tecademics-logoTecademics operate in the online marketing MLM niche. On the Tecademics website only a UPS Store address in the US state of Arizona is provided.

Heading up Tecademics is Founder and CEO, Chris Record.

chris-record-ceo-founder-tecademicsPrior to launching Tecademics, Record (right) was an affiliate with Empower Network. Record is also quite active in non-MLM affiliate marketing.

In a video promoting Dark Post Profits, a non-MLM marketing opportunity, Record claims to have first gotten involved in MLM back in 1998.

Record describes his initial attempt at MLM as a his “first big failure”.

Read on for a full review of the Tecademics MLM opportunity.

The Tecademics Product Line

Tecademics sell three internet marketing related products:

  • TEC (The Entrepreneurs Club, costs $100 a month) – “a 100% online learning experience designed for beginners who want to learn more about internet marketing”, costs $100 a month
  • Impact ($2000) – a “home-study course you can think of as the “Encyclopedia of Internet Marketing””
  • Masters ($10,000) – “one-time tuition fee for our TecAdemics, College of Internet Marketing, includes 120 credit hours and allows for 2 people to attend”

The Tecademics Compensation Plan

The Tecademics compensation plan pays affiliates on the sale of Tecademics products to retail customers and recruited affiliates.

Each Tecademics product is treated as a separate tier within the compensation plan, which an affiliate must qualify for commissions on.

When a new Tecademics affiliate joins the company, they must make an activation sale on each tier. This can be a sale to a retail customer or their own purchase of the product.

The activation sale pays 40% of the product cost to the affiliate who recruited them ($40 a month for a TEC membership, $800 for Impact and $4000 for Masters).

Once activated, commissions from the next two sales of a product on a qualified tier are split 20%/20% between the upline.

This equates to:

  • $20 a month for TEC membership
  • $400 for Impact and
  • $2000 for Masters

After three sales on any tier, the affiliate makes the full 40% on the next four sales.

On the fifth sale and every fifth sale thereafter, the 40% commission is again split in half between the affiliate and their upline.

In turn, downline recruited affiliates must also split their commissions (as per the above rules).

To recap:

  • first sale on any tier is an activation sale (40% commission paid to upline)
  • second and third sales split 40% half and half between affiliate and upline
  • next four sales pay out 40% commission to the affiliate
  • the fifth and every fifth sale thereafter is split 40% half and half between affiliate and upline

The first fifth sale is technically the eighth sale in a tier. The next fifth sale would be the thirteenth sale and so on and so forth.

Matching Bonus

When a Tecademics affiliate reaches $100,000 in earnings, they are paid an additional $100,000 for a 100% match.

When a Tecademics affiliate reaches $1,000,000 in earnings, they again receive an additional $1,000,000.

Note that the Matching Bonus must be qualified for within 36 months of signup as a Tecademics affiliate.

Joining Tecademics

Tecademics affiliate membership is free.

If an affiliate chooses to self-qualify for commissions, the cost of purchasing Tecademics products is $100 a month either $2000, $10,000 or $12,000.

Tecademics marketing material also mentions an “Elite Fam Insider” package for $12,000, which includes one year of TEC Club membership.

Conclusion

The gist of Tecademics appears to be Chris Record selling what he’s learnt over the course of his internet marketing career.

Tecademics’ products are bundled very much as a college equivalent course.

MASTERS is a $10,000, one-time tuition fee for our TecAdemics, College of Internet Marketing.

The college education is a two-year program, with the second year giving you the right to repeat or audit the classes you attended in your first year.

Tecademic’s signature product brings students into a physical classroom to learn, share, and explore the concepts and strategies for maximizing Internet marketing success.

These classes are LIVE, structured, and taught by expert practitioners with real experience in the field.

Students take pre- and post-tests to measure learning.

The MASTER’S curriculum is developed by Ph.D. and Masters prepared educators with deep knowledge in the science of learning known as Instructional Systems Design (ISD).

The Tecademics website domain registration even goes so far as to list “Tecademics College” as the owner.

As per his Dark Post Profits marketing video, Record doesn’t have a college degree himself or any formal marketing qualifications.

Nor are there any specifics as to the qualifications of the “educators” featured in Tecademics’ products.

Tecademics’ compensation plan encourages affiliates to self-qualify for commissions for buying into the three offered product tiers.

Affiliates can either shell out $1200, $2000 and $10,000 separately or drop $12,000 on the Elite package to qualify for all tiers.

The danger from there is that affiliates will focus on recruiting other affiliates who do the same, resulting in chain-recruitment.

You sign up as a Tecademics affiliate, buy in for $12,000 plus $100 a month and get paid to recruit others who do the same.

At the expense of retail, this would constitute a pyramid scheme.

Retail is of course possible in Tecademics, but personally I’m not seeing anyone drop $12,000 without the attached income opportunity.

The good news is this is relatively easy to verify with your prospect upline.

First and foremost take a step back and look at how they introduced Tecademics to you. Did they lead with the business opportunity or the products themselves?

For what it’s worth, most of the Tecademics marketing material I came across just hyped the income opportunity.

Second, ask them how many $2000 and $10,000 retail (non-affiliate) sales they’ve made, and weigh this against recruited affiliate sales.

What you want to see is a healthy mix of both, ideally weighed towards retail.

A lack of retail sales would be indicative of a pyramid scheme.

More importantly, it would suggest a lack of retail viability for Tecademics products and see you having to also recruit in order to get paid should you sign up.

If Tecademics’ products don’t stand up on their own without the attached income opportunity, the second recruitment dies down the scheme will collapse.

 

Update 16th April 2018 – Following continued decline throughout 2017, in early 2018 Tecademics was sold off to IQup.

The MLM component of the business has been discontinued.

 

Update 30th September 2023 – Tecademics co-founder Jim Piccolo has been sentenced to 18 months in prison for tax fraud.