’m thinking about investing roughly 4000 USD.
Please answer objectively, I do realize this is a rather heated debate 🙂
My self and many of my friends have MANY more thousands than that in Zeek and have no doubt at all this will be around for quite a long time. We are a well connected group of over 600 and have close contacts with mgt of Zeek.
I’m not living in fear of my money at all. And remember, it is not an investment. You are buying bids and are profit sharing. Using the word investment is a violation of the compliance laws and you can be removed from Zeek and lose your bids for using words such as investment.
If you have not done so, you should take the compliance test that has been put together by MLM Compliance lawyer Kevin Grimes. It is also my understanding that Donald Trump has him on retainer as well. I know The Donald has one of our law firms on retainer.
I’m the first 24 hours into looking at z rewards. first impressions.
1. the (zeekler) website is ugly slow and 10% time errors. and watching for a while i wonder if majority of Major winners are shill. and created by the site.
2. compared to qbids a bidder Loses his $ qbids you can apply what you spent and purchase the item. so a constant stream of new bidders are needed. to replace the ones that gave up because they got nothing in return.
3. I have not watched all day but it seems to me that the Merchandise is secondary to cash prizes. where 150$ was won for $32. ($3,200) and with those kind of profits i suppose the profit sharing can come from a full day of selling $100 for 1-3k. it seems pretty profitable.
but eventually IMO it will run out of customers. and when that happens investor financed panzi or not. no one will make any profit sharing…
that being said. still thinking i’ll drop 10k in for 60 days pull it out and then gamble on when i might empy the account value before everybody else does in 12-24 months. IMO…
Chances? I personally say 50/50.
Some members are basically “letting it ride” and see how much they can get out.
Others are busy assuring others “we’re sticking around, and we want you to join too”. What they don’t mention, of course, is they are getting half of the profit out of bids YOU bought.
That’s a lot of name dropping. Mr. Grimes is a fine MLM lawyer, but he sells that course to everybody who wants it. In fact, there’s a special website for it: mlmcompliancevt.com It’s NOT a course specifically designed for ZeekRewards. Don’t pretend it is.
Not quite. Assuming these were VIP bids, there is the BOGO offer, so you get 2 VIP bids for every dollar spent. This means the actual revenue is only $1,600.
(Let’s ignore the VIP bids given to affiliates for their monthly subscription fees for now.)
Now for that $1,600 in revenue, Zeek Rewards also paid out 20% commission or $320. Net revenue is actually is $1280 ($1600 – 20%).
Now for that $1280, Zeek Rewards has given the sponsoring affiliate matching 1600 VIP points (1 VIP point per dollar spent).
Bottom line:
– Zeek Rewards took in $1280 in revenue
– Zeek Rewards has liability of 1600 VIP points which earn ROI for 90-days
Zeek Rewards surely knows they can’t pay out these high returns forever. When the incoming affiliate revenue (people like you wanting to give it a go for $10k) stops, the daily profit share will collapse and everyone runs for the exit.
This is an investment ponzi, just dressed up in virtual points with the illusion of a retail penny auction, and an MLM structure to lure in the “MLM leaders” with their large downlines.
You will need an additional 90 days to pull it out completely. But most of your initial investment will be withdrawn within 90-100 days.
* ROI will be 190% or so in 5 months (90% more than your initial investment) minus expenses (membership fee etc.).
* taxable amount for income tax will be $26,000 in a worst case scenario, if you’re a U.S. citizen and the IRS won’t accept the deductions.
The taxes will be an additional risk in your plan, if you are a U.S. citizen. This is one of the flaws in the management’s idea when they started ZR, and choosed to call it “purchase bids + do work” instead of calling it investment.
People received 1099’s in February with thousands of dollars in taxable income from ZR, money they never had withdrawn.
@Bluevic
Here you have a method that will make you some additional ROI (20% commission).
Risky investments will require you to have better plans than most others, and be more experienced than them. Getting a 20% commission on your initial $10K investment should probably be a part of that plan? Instead of giving the commission to your upline.
The method was only an example. You will have people with more experience against you, people who will have better odds than you because of experience, and they have started to withdraw money (using an 80/20 plan) long before you even had heard about Zeek Rewards. So your plan for withdrawing the money “before everyone else” has already failed.
Also consider if the statement that 12 affiliates earn over $1M per month, how is this sustainable? No matter how you calculate Zeekler revenue, it isn’t producing $288M in revenue per year (12 x $12M x 2 because 50% is paid out in profits).
And that doesn’t include the rest of the members.And that assumes these 12 affiliates flatline at $1M per month and don’t have more growth.
I know, these 12 affiliates could donate 1% of their revenuue per month to hire real programmers. Think about how you awesome a site and back office Zeek could build for $120k (1% from these 12 affiliates) per month!
Just think: By the time your $10k is 100k in virtual points, how large will these 12 affiliate accounts be? And what about everyone else who is already at 100k, will they be at 500k or a million?
The top of the pyramid is taking off into the stratosphere like the pyramid in Stargate (the movie). The top will grow faster than the base can feed the ponzi. It can’t grow indefinitelty forever…
@jimmy
(not counting bogo) out of 3200 bids there were lets say 160 different bidders willing to gamble $20+ 3-20 (bids) to make 150$
dont they have to buy in 3-20 bids to place your first bid?
160 bidder buy in at 3= 480$ just from buying the seat.
still looks quite profitable especially when the website looks like my nephew put it together. “they must be saving money somewher” lol i’m not saying it is not an ivestment scheme/ponzi. but it could be very profitable and if “those in charge choose let it” it could last a long time.
@Bluevic — the problem is not that the auction is not profitable, but WHO IS DOING THE BIDDING.
If the members are bidding, then sharing in the profits, then it’s a potential Ponzi scheme.
I would also add not just WHO IS DOING THE BIDDING (a good question), but even if you assumed that all bidders were 100% retail and completely unconnected to affiliates (no matching VIP points given)… you still don’t have enough profit to cover all of the affiliates!
Remember, at the last Red Carpet event they reported 12 affiliates are earning over $1M per month. Yeah, sure, the retail penny auction is generating at least $24M per month? Okay, I’m sure these 12 affiliates have some matrix commissions too, but if you account for just these 12 only and ignore all other members, how id the retail penny auction even close to keeping up?
People are spending BIDS in the auctions, not a “monetary value”. So it doesn’t really matter how many BIDS they are spending in an auction, does it?
How many bids they are BUYING is more important than how many bids they are SPENDING. How they have PAID for the bids is also important. Lots of people do not pay for the bids with money, they pay for them with a virtual currency.
You can’t compare Zeekler + Zeek Rewards to other penny auctions. Other auctions will not accept virtual currencies as payment for bids, like Zeek Rewards do.
Look at your own plan?
Your plan was to invest $10K for 60 days, and then to withdraw the money “before everyone else” in the next 90 days.
You have only paid for the first $10K worth of bids. The rest of the period you will pay for the bids with Profit Points, a virtual currency that doesn’t hold any real monetary value. After 60 days you will have bought 14-15K “worth” of bids for virtual currency.
The only money you have brought into the system in these 60 days are your own initial $10K investment. Reinvesting profit points will NOT bring any fresh money into the system, and neither will spending the bids in auctions do.
Fresh money in
Recruiting more investors will bring fresh money in, and that’s why they are trying to recruit you. Your money is needed so some of the old investors can be able to withdraw some of their profit points as money.
And you will be dependant on an increasing number of new investors when you want to withdraw money, somebody willing to support the payouts to you (and all the others that also withdraws money). And they will be dependant on additional new investors if they want to withdraw money. And so on and so forth until the “bigger fool theory” finally fails to produce enough bigger fools.
The system will eventually run out of new fools willing to support the payouts to old investors.
I noticed a post by “Mel” last November. He stated that he was dubious but had invested and was, in fact, making money and he would get back to us within 6 months to tell us if he felt the program was a scam or just a good business opportunity.
I noticed we haven’t heard from him. I hope he’s doing well.
