When Zeek Rewards launched in early 2011, the company did so guaranteeing a 125% ROI on any VIP bids purchased by members.

Effectively you invested $x into the company and the company then guaranteed you a return of $x times 1.25.

In Mid 2011 Zeek Rewards removed this guarantee and shifted the compensation structure to a return paid out over a rolling 90 day period.

Although Zeek Rewards got rid of the 125% ROI guarantee, it is still generally accepted that in order for the profit-sharing side of the business to work, there still remains an unspoken ROI guarantee in effect.

This guarantee exists on the sole reasoning that nobody would invest in VIP bids to convert into bids if they weren’t earning more than a 100% return on their initial investment in bids after 90 days (and 90 days rolling after the initial 90 days has passed).

Despite being heavily advertised as a passive investment scheme for a year (buy bids, buy customers from Zeek Rewards, give bids away to the company rather than customers, publish daily ads and earn a ROI over 90 days), in January 2012 Zeek Rewards announced it would be rolling out a compliance course.

Additionally the company announced bans on its members using investment terminology to market and describe the Zeek Rewards business opportunity.

This was done because starting April, the company would no longer be selling customers to members, thus believing this meant Zeek Rewards was no longer a passive investment opportunity.

This despite the fact that the fundamental concept of the purchase of bids and the Zeek Rewards still paying out a 90 day ROI on bids converted to points remaining intact.

Despite announcing their compliance course in January, to date nothing has been released.

Zeek Rewards are seemingly satisfied that ordering their members to stop using investment terminology, without actually changing the business model is compliance enough.

And publicly their members have for the most part complied. But what about behind the scenes?

When we dive into the nuts and bolts of how Zeek Rewards is being marketed and described by its members, has anything really changed? [Continue reading…]

At the time of publication of this article, Zeek Rewards claim on their website that in order to get paid, upon joining Zeek Rewards here’s what you need to do:

Here’s How to Get Started:

-Choose your affiliate level

-Enroll a few friends as free customers

-Enroll a few friends as free affiliates

-Sell a few e-commerce suites

-Join the Customer Co-op

-Drive Traffic to Zeekler.com and Earn 20% and one point on every dollar your Zeekler.com customers spend on bids

Or

-Purchase some sample bids to give away to free customers

-Drive traffic by placing ONE FREE AD every day

There’s a strong implication here that upon completion of the above tasks, Zeek Rewards will then qualify you to participate in their daily profit share which in turn pays out a 90 day ROI on any retail bid purchases your customers make, or any VIP (sample) bids you purchase yourself and then give away to customers.

Along with this, much emphasis is made by Zeek Rewards that the daily requirement to place an ad and the acquisition of customers is primarily what their members are getting paid for. That is, with Zeek Rewards being ‘zeekler.com’s paid advertising division‘, that ‘driving traffic’ to Zeekler is what is important and the true value of Zeek Rewards’ members to the company.

Indeed, much has been made of this with Zeek Rewards members consistently referring to this advertising (via the giving away of sample bids and advertising) as being key to the success of both Zeekler and their Zeek Rewards commissions.

But how much value does this really provide to Zeek Rewards and perhaps more importantly, how would you measure this for the sake of comparison and establishing the true worth of Zeek Rewards members?

A good place to start would be the Zeek Rewards compensation plan. [Continue reading…]

There is no information on the Spritual Income website indicating who runs or owns the company.

The domain ‘spiritual-income.com’ however was registered on the 13th July 2009 and lists a Shreyas Nandan as the owner of the domain, operating out of Bangalore in India.

Nandan (photo right) appears to own a network of sites of which Spiritual Income appears to be a part of:

• ‘Securebank.in’ – Investment and insurance
• ‘Divinepower.in’ – MLM business opportunity
• ‘Utilitypay.in’ – mobile recharge site
• ‘Care2Soul.com’ – forum site
• ‘Face143.com’ – social network

Out of this network only Divine Power and Spiritual Income appear to be MLM companies, with both using identical compensation plans. [Continue reading…]

Launched in 2008, Healthy Coffee USA operates out of California in the US. As the name suggests, Healthy Coffee USA market what they call ‘healthy coffee’ that comes in a variety of blends which ‘are blended in Malaysia with quality ingredients from different parts of the world‘.

Currently in their fourth year of operation, Healthy Coffee USA (also known as Healthy Coffee International) state that their primary goal is ‘to attain 5 Million Independent Distributors within 10 years‘.

Whilst I’m always weary of membership-orientated goals (a far better goal to be would be to achieve a dollar sales figure), if the company itself has a solid compensation plan and product that people actually want to buy, five million members globally isn’t entirely impossible.

