Income Store, Legit? NO, A SCAM AS WE PREDICTED.

[PizzaOnTheRoof]

I have been looking for something like this forum to discuss my experience with Income Store. I was probably one of the earlier investors...gave them 100k to purchase an "authority" site and then they were to build another "hybrid" site to enhance the one they bought. I loved their model, but went into this with my eyes wide open...knew that it could be "too good to be true, but I did some diligence and decided to give it a try. All of the signs point to a legitimate business, however, buyer beware!!!

The site that they purchased for me is virtually worthless and they keep giving me the run around on how they are going to get me something that will give me the equity that I have lost!

They are moving away from authority and affiliate sites and into ecommerce...which I also like better...but they are WAY late with this site also. I built an ecommerce business about the same time frame and it has done VERY well, however, I do spend a good bit of time on this business.

I spend 0 time on the income store investment. I have accused them of a ponzi scheme, but they claim that the are doing well....won't share financials, however. They do continue to give me updates...however...the updates are basically that they are making no progress.

This has gone on for about four years now...so this is why I would not recommend this investment. I have almost earned back my original investment...and will milk this as long as I can and as long as they don't implode. They built a new building, they are growing, and I don't agree with those who are trashing their technical know how.

I bought this as a long term investment...and as long as they pay my 15%+ I am good to go. I follow their progress and get their updates and propaganda...they do try to be transparent and I can always get a response to any questions or concerns...their responses are just all the same..."we are working on it, but...we ran into a few snags...blah blah blah. It's definitely a red flag and I would NOT invest knowing what I know now.

But at this point, they have not missed a payment and I keep cashing the checks without spending any time. Would a REIT or something similar been better....maybe. Not too many places you can get a 15%+ return for life. Too good to be true? We shall see....but I like my chances. Lot's of naysayers here...but give me some options that will do what this has done and claims it will do in the future with the same or lower risk!!!

The reason the checks keep coming in is there’s fresh blood still investing in this scam.

Lack of customer support, specific details on investments, no reporting of financials, etc...

And yet somehow they’re making you money?...

Come on man GTFO of there!

 

[contentwriterIS]

Hello ContentwriterIS: Not sure I understand...are you currently providing content and services to them? I am a longer term investor and concerned that this same thing may be happening. I have had a hard time getting them to even return my emails at this point. May last payment was a few days late so I am thinking they may be starting to have cash flow problems. Doesn't look good to me...I'm just trying to milk this as long as possible, but I fear that trouble is in the wind.

UPDATE!!! BIG RED FLAG HERE FOLKS....I just got a note from Ken Courtright...owner...the email note said that they will not be doing customer service calls in December due to the Holidays and STAFFING! I am guessing that they laid off this group because they are getting so much negative feedback and they can no longer afford them?

They did say that they will start again in January, but I have my doubts. I don't even have a contact anymore!!! And I didn't even get a reply from my last email to my customer service rep. Doesn't look good, folks.

Hi, Herbie!

I was providing content until my contract was "paused" due to cash flow issues. Like you, I struggle to get responses to my emails and I am owed a significant amount of money for the services I provided over the past months.

As I understand it, Income Store has begun cancelling subscriptions to crucial services, such as the company's Slack account, and locking employees out of the company-branded email account.

I'll try to keep you updates as I learn more about the situation -- would be eager to hear about your experiences, too.

 

[ExploringOptions]

Hello, MJ DeMarco.

Could you share any more about this pending litigation? Specifically, I'm curious if the litigation might concern unpaid contractor invoices. If that is the case, I'd be happy to delete my posts if it might help protect the contractors.

Thank you!

I read the original post and it didn't address unpaid contractors invoices. It was litigation involving an investment.

 

[F-PonziSchemes]

I am trying to understand if I am witnessing the implosion of a Ponzi scheme

all available information indicates yes

UPDATE!!! BIG RED FLAG HERE FOLKS....I just got a note from Ken Courtright...owner...the email note said that they will not be doing customer service calls in December due to the Holidays and STAFFING! I am guessing that they laid off this group because they are getting so much negative feedback and they can no longer afford them?

