Revenue-sharing, profit-sharing, a daily leadership bonus, daily bonus pool, a VIP points pool, a retail profit pool… whatever you want to call the latest attempt to marry MLM to the Ponzi scheme business model, the good news is that this industry damaging niche appears to be on its last legs.

Today we take a look at the last two major revenue-sharing MLM companies still in operation, AddWallet and JubiRev.

Why these two companies? By and large they are seen as the last two major “we are not a Ponzi scheme” MLM companies still in operation today. The final twin bastions of so-called legitimacy in the Ponzi points business model.

Both companies initially attracted investors on the heavily repeated profession that their revenue-sharing schemes were above-board and not just rehashes of the Ponzi points schemes flooding the MLM industry.

As collapses appear on the horizon and declining daily ROIs plague the MLM revenue-sharing niche, how have AddWallet and JubiRev weathered the storm? [Continue reading…]

Xplocial are based out of New York in the US and appear to have initially launched mid 2012 as some sort of “viral” Facebook marketing campaign opportunity. Affiliates paid $49.95 a month and were paid commissions based on how many affiliates they recruited who also paid monthly membership fees.

Roughly a year later in May 2013 the company relaunched itself with a new compensation plan and product lineup.

Heading up Xplocial is Lawrence B. Marcus (also known as Larry Marcus). On his personal website (“lawrencemarcus.com”), Marcus provides an executive bio which states:

A professional speaker, trainer and consultant for more than 20 years, Larry Marcus has been helping companies build customers, relationships, and their bottom-line.

Larry is one of the world’s leading authorities on “referral based sales and marketing systems and strategies.” People quickly relate to his down-to-earth, charismatic and interactive presentation style.

Larry is a highly requested speaker and has shared the stage with other notable leaders such as President Ronald Reagan, President George Bush Sr., U.S. Senator Orin Hatch, Rev. Robert Schuller, Dr. Denis Waitley, Brian Tracey and many others.

He’s been invited to the White House as a special guest to discuss small business trends in America and has worked closely with a special liaison on small business affairs under two Presidents.

Marcus lists the following companies as “clients” on his website: Amway, Pre-paid Legal, Mannatech, Usana and Melaleuca. Additionally on the Xplocial website, Marcus’ corporate bio states he’s

consulted for more than 55 different network marketing companies and held numerous Corporate and Board of Director Positions.

Larry has been asked to act as an industry expert on Network Marketing by numerous State Attorney Generals.

The only other additional executive position I found Marcus involved in was as the President and CEO of Provantage Legal, which seems to be some sort of affiliate opportunity:

The Provantage Legal website domain (“provantagelegal.com”) provides the same New York based office suite address as Xplocial in its domain registration. A Google search reveals multiple unrelated businesses operating out of this same suite number, indicating that it’s shared virtual office space.

Stephen Marcus also appears on the Provantage Legal website, credited as being the company’s Director of Support Services.

A badly photoshopped version of Marcus’ image also appears on the Xplocial website, where he is also credited as being Xplocial’s Director of Support Services:

It’s worth noting that the third exective listed on the Xplocial website, a Scott Michaels who is credited as Vice-President of Operations is just a stock image from iStockPhoto:

Not sure what’s going on there but between badly photoshopped images and stock photos used to represent a company’s executive management, things certainly smell fishy.

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

Running a near identical business model, Bidify sprung up in the shadow of the $600M Ponzi scheme Zeek Rewards. When Zeek Rewards was shut down by the SEC in mid 2012, Bidify immediately went into crisis management and responded by scrapping the Ponzi points model.

Two compensation plan changes were released in the space of a week, with Bidify hoping to prove to the industry that retail was viable in an MLM penny auction.

By December 2012, following a general loss of confidence in MLM penny auctions after the SEC revealed that 98% of Zeek Rewards’ revenue was sourced from affiliates, Bidify had abandoned their retail bids business model and went back to an affiliate-funded compensation plan.

Six months later and yet again CEO Larus Palmi Magnusson is again going to attempt to relaunch the Bidify business. This time though he’s kicked it up a notch and gone far beyond a simple compensation plan change. A new brand, the abandoning of business operations in the US and a new website (“mycenterbid.eu”).

Five compensation plan revisions later, have the folks over at Bidify learnt anything since Zeek Rewards?

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

Misdirection (n): Misdirection is a form of deception in which the attention of an audience is focused on one thing in order to distract its attention from another.

I’ve been buried under a mountain of work so I’m a bit behind on BehindMLM at the moment (geddit?), but by now most following the MLM industry will have seen the press release regarding the Nielsen survey Herbalife recently commissioned.

Before we get into that though, we first need to put the Nielsen survey into context. Last we checked in on Herbalife they announced back in February that they were going to ‘more clearly identify the wholesale customers among its 3.2 million distributors from April’.

For reasons unknown, that never happened. Or it might have happened, but the results were never made public.

Completely missing the self-imposed April deadline, on May 2nd Herbalife CEO Michael Johnson then announced that Herbalife would be

announcing significant changes to the nomenclature used by the company in the next 30 days.

Anticipated to be the introduction of a “wholesale customer” class into the Herbalife compensation plan, to the best of my knowledge it never happened either.

What did happen? [Continue reading…]

Billion Venture International is the name given to the global operations of the Digital Crown Holdings Limited (DCHL).

