Empower Network Review: Is it a Scam?
Empower Network Review: Because I know how frustrating it can be to be scammed online and that there are a lot of scams on the internet I want to give you a thorough review of Empower Network so that you can make an informed decision for yourself. I will pull no punches and tell you the pros and cons. Fair enough?
As of October 2012, the Empower Network has now paid out over $17 Million in commissions to its 50,000+ affiliates in its first year since its launch on Oct.31,2011 and according to Alexa, Empowernetwork.com is already the 420th largest global site.
Out of billions of websites and thousands of websites coming online everyday that is a history making testimony to the power of Empower Network. And it has not reached it’s peak yet. According to Google trends, the amount of searches is still rapidly increasing as of October 2012.
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“How to Make a Small Fortune with Empower Network”
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Some people assume that it is multi-level marketing but it really is not. It is actually direct marketing. However, there will be instances when you will receive pass-up commissions but I will cover that in more detail in the explanation below. Now I’m a little late to this party as I didn’t join until October 2012 but I got here as soon as I could. Actually I wasn’t plugged into the affiliate marketing scene for the last few years because I’ve been busy with other niches that are not directed to other marketers. That’s another story I will have to tell another day. So without further ado, let’s get to the topic that you came here for … to see my review of Empower Network and to determine if it is a scam or not. I’m going to tell you how it really is.
Pros and Cons
Pros
1) Excellent value – For $25 you get a viral blogging system, professionally designed lead capture pages, ready to go, fully monetized blog ready for you to just start typing your own thoughts. Many people don’t know how to set up a blog and with this you don’t have to, everything is ready to go right out of the box and it is already optimized for search engines. You can be blogging today.
2) 100% commissions – Best in the Industry. This is proof to me that the founders are not greedy because they could take a cut for every sale that you produce as virtually every company does, but they don’t because they wanted to do something different and reward the little guys, the affiliates. The money they make is from their own personal affiliate sales. That says something about the company. Don’t you think?
3) Excellent training and motivation – The Millionaire mindset. The training is world class, motivational, inspiring and practical. With the top leaders in Empower Network telling you exactly how they make their money. All of them with different strategies and techniques. Many marketers don’t tell you exactly how they make money but in these advanced courses they don’t hold back including everything from having the right mindset to step-by-step how to make $1,000 a day or $15K or $30,000 a month.. Most importantly these training videos are products that you will be proud to recommend to others.
Cons
1) It is not a push button software or some magic formula that makes you money without any work. The TRUTH is that there really is NO push button software or some shortcut to success. You have to learn how to do it and then DO IT. There is a learning curve, especially for those that are new to internet marketing. But it’s not that hard. It’s easy really once you get an understanding of it. But don’t look at it as an obstacle – INSTEAD LOOK AT IT AS A STEPPING STONE TO SUCCESS. Do you really want to be successful? Then what will you do to get there? Once you get there it is largely automated. The system that I will show you will automate the whole process. Plus, it’s better to be working by typing some words on a keyboard and making up to hundreds an hour than working in some dead end job that ultimately limits how much money you can make. Your choice – Work hard to build something big or keep falling for the same old scams that keep promising a shortcut.
2) If you don’t have a large list it will take longer to start making commissions but it’s not impossible. If you don’t have a list, it is THE most important asset that you can have in making money online. Because when you have a list, you can send a single email that could result in hundreds or thousands of Dollars. NOW THAT’S AS CLOSE TO PUSH BUTTON AS IT GETS. If you join my team, I will show you from Day 1 how to set up a list and get a free lead capture page to start building your list (actually from Day 2 LOL).
3) In order to receive commissions you must use e-wallet for $19.95/mo or use your own credit card processor. Actually this is only a con on the surface because ANYBODY that receives money on the internet will incur processing fees. They give you the option of using your processor which you can apply for separately and have it deposited into your merchant bank account (This is different from a personal bank account). The $19.95 fee for e-wallet covers all the fees for processing your 100% commissions and for customer support. Otherwise, a processor will charge you a percentage from about 4-12% depending on your credit and other factors.So basically, it’s up to you.
How do you make money with Empower Network?
You can use the blogging system to write about whatever you want. In order to continue to blog on almost a daily basis, you need to write about things you are interested in or you will eventually burn out and stop writing. And this is the beauty of Empower, that you can write about whatever you want and because the website is considered an authority site by search engines, there is a good possibility that your site will rank high in the search engines for what you are writing about. And this will attract visitors to your blog. And because the blog is already monetized with the banners on the top, side and bottom, if a visitor clicks on one of those banners, you’ve just captured a lead. And of course, a certain amount of leads equals to a sale.