I think it's moreso a case of them not wanting to discuss what's going on.

I'd be fascinated to hear the story behind what happened there.

Saw it. The gentleman had a deal in play with no site attached and was fed bullshit. He demanded exit and got his moneys back in two months.

I used to contract for IS which was an... interesting.. experience. I could tell stories for months but probably should refrain!

Would love to know more!

My advice for investors would be IF you have doubts about the long term viability of the company, I would request regular backups of your site and request your domain(s) to be transferred to your own registrar account (get an account using the same registrar they are using for ease of transfer). Yeah you'll have to pay the yearly fees on the domains but if the company implodes you'll be able to get the business going again. Otherwise if they neglect to pay hosting/registrar bills (and who is to say that is an impossibility?) you'll be up shit creek in a way that a bankruptcy court or lawsuit probably won't be able to fix.

This is wise if and only if you actually have these "income store sites" in a deal. The comments here as well as my own experience, and that of others is that there are no sites in these deals.

The reason the checks keep coming in is there’s fresh blood still investing in this scam.

#winner

My wife wrote for the Income Store along with lots of other people. I used to write there full time, then I found another gig and started focusing on my now FAILED eBay business. This company is definitely a scam; they owe thousand to their writers and have stopped paying basic bills. They've even threatened freelance contract writers that they will file bankruptcy if they feel too much public heat. They are trying not to scare off investors. Meanwhile, dozens of freelance writers are having the shittiest holiday season ever. And what's their excuse? Oh, well, our company is growing so fast that we've got "cash flow" issues right now. They're basically saying the reason they can't pay is because they've tripped over all their money and need time to sort it all out.

My wife and I are throwing our energy back into growing our politics blog and t-shirt business for now and put out a few SEO websites within the next few months. It's harder on her because she's the entrepreneur thinking about our future. I'm always grinding at different jobs taking care of the present. This ordeal has taught us that you can't trust any single company or platform with your future, because they all have the ability to F*ck you over at the drop of a dime.

For that bolded portion above do you have records of this? Would love to see and learn more about your situation if you are willing and able! Can you share an email or share publicly?

As I understand it, Income Store has begun cancelling subscriptions to crucial services, such as the company's Slack account, and locking employees out of the company-branded email account.

That's end-stage level stuff there.

 

[ISWhistleblower]

And for core staff like yourself...would you estimate the average annualized salary was more or less than $50,000?

My net pay is something between $35,000 and $45,000. I don’t want to share the exact amount.

 

[MakMac]

SEC site doesn't list any mention of litigation

But a buddy sent this gem.

Which was a link to a video message from Ken Courtright to Site Owners.

With the IncomeStore.com already offline, this web based video will disappear too in a matter of time. And its better to see sweet blah blah nothings in the cold light of black and white text. So for posterity here is a transcription of the video message:


“Hello Site Partners -- many of which include my friends, my family and even my parents."

"As you know from Friday’s letter, Income Store is in a very tight spot. Prior to David Kelly coming aboard, decisions were made that hindsight now shows would be made differently. For these decisions, I am terribly sorry. And I terribly regret having to ask you for 4 months forbearance especially the week before Christmas.”

"As President and CEO at the time, I take full responsibility. As recent as last Monday, we had opportunities in place to avoid that letter going out. As a week long discussion was under way to sell 10 - 40 % of Income Store to a well known company. Clearly those plans fell through."

"This short video is to provide some answers as to what happened. Some insight into the plan forward and reassurance that -- unless forced to -- a restructuring / bankruptcy is not in our future."

"To start, as many of you know, from 2012 to 2016, we battled Google algorithms and were in a constant dance of 2 steps forward and 1 step back. In addition, as many have received one, if we failed on a site we have always replaced it with another. In 2016, we made a hard charge at Facebook-driven assets as they were providing us traffic and revenue the likes of which we had never seen before. As witnessed on our case study videos, some of these assets were earning hundreds of thousands of thousands of dollars per month. Many of you are intimately aware that a year or so ago we had an immediate seven figure monthly loss when the government mandated Facebook to turn off their paywalls due to selling everyone's data through the paywalls. This kick in the teeth by Facebook drove us to seek a platform that had no algorithms, no paywalls and no review system."