I have several friends that are in this and are drawing real money out of it. I was in a ponzi scam like this in the mid 80’s and lost all my money.
It’s like any other pyramid sham, You need new blood to keep the money machine going. I hope they get out before they loose theirs, but they are riding the wave making some change and greed is swelling in those virtual accounts of theirs.
I’m sure it is like any other get something for nothing scam, if your not on the bottom floor you will make something for a while. When the well dries up, then all is lost.
Good luck with that, hard work is only sure way of making money or invest, gamble or play the stocks and take a chance. It’s all relative, you can’t take it with you when you die!
If “Mel” invested in mid November 2011 and has followed a normal “80/20 plan” after the first 90 days, he should have been able to withdraw his initial investment + 60-70% profit, plus having a VIP balance 4 times his initial investment.
He also has got a potential tax problem for 2011, the reward points paid to his backoffice and reinvested. But we haven’t got any clear conclusion on the tax issue.
I used a spreadsheet with 1.5% daily return in the calculation, and calculated an investment for 35 weeks (245 days).
The tax problem?
Affiliates in the US received a 1099 MISC taxform from Zeek in January/February 2012, stating ALL the RPP paid to the backoffice as taxable income, not only the money they had withdrawn.
For “Mel”, this means a taxable income for around 80-85% of his initial investment, with questionable deductions, for money he never has received in 2011.
I am currently looking into Zeek rewards, and I’ll admit that I’ve had the same concerns as many people…how can this company maintain for the long term?
However, through my research and math so far, it seems that Zeek is making a ton of money. Not only from the penny auction, which would generate huge income anyway. An ipad sold for 3.09 could easily make the company close to 1000 dollars once you factor in the bid packs that were brought.
I participated in penny auctions myself (beezid, skorit) so I know what they are about. You can easily go through a 250 dollar bid pack and not win anything, that’s 250 dollars that you just gave away for a little fun.
It’s a business and it’s about making money, can’t blame them for that. They also make money from the bids that affiliate buy to earn more points on, because like someone said, you don’t get it back and they do drop off.
The way I see it, what harm will it do to invest a few bucks (if you can afford it). We are because if it is as good as I want it to be, then in a year we’ll hava a few thousand bucks in the back and if not then hey, I’ve done (and may continue with) Amway so I’m used to disappointment…LOL
@Contrice
You know these two sentences don’t cancel eachother out right. As long as affiliates keep investing with new money, Zeek Rewards will continue to pay out (that’s how Ponzi schemes work and grow).
Obviously there’s a finite cap to new investor money and then you have
-imaginary OFAC sanctions
-abolishing of checks
-banking problems
-compulsory marketing and compliance programs (mandatory cash injection from affiliates)
-e-wallet payment delays
etc. etc.
We can eliminate the penny auction as a source of viable revenue due to the simple fact that each retail bid carries with it a >100% liability on the cost of the bids (matching VIP points and 20% referral bonus).
That leaves what, affiliate money being invested in VIP bids/points? 100% affiliate money paying commissions = Ponzi. This has been admitted as much in Zeek Reward’s conference calls by COO Dawn Wright-Olivarez.
Nobody in their right mind is dropping money on retail bids with hundreds of thousands of affiliates looking to dump bids on people. That and the knowledge that Zeekler auctions are stuffed with retail bid inflation due to affiliates creating dummy customer accounts to purchase retail bids through to get matching VIP points and referral commissions.
If you’re wanting to participate in a Ponzi scheme then at least admit it is so. The harm is in people investing (no matter how little or large the investment) under the false pretense that this is anything but a Ponzi scheme.
@ Oz,
Okay know it all, believe me I am not trying to convince you of anything. I was just expressing my opinion. Personally it bugs me when people put up blogs and webpages about stuff that they probably know little about.
Have you ever been part of Zeek Rewards? Have you ever talked with anyone who was apart of it or are you just forming an opinion and putting it out as fact. Zeek Rewards is not an investment program (I used the term loosely) and should not be treated as such, however; If someone wants to take their money and buy bids as a Zeek affiliate, then that’s their business.
