YourVidaViral Review: Cooking With Monkey feeder?
There is no information on the YourVidaViral website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The YourVidaViral website domain (“yourvidaviral.com”) was registered on the 17th of January 2013, and lists the registrant as “VidaYum c/o Jon-Petter Holen”. A contact address for VidaYum in Vestfold, Norway is also provided.
A visit to the VidaYum website (hosted on the same server as YourVidaViral) does not reveal much, with the website providing little information about the company.
Welcome to VidaYum
Cooking with Monkey Production Corporation was created to help children. By addressing the issues of health and wellness through entertainment, we plan to create a positive difference in an educational manner.
The domain registration information for the VidaYum website (“vidayum.com”) is also set to private.
Cooking With Monkey appears to be an unofficial offshoot of Wealth Masters International, which was launched by Norwegian WMI affiliates after Wealth Masters was banned in Norway.
A February 2012 post on the Norwegian blog “Pharao’s Tomb” provides some additional information on Cooking With Monkey:
With WMI officially banned and the appeal rejected, there is no future for WMI in Norway. Unless you continue the scam covered by another business name.
The concept Cooking with Monkey was created by Fred Tissington, a close business partner of Kip Herriage.
The launch was scheduled to a WMI seminar in Hawaii, and people like Becky Maes and Per Gunnar Hoem are included as advisors. However, the products seem to differ from the WMI product line.
The launch of Vidayum seems to be scheduled to May 2012, a concept based on “Nutrition – Activity – Nature – Family”. A Norwegian Facebook profile is already established, of course without any sign of who is behind the profile.
Tying Jon-Petter Holen into the picture, on his LinkedIn profile Holen credits himself as being an “M3 Master Consultant” at Wealth Masters International:
On Holen’s (photo right) personal website (“jph.no”) he claims that he has “recently retired” and “works with Cooking With Monkey”.
First and foremost my heart is with the company Cooking with Monkey.
This company has created a platform of entertainment for children, while playing they are learning about nutrition, relations and the importance of leading active lives.
Like with Disney, there is a society of fantastic illustrations, massive entertainment, and a number of fantastic characters and personalities.
All of this comes in the shape of videogames, boardgames, cartoons, bedtimestories, catchy music and much more.
Putting two and two together, it would appear that VidaYum is some sort of marketing arm for Cooking With Monkey and either officially or unofficially YourVidaViral is being launched as a separate MLM opportunity, with those involved originating from both Wealth Masters International’s Norwegian Chapter and Cooking With Monkey.
Holen’s exact role within YourVidaViral however is not clear.
Read on for a full review of the YourVidaViral MLM business opportunity.
The YourVidaViral Product Line
In a similar vein to Jon-Petter Holen’s description of Cooking With Monkey’s product line above, YourVidaViral provides members with access to a series of books, magazines and games targeted at children.
YourVidaViral don’t mention Cooking With Monkey as a source of their product line and don’t explicitly mention where the content is sourced, only stating
we will be using a combination of in house talent, known leaders in the market and obtaining reproduction rights to existing material.
For $9.95 a month, YourVidaViral state they will provide subscribers with “1 book, 1 magazine and two games” each month, as well as access to a library of previously released content.
The YourVidaViral Compensation Plan
The YourVidaViral compensation plan revolves around a 3×7 matrix. A 3×7 matrix places an affiliate at the top of the matrix with three positions directly under them (level 1).
In turn, these three positions branch off into another three positions (level 2) and so on and so forth down seven levels for a total of 3279 positions.
YourVidaViral pay out a commission per position filled in an affiliate’s matrix, with positions able to filled via direct recruitment or the recruiting efforts of an affiliates up and downlines.
Commissions are paid monthly to affiliates, dependent on how many members they have in their matrix. YourVidaViral don’t explicitly state the rates they pay per member in an affiliate’s matrix, only stating that
when you have your first and second row filled (12 spots) you’ll be making roughly $10/month.
This equates to about 83 cents per member recruited.
Joining YourVidaViral
Affiliate membership to YourVidaViral is $9.95 a month.
Conclusion
With no differentiation between their retail customers and affiliates (everyone pays $9.95 a month and has access to the compensation plan), YourVidaViral immediately set themselves up for problems regarding internal consumption.
100% affiliate membership means there’s no retail sales taking place to customers, meaning that effectively you’ve got an MLM opportunity that only paid members are participating in.
Mechanically you can completely ignore YourVidaViral’s product line and market the opportunity as a $9.95 position scheme, with you earning a fixed monthly commission per member you recruit into the scheme (directly or indirectly).
With recruitment directly tied into commissions paid, once those at the bottom of the matrices are unable to find anyone new to recruit, they’ll stop paying their monthly membership fee.
This means those above them will stop earning commissions and then they too will stop paying their monthly fees. Like a chain reaction this moves up the company until the entire scheme collapses.
In its current state with no retail sales and 100% of the commissions paid out being sourced from affiliate membership fees, the long-term viability of YourVidaViral does not look promising.
This has started only a few days ago, as far as I can see. The website isn’t even finished, it has empty pages and menu choices that don’t work yet. “How it works” in the top menu leads to a page “Put in how it works here”. 🙂
106 members total (minus 4 = 102 members total).
VidaMarketing is at the top of the foodchain, and joined February 12th. Per Gunnar Hoem joined as #2, 5 hours later.
So you reckon “VidaMarketing1” = Jon-Petter Holen (and friends?)?
I wonder what’s up with all these $9.95 matrix opportunities we’ve seen pop up recently. It’s almost as if some MLM guru recently finished a “how to start up a $9.95 matrix MLM company” course and has just now released attendees out into the wild.
The “Terms and Conditions” point #20 reveals it’s a Norwegian company (VidaYum Skandinavia AS).
I received the following information on VidaViral and related persons and companies via email:
The changes in company names shows that “Cooking with Monkeys” didn’t work well. It was terminated in early 2012, around 6 months after “WMI Scandinavia” was terminated.
“Newbie” isn’t about network marketing. It’s probably a solution to store some money temporarily, until they have found a new project.
That means VidaViral isn’t a feeder for Cooking With Monkeys. CWM was terminated 10 months ago.
@M_Norway
Sounds good. Wish MLM marketers wouldn’t leave such a large online paper trail though. Makes it hard to work out what is and isn’t still running. Especially when company websites are still up.
That should have been “CWM was abandoned in Norway” or “in Europe”. I didn’t check Cooking With Monkeys, only the Norwegian company and its history.
From my POV, it looks like they mostly have failed attempts to introduce relatively unknown network marketing plans since 2011 (since WMI).
* WMI was banned in Norway in March 2011.
* Per Gunnar Hoem tried That Free Thing around the same time, and it was abandoned 4 months later.
* The “WMI Scandinavia” name was abandoned in October 2011, and the company changed name to “Cooking With Monkeys”.
* “Cooking With Monkeys” (Europe) was abandoned in April 2012, and a new company name “Newbie” was introduced (not network marketing).
From my POV, that looks much like “series of failed attempts” and “failed ideas”, e.g. trying to keep an existing downline (from WMI) together with some new opportunities from time to time.
It looks more like someone TRYING to do something than an on going project. I haven’t been able to identify VidaViral, but it’s probably “yet another attempt”.