I was introduced to the Empower Network by an acquaintance at a rare blogging meetup in my home town. I have said that I’ve sworn off scams – but this one came looking for me – its not just a scam, its a pyramid scheme – so illegal in most decent countries (including New Zealand). I’ve written my review on the blog they so kindly set-up for me for my $25/month. I’m curious to see if it will rank for the appropriate terms before I get terminated! Anyways here’s my review on the Empower Network Scam Looks like they noticed it!
Lets take them one at a time :
- Wow a blogging system how cool is that? Very not cool – its just a WordPress install on their domain – you aren’t developing your own blog – you are providing content – for them. That’s why the original review got removed – because they could. Interesting aside – when I put the original review on my very own blog on their system – I thought it would outrank this review in the search results, it never did. In other words their own domain called “EmpowerNetwork.com” couldn’t rank for a term like “empower network scam”. For once Google and I agree – the domain has no authority at all 🙂
- High converting lead capture page. That sounds cool doesn’t it! Its the ugly form that shows up when you arrive on their site. I have one to – its called the email form on my sidebar or sometimes pops up (I change it around). I do it using a service known as Aweber – it costs about $20/month for the entire email management system – not just for the form!
- 8-Part Video training. Yeah right – nice if you want to see the lifestyles of the “rich and famous” – rich on other suckers money of course. These are very brief teaser videos each is only about 10 minutes long. The real content of course is in the upsell- oh you’re surprised there is an upsell? Also the only detailed information they give you is how to set up a merchant account – so you can get paid you know? I’ve been paid for years online and I’ve never had a merchant account: paypal, checks, bank accounts, they all work just fine. Unless you are running something somewhat illegal…
- Yeah website hosting etc. Like I said above – all you have is a blog on their site. If you want someone to host your blog for free then use wordpress.com – its free, or blogspot.com or blogs.com or tumblr.com – yes there are heaps of them. If you actually want your OWN blog – buy a domain name ($10/year) and some hosting ($7/month). I don’t know what “sales phycology” is – maybe they should spend all that money on a proof-reader? Anyways they sales are slick – look at what they are doing, not what they are offering.
- The right to resell to others – yeah that makes not just a scam but a pyramid scheme
So they are selling what exactly? Precisely – they are in fact not just offering an over-priced scam. They are offering a pyramid scheme. A pyramid scheme is when what you buy has no value at all. You buy in because you want others to buy in on your “down line” and you get their payments.
It works for those at the top. The other 95% of members generally lose money.
That’s why pyramid schemes are illegal in most countries including the US, Canada, UK, Australia and most others.
Oh and the $25/month that’s the start of it – you’ll need to pay considerably more to get to the “inner circle” where they might actually teach something about making money online.
Really its the old, old story – if it sounds too good to be true, it is.