MePals Review: $24.95 spam network
There is no information on the MePals network indicating who owns or runs the business.
The MePals website domain (“mypals.com”) was registered on the 18th of April 2011, with a “Daniel Laverdiere” listed as the domain owner. An address in Quebec, Canada is also provided.
I’m not sure if it’s the same person, but most of the information connecting Laverdiere to the MLM industry is quite old (1990s to early 2000). Claims of him being involved in the MLM industry since around 1998 are made, however I wasn’t able to find anything concrete.
The following appears to be from the Daniel Laverdiere in question. It was published in 1999 to promote The Global Bio Venture, a $5 cash gifting scheme:
Hi ! My name is Daniel Laverdiere. I am 40 years old, father of two.
I have been self-employed for the last 22 years, as a system analyst and as a computer programmer for the last 12 years, 10 years on the net, 3 years as a webmaster.
After all these years doing business with and for people, I can say that I have seen most marketing and money making concepts that will ever reach your E-mailbox.
Personally, I have been involved in many different MLM and direct marketing plans. I keep tight statistics on every plan with which I choose to work.
I use sophisticated software I have created to keep track of numbers.
I have understood that the best money making plans on the net that work are the ones that cost under US$100 (for a one time fee), that do not require much work, and if possible have other people work for you (like the real big guys).
After working a lot with those plans, I found out that the fastest and most rewarding are those that actually cost under US$20.
They have a faster response time, and since they cost less, people are ready to dig in faster than with highly sophisticated MLMs or marketing plans costing more and requiring lots of promoting….
Now, with the background of having worked on all those plans, I want to tell to you about the very best of them all.
Its name is: “The Global Bio Venture.” (Launched June 1st 1997)
When you buy the program, you become an authorized dealer. You promote it a bit , just as I do now, and you send some copies of YOUR copy of the software that, as an owner, will carry your name in it, and then YOU will receive orders and make money forever…
This was followed up by the launch of FortuneMaker in 2000, a $50 cash gifting scheme Laverdiere himself launched:
I have been doing business on the net since 1988. I have seen most of the actual businesses being born… I seen real scams, I got ripped off for real, I have lost lots of money and time promoting those scams, and this is exactly what I DID NOT want FMN to become.
What would be the point of building a hit and run site ??? I have started about 50 businesses online, most of them were free, and were used as traffic building system.
More recently Laverdiere launched ProList (2011) and ProAdz (2014). Laverdiere’s name doesn’t appear anywhere on these sites, but the email address used to register these domains matches that of MePals.
ProList takes affiliate fees and uses it to pay commissions ‘from everyone down 50 levels‘.
ProAdz purportedly offer affiliates free leads provided they recruit new affiliates into the scheme. The company also sells access to their affiliate database, allowing those who pay a fee to market directly to them.
Alexa traffic estimates to both the ProList and ProAdz domains suggest both schemes are dormant. With this likely prompting the launch of MePals.
Why none of this information is provided on the MePals website is a mystery.
Read on for a full review of the MePals MLM business opportunity.
The MePals Product Line
MePals has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market affiliate membership with the opportunity itself.
Once signed up, MePals affiliates are then able to ‘send private messages to all their infinite levels network at once‘.
The “infinite levels network” referred to is a downline, that being affiliates personally recruited, affiliates they recruit and so on.
The MePals Compensation Plan
The MePals compensation plan sees affiliates pay $24.95 and then recruit others who do the same.
Commissions are tracked via a unilevel compensation structure, paid out down twenty-five levels of recruitment.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any of these level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth.
Commissions are paid out when a newly recruited affiliate is placed in a unilevel team, either via direct or indirect recruitment.
The paid membership is a one time fee of $24.95. USD that gets distributed to 25 levels of friends and partners.
How affiliate fees are paid out through the twenty-five unilevel levels is not clarified (~$1 per level or weighted otherwise).
A recruitment commission is also paid for each personally recruited affiliate who pays $24.95:
We give credits for each people you may invite to join who do so.
1 person = 1 credit is equal one dollar and can be exchanges for real cash.
Joining MePals
Basic affiliate membership with MePals is $24.95.
A free affiliate membership option is also available, however this excludes an affiliate from the MLM income opportunity. Free affiliates also have limited access to the MePals member database.
Conclusion
MePals effectively operates as an email harvester for its owner, Daniel Laverdiere.
Affiliates who pony up $24.95 are able to send advertising through the company’s website, but I believe the actual contact details are withheld.
In turn, they elect to receive advertising from affiliates who joined before them.
And if that happens to be a large number of affiliates, one would expect the amount of spam to received to be equally voluminous.
On the MLM side of things, MePals operates as a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme.
Nothing is being marketed or sold to retail customers, with all commissions paid out requiring the recruitment of new affiliates.
Once the recruitment of new affiliates stops, so too do the commissions paid out.
Of note is that MePals appears to be a reboot of the ProList opportunity Laverdiere launched in 2011.
As per the ProList website, when an affiliate pays $19.95 the company pays ‘commissions from everyone down 50 levels‘.
All Laverdiere has done with MePals is up the affiliate fee to $24.95 and capped payable levels to twenty-five.