The only platform offering no algorithms, no paywalls, and no review systems is that of e-commerce with the leading platform being Shopify. As I shared on our Christmas state of the union last year, our first 22 Shopify stores launched the first week of January. I showed that they went from $21,000 per week to $100,000 per week in the final week of March. This new growth model showed growth opportunities 15 percent better than our Facebook driven assets. We proceeded to build and buy what is now 422 Shopify stores.

David came in and added multiple artificial intelligence driven hubs to cross reference store inventories in the model like Amazon. I greatly underestimated the cost to build, market and manage the digital stores. This past summer I created a fund-raising packet that was passed 4 months on to one David Kelly. David shared that as much as you needed cash you moreover need leadership that understands scale. As all your current models are based on one off builds.

David shared that if I could commit to raising funds, he would come aboard and consolidate, automate and streamline all operations in under a year. The changes David has made so far are immeasurable. In the 4 months David has been aboard, he has successfully consolidated, automated and streamlined a portion of every division in Income Store. David has lived up to his end of the arrangement. I have not lived up to mine.

Outside of receiving a few merchant cash advances, I was routinely receiving bad news from traditional lenders. We recently hired a fundraising manager. He shared with us the reason no traditional bank was interested was their underwriting laws regarding our multiple MCA loans.

He shared that there is a type of lender that only lends to companies that restructure. He showed that if we restructured our MCA loans and found a way to receive a periodic forbearance from our site owners, our funding opportunities would change dramatically. On Wednesday I left New York with our MCA loans completely restructured. Last Friday and again yesterday, we unfortunately had to send out the letter requesting 4 months forebearance on payments to site partners.Because of the quick response from many site partners, as of this morning we have good news from multiple funding options.

With the understanding that none of the 4 options is exciting, if we can urge each of our site partners to pick one of the four options, we can go forward with our plan of monetizing all 422 ecommerce stores, growing our legacy portfolio aggressively, and most importantly cross-marketing all assets to maximize the 10s of millions of visitors we receive each month.

So if I am hard to reach, please forgive me. And please pardon me, as I and the team are working tirelessly around the clock to recapitalize your websites and this company to remedy all issues. I’d like to state again, we are making every effort possible to avoid bankruptcy. If we are forced to go that route it has been shared with us our plan will get approved but site partners might not see anything for years.

I urge each partner, recognizing that none of the options are desirable, to please choose whatever option is most bearable as we can’t choose our go forward plan until we see how a majority of the responses come in. At this time, we are doing everything we can to start payments as soon as possible. I will never forget your patience and cooperation. To our future success. Thanks in advance for working with us.

Your friend Ken.


I'll let the communication "stand" on its own reserving my comments for another post.

 

[AllenCrawley]

Let’s not be glib and triumphant. I lost $173,000. It’s easy to say haha I told you so. I knew it was an unconventional investment but the company had been around for decades and it seemed legit and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. I don’t consider myself to be a sucker generally, I went in with my eyes open but I didn’t think it was actually a scam. I think they used to have a business model that worked but they got into trouble and tried to cover it by taking new investor money (like mine) so it became a ponzi scheme even if it didn’t start out like that. It’s a life changing event for me. I hope the owners and execs all go to prison and are miserable for the rest of their lives because they knew what they were doing when they took my money. In the end of course, it’s my fault. But that doesn’t mean that the people, like me, who have lost their life savings are stupid. We were conned. In hindsight it is obvious but for decades they did give investors returns. I just happened to be the last money into the pyramid, I’m to blame for being stupid. I hope the execs rot in a prison cell.

Glib and triumphant?

If you had read the warnings many shared here in this thread would you have continued with your investment into IS?

 

[MakMac]

I remember reading this thread back in 2018 and wondering how skilled they would have to be to pull such a business off.

Seems like shit just got real for them.

I hope anyone here who have money stuck with The Income Store will get as much of their money back as possible.

Will be interesting to follow the court case.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK3oCIxRqJk



Emilia Gardner piecing together interesting lawsuit details on youtube.

 

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[PapaGang]

"15% guaranteed."

Sometimes the scam is so overt, so obvious, that nothing else needs to be reviewed. As soon as I read that nonsense I knew it was a house of cards.

Hope anyone who fell for it gets out with minimal damage.

I didn't go to business school, but that was my red flag as well. Guaranteed?

Bruh...

Who green-lighted that marketing copy? Even I've heard of FINRA...

BTW, I've lost 5 figures on a get rich quick investment scheme, so I know how it feels to lose and get bamboozled.

I learned SO MUCH from that experience. I hope investors of IS get some sort of consolation. If nothing else, may it serve as fuel to fire your efforts to go UNSCRIPTED .

 

[MJ DeMarco]

It's suggested that with ponzi schemes they claw back profits from early people to pay later people who have lost al of their money.

Oh boy, this will really screw those early adopters who said this was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Now imagine the SEC coming after you and asking for $56,000 you received over the last 3 years.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

Link to official SEC announcement that yes in fact, it was a Ponzi scheme.

INVESTING - NOTABLE! - Income Store Shut down by SEC, How to Whistleblow Scams

Well low and behold - I just called this out as a likely scam in another thread. https://authoritywebsiteincome.com/income-store-ripoff/ Re: Securities and Exchange Commission v. Today’s Growth Consultant, Inc (dba “The Income Store”) and Kenneth D. Courtright, III, United States District...

www.thefastlaneforum.com

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I'm bumping this because.. well, maybe you can figure it out.

 

[ned.ryerson]

Did a ton of study on it. Decided that I would rather make a guaranteed 15% a year with virtually unlimited upside than to make 16% a year with almost no long term upside.

If you have about 100k+ to invest I’ve got something that I did that’s “guaranteed” 15% a year as a minimum. (Guaranteed contractually but of course something could go wrong if SHTF) And no I’m not hawking it lol.

Okay now that you've got us all intrigued...

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk

 

[Ecom man]

Why would the management companies not buy and retain 100% of the profits?
Are we talkin acquiring websites for 5k or 500k.

Their minimum is 100k.
Not trying to sidetrack the thread just what I decided was better for me. They’ve been in busines

Why would the management companies not buy and retain 100% of the profits?
Are we talkin acquiring websites for 5k or 500k.

the minimum site buy is 100k. Not trying to derail the thread but just what I chose to do with my extra money rather than tax liens. (Which I looked into heavily when I was in the Midwest, Iowa has some great yields!)
I supossd whether it is legit or not is certainly up to debate but they have been doing it through income store since 2009 and website building and consulting long before that.

The 15% minimum is guaranteed to perpetuity... not 5 years. (A contract is just a piece of paper obviously so just as with any investment it is only as good as the company/item.) In this case you actually own the asset (website) so if Income store goes under then you can certainly just sell your website or hire a different management team.

 

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[Ecom man]

Bing!

Same reason people sell 50% of their company to investors. They would rather own 50% of 100,000,000 in assets than to own 100% of 10 million.

 

[100k]

Isn't this what hedge funds do

Accumulate other people's money (OPM!!!!) in a short amount of time, instead of slowly building up your own site then reinvesting.

I'd be more interested in being on the other side of this transaction.

Learn some marketing skills PPC, SEO, branding, copy. etc. Use the money to run ads, etc. All with minimal risk to you.

I'm not totally familiar with that world, but I do believe hedge funds and most asset management companies make most of their moneys from management fees and not from putting their own money on the line.

Its an interesting proposition, and if you're a total newb that doesn't know anything about the world of online marketing and digital products - this is a great way to get in the game.

But in theory, there is no reason why someone couldn't hire a operations manager and a digital agency to do what Income Store is doing, and you'd end up keeping 80% of the profits (investing 20% back into the business).

I'll def. be exploring the latter scenario in the coming new year.

 

[Ecom man]

I'm sorry but this doesn't look great to me. Their example websites are not impressive and I don't believe that you own an asset worth $100k. If I had $100k, I could buy an ecommerce site that already makes $30k a year, assuming a 3x multiplier which is very high. Realistically, I'd buy a site making about $40k a year for $100k. That would net me $3,300 a month right away.

@Ecom man, did they create a site from scratch or buy a site with your $100k? This just doesn't make sense to me. If your store is not even making the minimum of $15k a year, what did they do with your $100k?

Can you get out of the 50/50 profit share? How long is the contract?

I've looked at all their videos and what I think they do is purchase a websites worth between $10k-$25k and they increase sales and traffic. So you are basically overpaying for a website, they make a nice healthy $75k profit, then they spend time building the traffic and increasing income.

For 100k they buy one and then also build one.

You can sell your website anytime you like to “get out” of the contract. There isn’t a minimum time period before you can sell. You can’t get out of the management contract without selling the site however.

 

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[MTEE1985]

Nothing is guaranteed, not even an annuity backed by a life insurance company who claims "guaranteed" -- indeed Sirens.

Sure there is, here is a whole list of people who offered guaranteed returns: American Greed

 

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[ApparentHorizon]

I'm not totally familiar with that world, but I do believe hedge funds and most asset management companies make most of their moneys from management fees and not from putting their own money on the line.

Its an interesting proposition, and if you're a total newb that doesn't know anything about the world of online marketing and digital products - this is a great way to get in the game.

But in theory, there is no reason why someone couldn't hire a operations manager and a digital agency to do what Income Store is doing, and you'd end up keeping 80% of the profits (investing 20% back into the business).

I'll def. be exploring the latter scenario in the coming new year.

Asset management companies have fee, performance, or a combination of the two.

I was thinking the same, you could reverse engineer the methods and put it to your own use. For 100k though, you'd be better off taking a few courses and building 10 different sites. Then you'd still have money left over for ads and SEO.

$3k per site. (1k to build, 2k for copy and On-Site SEO)

Then hire 3 full time VAs. 2 for writing content. 1 for growing your social media.

 

[Ecom man]

Did you mean "or" build one? Are you saying that you got 2 websites for $100k?

When you sell the website is the profit split 50/50 also?

If you were to listed your site(s) on the market now, would you be able to list them both for a sum of $100k?

If they bought a site for you, you should be able to list it for $100k the next day.
If they built a site for you, how long until the website is worth $100k?

I'm willing to bet that the reason they say also build one is to keep the value of your investment ambiguous so that you can't clearly define the value of the site that they bought. If I buy and build you a site, I can say that I bought you a site worth $25k and will build you a site worth $75k from scratch.

No I meant and. They buy a site for 100k (yes that’s how much they spend on buying the site) Then they build one from scratch as well. The one they build is in the same vertical as the one bought so that way they can send traffic to each other (for example if the bought site is a wine site the built site might be on vineyards)

Both sites you 100% own and can sell whenever you choose. Yes you could turn and sell the site they bought immediately and recoup your 100k. The built site is essentially worthless until it actually has income/visitors.

On the sale of the site you split the proceeds 50/50 over the original buy price. So if my site is worth 200k when I go to sell I get 150k (original 100+50 profit) and they get 50k of the sale price.

 

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[biophase]

No I meant and. They buy a site for 100k (yes that’s how much they spend on buying the site) Then they build one from scratch as well. The one they build is in the same vertical as the one bought so that way they can send traffic to each other (for example if the bought site is a wine site the built site might be on vineyards)

Both sites you 100% own and can sell whenever you choose. Yes you could turn and sell the site they bought immediately and recoup your 100k. The built site is essentially worthless until it actually has income/visitors.

On the sale of the site you split the proceeds 50/50 over the original buy price. So if my site is worth 200k when I go to sell I get 150k (original 100+50 profit) and they get 50k of the sale price.

Ok, but shouldn't you be getting at least $3k a month total ($36k a year), else they overpaid for the site? It makes sense that they build a additional sites to drive traffic. That's what I'd do too. But that site that they build is part of the "traffic driving" which is part of their job like SEO and PPC would be. So it's part of their work to get the 50% of profits.