It’s the business to buy bids and give them away, but that doesn’t mean people won’t want to buy more once they run out. Like I said, I’ve done penny auctions before and I enjoy them. I’m sure I’m not the only one.
I’m wanting to know who’s twisting your arm to join? Why are you so passionate about it being so awful? The Zeek Rewards company is completely legal, whether you think it’s a Ponzi Scheme or not is really a concern to no one.
Every successful business gets negativity from somewhere, EVERY BUSINESS GETS NEGATIVITY. Zeek rewards is no different. I’ll be sure to let you know how my business is going in a year or two, good or not. I just want to make sure you continue to have something to talk about and criticize.
@Contrice — you are using the SAME sorry excuses used by scammers before…
What makes you think Oz don’t have the facts or “know little about” Zeek? Show us a mistake or two.
There are PLENTY of Zeek members commenting here. Please don’t sprout that bogus “You have to be in to comment on it”. You don’t have to play football (or soccer or any professional sport) to analyze it.
You sound just like someone who posted on my hub, insisting that a hypothesis, solidly supported by logic and facts, is an “opinion” and therefore worthless.
If that logic holds, your own opinion, UNSUPPORTED by facts and logic, would be WORSE than worthless.
That fact that it passes the Howey Test would indicate that it *is* an investment program, despite your personal opinions (not backed up by facts)
Not if they were lied to and their risk omitted from discussion. That is fraud. You just used “blame the victim” excuse.
That’s your OPINION, not supported by any facts or logic.
You are here, so it obviously concerns YOU. So you just lied.
Ah, the standard “dismiss it as negativity” tactic. Concerns are real, not pessimism. If they were not real, they would not have hired those lawyers. And what has changed after that? Just a lot more restrictions on what you affiliates can say.
Burying your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist is not going to get the problem fixed. It’s called “denial”, and I don’t mean the river.
Zeek affiliates try to make the penny auctions sound so fun and great entertainment. Why dont they just buy bids from the Zeekler site, No what they really like is getting new members money from zeekrewards site with thier original bids slash vip points.
Many know they are in a pure ponzi and still passionatly defend the scheme. Honestly on a scale of 1-20 for being psycho where do you place a passionate scammer. Hows that for negativity.
If they reinvested 80/20, then they didn’t earn 1 mil a month. They earned 200K a month. THAT is believable.
@Contrice:
It’s obvious to me that you’re just another zeek affiliate, NOT someone just looking into the program. You’ve just polished the rhetoric a little bit more. Nice try (:
@candice
Irrelevant for the purpose of analysis of the business model.
The business model is all the facts I need to analyse Zeek Rewards. And I’ve talked to many affiliates via the article comments here.
Functionally as a business model it is. You invest in bids with the intention of earning a >100% 90 day ROI on the price you paid on the bids. No amount of psuedo name-changing compliance changes that fundamental core fact.
Irrelevant.
It’s childish to dismiss the processing, analysis and discussion of facts and the Zeek Rewards business model as mere ‘negativity’. Pull your head out.
If you have reached a level of over 1 million VIP points, you will usually have a huge downline too, generating commissions upwards to yourself. So some of the income can come from commissions.
The commission are 10% on your first level, the affiliates directly sponsored by yourself. And it’s 5% on your second level. In addition you have the commissions from your third and fourth level, they will “roll upwards” in the system when people are reinvesting them.
So if one affiliate in your third lavel reinvestests 10,000 RPP per day, your second level will earn $500 in commission and your first level will earn $1,000 in commission. When THEY reinvests the money, YOU will earn commission — $25 from your second level and $100 from your first level (in addition to their ordinary reinvestments).
The experienced ones will try to recruit as many as possible in their downlines, and will earn more from the commissions than from their own investments. If you have enough people in your downline, you can easily maintain the VIP balance with a 60/40 plan rather than an 80/20 plan.
The few personal websites I checked in January had 95% focus on recruitment, and hardly no focus on driving customers to the auctions.
I have personally asked more than 40 affiliates about the income streams in Zeek since January, and others have asked too. Most affiliates will try to avoid answering questions about real paying customers, but some affiliates will.
The two main income streams presented in January were Zeekler and FSC stores. So I asked questions about thee FSC stores — “How much have you sold for through your FSC store in the last 1 or 3 months?”. I’ll guess you know the answer?
And then I asked questions about how many retail customers affiliates had, “PAYING customers, paying for bids with their OWN money, interested in the auctions rather than the opportunity, not including family members and friends who only ACTS as real customers”. I’ll guess you know the answer to that too?
So if you have real customers or sell something through your FSC store, then please come forward with your information? I will even consider it to be positive when people have PLANS for how to attract customers, and I have quoted a couple of affiliates who clearly have included real customers in their plans.
No, Oz doesnt know it all. But between him, KC, Jimmy, Norway, and PP they sure do.
Now run along and discuss how wonderful Zeek is with the other cultists on the Fbook page.
Same thing over and over. Zero facts/ All attacks.
I read a couple of those incomes… turns out “repurchase” of bids from your downlines also counts as your commission.
If your downline gets 1000 RPP, and repurchase 800, you get 5-10% of that as “cash”.
So you get paid $$$ when your downline puts in $$$.
And they say this ain’t a Ponzi…
Is the VIP points earned daily taxable income , YES or NO ?
You do not “earn” VIP points. You earn RPP which is considered income.
Whether you purchase more bids with them or move them over to your “cash” section (or do the 80/20 mix as they recommend) is up to you. If you purchase more bids, then they are converted into VIP points for you.
All the 1099 fear is caused by an ignorance of how businesses report in the U.S. The 1099 represents a gross income, not the taxable profit.
All the spending you do related to ZR is expense. After all the math is done there is nothing to freak over.
Yes there is. The ratio of revenue to expenses will trigger red flags and some affiliates will have to endure audits. The risk that an expense (bid repurchase) wil be disallowed is very low, but Zeek puts undue audit risk on its affiliates by not reporting as an investment.
Some will also have to pay selfemployment tax that you would never do for other passive investments. If you think Zeek is not a passive investment for the vast majority who do not recruit, you are deluding yourself.
K.Chang will remind you of the Howey test.
@Jazzy — The real question you should ask is… WHICH BOX did your income appear in on a 1099-MISC?
I am going to guess Box 7. That subjects you to self-employment tax, and possibly missed quarterly pre-payments AND penalties for missing them.
THEN the problem is how much are you going to deduct as “expenses”? And how exactly are you going to justify the expenses if you do get audited?
People who are in their second year in Zeek are in danger of audit if they deduct too much (like trying to deduct expired points). People who just joined probably won’t get audited… yet. The more you deduct, the more likely you’ll trigger an audit, esp. something as nebulous as “bid purchases”.
Audit flags involving the SAME payer is going to trigger additional audit flags.
You probably mean “Rex Venturee Group needs to be audited”, not the individual taxpayers?
If they raise the red flag for a few individual taxpayers, all involving the same party as the original source of the 1099-MISC, they probably will have to raise red flags for ALL the 1099’s from Rex Venture Group, and check the source rather than the individual taxpayers.
Individual taxpayers can probably raise some red flags themselves by contacting the IRS. Or they can wait for other taxpayers to raise the red flags, or wait for the IRS to raise the red flags themselves.
I would have preferred to raise the red flags myself, instead of waiting. But that is more related to me and my own work methods than to the tax issue itself. I prefer to be proactive rather than reactive in some cases, and so far I have been proactive in this case.
Individual affiliates will have to go through audits befor the IRS realizes the trend.
I am a bit concerned about the zeekrewards investments. Here, in spain, the situation is very bad and many people are trying to get some cash by investing money in this venture.
Some friends of mine accepts that the venture is unclear and they just want the business to last half a year to get a good deal and get some money.
I have been reading some opinions and I agree entirely that this is scam. The investment comes from the new investors. It is impossible to pay affiliates just from the auctions.
I can’t believe all the crap being posted on this site. There seems to be so many geniuses answering all the questions of which it’s painfully obvious they don’t REALLY know what’s going on.
