Is La Bella Baskets a Scam?
Today I want to introduce you to a home based business, La Bella Baskets. Please note I said this a home business, not a job! If you've read my articles about Wealthy Affiliate or Arise.com, you already know that running a business isn't for everyone. It involves a lot more than just showing up to earn a check which we all know some of us can get away with in certain jobs. With a business, you're the boss, you determine how much money you make and when you work. That being said, there are cost involved to start a business and there is a strong likelihood that initially your ROI isn't great. But for the business minded people that are willing to stick through and work their business until they succeed, it can pay off many times over. Any of my loyal subscribers that have been following me long enough know I'm living proof of this. In any event now that we have that disclaimer out the way, let's get into how you can make money with this BUSINESS.
What Is La Bella Baskets?
La Bella Baskets is a company that does just what it sounds like they do, sell gift baskets. They have been around since 2009. They hire independent designers to come up with interesting and unique basket theme designs. There is a master warehouse in Texas where most of the baskets are put together, and shipped. All items are shipped within 24-48 hours, standard shipping.
La Bella Baskets prides themselves in providing over 200 unique themes, some your typical things like get well, birthdays, weddings and babies. Other baskets are more unique like the spa, care packages, pets, kosher, and gardening. Each theme will have an option for a cookies or flower based basket, but most baskets will have a variety of items relating to the specific theme. Their prices are comparable to what you find from a Google search, typically around the $29.99 range to the $79.99 range.
So what separates La Bella Baskets from the rest of the pack?
Okay if you're anything like me you're probably thinking to yourself okay and? What makes this company different and a viable business when you have some other well known players in the space that do this business? I just thought to myself how can someone compete against those established brands that have TV commercials and wide exposure? Honestly I didn't find much in the way of a unique selling proposition.
The one thing that may be something that differentiates them is their Basket of Hope Program. Each month they deliver to single moms a La Bella Basket of Hope that is filled with beautiful Spa and Bath essentials. La Bella Baskets has a deeply held belief that every single mom needs to be nurtured and to find a calm place in their lives to relax, melt away stress, rejuvenate, heal. This is a key element of their philosophy of supporting women. Consultants nominate people they know to receive a Basket of Hope. Look I think that's a great thing from a personal and karma stand point. But I still don't see anything about the company that makes it a game changer in their space. Please keep in mind I'm not infallible so maybe someone from the company can enlighten me. But on the surface, I don't see how the company is set up to help their independent contractors compete against bigger players or someone just going to their local flower shop.
How to do you make money selling baskets?
Allegedly La Bella Baskets cannot sell all these baskets alone, they would never make enough to cover costs, so they recruit Independent Contractors, "Professional Basket Consultants," to sell the baskets for them. La Bella handles making, creating, packaging and shipping the baskets. What they need from their consultants are customers. You earn 20% commission on each basket sold through your site. As you build the business volume and build your team, you might be able to earn up to 35% . I'd focus on the 20% number for now if I were you. You also earn $15 for each referral you find for a new work at home consultant who wants to sell baskets.
To ensure that their consultants are always the ones making money. La Bella Baskets has a policy where no one can buy anything directly from the La Bella Basket Website or Facebook page. You must buy through one of their contractors. Now this part I really like! It shows me they are dedicated to their people's success and are not greedy. What's even better is that the company sends referrals to you via their website and through their consultants Facebook posts. So they're really about their independent sales force. I guess that definitely separates them from the well known companies out there.
How do I get paid?
You get paid every other week, through PayPal which can be a good or bad thing depending on your feelings on PayPal. Personally I like it because it gives me access to my money instantly once it's in the account. In any event, your commission is only on the price of the item, and not on any sales tax or shipping that they collect. There are no quotas to meet, you get your commission on what you sold, not matter how big or small. This is definitely a plus for those of you that hate the opportunities that require a minimum threshold amount to get your money. Like most home business and traditional work at home jobs, you are 100% responsible for paying income taxes to Uncle Sam yourself. As annoying and scary as this sounds it can actually be a good thing because you have a lot more things that can be written off as an expense that you can't do as an employee. But consult your tax professional as Eddy is not an expert in such matters which my lawyer has insisted I express. lol
How much can I expect to make?
Commission on one basket is $20. If you sold one basket a day it would be $600 a month or $7200 a year. You can do the math from there. If you add in two referrals a month, at $15 each or $30 a month more (an additional $360 a year). It honestly depends on how hard you work, and how much traffic you can get to your website. This is pretty much the spiel for most online businesses. So nothing new here. Just keep in mind that this isn't a job and just because you put in a 100 hours doesn't mean you'll earn anywhere near the time you put INITIALLY. As you gain traction it does start to better translate in that way. So if you don't have delayed gratification, keep that in mind for this business or any business for that matter.