So how does Healthy Coffee USA stack up? Read on for a full review. [Continue reading…]

There is no information on the ProShare website indicating who runs or owns the business.

The domain ‘proshare.info’ however was registered on the 14th September 2011 with the registration information listing ‘Richard Harrold’ as the owner.

Harrold (photo right) appears to operate out of New York in the US and has recently run into some financial difficulties:

There are currently six (6) of us living in our home. Myself & My Fiancé and our 4 children.

The problem we are having is that our house is in FORECLOSURE. I have held the bank off for over 2 years but we are running out of time.

I have to admit that this is totally my fault.

I was a Pharmaceutical Representative for almost 9 years and was earning around $100,000 per year and made one of the dumbest mistakes in my life… I DRANK ALCOHOL and DROVE.

I lost a great job and cannot get it back. I, also, lost my driver’s license. I just got my license back 4/5/2011. It took 3 + years.

I had to cash out my entire 401k to help my family survive. But that has been fully depleted for over a year. And now I owe the IRS over $9,000.

The bills have been piling up for a while now and as stated the house is in foreclosure and at risk of being auctioned and ripped away from my family.

I am currently in debt well over $200,000. To pay off my mortgage completely I need $113,000+. I am currently over $45,000 behind on my mortgage payments and they will not accept any payments unless I pay off the entire past due amount or more.

Additionally, Harrold also appears to be involved in cash gifting scams:

This is bar none the best Gifting Program that I have personally encountered.

You receive Gifts after just getting One Person below you (whether it is from you or your upline)!

One would assume Harrold’s serious financial position is behind the launch of ProShare. [Continue reading…]

Roughly three weeks ago now Zeek Rewards members in Serbia, Slovenia, Belarus, Egypt, Croatia and Macedonia woke up to find their Zeek Rewards account deactivated.

No explanation was given for almost a week, whereupon Zeek Rewards support staff started to mention “sanctions” were in effect for members in the six named countries above:

We do not have total knowledge of what happened. What I do know is that it is something with your countries government policies (not the Serbian people itself), that has required us to not list your country anymore.

Obviously a woefully inadequate response when members’ accounts had been terminated, the mention of “government policies” as the reason for the bans raised some concerns.

Of particular interest was the inclusion of Slovenia, who are a member of the European Union. Business wise, the EU operates as a central body for all member states so with the banning of Slovenia, one would assume that if it was indeed for political reasons, that all European Union member states would be banned.

This however was clearly not the case. [Continue reading…]

Initially launching on the premise of giving free stuff offers away and charging a monthly membership fee, That Free Thing quickly learnt that once you ran out of new members to recruit, people start to leave in droves.

As such, four months after launching That Free Thing lost 25% of their members… which I suppose in hindsight wasn’t really all that surprising when you consider that the company launched worldwide, despite failing to provide any free offers in the majority of countries it was operating in.

With members in these countries only paying the monthly membership fee for the privilege of recruiting others and earning commissions… sooner or later that was going to fall apart – and it did.

Seeking alternative revenue sources, That Free Thing then launched a vendor network in October 2011. The vendor network doesn’t appear to have turned into the cash cow That Free Thing hoped it would, with the company recently announcing it is branching out into blogs and getting their members to write for them.

Unfortunately whereas the vendor network was a departure from the membership driven commissions That Free Thing initially offered, the Blog Network appears to be a return to the recruitment based commission structure roots the company launched with.

Read on for a full review of the Blogging Network MLM opportunity. [Continue reading…]

There is no information on the Daily Profit Always website indicating who owns or runs the company.

The domain ‘dailyprofitalways.com’ was registered on the 30th March 2012 however the domain registration information is set to private.

As always, if an 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. [Continue reading…]

There is no information on the World Rewards Network website about who owns or runs the company.

The domain ‘worldrewardsnetwork.com’ was registered on the 3rd October 2011 however the domain registration information is set to private.

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. [Continue reading…]

International Silver Network (otherwise known as ISN Coins) are the network marketing division of ‘ISN Modern Coins’.

ISN Modern Coins claim to be ‘one of the largest modern coin dealers in the United States headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana‘.

ISN Coins launched in mid 2010 and is headed up by founder and CEO Matt Barkes (photo right).

Prior to 2010 there isn’t all that much of a history on Barkes but he seems to have been involved with the now defunct website ‘silver-lining-group.com’ and was publishing ads on the internet advertising Silver Lining Group as a business opportunity:

In 2008 Barkes listed himself was the company President of ‘Silverline Market Corporation’, which also now appears to be defunct. [Continue reading…]