Help1 Direct Money Review: $100 two-phase cash gifting

There is no information on the Help1 Direct Money website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The Help1 Direct Money website domain (“help1directmoney.com”) was registered on the 16th of September 2014, with a “Robert Pressley” is listed as the domain owner. An address in the US state of Alabama is also provided.

Curiously, the address listed on the Help1 Direct Money domain registration does not match the “company address” listed on their website.

The address listed on the Help1 Direct Money website is in the US state of Georgia and belongs to that of ServCorp. Servcorp, among other things, are a virtual office (mailing address) provider.

As such, Help1 Direct Money would appear to exist in Georgia in name only.

Interestingly enough, the address provided for “Robert Pressley” in the Help1 Direct Money domain registration, belongs to a company called “Mail Box Printing & Mailing”. They too offer virtual mailing addresses.

As such where exactly Help1 Direct Money is being run out of is unclear.  Trying to pull up an MLM history for Robert Pressley also turned up nothing.

One too many wonky co-incidences there for my liking, so I’m going to flag Robert Pressley as possibly not being an actual person.

As always, if a MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.

The Help1 Direct Money Product Line

Help1 Direct Money has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market affiliate membership to the company itself ($39).

A number of ebooks do feature on the Help1 Direct Money website, however they don’t appear to have anything to with the MLM business opportunity.

The Help1 Direct Money Compensation Plan

The Help1 Direct Money compensation plan revolves around affiliates signing up and then purchasing $100 matrix positions. This $100 is paid to the affiliate who holds the matrix position directly above the newly purchase position.

Note that in the following Help1 Direct Money compensation plan breakdown, “immediate upline” refers to an affiliate who recruited another affiliate.

Phase 1 Matrix

Help1 Direct use a 2×3 matrix to pay out “Phase 1” commissions in their compensation plan.

A 2×3 matrix places an affiliate at the top of a 2×3 matrix, with two positions directly under them (level 1):

These level 1 positions each branch out into another two positions, making up level 2 of the matrix (4 positions). The third and final level is generated by each level 2 position again branching out into another two positions (8 positions).

In total, a 2×3 matrix has fourteen position to fill.

Positions in a Help1 Direct Money matrix are filled when affiliates purchase $100 positions. These can be directly recruited affiliates, or affiliates recruited by an affiliate’s upline and downline.

Commissions are paid as the matrix fills, paid both to the affiliate at the top of the matrix and their upline.

• level 1 (2 positions) – pays $100 per position ($200 total) to the immediate upline of the affiliate who received the initial $100 matrix position cost
• level 2 (4 positions) – pays $200 and $600 to the immediate upline of the affiliate who received the $200 commission from level 1
• level 3 (8 positions) – pays $1300, $3500 to the immediate upline of the affiliate who received the $600 commission from level 2 and enters an affiliate into a new Phase 2 Matrix

Phase 2 Matrix

Help1 Direct Money’s Phase 2 matrix is the same size as the Phase 1 matrix, and operates in the same fashion.

Positions in a Phase 2 matrix are filled as affiliates “cycle” out of Phase 1 matrices, with commissions paid out as follows:

• level 1 (2 positions) – pays $2000 and $5000 to the immediate upline of the affiliate who received the $3500 commission from level 3 of the Phase 1 matrix
• level 2 (4 positions) – pays $5000 and $15,000 to the immediate upline of the affiliate who received $3500 from level 1
• level 3 (8 positions) – pays $116,500, $3500 to the immediate upline of the affiliate and re-enters them into a new Phase 2 matrix

Matrix Level Progression

Note that in a typical MLM matrix, positions are filled across all levels of the matrix.

In Help1 Direct Money, each level represents a new level of qualification, with affiliates only able to be placed at any particular level once they have “cycled” out of a previous level.

Ie. An affiliate cannot be placed on level 2 of a Phase 1 matrix until they have recruited at least two affiliates under them (passing up the commissions to their upline’s upline).

This is true of every level of both Phase matrices, otherwise the commissions don’t add up ($600 into a Phase 1 Matrix can’t pay thousands of dollars out).

Whether positions on subsequent levels are allocated on a first-come first-served basis or follow recruitment genealogy (meaning affiliates can have their matrices stall if those they recruit can’t find new participants), is not clarified in the Help1 Direct Money compensation plan.

Joining Help1 Direct Money

Affiliate membership with Help1 Direct Money is $39 once-off and then $100 for a matrix position.

As such, the defacto minimum cost for Help1 Direct Money affiliate membership is $139.

Conclusion

As per the Help1 Direct Money compensation plan material;

What we are NOT:

-we are NOT a MLM

-we are NOT a Company

-we are NOT a Business

-we are NOT an Investment Group

-we are NOT a Gifting Program

-we are NOT a Ponzi Scheme

-we are NOT a Pyramid

Evidently the owner(s) of Help1 Direct Money want to assert that they aren’t alot of things.

Why?

Because the reality is they are indeed all of the things mentioned above.

At its core, Help1 Direct Money is a simple gifting scheme that operates as a Ponzi/pyramid hybrid business.

Affiliates buy in for $100, gifted to the affiliate who recruited them, and then proceed to receive $100 gifts from affiliates they recruit, affiliates they recruit and so on and so forth.

As affiliates push their way through both matrix phases, all they are doing is receiving gifting payments from cumulatively more and more people.

With fixed requirements of positions to be purchased, this instills the Ponzi element of the scheme. Invest $100, and once enough new investments have been made you get paid a ROI.

The pyramid scheme aspect is found in the passed-up payments. You recruit someone, they recruit people and you get passed up their gifting payments.

Both $100 investments and the recruitment of new affiliates are critical to the operation of the Help1 Direct Money MLM business opportunity.

Aside from the initial $39 participation fee charged to all Help1 Direct Money affiliates, the company itself takes no further payments from affiliates.

Help1 Direct Money are quite candid about explaining this, explaining on their website that

our members earn 100% of commissions. All payments are made directly member to member.

Member to Member payments is of course just another way of saying cash gifting.

As with all cash gifting scheme, when those at the bottom fail to recruit new participants into the scheme, $100 payments stop getting passed up the chain.

When that happens across enough individual matrices (each $100 position purchased starts a new matrix), the scheme will collapse.

At that point anyone who hasn’t recruited at least three new participants into the scheme ($200 passed to the upline and $100 kept), loses their $139 investment.

Mathematically speaking, a crap ton of $100 gifting payments are required to generate individual $100,000 payments (10,000 per payment) at the Phase 2 level… so even if you do manage to make your $100 gifting fee back by scamming others into the scheme, your chances of riches in Help1 Direct Money are still slim to none.

Worse still when you consider the admin(s) of the scheme and their buddies likely preloaded a bunch of positions before launching the opportunity.

At best that’s tens of thousands of $100 gifting payments required before anyone else even gets near the Phase 2 big money payouts.