What kind of costs are there going to be to set up my home business?
As I said before, this is a business, not a work at home job, so you should expect some kind of start up cost but you will be surprised at how little you really need for this particular opportunity. The required cost is a $20/monthly fee to La Bella Baskets. They GIVE you a store website with the entire catalog of products and ordering portals etc, and they also give you a marketing website. They take care of all the money and shipping. In case you did not properly process that tidbit… you don't have to worry about collecting money, or becoming "BFFs" with the UPS or Postal workers. They take care of that entire end of things. All you need to worry about is educating people about the product so they hopefully purchase it.
It should be noted that they frequently run a 7 day trial for $1.97 where you would have access to everything they offer including all the training before you decide to join. I think this is great for you tire kickers out there. It gives you a taste of the business before you fully commit yourself. It also shows me they're confident enough in their business to give you a trial because they've probably figured out the math in which a good portion of people end up staying on board. So that's a plus in my book.
Before someone decides to get all technical on me, I should point out that technically there are "additional" fees involved that include things like the cost of a computer, high speed internet, any other legal stuff to keep Uncle Sam happy (that is for your financial whiz of an adviser, not measly old me to advise you on). I don't really count these as upfront costs because most of this stuff you would be paying for regardless. But you probably wouldn't get the tax benefit that you now have using them for business.
Will LaBella Baskets help me learn how to do all this stuff?
As a business man, the biggest problem I see is how are you going to compete with the big players in the space? As a trained affiliate marketer I already know how I would do this using long tailed keywords & SEO. Because the fact of the matter is that if your website isn't on Google's Page #1 for some type of basket or gift search word, you might as well forget it. Fortunately La Bella Baskets is aware of this and helps you out. Once you sign up you are assigned a mentor who is available 24/7. You get some basic Internet marketing training that explains the different marketing approaches you can take. As you grow the business, more detailed Internet Marketing Lessons and are geared to your specific marketing approach. All training materials, templates, brochures, monthly newsletters for online and offline marketing are available for download by paid members of La Bella Baskets. This is probably where some of your $20 per month goes. They obviously use some of it to invest in creating a training center for you. I think this is a great plus because without any training, you'll never be able to compete with experienced marketers like myself and the big corporations. It's the reason why I emphasize it so much on this site and why I cringe when I hear from people that they decided to create a website and start affiliate marketing without training. To me that's like saying I'm going to climb Mount Everest in a zebra print speedo and some flip flops. Oh you can try it if you want, but I guarantee it won't turn out well! So it's good to see that La Bella Baskets understands the importance of training it's business owners. It's not an option, it's a requirement for success!
Has anyone made money with this?
As far as I can tell, those folks who have been willing to put the work in using good, solid Internet marketing strategies are making money. The company is just over a year old, so you won't find what I really love to find, which is a history of people who have made money over time. Hopefully they are a company that lasts the test of time.
Here is a quick summary of the things they do I generally like a lot.
• You have a product that you know there is interest in, we see gift baskets all the time,
• They take care of the money and shipping, that is huge in my book.
• Even better, they take care of the actual baskets, you do not have to buy any products yourself, like some home party companies make you do.
• They give you the online store website, so you do not need to learn anything about making a website.
• You should be able to build a solid list of repeat customers which is what will sustain your business over time.
• You get paid on a regular basis, no quotas. I can't tell you how big of a thumbs up that is for me and most people.
• They provide training, right there on their site, which sadly, many companies do not do.
• They use Pay Pal for payments which is like instant gratification because there is no waiting for a check in the mail assuming you have a Paypal debit card like I do!
• The IM training, the marketing strategies they suggest are something you will be able to use in all your other projects and many future projects in affiliate marketing.
Cons
• For some they will say the $20 is a con so I will mention it here. Look if you don't have the $20, you don't have it. But there is no way in my eyes that is a con. Think of it this way. $20 at minimum wage is 2 hours work. When you consider all the techno stuff, websites, domain names, their customer service, Q and A, not to mention making the baskets, gathering the supplies to put into them, packing them, and mailing them, seems more than two hours a month.
• Even though it is not a requirement, you will probably have to get referrals to truly boost your income. I have nothing against referrals as they are legitimate part of most online businesses. I just know that some folks dislike doing this because they feel the only way they can get referrals is by harassing family and friends. If La Bella Baskets does a great job of teaching you internet marketing, that shouldn't be the case. After all I've made a living referring total strangers to legitimate opportunities that I've tried and recommended. So this optional part of the business may be a con for some of you. But keep in mind the operative word here is that it's optional.
