Donna Knight's Internet Marketing Tools and Reviews

Category: MLM

  • The Most Expensive Chocolate Bar You Will Ever Buy

    Recently I saw an MLM opportunity that sounded good. It’s called Zooloot. Buy a $2 chocolate bar, refer others and earn commissions. Sounds pretty good. Lots of people love chocolate. It can’t be too much of a hard sell, right? The picture of the chocolate bar certainly looked good. They have 4 flavors, including chocolate, white, strawberry and toffee. Yum, Yum! $2 is not really much of an investment in order to earn commissions, I thought.

    So I signed up. Paid my $2. I clicked the “Ship My Chocolate button”. I wanted that chocolate right now, baby. It’s 2 a.m. and I got the munchies. But then, whoa! How much is the shipping?!

    Shipping for the $2 chocolate bar is $4.75. Ouch! That’s more than twice the price of the bar.

    This is a perfect example of what’s wrong with MLM. Even when the product is fantastic and practically sells itself, you find that the price is unreasonably expensive. Offline you can get one of those charity chocolate bars for $1, and that’s a perfect price. Whenever I see someone selling these, I also find that they have no problem selling out.

    So why would you need to pay $6.75 for the same type of chocolate bar. Because with MLM chocolate bars, you’re paying the commission for the seller and their whole downline. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need chocolate that badly. My cheapskatedness has way more fortitude than my sweet tooth.

    Also strangely, I don’t remember seeing any mention of this shipping cost until after I paid the $2. Hmm…

    Painful lesson learned here: There’s no such thing as a good cheap MLM deal. You’re always paying way more than the products are worth, which outweighs the fact that the product is perfectly legitimate.

    Donna Knight http://www.donnaknight.com/

  • 12dailypro.com Owner Charged with Running an Internet Ponzi Scheme by the SEC

    By Donna Knight

    Last week, 12dailypro.com was shut down for running an internet Ponzi scheme. This was following a ruckus raised by hundreds of people who complained to the BBB after payments from 12dailypro.com were reversed from their StormPay and bank accounts.

    Any time you see a program promising you a “return on your investment”,
    you need to know the SEC is very likely to be keeping an eye on this company. Many MLMs with questionable legality may come and go, but the SEC takes very seriously programs that use the words “investment” and “return”, especially when the money to pay the returns comes from payments for membership.

    What amazes me is how many well-known and very respectable people promoted 12dailypro.com without ever questioning it, and how people were ready to call Stormpay.com a fraud, when it is now clear that StormPay knew something they didn’t.

    Now, don’t get me wrong. I am by no means an innocent casting the first stone. It was only a few years ago that I, myself, was involved in an MLM I believed in with all my heart, so much so that I promoted it like there was no tomorrow, only to see it shut its’ doors and never pay me my commissions, resulting in my losing the respect of the hundreds of people in my downline.

    How short our memory is on the internet. Likewise, I was also a member of 1heluva.com, a surfing program which got shut down by the government. The website owners had to shut down all their websites, including those that did not seem to be doing anything wrong. Again I lost downlines and traffic. Oh, I didn’t care about the money though. All that traffic! Sometimes traffic is more valuable than money.

    No matter how many years you are in the “making money” game, if people claim to be making money — even if you know they’re making money — if a program sells nothing more than the opportunity to make money, it is breaking the law in some state, and most likely many states. If you’re going to risk money, make sure it’s money you can afford to throw away because the FBI and SEC won’t give you your money back just because “you didn’t know any better” or because you “really believed in the program”.

    More importantly ask yourself are you willing to risk your self-respect when the people you promote the program to lose their money, as well. Is your reputation worth a few hundreds or thousands of dollars you might earn in the short term? Think about it.

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    Donna Knight is a Computer Trainer and Website Promotion Specialist. She has built over 250 websites and helps new site owners promote their site cheaply. For tips that will help you save money and save time when marketing online, visit her Internet Marketing Tools and Reviews blog at http://www.DonnaKnight.com . Copyright (C) 2006 Donna Knight.
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