This IS WORTH debating about. Pyramid Time Folks.

Yes Empower network seems to be the talk of the town, all the big marketers are launching their products based on empower network.

Recently i saw 5 Minute Mogul and two days ago shakir husseyin launched something as well.

So it's a starting point of pyramid, as you know pyramid schemes work in start and as it grows, the problems start to arise.

So if you want you can get in empower network and make some cash but don't base your business around it.

Thanks

Tumbi

That one is kind of obvious considering all they do is talk BS (money talk) on the Home page of the site. They're selling hype.

It is not a pyramid scheme,some pople think it is but I know it is not. Because how can something be a pyramidscheme when the products can help people be successful in any business,and the basic product is of course a blogging platform,

Otherwise i certainly agree that pyramid schemes are illegal.

Well that's exactly the problem. If people are only buying the product because of the opportunity, then there is the problem. The product is just cover for a money shuffling game. And the last reps are mathematically doomed to fail.

It's not the same as potato chips example, because with chips, people do buy chips for reasons other than to resell them. They buy them to eat them!

Now the first issue with empower, is anybody buying the blog for it's own sake? Or are they only buying it to become reps to resell to others? If less 50% of people buying the product are retail customers, that is people not in the bizop, I'd say they have a major problem.

The issue

Great post. Good enough to mislead and distract atleast a bunch of readers of this thread..


But below is a good example of a "REAL" business.

That is flat out WRONG, and hopefully you KNOW that!

WRONG! Not everyone will make chips. They won't sell to everyone. Even the STORES are LIMITED. Startup costs and all. And WHAT are they selling? The business? ****NOPE**** They are selling CHIPS! You want chips? YOU must source and prepare, or BUY! and if you source and prepare, it can get to be very expensive unless you go to a STORE to buy goods.

WRONG! The head guys put out a RISK! The guys at the bottom get paid the same even in hard times.

Well, where I work, I COULD easily make 4 times as much for the same job. I DON'T! WHY? Because THIS way I get paid even during hard times!

EXACTLY!!

That's fine, as long as they aren't limited or promised a huge income, etc....

Steve

As Mark Twain is credited with saying, the difference between a word and the right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.

Or, in this case, between a pyramid and a pyramid scheme.

Yes, every big business' table of organization is narrower at the top than at the bottom. And some might say that CEOs making 7, 8 or even 9-figure bonuses while a company loses money is a legalized form of theft.

But to categorize all businesses with triangular-shaped organizational structures with illegal pyramid swindles is silly...

Pyramids are illegal. I personally hate them. There are so many of them, so people fall for them and having a big losses.
They are such a big issue, so people are scared to join not only genuine MLM businesses, but IM businesses as well.
And for some reasons those scams are more attractive that normal businesses. They offer better income, easier way of getting it and people fall for it easily.
Empower Network looks suspicious to me this may be for a reason, or may be just because me too suspect every thing that I can not check.
However if business can not be checked I am getting even more suspicious that it is a scam.
Real business, what ever it is never easy. You have to work and make sales, no matter if that is offline business, IM or MLM in order to be paid. Business should be registered and pay taxes, same as you as a seller. And if fact every genuine MLM company would request your Tax ID (or what ever it is called in that country) in order to register as affiliate. If they don't, then there is something wrong there, because that is a legal requirement and can not be ignored.

You mean like an up-sell?

Fake businesses...

As I understand it, a pyramid works as follows:

Lets say the pyramid charges a joining fee of $20. You pay your $20 to the scheme. You are on level 1. You then recruit others to join. When you persaude someone to join (level 2), you get $10 of their $20 joining fee.

When they get someone to join (level 3) the person you introduced gets $10 and you get $5.

When level 3 gets someone to join (level 4), level 3 gets $10, level 2 gets $5, and level 1 (you) gets $2.50

So basically, the money is halved as it goes up the pyramid.

The sales pitch usually runs along the lines that if you introduce 2 people who each introduce 2 people who each introduce 2 people ... and so on, by the 20th level or so you will be a millionaire.

But they forget to tell you that you will also have recruited 3 x the population of the planet

I think there are lots of variations on the theme but that's the general idea.

MLM (multi-level marketing) is a similar idea, but instead of paying a fee to join the scheme, you buy a product.

Some of the dodgier MLM schemes are run like cults from what I've read - i.e. they gear it towards newbies being able to make money quickly to hook them in, but then they make them feel like failures when it dries up and persaude their members to pay for expensive training courses etc.

btw I'm no expert on this field so please feel free to correct me

Can't help but think of something similar to your picture here...



Do you see the above statement as a positive or a negative comment?