• Even though you can cancel your membership at anytime, it must be in writing and there is a 30 day wait to fully close down you account, which means another $20 goes to them. My guess is the 30 days is to let any pending orders fully process which I guess makes some sense. But It still seems a bit funny style to me to make people jump through hoops to cancel. It really should just be a matter of clicking a button and that's it.
• As I've implied or flat out stated many times in this article, competition is a major concern for me here. You're competing against established brands with deep pockets for advertising on multiple mediums such as TV, the web, etc. Because I've been trained very well, competition means nothing to me. I'm in one of the most competitive industries and I do pretty well because I have that training and people seem to enjoy my babbling on (Well I hope you do.). But if you're a newbie, this may seem very daunting to you. Since I'm not actually a member of La Bella Baskets, I can't really speak about their training material. Hopefully they are up to snuff and do teach you some great internet marketing because your success will be dependent on it to compete against the bigger boys. If it is decent, then you're in a great place and don't need to worry about competition. But I can definitely seeing that competition may be an area of concern for people.
Conclusion, Is La Bella Baskets a scam?
At the end of the day, despite some of the minor cons this company looks to me like a solid, honest way to get started in a home business. All you need to do is get customers, they take care of all the rest. When it comes to multiple streams of income, this sort of thing could possibly fit right into your portfolio of money making opportunities. I like it because the cash output is minimal, and if you put in the work, you have the chance to bring in extra dollars to you pocket. So, no this does not scream scam to me.
I also appreciate the fact that the gift basket industry has been rated as one of the top 20 successful home business by Small Business Magazine. This is obviously a good sign. But just keep in mind you won't be successful by just joining the company. Contrary to the movie "Field of Dreams", people won't come just because you build it. The same goes for those folks that build websites with slapped up affiliate links that lack the training to bring visitors in. Success is all about what you put into it and the training you have! If you were to do a Google Search with the phrase "gift baskets" you will get over 10 million results, so it is safe to say this is a popular and highly competitive business. The good news is that at the time of this article, a whole bunch of the first and second page results are independent companies, so the big guys (Amazon, FTD 1800 ) do not have a tight grip on the market. It shows me that some of these smaller companies really know their internet marketing stuff which is great for you provided that La Bella Basket is giving you some great training. If you learn your stuff, you can get any page ranked high in Google.
That being said, I would be totally off base if I made it seem like the only way to succeed with this business is using the web. It's probably the way I would do it but it doesn't mean it has to be your way. I think if you live in an area where there are not readily accessible florist/gift basket businesses, the fliers and promo material they provide, you could build your business the old fashioned way. You can even have ads in the local newspapers, business cards and even home parties. Local businesses often use these sorts of places for employee thanks, so there is another avenue. For me in NYC, that would not work so well, but small communities it could be an option for you. So there are definitely different ways to succeed with this business. I'm just a web guy so sometimes I get all narrow minded. So forgive me. lol
In any event, although I think the company is legit, the fact the company is so young is something to keep an eye on. You just have to do what I preach all the time and watch for red flags. Are the payments sent on time? Are they accurate? Is the website keeping track of your sales correctly? All the things you should be doing no matter what kind of work at home income you are involved in. If you know me, you know "Due diligence" & "Read, don't skim" are my favorite words!
So should you join La Bella Baskets?
What do I look like you dad? I am not going to tell you what you should do here. You guys are grown and intelligent folks. I've done my job by laying out what my research team has discovered about this company. You have to take all I've told you and mix it up in your head and come out with a decision that is right for you. You already know I'm about empowering you guys to make your own decisions. Yes, I think that highly of you.
So take everything I've written here with a grain of salt. Then take the feedback of the reps that will probably chime in below and work from that. Just keep in mind any opportunity is going to have sore points for people. I don't know of one work at home company that everyone loves. There is always a con for somebody. Be extremely wary of people that make it seem like their opportunity is perfect because they're full of it and may try to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge while they're also stealing your wallet.
Well that's enough of my jibber jabbing. If you've worked for this company or ever considered it, we would love to hear from you below. For those of you that have no interest in being the boss and want a traditional work at home job, just visit our work at home jobs page. If you want to figure out if something is a scam and need to know right away, then visit my work at home scams page and watch the video listed there. That's how I research many companies. And finally if you like what you've read be sure to share it with anyone you might think it will help. We make it easy with the items listed below this article. Feel free to subscribe as well if you like my babbling. Thanks for taking time to read this. Hopefully it entertained and educated you.
Sponsored Listings For ...
Did you know Eddy earns 5 figures monthly at home w/o a job?
All this, just by giving helpful solutions to hundreds of people.
You can too, with the right guidance. How?
Click here to find out...
BBB Listed Work At Home Company
Get Paid To Type Your Opinions.
No Fees, No Scams. Start Today!
Get Paid To Search Google!
No Fees! No Scams! No Hype!
Start & Earn Today!
Get Paid To Click on Ads!
Work At Home Now - No Fees!
No Scams! No Hype! Start Today!
Do you need help finding legit ways to work from home? Our FREE Work At home Guide will help you avoid scams and find FREE opportunities! Click here for more...
Weekly Work At Home Recap 8-27-2010
Hello All,
Hope you had a great week. Mine has been interesting to say the least. As some of my facebook fans already know, My wife went away on an all girls trip with her brother's wife and her sisters to Las Vegas. It's to celebrate her sister-in-law's big 30th. So if any of you live in Las Vegas and see 4 "old chicks" that have no business in the club, that would be my wife and her crew. lol (Yes, I know I've just sealed my fate. lol)
So while the wife plays and Lord know she deserves it, I have to go into full time Mr Mom mode aka Super Dad! I'll be the first to admit that I'm usually lazy around the house when my "better half" is here. I call her that because I think she's better at all this stuff than I am. lol But here's the thing, it's actually just a front. My mom actually raised me to be able to fend by myself without a woman. So when my wife does these escapes, I default to my good home training and can pretty much hold my own even though I pretend I can't when she's here. Fortunately for me she goes along with this phony facade that I put on to the world.
That being said, this week was yet another reminder of how much I admire single parents and stay at home moms (& Dads) that manage to juggle tending to the house, raising the kids and doing a work at home job. Time management becomes a requirement to maintain any sanity. I've literally had to alter my sleeping patterns so I can squeeze in some work early in the morning and late in the evening while the princess is still asleep. Child rearing is much easier when there are two parents involve and I feel very blessed that I'm in that type of relationship. I'm not looking down on those of you who are single parents. Stuff happens and Eddy's not judging you. In fact I have the utmost respect for you because I've been walking your shoes for a few days.
People that look down on stay at home or single parents need to be smacked. They wouldn't survive a day in your shoes. So I just wanted to say thank you for the great service you guys provide despite the limited resources of time and energy at your disposal. You folks should get the salary of these greedy executives and shady politicians. Because you probably put in more work in a day then most of them do in a week or lifetime.
Being Mr mom for the better part of the week has just re-affirmed the importance of what we do here on this site. I feel more committed than ever to provide you with various ways of earning from home so you can continue to be the super moms and dads that you are! In any event, thanks again for what you guys do! You're really an inspiration to me.
In any event, I would love to hear how some of you super stay at home or single parents manage your days in terms of balancing the children, chores and working at home. Do you have any tips or secrets you want to share with the rest of us?
Enjoy the leads below!
Monday 8/23/2010
- Writers for NC Urban Online Magazine
Tuesday 8/24/2010
- Writers
Wednesday 8/25/2010
- Writer
- Litigation/Paralegal Secretary
- Legal Newsletter/Blog Writer
- Authors
Thursday 8/26/2010
- Writer
- Writer
- Writers Needed to Write Product Reviews
- Customer Service – Mothers Only
Recommended Instant Work At Home Opportunities
Ad Clickers Wanted (Clixsense)
Get Paid To Search The Web (SwagBucks)
Get Paid To Search The Web (iRazoo)
Work At Home With Amazon.com (Data Entry, Typing, etc)
More Job Leads HomeJobStop.com (Membership based site)
Sponsored Listings For ...
Did you know Eddy earns 5 figures monthly at home w/o a job?
All this, just by giving helpful solutions to hundreds of people.
You can too, with the right guidance. How?
Click here to find out...
BBB Listed Work At Home Company
Get Paid To Type Your Opinions.
No Fees, No Scams. Start Today!
Get Paid To Search Google!
No Fees! No Scams! No Hype!
Start & Earn Today!
Get Paid To Click on Ads!
Work At Home Now - No Fees!
No Scams! No Hype! Start Today!
- Do you need help finding legit ways to work from home? Our FREE Work At home Guide will help you avoid scams and find FREE opportunities! Click here for more...
Weekly Work At Home Recap 8/20/2010
Guess who's back?
