There’s a strong implication here that upon completion of the above tasks, Zeek Rewards will then qualify you to participate in their daily profit share which in turn pays out a 90 day ROI on any retail bid purchases your customers make, or any VIP (sample) bids you purchase yourself and then give away to customers.
Along with this, much emphasis is made by Zeek Rewards that the daily requirement to place an ad and the acquisition of customers is primarily what their members are getting paid for. That is, with Zeek Rewards being ‘zeekler.com’s paid advertising division‘, that ‘driving traffic’ to Zeekler is what is important and the true value of Zeek Rewards’ members to the company.
Indeed, much has been made of this with Zeek Rewards members consistently referring to this advertising (via the giving away of sample bids and advertising) as being key to the success of both Zeekler and their Zeek Rewards commissions.
But how much value does this really provide to Zeek Rewards and perhaps more importantly, how would you measure this for the sake of comparison and establishing the true worth of Zeek Rewards members?
A good place to start would be the Zeek Rewards compensation plan.
The only main attraction of the Zeek Rewards business opportunity is participation in the daily profit share. In a nutshell, via various acquisition methods Zeek Rewards members acquire VIP points and then earn a 90 day dollar share based on the value of these points.
These points expire over a 90 day rolling period and need to be continually replaced with new points, otherwise overall point balances go into decline.
The money that makes up the profit share allegedly comes from a number of sources but primarily Zeek Rewards claim that it’s pegged to the success of Zeekler, which is why the profit share revolves around the promotion of Zeekler.
So lets start by analysing the relationship between Zeekler and the listed suggestions from Zeek Rewards to new members.
-Choose your affiliate level
Prior to some changes made earlier this year by Zeek Rewards, the level an affiliate joined Zeek Rewards primarily mattered because it dictated how many sample bids they could give away to each customer they acquired.
Following the changes all paid affiliate levels were standardised to being able to give away 1000 points to each customer. In effect, for the bulk of Zeek Rewards members this meant that the only difference in affiliate levels was how much money they were handing over the company each month.
For the sake of analysis, we’ll count membership subscriptions as money going into Zeek Rewards via members. And as far as Zeekler is concerned, a member’s affiliate level has no bearing on the site one way or another.
-Enroll a few friends as free customers
The enrolment of free customers in itself has no direct relationship with the daily profit share, but it does permit the purchase of retail bids by the recruited members, which in turn provides revenue in Zeekler and at the same time provide VIP points to the recruiting Zeek Rewards member.
As far as the profit share goes, we can boil down the contribution to the profit share as money going into Zeek Rewards via customers and Zeek Rewards members.
The customer monetary contribution is in the purchase of retail bids, and the member contribution is via the purchase of sample bids, which are then given away.
In both instances no actual product is being purchased, but rather real money is being converted into a virtual currency (Zeekler bids).
Furthermore, note that whether this virtual currency is actually used in Zeekler is irrelevant, VIP points are issued based on the purchase of bids, rather than whether or not they are used in Zeekler. This is true regardless of whether the bids are given away or directly purchased by customers.
In summation, as far as the Zeek Rewards compensation plan goes and member’s commissions are paid out, the purchase of bids here is what is of value to Zeek Rewards.
The participation and use of bids in Zeekler is irrelevant and not a direct contributing factor.
-Enroll a few friends as free affiliates
As far as the profit share is concerned, free affiliates eventually need to upgrade to paid affiliate status if they wish to continue earning in the profit share, so as above, the same considerations apply as with paid affiliates (acquiring customers and membership fees).
There are additional commissions earnt when recruited members make purchases (10% on level 1 and 5% on level 2), but again this is counted as money going into Zeek Rewards via members.
-Sell a few e-commerce suites
If you ask most Zeek Rewards members about ‘e-commerce suites’ you’ll in all probability get a blank stare response.
As far the profit share goes e-commerce suites are a non-factor and were just something Rex Ventures had lying around from previous business ventures that they’ve tacked onto Zeek Rewards.