DCHL was founded in 2000 and is headquartered in Taiwan. The company primarily operates in the Asian region although recently, under the name Billion Venture International, DCHL has begun a global expansion specifically targeting the US and Canada.

At the time of publication, DCHL claim on the Billion Venture International website that they have ‘an extensive network of 26 branches across 11 countries in the Asia region (and) more than 500,000 business partners‘.

On the executive side of things DHCL is headed up by Chairman Kim Huynh (right). In his executive bio Huynh is credited as having been “educated in France”, with DHCL coming about following Huynh’s bringing the French brand “Lampe Berger” (fragrance lamps) to “the Chinese community”.

Following the success of Huynh’s marketing efforts he established DHCL to sell Lampe Berger’s products through. which are credited with generating ‘half of (Lampe Berger’s) global revenue‘. This resulted in Lampe Berger granting Huynh “exclusive agent rights” for the Asia-Pacific region.

Since then DHCL has expanded out into a broader Asian market and added several other brands to its product lineup.

Read on for a full review of the Billion Venture International MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Remember Wazzub?

For those who came in late Wazzub were pretty much the “Rippln” of 2011 as far as hyped up MLM launches go.

With their own massively hyped launch campaign kicking off in late 2011 and extending into 2012, the basic idea behind Wazzub was to attach a “do-everything” search portal to a “profit-sharing” MLM compensation plan and hope for the best.

Not surprisingly Wazzub (or PerfectInternet… whatever they’re calling themselves now) flopped, with the company failing to generate any significant revenue and thus missing several self-imposed commssion deadlines after launch.

Over the past year or so the company has however continued to string those along who still believe in the failed concept, marketing everything from lotteries, ebooks and online games to them. I even saw some marketing material for some “global talent show” a few months back. I think the idea was for Wazzub affiliates to enter and if they won, win a prize.

Yes, that’s how weird the Wazzub MLM opportunity has become.

Perhaps realising that talent shows, ebooks and lotteries an MLM business opportunity makes not, Wazzub now appear to be gearing up to launch into the mobile app market. [Continue reading…]

There is no information on the Join2World website indicating who owns or runs the business.

The Join2World website domain (“join2world.com”) was registered on the 19th of April 2013, however the domain appears to be registered to the web hosting provider rather than Join2World owner.

The web hosting provider is based out of Slovakia (Europe), possibly indicating where the owner(s) of Join2World might be located.

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…]

Ultimate Profits Network state on their website that the opportunity is “powered by Team Impact LLC”, with Team Impact headed up by Jon  Scherling and Geoff Cash.

A YouTube video on the Ultimate Profits Network website also credits Scherling and Cash (bottom right) as the owners of Ultimate Profits Network.

Location wise a virtual mailbox address in the US state of Pennsylvania is provided on the website, indicating this is where Team Impact LLC and Ultimate Profits are registered.

In late 2009 Scherling launched a gifting scheme called “2010 Blessings”. Participants put $25 into the scheme and were gifted up to $100 by other participants.

Upon receiving $100, participants continued to put more money into the scheme ($50, $100 and $250), receiving back as gifts $200, $400 and $800 from other participants.

Scherling also credits himself in an APSense profile as being a “master affiliate” of Smart Media Technologies from December 2011 to present. Scherling states that Smart Media Technologies ‘is going to be responsible for shutting down quite a few similar programs when it goes into full launch‘.

Geoff Cash appears to have been more active on the affiliate side of things. Cash was involved in  having been involved in several dubious schemes, including Just Been Paid (Ponzi scheme), ProsperElite (matrix-based recruitment scheme) and Holy Grail Residuals (gifting scheme).

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

My Fun Life operate in the MLM travel niche and are based out of Idaho in the US.

The company is headed up by Dan Edwards, who serves as My Fun Life’s Chairman of the Board and CEO.

In his executive bio, My Fun Life claims Edwards is

an accomplished Direct Sales & Marketing professional.

His business experience encompasses over 26 years in strategic planning for direct sales organizations and corporate ownership responsibilities as President/CEO for several companies.

Despite a purported “26 years in strategic marketing for direct sales organisations”, I was unable to find any specific information on Edward’s involvement in the MLM industry prior to My Fun Life.

Read on for a full review of the My Fun Life MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

iMobile Innovations operate in the mobile communications MLM niche and are based out of New York in the US.

The company is headed up by CEO Patrick Fenton, with his iMobile Innovations corporate bio stating:

Hiring a personal business coach and mentor at age 23, Patrick has been a student of personal development, sales and leadership training his entire career.

He spent over a decade as an internationally recognized sales and motivational speaker; performing 96 live events per year in his 9 year speaking career and was sponsored nationally by ABN Amro Bank, Citibank and Flagstar Bank.

In 2008, Patrick founded Cellthisproperty; one of the early pioneers of text message marketing in the United States.

From 2009 to present, Patrick has designed and created world-class mobile media software, designed and created Imobile Innovations seminar/social sharing business model and secured relationships in the financial markets to effectively launch imobile Innovations.

I wasn’t able to find any involvement in an MLM company by Fenton at an executive level, so iMobile Innovations appears to be his first attempt at running an MLM company.

Read on for a full review of the iMobile Innovations MLM business opportunity. [Continue reading…]