They give you an exact system to follow:
Blog daily – This is EXACTLY how David Wood built his business and succeeded. Blogging daily made him an effective communicator. Blogging daily gives content for the search engines to find and when it is unique content updated frequently, the search engines love it and reward you with traffic. Possibly lots of traffic.
Market daily – To speed up the process of getting your blog out to people and ultimately your opportunity, you will need to do some marketing. Some of it is free and can be effective. You will learn about the most effective ways. And some you will want to invest in advertisement to grow your business. This can be tricky though. Listen to the Inner Circle audios mentioned below. David Wood has a free webinar where he explains statistically how you can make $1,000 a day on average. How many leads you need to reach that goal etc. etc. I will give you a link to that underground video by simply opting in to my list here.
Empower Network is NOT an MLM
You are the master of your domain in the Empower Network. Meaning, you can generate as many commissions as you would like for yourself and be rewarded accordingly. This is not an MLM scheme in the sense that when you get members to join you are hoping they will recruit 2 and they will recruit 2 and so on and so on to the point that you are hoping that there will be 5,000 members 5 or 6 levels down making you commissions.
From my personal experience, and this is something that I’m working on and improving, I have been successful in recruiting people into an MLM program in the past but those I recruit can’t duplicate and I end up producing sign ups for the members that I recruited. After that experience I had determined that I’m better at direct sales, so I started only focusing on that.
Explanation of Pass-Ups
When you refer someone to Empower Network, that commission goes to you. However, the 2nd, 4th, 6th and every 5th member after that are passed up to your sponsor. This may be a little bit confusing to explain so I have provided a picture for you here that illustrates it much better.
Now on the levels above the Basic level you can only receive commission for that product if you have personally bought that product. How can you expect to make a commission on something that you weren’t willing to invest in. Right?
So say for example you joined at the Inner Circle level and you recruit someone that just comes in at the Basic level. Now if he/she referred someone who bought the Basic and Inner Circle products, then 100% of the Inner Circle commission would be passed up to you ($100). And this works for every level up to the Mastermind course. You only get commissions for what you were willing to invest.
One more important point for me to make is that once you make 1 commission you have already paid for that product. This is true for all of the Empower Network products. It’s hard to go wrong with 100% commissions.
Membership Levels
Basic – $25/mo viral blogging system and Fast Start videos are everything that you need to get started. See this page Empower Network Products for a more detailed description of the membership levels which correspond to the actual products themselves.
Inner Circle – The Inner Circle is a series of 51 audios (as of November 5th, 2012) that talk about how to grow your Empower Network business
Costa Rica Intensive – The Costa Rica Intensive is a series of 11 intense videos about improving your marketing skills on and offline
15K Formula – The 15K Formula is a series of 10 videos about how to reach the 15,000 per month income level with Empower Network
Mastermind Course – This is a boots on the ground, in the real world, internet marketing and network marketing course that is worth more than any Marketing Degree. Yet costs only a fraction of the cost.
My Recommendation:
I recommend that you get in at the Basic and Inner Circle level. This will allow you to be able to at least receive the $25 and $100 monthly residual commissions. I don’t recommend that you upgrade to the Costa Rica Intensive or 15K Formula or the Mastermind Course until you are ready for the next step. Unless you can afford it or you are a heavy hitter, then by all means GET ALL IN. You can upgrade at anytime. Besides the Inner Circle level will keep you busy for a month or 2.
However, the first time you see that a $500 or $1,000 or $3,000 commission was passed up to your sponsor (or whoever is the next upline that upgraded to that level) then you will probably want to upgrade so that it doesn’t happen again.
My Promise to you:
If you join with my team I will provide you with the bonuses provided on my Empower Network Bonus page. I will give you a link to a free lead capture page so that you can capture your leads first and market whatever you want to your prospects. Incidentally, this lead capture page triples your opt in rate. It’s as easy as point, type, click.
I will provide to you training and support and what I’m doing to market my business. You will have my personal email address and phone number. As well, I will be providing webinars on how to build and grow your business in order to be able to this for a living while having the time and money to do what you want.
GET ALL IN Empower Network ASAP
If you’ve been following my posts you know that I’ve been struggling to find a source of advertising that works with Empower Network and Instant Payday Network. The short story is that I’m not in profit yet on my advertising although I have so far generated a lot of leads – 674 to be exact in a month’s time. And a few sales that did not equal to the amount I spent.
I’m going to throw a lot of numbers at you again today. So if you are analytical you will love this and you will understand like me why it’s important to get ALL IN as soon as possible. If you’re not analytical you could probably go to the conclusion to get the short story.
As I said from my analysis yesterday, it’s probably because the leads need to work their way through the funnel as I work on improving my follow up process.
Remember to Blog Daily
I ALWAYS want you to remember that I still recommend that you blog daily, or at least 5 days a week. This will lay the groundwork for free traffic, leads and sales to come through your blog.
The more you blog and the longer your posts stay published the more traffic you will get. This also creates a good habit and forces you to grow in many areas.
There are many benefits covered in greater detail in my post about how to make money blogging.
I Had Another Epiphany Yesterday
I was listening to one of the new recordings in the 15K Formula where Shaqir Hussyin talks about how to to build your list and make sales specifically in Empower Network by using solo ads.
Since I’m a numbers guy, the numbers that he shared totally made the right neurons in my brain to connect to fully understand why it’s IMPORTANT to GET ALL IN.
Because Dave and Dave talk about how important it is to blog all the time and how David Wood found incredible success and built his career on blogging. He convinced me and I was sold. As you can see I do blog everyday now.
However, because someone analytical shared some REAL numbers specifically for Empower Network, it made me realize how each $25 customer that you bring into EN is actually worth $697 over their lifetime. And when I say lifetime, it’s based on Shaqir’s numbers after being in EN for about 6 months.
By the way, he showed all his stats live. Meaning he went into his Aweber account and showed how many leads he had and he logged into Empower Network and showed his total income etc. This is how I know these are REAL numbers.
Case Study: $217,541 Total Income
Through solo ad marketing Shaqir generated about 18,000 leads. at about $4 per lead. He had 312 front end buyers of the basic blogging package in Empower Network of $25.
So if you are doing the math already and saying that $4 per lead at 18,000 leads is $72,000 and 312 X $25 sales is only $7,800. That’s a total loss of $64,200. And you would be right, on the front end. But it’s the back end sales that make ALL the difference in the world.
Total Income = $217,541
Total Leads = 18,000
Front End Buyers ($25) = 312
Value per Lead = $217,541 / 18,000 = $12.09
Customer Lifetime Value = $217,541 / 312 = $697.25
YOU’VE GOT TO BE ALL IN
Did you see that? The Lifetime Value of each customer in Empower Network according to his numbers is $697.25. That’s how you can spend $200 – $300 per front end sale and make a profit in EN.
But here is the caveat – YOU’VE GOT TO BE ALL IN for this to work. You can’t just get in at the $25 level and expect to advertise and get the same results. You will be losing money. You’re better off blogging everyday for the first 90 days and creating free traffic and sales BEFORE you think about advertising.
It also doesn’t work if you just buy the Inner Circle or up to the Costa Rica Intensive or up to the 15K Formula. Up until this point I was only in at the 15K formula which was ALL IN when I joined.
But since then, in October I think, they added the Master’s Retreat course which is getting ALL IN now. When they first came out with it, I thought, I’ll just wait until I make a sale or 2 in the Costa Rica and 15K Formula then I will get the Master’s course.
But with this evidence I’m fully convinced that I need to get completely in today. So basically I’m waiting for the bank to open so that I can call the bank first and let them know to expect it so there are not any problems along the way.
The numbers don’t lie. These are the cold hard facts but I hope it doesn’t discourage you.
If You Can’t Afford to get ALL IN Right Now
If you can’t get all in right now, I’m not asking you to go in debt doing it. I always recommend, even though a lot of marketers always push you into getting all in, that you upgrade as soon as you can afford it.
There are some people out there that can afford to get all in from the beginning and there are people that can only afford the $25 package and everything in between. So I would recommend that you get in as much as you can as soon as you can and still work on your daily blogging.
Helping My Team Succeed
Then when you get all in you can do some advertising and I will be helping you along the way. Sharing my results, my struggles and my epiphanies. We will also have some webinars for my team to share what I’m learning and what others are learning as well as motivation and Q&A’s.
But that is reserved for people who are at least committed enough to spend $25 to join. I have made a decision, inspired by David Wood, that I don’t spend all my time chasing prospects to join. I tried that in the past and I didn’t enjoy it and it is unproductive.
If you want access to me, an up and coming leader, JOIN MY TEAM NOW, get serious about making money online and join us in monthly webinars.
Why 92% Online Marketers Fail
I’ve been thinking ALOT about how I can add more value to you as my subscriber and customer. My biggest concern is to see you succeed.
So over the next 2-3 weeks I will have a series of announcements as this concept develops into reality. You know it is a special announcement if it has [GREAT IDEA] in the subject line. I promise I will ONLY use this on the BIG ANNOUNCEMENT.
What I’ve been thinking is a 3 pronged strategy. Because in the network marketing niche you’ve got to zig while everyone else is zagging. You’ve got to do something TOTALLY different than what everybody else is doing. You’ve got to stand out from the crowd.
The Odds are Not in Your Favor
The statistics show that 0.8% of people in online marketing are making $10K a month or more.
Most people are virtually making zero. 91.6% of people in online marketing – network marketing, internet marketing, affiliate marketing – who have been trying for at least 6 months, are making less than $100 a month.
Those are horrible numbers – aren’t they? What can we do as normal people about this? How can we succeed? What do we NEED to do to put the odds in our favor?
Even though Empower Network is poised to explode and become a household name, we’ve got to position ourselves in a way to benefit from that as much as possible. Do you agree?
But as you may or may not know I am not naturally a good speaker or even an influential person. So what are people like me supposed to do in network marketing companies like Empower Network?
Chances are if you’re reading this, you fall into the same category as me. If you study personality types, even just a little, you know that there are the bold and confrontational types. They tend to be leaders but their weakness is their insensitivity to others.
Others are persuasive and influential naturally. These are usually the people that like to talk and talk alot and usually get good at making persuasive videos.
80% of people don’t have those 2 traits as their primary or secondary personality trait. So are we to just settle for being followers and resign ourselves to helping the 0.8% make ALL THE MONEY?
No …. No way!!!
I want to do something significant about it.
I know it’s just a fact of life and that you can’t punish those that succeeded because they done it with hard work and they deserve that. But if you are not a natural leader or an influential person, then the odds are stacked against you that much more.
People Join People – Not Companies
It’s my suspicion that even though you may introduce someone to Empower Network, they may end up signing up under someone else. I know it shouldn’t be that way but I think that we need to realize this.
They are just looking for the most value and if someone is promising a lot of value, like the BIG GURUS with all the name recognition, then they are more likely seek them out and join them.
More success for the successful …
I’ve been really good at affiliate marketing because most of it took me as a person out of the picture and sold a product. With Empower Network there are over 70,000 members or so all trying to sell the same product(s).
So what are we as the 80% going to do to stand out and get our share?
Here’s My Big Idea
1) First I am going to develop a system that will create it’s own stream of income on the front end. It will be a lead capture page system that will be unlike the Empower Lead capture pages and will stand out.
Most of all it will be cheap. For a one time low cost fee you can turn around and sell it an infinite number of times and keep all the money.
And because it will be affordable by the 99%, your conversion rate will be high because a lot of people are looking for more leads, a way to offset their advertising costs and a lead capture system that’s different from everyone else’ … like in Empower.
People could actually use it to make money and then turn around and market to the leads that they captured. It could be any business – not just Empower Network.
2) We will also have a Mastermind Group. I don’t know if it’s going to be a forum format or on Facebook. But a place where I can give you daily actionable steps and we can share together our successes or anything related to succeeding in this business.
ONE THING THAT WE WILL NOT TOLERATE IS NEGATIVITY. To prevent the spreading of a poisonous attitudes we will have a very strict policy here.
3) Media Buying – Right now I am negotiating media buys with several networks. These are the BIG networks that no one in Empower Network have touched.
These networks have access to sites as big as CNN, Fox News, Weather.com etc. Not that we will advertise in those places specifically but that is the type of traffic that we are talking about.
Media buying is something that’s hard to find much information on because it works so well and is so profitable that those that know how to do it usually just keep it to themselves. But if you don’t know what you are doing you could lose thousands of Dollars very quickly.
It’s almost like you have to be a media buyer for a big company with a big budget to know anything about it. They don’t usually deal with small time marketers.
So the plan is to open co-ops within the Mastermind group so that we can pool our resources together and advertise in those untouched places and virtually limitless traffic on the internet.
You see, a lot of the co-ops and leads that you buy online are sold over and over again or are incentivized to buy from the person who generated that traffic. You never really know until you buy it and test it. And I can tell you, I think most of it is this way.
That’s not the kind of traffic that we will be getting. What we will be getting will only be sent to your capture page and put in your autoresponder.
No one else but you will have access to that lead.
So that is the overview of this grand concept that I have. Now I’ve got to start implementing it. So you may not see many blog posts from me for the next 2-4 weeks as I’m working on putting this all together.
How You Can Help This Cause
If you’ve been kicking around the idea of joining Empower Network, I encourage you to join under me now in order to position yourself in the best way possible. This will also help fund our operation so that we can be a success. All this takes money and I’m already bleeding money. Any help you can give by simply just going ahead and signing up now will help greatly.
I’m also looking for others who have talents that I can use to put this all together. Like graphic design, programmers and copy writers. If you can help in any of these areas and want to be a part of this project, you may contact me at kevin at bestempowernetworkreview dot com.
Kevin Dixon
“The Underdog’s helper“