Is the website that they bought for you worth $100k in your opinion? What's it doing in sales per month?

I was looking at a couple ecom businesses in July priced around $100k, total cost would have been around $120k-$130k because you have to buy their inventory also. But those sites were making $40-$50k a year already. Just seems odd to me that you'd be making their minimum.

 

[jlwilliams]

Run, Forest. Run.

 

[garyfritz]

I'm sorry but this doesn't look great to me. Their example websites are not impressive and I don't believe that you own an asset worth $100k. If I had $100k, I could buy an ecommerce site that already makes $30k a year, assuming a 3x multiplier which is very high. Realistically, I'd buy a site making about $40k a year for $100k. That would net me $3,300 a month right away.

That sure makes a lot more sense to me. Buy an already-established and income-producing website, one that returns 40% instead of 15%. Then hire somebody to help you improve it and juice its returns, while also teaching you the techniques. End up with a much more valuable website AND a valuable skill.

 

[ApparentHorizon]

Not generally. Hedge funds (or private placements) don't base their IRR assumptions off an annuity model. In other words, they don't assume they'll be paying you dividends/distributions forever in order to achieve their targeted IRR. Instead, they assume that you (might) get dividends/distributions for some period of time, and then you'll receive principle plus return at the end of some period.

While the IRR *could* potentially be good in either scenario, the annuity model requires that the investment be successful into perpetuity, which for online stores is far from a given. In the hedge fund model, the investment must only be successful for some short period of time -- 3, 5, 7, 10 years or whatever. And, in some cases, the original investment is actually liquid to some degree.

Incomestore's faq page definitely doesn't build confidence in perpetuity payments. What they say in the how it works videos, and what I'd realistically expect are closer to hedge funds as you described. Just with an annuity twist.

It would be foolish not to sell the site in 2-3 years, as the investor.

Speaking of Madoff, I'd be weary of a possible pyramid scheme, if the SEO floor ever falls out. "It will only be until the rankings pick back up. So keep recruiting 'investors.'"

 

[mtnman]

hehe, this is a funny thread.

Anything under $500k from FEI is usually shit long term. I mean look at some of the garbage Amazon sites they've had listed in their platform for the last two years... FFS.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

View attachment 22768

Rut Roh! The "15% guaranteed returns" won't like regulatory scrutiny.

 

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[Bearze34]

Anybody promising 15% is a liar, any site that spends more space asking for your phone number and making vague claims than telling you what it does is a scam, and anybody that gives this P.T. Barnum of snake oil a dime is an absolute idiot. Go to your local tavern buy a stock certificate in a diamond mine. You have a better chance of getting a return on your money.

 

[OME]

hehe, this is a funny thread.

Anything under $500k from FEI is usually shit long term. I mean look at some of the garbage Amazon sites they've had listed in their platform for the last two years... FFS.

Agree. Would stay away from FEI as overpriced multiples sometimes based on 3 month averages.

 

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[Ecom man]

Yeah I think the transition was more complex than they expected/ realized.

I have a good site up and running currently through them and they are building the second site currently. I haven’t gotten more than the minimum yet which isn’t exactly what I was hoping for but it’s where it currently is at.

As of where it stands right now I wouldn’t put anymore money with them until I start actually getting more than the minimum. I like the change into e-commerce as that’s something that I think will be better long term imo but short term it has caused some issues with getting new sites up and building those sites at scale.

 

[Ecom man]

Can you explain wht you mean by "the change into e-commerce"? Are you saying that their focus has changed from ad-based and affiliate revenue to selling branded lines of products or services?

Correct. They were building/buying authority sites that made ad revenue via Adsense etc. but they were driving a lot of traffic via Facebook/ SEO. When Facebook changed the organic reach of pages a year or so ago it hurt many of their sites traffic a lot. They have also been battling with the google algorithm updates every time they drop.

They changed to e-commerce to drive traffic rather than hope the next change didn’t hurt them. They still have authority sites for existing partners but I believe all new partners are getting e-commerce sites.