This actually shows a person's perspective on life by what they think the above run-on actually says.

I was recently introduced to an opportunity to sell coffee! It sounded great, and the coffee was supposedly better than Starbucks and for less than half the price. But something didn't quite sound right with me, even though it had not just a product but a product that people would have to return in order to buy again and again, since it was a consumable.

So I started to bargain-hunt. Here's what I mean.

The product had a certain wholesale level, and you had to buy in to get the starter kit with the first wholesale product purchase and some training aids. Sounds OK, as you are supposed to only be able to get the product at wholesale through your local distributor people through their system and then sell it at the retail price to the public.

Now I don't know about you, but I like to bargain hunt on eBay and Amazon. And when I went there, lo and behold I found people selling the product at the wholesale price without my having to buy into the whole system and become a distributor and make the big up-front payment. Both on eBay AND on Amazon. And yes, I could just buy it from them...a couple of their distributors had set up Fulfillment By Amazon!

This showed me that while this coffee might be a big seller, somebody was having trouble meeting their monthly minimums in order to stay at a certain level, likely the level that pays additional money or covers the car payment that was shown in the video shown at the first meeting I went to. (In the applicable video it was supposed to be a Mercedes 600 series S Class, by the way...)

So even though this MLM or network marketing thing might actually be legit, it started to look more and more like I would likely have problems selling it myself, because others were already having problems selling the stuff without bending the rules...

Do you want to invest in a network marketing system where some of the product sellers are having an obvious hard time keeping their sales levels up?

I know I didn't! So for me even though the product could have been legit, in my eyes it was a "pass" as far as the opportunity was concerned. And when it comes to the coffee, the product was OK, but it wasn't going to change my life if I started to drink it!

Because if the product is being sold to the public at the wholesale price, then that wholesale price is not a real "wholesale" price and the so-called retail price is inflated.

And that's hazardous to your wealth even if the coffee is not hazardous to your health, LOL.

So what does this have to do with that Empower Network, you ask?

Everything!

Because you see, if they are selling the ability to build a blog for $25 per month, then the product is priced unrealistically high. And when your downline customers realize that they can go to Hostgator or BlueHost or some other web hosting company and possibly buy the ability to create an infinite number of blogs by setting up a webhosting reseller account for that same $25 or possibly even less, they are likely to become dissatisfied customers if they have not also signed on for the opportunity part.

So the fact that you can create a blog sounds more like a smoke screen to distract from the opportunity part just enough to attempt to duck the FTC and other government regulatory bodies by saying "But we offer them a PRODUCT."

And believe me, the FTC does not take kindly to finding a smoke screen when a legitimate product should be in its place...

What a lot of people do not realize is, what happens to everyone involved when a pyramid scheme AKA Ponzi scheme is unwound when the thing fails. If you want to know, you can look up Bernie Madoff and see what happened when they went to recover for the people who lost out.

Believe it or not, some people actually made money with Madoff. And they took their profits and then some of them actually left Madoff before the whole thing came crashing down at the end.

Life for someone who does good up front in a pyramid scheme can end up being worse than those who lose out when they join near the end. Why? Because when the government or other asset recovery agency goes out to attempt to make things right, they come after those who have profited from the Ponzi. In other words, those who made money and withdrew the profits (and likely spent them) and brought others into it who later lost out. That means that even if you don't lose money from the Ponzi itself you could find yourself losing money at the end due to the clawback powers granted the recovery agent or trustee!

Another thing that is unique when some alphabet-soup-lettered US government agency goes after people is, they usually will seize company records to get a list of ALL CUSTOMERS and send out a letter to each and every one of them informing them that the thing was determined to be a scam and to encourage them to file complaints and seek to get their money back, EVEN IF THE PRODUCT IS LEGIT AND THE CUSTOMERS ARE SATISFIED. And let's face it, under those kinds of circumstances people will likely file to get their money back even if they used the product and it benefited them, all just because some government agency said they are ENTITLED to their money back.

So even if the product seems to be legit, there are dangers in getting involved in something that can later be determined to be a pyramid scheme, if for no other reason than the potential for clawback to return money to those who may have lost out later.

Not exactly the safest way to grow your wealth!

Just my two dollars (inflation, you know?).

(Plus, you guys know IANAL and all, right? Don't even play an attorney on TV!)



EDIT Almost forgot!

OPPORTUNITY IS NOW HERE sounds a lot better than OPPORTUNITY IS NOWHERE, but the letters above can be used to spell either one...some things are all about your point of view in life!

pyramid schemes was outlawed in th 80s, as long as you have a product and a company your fine

And/or the "pro-MLM" make sure their sig (and opportunity) is present and displayed? :rolleyes: