Back in high school, there was this dude in my class called Ron.
Now Ron was BIG into ancient Egypt. He loved that stuff.
That’s cool, everyone’s gotta have a passion.
Bruce was into Space, bigtime.
Me? I was into baseball.
The teachers were probably a bit happier with kids wanting to be archaeologists or physicists than some pie-in-the-sky baseball dream. But I didn’t care.
Ron’s camel.
Maybe there were right, though. Bruce went on to work for NASA. Nice.
And Ron? Well things were a bit different with Ron.
I hadn’t heard from him for a good few years.
This one night me and the boys were cutting the crap in the local bar.
Just a few drinks after a hard week, you know how it goes.
Then imagine my surprise when someone piped up with some new info on our old boy Ron.
No, he wasn’t leading expeditions into ancient Egypt.
But he WAS doing something to do with pyramids.
He was working for a PYRAMID SCHEME!
HAHA!
One of my other bros was laughing about how ironic that was, since he was so into ancient Egypt. I’m not sure it was irony, but then English wasn’t my passion either. It sure was funny though.
Bruce chilling.
Since I’d been working in internet marketing for a while now, I’d seen a lot of these come and go.
You see, I’d been making some good bank for a few years with Local Lead Generation. It’s as legit as they come. More on that later.
But the thing is, before I found Local Lead Generation, I’d tried a lot of duds.
Things you THINK are gonna take off, but never do.
So I’d seen a lot of these pyramid schemes. I’d seen a lot of people fail on them, too.
I was always kinda apprehensive about getting into them.
I’d seen how they sometimes preyed on desperate people. But I’d also seen people make good money from them.
So I wanted to know more about this scheme. It was called World Ventures. Nope, never heard of it either. It sure sounded pretty generic.
But I’d always been the kinda guy who didn’t like to rush to judgements.
Ron was one of the smartest guys in our class. He was also a decent bloke.
And apparently, he’d been making real bank with this.
We’re talking yacht money. Nice.
Living the dream!
So I decided to have a closer look into World Ventures. I was gonna start at the bottom without any prejudices. See if it works for normal people who DIDN’T get into it early like Ron did.
You see, I didn’t mind some of the marketing networks. They tend to call them MLM or MultiLevel Marketing. It’s all good if the products are quality and the people at the bottom (the late adopters) can still make money.
Was that the case with World Ventures? Read my World Ventures review to find out.
World Ventures Review
At the start, I thought it’d be a good idea to give Ron a heads up. I thought I could ask him a few questions and make sure he knew I was gonna be writing this review.
Trouble is, I was having a hard time getting hold of him.
I mean, we weren’t that close back in the day, but I still thought he’d talk to me.
I reached out to some of his closer friends. No luck.
I was starting to think he didn’t really want to talk about World Ventures.
I wondered why, but tried not to make any judgements.
It was no biggie, I mean maybe it’d be better if I just got into World Ventures without any prior knowledge. Like the real people who were just starting on this.
But wait a minute. I’m getting WAY ahead of myself here. We haven’t even covered the basics. What even IS World Ventures?
Let’s have a look…
World Ventures touts itself as a dream vacation provider. That’s all good, I can dig it.
Only instead of actually selling these vacations yourself, it turns out the main way to make money is by recruiting other salespeople. That’s kinda how most pyramid schemes work these days. Sorry. Most MLM networks, I meant. Ha!
Anyway, they’re not all bad. I wanted to know if World Ventures was one of the good ones. After all, Ron had been making big bucks, right?
World Ventures was founded in 2005, and it brought in nearly a billion in revenue in 2016. Nice.
They SAY they’ve got 500,000 employees—but this figure’s unconfirmed. I reckon they’re simply adding up the number of network salespeople that occasionally work for them. Maybe that have EVER worked for them. But again, this is unconfirmed as well. It’s just a hunch. I’m 100% on hunches half of the time.
So World Ventures was started by this dude Wayne Nugent, along with his buddy Mike Azcue. They SAY that they wanted to build the “Mary Kay of travel”—I found that blurb when I was Googling them. Trouble is, I don’t know who Mary Kay is. I guess that’s for another article. What I THINK they’re saying is that they wanna be successful. I get that. Don’t we all?
Anyway, things certainly got off to a good start for Wayne and Mike. Ernst and Young even nominated our boy Wayne to be entrepreneur of the year in 2010. So these aren’t the sort of scam artists you see running other networks. They’ve got traction and a reasonably amount of respect in industry circles.
But does that mean it’s a good idea signing up to be a World Ventures rep? I’m not sure.
Yes, the guys at the top are raking it in. Big respect to them for that. But what about guys like me who were just gonna start at the bottom and hopefully make some money? What about guys like you?
I’m sure that’s why you’re at this World Ventures review. After all, it’s too late to be one of the lucky ones who got in at the start. Guys like Ron. What happened to Ron, anyway? More on Ron later.
It hasn’t been completely plain-sailing for Mike and Wayne, either. They’ve made a ton of cash—but they’ve also been sued continuously. Even by the Norwegian Government.
These guys weren’t fans.
What were they sued for? Being a pyramid scheme, basically. Told you.
Should have known, since Ron was always into those Egyptians.
What does World Ventures Even sell?
We’ve got this far into the review and you still don’t really know what World Ventures are trying to pimp. It’s about travel, we get that, but what’s so special about it?
In a word… Nothing.
I mean, they’re offering discounts and other travel-based offers for a monthly fee. A lot of this stuff can be found on other big-name affiliate sites WITHOUT the monthly fee. You’re basically paying for discounts. Some of them are ok, but I wouldn’t say they’re REALLY worth singing up to a monthly plan for.
Look, it’s not scammy at this level. You won’t see me calling this a World Ventures scam. You pay your monthly fee, and you get some good discounts.
Some people might prefer to do this than spend hours finding these discounts individually. Time is money, right?
But when I looked a bit deeper into these offers they seemed even less attractive. They weren’t flexible at all with dates or anything like that. Basically, if you like an offer, you have to book it on their terms and the ability to customize things isn’t easy.
You can’t combine offers either, or save reward points to spend all at once. Things are pretty limited here. There are much better travel offer sites out there. Many of these you don’t have to pay for.
This is always one of my biggest problems with pyramid schemes like this. Sorry, MLM Networks. Keep making that mistake.
Basically, if the products are good, then what’s the problem? I don’t see one with using a network to promote stuff.
But when they products AREN’T good, that’s when I start to have second thoughts.
But the REAL problem with MLM networks like this is even bigger…
It’s that they’re really hard to make money with for people at the bottom of the pyramid.
So if the people buying these plans aren’t getting anything good, and the people selling them aren’t making any money. What’s the point? Answers on a postcard, please.
Oh yeah. I know what the point was—the people at the stop still continue to make money. Just nobody else gets any value at all from this stuff.
THAT’S why MLM networks are getting a bad rap these days.
So in order to become an affiliate with World Ventures, you gotta pay a signup fee and then a monthly fee. Most affiliate networks I’ve worked with are happy to let you in for free in return for promoting their products.
Problem is, because the products aren’t that great or easy to promote—the main way it seems like World Ventures makes any money is with these
membership plans. Yep, you got it—they make the bulk of their cash from their affiliates, rather than their actual products.
And when you realise that you’ve gotta pay for an even more costly affiliate membership in order to qualify for the best commissions, things get even harder.
I remember when i first got into affiliate marketing, I was stoked with how much content and help PROPER affiliates gave me. And when I started making sales, I started making money. I DID NOT have to pay them before I started making sales. And I qualified for higher commissions based on my performance, NOT how much I paid them. Spotting the difference here? That’s not how World Ventures works…
And while people are still making money from World Ventures (people like Ron)—there’s an income disclosure statement which makes for interesting reading.
Basically, it says that 80% of affiliates aren’t making any money from World Ventures. And that 99% of affiliates make less than $2,000 a year. For those of you thinking about quitting their day jobs for this—think again. For those who’ve ALREADY quit their day jobs for this—Ouch.
So nobody’s really making money from this anymore? Not the people at the bottom, anyway. And there are loads of legal issues associated with World Ventures? And the products people end up with aren’t that great? I think you know which way to go on this already.
And back to the product range. The problem with using this model to promote World Ventures is that you often get desperate salespeople who’re already out of pocket pushing low-quality products to people who don’t really want them. The hard sell. You got it. This leaves both parties unhappy. And that’s not a party I wanna be involved in. No cake, either.
So what happened to Ron? Ah yeah, our boy Ron.
He still wasn’t answering my calls. Ron, bro! We go way back.
I’d heard on the grapevine that he’d been taking a lot of heat from friends and family that he’d got involved in World Ventures. He’d made some nice cash, and bought some cool stuff. But things were drying up. Word was that he’d moved on to some more legit money-making ventures. Good for him.
But where does that leave the people further down the pyramid? I want my $200 signup fee back!
A bit later, I started finding some better ways to make money online.
What I realised was that these get rich quick schemes were often just that. Schemes.
To make actual money, you’ve normally gotta put a bit of work in. I know that doesn’t sound like fun to most of you. But that’s just the way it is.
I found this other cool gig called Local Lead Generation. It lets you set up your own lead generation business for real clients who pay well. It could be your first step towards that passive income deal you’ve always wanted. It was for me, anyway. You should check it out.
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