[CASE STUDY] - Empower Network

[Dezzamondo]

Hey guys, I've been busy ferreting away on my own ventures and thought I'd stop for a moment to bring you a case study that some of you may find useful for one purpose or another. If nothing else, then at least it will highlight another area that average Joe is being suckered into. Who knows, it might even start a trend

CASE STUDY
Who? – Empower Network

How did you find it? – Twice. Once through “Casual Gamer Millionaire†on Udemy and now through an unsolicited email in my inbox.

What is it’s primary purpose? – Sells “Blogging Systems†to content owners. Wordpress with a $25/month price tag.

Any secondary features? – Upsell you to higher ticket “insider†packages. Generates you money through referring people to sign up to the same service.

Rating – 4 / 10

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Study Findings

After watching “Casual Gamer Millionaire†to see what his “business model†consisted of, it wasn’t at all surprising to find the whole system simply as a front for an MLM system. The video owner makes money from his blog by uploading videos of him playing games. At the same time he tells his audience how he’s making loadsa-money just by playing games, just from people clicking on his site.

WOW! EASY MONEY! SAY IT AIN'T SO!

It ain't so.

Lo and behold, when average Joe rocks up to do the same as his new idol, $25 / month ends up leaving his bank account. The referring content owner gets a combination of almost every-other payment made, along with sub-affiliate sales from his new protégé.

As for Empower Network, they encourage their content providers to use their “business systems†and advance through their additional "masters courses" to learn how to increase their monthly revenue. Of course, each one MUCH more expensive from the last. With 5 upgrades in total (at least visible on their site) and income being brought in from the suckers at the bottom, the big money players will poach the smaller guys into taking on the higher courses… lining their pockets with the proceeds and fuelling their own success stories.

If EN’s figure of 155K users is correct, then they are pulling in at least $3.8MM a month.

What users get in return is a straight forward wordpress site, optimised with a very efficient and aggressive sales funnel, along with a finely tuned affiliate structure to get people to come in and do the same.

To summarise the business model: Lure in money chasers >> They buy into the “easy money†>> Upsell to higher tickets >> Chasers convinced they are in business & buy into the system even more.

It is a self-perpetuating system using the MLM model, offering wordpress blogs and “business support†as it’s product.

Conclusion(s)
Personally, MLM makes me angry. But rather than debate on the morality of the system, it clearly makes a lot of money, notably by posing as a business in a box. What we can learn from this is the benefit of having a dedicated affiliate presence and payout structure. It’s one of the best I’ve seen with very well thought out counters to most arguments. However, as with all MLMs, you will always need more bodies at the bottom to fuel the monster and keep your income streams alive.

I don't know about you, but I'd want a bit more than just a damned wrodpress site for $25 a month.

Possibly something to emulate.

Definitely something to avoid.

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There you have it, my first shotgun business case-study of somthing that keeps popping up.

Hopefully it was of some use to someone. Whether that is to prevent or encourage you to join the network, at least now you can see the mechanics of it all before making a decision!

Cheers,
Dez

 

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[exige]

Yeah, the guys who set it up were pretty crafty. Banking/processing in Cyprus. Living in Costa Rica. Hiding from the F T C. The $25 just gets you in the door to their funnel of fleecing. Incidentally, there's an ad I see a lot when I hit this site not logged in, for something called Big Idea Mastermind. I watched the guy's video pitch. I think his videos are very well done, but BIM is basically also a front for EN, when you buy BIM you are buying into his Empower Network "downline". It seems like there's a couple of these "fronts" or whatever that have popped up. There's another one of these online marketing MLM's that John Chow has started pushing on his blog, just made me kinda shake my head like "really, you really have to stoop to pushing this high ticket MLM stuff?".

The thing that kind of puts it into perspective is... Instead of spending the $3k or $5k or so on the high ticket "courses" and "buy ins" etc. you look at some of the guys on here that have started successful e-commerce ventures etc. and...if you've got the $3-5k to drop on the junk, then you've got enough seed money to kickstart something real instead, importing or making your own supplements or buying an existing website, etc. There are guys I see on some other forums that just keep buying those courses over and over again...and I always think to myself if only they saved their money they could just go buy some big established website. Or save the money, start your own thing, and use it for marketing and driving traffic.

 

[Daniel A]

Wow, I really did just see an ad from the top earner of that company just before you posted this too! It was a banner ad from Google and it was here on the forum.

EN is coming out with something new but I have not looked into it.

I tried it out for less than a month I believe and IMO, I would not recommend it. I'd rather have my own website/blog (which I will have soon) and promote training that does not cost so much (and probably has little value). I know that there are 'top earners' in that company that realize they made a lot of money from EN, but the product isn't that great. They are still pushing it (or not, they could have moved on) to keep the money flowing in.

I had almost 1,000 opt-ins to the funnel and only had one sale by the way haha. I got in at the $500 level and have not even finished the 'training'. What I saw can be found on the internet for free. I realize how a lot of those businesses put people who are looking for a better life into a worse situation (aside from the personal development).

I market some MLMs but they are product/service focused. They offer products/services you would use regardless of the income opportunity (one of them being mobile service from a top network at a lower price and a better plan than if you were to go direct to the network). That company will take A LOT of volume to create significant income but it will be VERY stable because the attrition rate is most likely very low.

The person who bought into EN from me got in at the $500 level too so I got my money back but I didn't feel good about it. He was from Europe and I had already stopped actively advertising it. My auto-responder and the funnel got him in.

Recently too the real top earner for EN had issues with EN. The lack of control MJ talked about in his book.

The guy that is now the top earner (the one I saw on the ad here) was placed under the former top earner. EN changed their policy to where you can switch 'sponsors' after 6 months and guess what happened.

(This is info from the former top earner by the way. Who is with no doubt a multimillionaire.)

The day the policy was actually put in place and in the exact time(to the day) frame the policy stated you needed to wait before you can move under someone else. The now top earner disbanded from being under the former top earner. Since the compensation plan has a pass up structure which basically pays the sponsor ~20% in pass ups from the person under him. He lost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So basically the former top earner brought in someone who was just under him in earnings, then the guy who is in 2nd place moves from being under him. The whole idea is to get people under you so you get some money from their work and if people can leave like that (for reasons I am not sure of) you really even have less control.

The same guy who was the former top earner of EN lost another stream of income very recently. The other company eliminated him because he was promoting other companies (A LOT of other companies lol. He is the top earner for many companies, so the money isn't an issue, but I'd still be pissed if I were him, and he was about EN though).

Lack Of Control!

I want my own fastlane business haha. It's a process though and it will take some time.

I am going the route a lot of you all here are doing. Specializing in internet marketing so you can get some good income and even better, develop valuable skills, create great connections, and have a huge following. I will try out some college at the same time too while studying A LOT on my own. I still have so many books to be read. So many forums to be a member of and so many blog posts to read

I just went on and typed a lot haha, BUT, when I first read MJ's book I never personally witnessed the lack of control that that guy experienced so I didn't pay too much attention to it. But if that can happen to the number one top earner of the company, that's too little control. MJ was right.