I’d like to ask these same people if they know how every component in their car works? Or do they just know That if theydo certain things the car will work for them. How many of you are computer program writers or actual IRS auditors.
Zeek does an annual report for everyone to give tothe IRS. The program works. Get over it. Take your skepticism and negative way of thinking and try turning it around and making something of your life.
If Zeek is not for you, don’t bitch about it. Get out? I dare you to leave something that is actually working?
@Chosen One
Yawh, another ‘I’m getting paid so who cares?’ affiliate.
How Zeek Rewards works is simple. You invest money and then earn a rolling 90 day ROI that is paid out from new and existing members either investing new money or re-investing their returns.
There’s no mystery there.
By your logic, nobody would ever dream of leaving the mob, because once you’re “made man”, you’re set for life.
Sorry, but that’s just bogus logic.
If this is such a great investment where can i see a contract or agreement of what i am to recieve. My friends are soliciting me to join this zeek group and give my hard earned cash to them to start my account but i am very sceptical…
I want to see the company annual report or a balance sheet just like i look at before i make any other investment but for some reason it seems as if the company hides this infomation.
Can someone please show me how i am to make all this money in writing and please show me how its legal?
Good, be very very sceptical. Zeekler doesn’t make crap for profit to sustain zeekrewards.
The only external revenue is retail bid sales which give the sponsor affiliate matching VIP points that generate a daily 1.5 ROI. Affiliates paying affiliates.
Zeek will never show any of that information since they deem it “proprietary” and even keep the name of the bank they use (if they’re currently using one) secret. They are anything but transparent which should be a warning to anyone wanting to put money into this.
The problem is that Zeek doesn’t have any kind of contract (that I know of) promising anything in return for your investment, which they claim isn’t an investment.
You give them money and they give you “bids” in return, which you have to give away. In return for that they give you a number of points which you can eventually exchange for cash. Then you have to trust them that they’ll pay you $1 per point like they’re currently doing.
You also have to trust their claims that all the money you’re getting is actually profit share from a penny auction website which will keep growing to infinity.
When you look at the facts, it’s not hard to see why this is a risky investment.
i am approached to join zeekrewards, i am confused about this.
Can anyone tell is it a scam, how long the business model in the market, will they overpay?
how company generate revenue, and how much total payout for commision
@confuse
Set aside a few hours and start reading.
Internal revenue from affiliates:
1. monthly fees, $10silver, $50gold, $100diamond
2. sample bid purchase (initial investment)
cash commissions are paid out to the sponsor affiliates for both.
External revenue from customers:
1. Retail bids
20% cash commission + matching VIP points for the sponsor affiliate
So for every dollar spent on retail bids, $.20 goes to sponsor + 1 VIP point that compounds 1.5% daily….~500% yearly.
So in effect every retail bid costs zeek more than they bring in, once the VIP points are converted to cash. Zeekler is a decoy to take the focus off the real money maker, affiliate investment.
salam evry body
i pray that zeek come back inshallah. zeek is purebusiness site and i request to ameercan court and minister to let the zeek and do work.
zeek is proud of poor man and family i request fedrral minster and court plz leave zeek and they work agian.
with regard and best wishes
So ummmmm. Where are all the defenders now?
Unfortunately zeek haram. Much fraud in business.
You pay Zeek money. Later Zeek pay you back much more. Both haram. Riba al-fadl and riba al-nasiah
Also, you do not know how much you earn day to day. This is haram. Abū Hurayrah said: “Allah’s Messenger (peace be upon him) forbade business transactions determined by the throw of a stone and business transactions involving uncertainty.”
The Prophet (peace be upon him) said: “He who cheats us is not one of us.” Paul Burks is cheater. No profit from auctions (2% only).
Allah says: “O you who believe! Do not devour your wealth among yourselves falsely.” Your money was taken by lie.
Please do not pray for Zeek. Haram business bad for everyone. Maybe government get you some money back. Inshallah.
I thank you with all my heart for your explanations along with your honesty. I am 86 and cannot afford what I have read.
My income is limited but I cannot afford to donate it to a loss. Thank you very much.