-Join the Customer Co-op
Prior to changes made in April, the customer co-op was run by Zeek Rewards and equated to members paying the company for “customers” to dump bids onto. This was attractive in that it turned the requirement of attracting customers to dump bids into a passive activity, meaning you could just pay a small fee per customer ($2.50 or so) and that was it.
As VIP point balances grew so too did the number of customers required for purchase by Zeek Rewards members so no doubt this was a nice little money spinner for the company.
After April 2012 though the company stopped directly selling “customers” to members (conceeding that this was illegal), although they are still readily available for purchase from several third-party companies.
The bottom line is that now the fees for these paid-for customers is going to third-party companies, rather than Zeek Rewards (who they themselves were contracting out the acquisition of paid customers anyway), and as such this side of the business directly contributes nothing directly to the daily profit share.
-Drive Traffic to Zeekler.com and Earn 20% and one point on every dollar your Zeekler.com customers spend on bids
Placing emphasis on ‘driving traffic’ to Zeekler‘, the above task is disingenuous as it is the conversion of bids (either by the customer or affiliate) that drives the commissions, rather than any participation in Zeekler itself.
The use of bids is entirely optional as far as the profit share requirements goes. This is easily understandable when you consider that it is upon purchase of bids that Zeekler and Zeek Rewards see the money and are thus able to redistrubute it.
As far as the auctions go, the winner pays whatever they won the auction at, but this pales in comparison to the revenue generated via the sale of bids.
Although with Zeekler offering a cash substitute on all auctions, it is noted by members that this can serve as a small discount on the initial price paid for the bids if they win an auction with said purchased bids and choose the cash prize option (this counts for customers too).
The downside of this of course is that as a result, Zeekler is full of suspicious looking penny auctions that no sane retail customer would bother pariticipating in.
-Purchase some sample bids to give away to free customers
As above, the purchase is what contributes to the profit share, not the use of the sample bids once given away. Only Zeek Rewards members can purchase sample bids to give away so this equates to money going into Zeek Rewards by members themselves.
-Drive traffic by placing ONE FREE AD every day
This is the big one in that if you ask a Zeek Rewards member what they do, ‘advertising for Zeekler’ is usually the given reply.
Note that the actual requirement however is the publication of a free ad, and that the time required to do so is usually only a few minutes, if that.
Yet as the ‘paid advertising division’ of Zeekler, much importance and emphasis is placed on the fact that Zeek Rewards members are directly contributing to the success of Zeekler and Zeek Rewards via said advertisements.
At the end of the day however, inherently there is no direct contribution to the profit share via the placing of free ads on already saturated classified ad networks. Thus the value of such a requirement is highly questionable, if not non-existent entirely.
Putting it altogether
With Zeek Rewards supposedly being the ‘paid advertising division’ Zeekler, one would assume that this advertising by members would be of primary importance to Zeek Rewards.
Furthermore one would also assume that the advertising itself would contribute a significant amount to the commissions structure of Zeek Rewards.
Unfortunately, neither are the case.
When Zeek Rewards recently banned the nationals of six countries from joining and participating in the income opportunity, they also inadvertently quantified the exact dollar value of advertising that members do for Zeekler.
As per a press release put out by CEO Paul Burks on the matter, he stated that despite many banned members having been with the company for a year or more diligently advertising daily for Zeekler, that Zeek Rewards would only be issuing refunds for
payments made since joining, including subscription payments, bid purchases and any other payments.
The true value of advertising for Zeekler that Zeek Rewards members are required to do daily?
In hard dollar terms, nothing.
Kind of ironic when you consider one of the compliance friendly taglines of Zeek Rewards is ‘you get paid to advertise!’
In the case of issuing refunds to Zeek Rewards members and in effect quantifying just what value members provide to the company via their participation and membership, turns out that only money injected into Zeek Rewards via a member’s own purchases is of any value.
Banned members, through no fault of their own, were forced to forfeit any VIP point balances they had accrued or any outstanding balances (projected or otherwise) owed via participation in the daily profit share.
And thus the true value of these members to Zeek Rewards was reduced solely to the money these members had financially contributed towards Zeek Rewards themselves.
Advertising, promotion, signing up customers, encouraging recruited members and customers purchase bids… none of it warranted any form of financial compensation or restitution on behalf of Zeek Rewards when they cut ties with the affected members.
Whereas most MLM businesses compensate members based on sales of tangible products and services as a direct result of marketing or advertising the business itself (as this is where the value of members to the company in question is derived from), here is a company candidly reducing the value of members to the money they themselves put into the company.
By rights if the advertising and procurement of Zeekler customers meant anything financially to Zeek Rewards, then at a minimum banned members would be entitled to commissions paid out on the purchase of any bids made by their customers and recruited members, as well as some form of monetary compensation per the amount of advertising done by each individual members, paid out pro-rata based on their VIP point balance and withdrawals to date.
Instead, Zeek Rewards reduced their participation in the scheme to the money they themselves put into the company.
There is one other distinct business model that also harbors this trademark defining characteristic:
a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from profit earned by the individual or organization running the operation.
The above is taken from the Wikipedia definition of a Ponzi scheme.
Looking at the bigger picture, it is worrying to consider that the long-term success of Zeek Rewards thus is pegged to the financial contribution of its members.
If these contributions are all that Zeek Rewards are willing to refund, it thus follows that these contributions are all that really matter when calculating the worth of their members and what they are actually paid for. That is, pumping money into Zeek Rewards themselves or encouraging others to do so.
Naturally this wouldn’t be such a problem if said money was being used to purchase actual goods or services. With the money being pumped into Zeek Rewards and Zeekler however simply being converted into a virtual currency (Zeekler bids), which is then in turn converted into another virtual currency for ROI payouts (VIP points), this is serious cause for concern.
Furthermore it entirely throws into the doubt the claim that money being contributed into Zeek Rewards is not an investment. Especially when you consider that neither Zeekler bids or VIP points hold any monetary value outside of the company itself.
When you throw in the fact that a 90 day ROI is offered on the points themselves… it then becomes even harder to ignore the obvious.
With Zeek Rewards offering members a rolling 90 day ROI based on their direct monetary contributions into the scheme (via the purchase of sample bids and re-investment of paid out returns), and reducing the value of their members to the money they themselves pump into the company, there’s clearly not all that much room for interpretation here.
Strip away the marketing jargon and compliance double speak… and at the heart of Zeek Rewards is the fundamental concept of the more money you put in or convince others to put in, the greater your return.
Related posts that might interest you:
Zeek Rewards banning members due to politics?
Using Zeek Rewards as a pure investment program?
How Zeek Rewards can achieve compliance overnight
Zeek Rewards admit business model is illegal
Zeek Rewards confirm $100,000s in fraud occurring
109 Comments on “Calculating the true value of Zeek Rewards members”
steveamenta
April 19th, 2012 at 1:10 pm (Quote)
Why dont you put the positive related posts.You again have no idea what your talkin g about!
gen3benz
April 19th, 2012 at 2:00 pm (Quote)
@ steveamenta
This isnt a court of law. They are guilty until proven innocent in my book. If they were legit it would not be hard to prove it…
K. Chang
April 19th, 2012 at 3:33 pm (Quote)
@steveamenta — Oz was pointing out a flaw in Zeek’s business model. Why do Oz need to mention something “positive” along with it?
Perhaps you just don’t like the tone? If you can’t find any fault with the evidence or logic, then perhaps you just don’t like the information you see and it’s giving you a cognitive dissonance.
K. Chang
April 19th, 2012 at 3:47 pm (Quote)
Nice job, Oz. You’ve basically clarified my own thoughts I had commented in the previous Zeekrewards topic.
They say they are not investment, but they want your money (buy bids, which gets you VIP points instead of bids)
They say they are not investment, but they give you ROI at usurious rates (over 1% DAILY)
They say they are not investment, but they are surely NOT paying you for work
They say they are not investment, but they are paying someone who had more points (i.e. more money in system for longer time) more than people with less points for same amount of “work”
Clearly, they are lying about being not an investment.