I'm back from my vacation to the Bahamas and feeling totally refreshed. It's amazing what a little time away can do! Hope you guys missed me. I have to admit I'm still trying to get in back into the swing of things. Summer time is pretty much over and I'm trying to enjoy the rest of it. Hopefully you are too.
In any event, I'll keep this short. The job leads are listed below. Sorry about last week's leads. I really had every intention of doing them. But spending a day on a private island looking at views like the following: View 1, View 2, Our Chariot, My daughter napping 1,"Bee" napping 2, doesn't really inspire any sort of work. So please forgive me. Enjoy your leads!
Monday 8/16/2010
- Environmental Writing and Outreach Consultant
Tuesday 8/16/2010
- Independent Contracter General Transcriptionist
Wednesday 8/18/2010
- Pharmecuetical Scientific Writer-
- Authors
Thursday 8/19/2010
- Professional Writer and Transcriber
- Clinical Trial Protocol Writer
Recommended Instant Work At Home Opportunities
Ad Clickers Wanted (Clixsense)
Get Paid To Search The Web (SwagBucks)
Get Paid To Search The Web (iRazoo)
Work At Home With Amazon.com (Data Entry, Typing, etc)
More Job Leads HomeJobStop.com (Membership based site)
Sponsored Listings For ...
Did you know Eddy earns 5 figures monthly at home w/o a job?
All this, just by giving helpful solutions to hundreds of people.
You can too, with the right guidance. How?
Click here to find out...
BBB Listed Work At Home Company
Get Paid To Type Your Opinions.
No Fees, No Scams. Start Today!
Get Paid To Search Google!
No Fees! No Scams! No Hype!
Start & Earn Today!
Get Paid To Click on Ads!
Work At Home Now - No Fees!
No Scams! No Hype! Start Today!
- Do you need help finding legit ways to work from home? Our FREE Work At home Guide will help you avoid scams and find FREE opportunities! Click here for more...
Is PeopleString.com A Scam?
So what is it? Well according to them, PeopleString.com is trying to become the next best thing to…..Facebook. Their spiel is that on thier social network site they will share in the revenue they make from all those ads. This may sound very familiar because MyLot.com works very much the same way but is has been established as legitimate for many years now. In any event, PeopleString claims they give back 70% of advertisers income to their members. But obviously the advertisers are hoping that you're paying attention to their ads. I don't know about you but when I am on Facebook, I tend to ignore most of the ads. Well PeopleString can't have that, in order to convince advertisers to sign up with them they need to show the members click on the ads.
So to ensure this, members get credit for using different things they offer on the site and sponsored by advertisers, to please them and generate income, The more you use it, the more credit you get. Because of that, it also becomes a money making opportunity. I go into detail later how all that works, don't worry! On top of that, they have a patented free email system that lets you use video email as well as technology to track, recall and destroy emails once they have been sent. Think about how many times you've sent off a reckless email and wished you could take it back. So this technology is pretty impressive.
In any event, signing up for PeopleString.com is Free which I know all of you love. There is an option to upgrade to Entrepreneur Membership Status for a one time fee of $200. All this does is give you higher percentages of the payouts and better email storage options. But remember it is optional, and they do not push it down your throat which is always a good thing in my book.
For those of you who care about this official kind of thing, you should know the parent company, BigString.com, is a publicly traded company listed on the NY Stock Exchange with a million users. BigString.com is basically behind patented email service that I mentioned earlier that lets you track your emails and recall it, erase it once sent (after a set period of time), and can put a tag on it so it cannot be printed. So PeopleString doesn't seem to be a small fry company considering this type of back up parent company. Personally I take stuff like this with a grain of salt, sort of like BBB ratings. It's nice but it doesn't guarantee anything in my mind. I tend to pay more attention to the word on the street of the people that actual use the company. But to each their own.
How do you make money with People String.com?
When you sign up for your free membership and log in the first time you are bombarded with "Deals of the Day" that offer points and credit options. For returning members this is fine, a new member will be confused by this. Once that is closed down, you end up looking at a page that looks like your Facebook page, but with way more ads. All the things you would expect are there, invite friend, "write something," profiles, all that stuff. So the social network piece is there, you would just start inviting friends and start conversations.
To make thing easy for you they let you link instantly to major email sites, (MSN,GMail, Yahoo etc) IM and Social Networks. Really, you can instantly click to your Facebook page! The ideda is that this would be your home page, then you would be able to get to those other places easy. But that is neither here nor there as I am here to try to tell how how you can make money with this thing.
They keep track of two sets of numbers. Money Credits and People Points. Remember those Deals of the Day they bombard you with when you log on? You either earn Points or they give you Credit. It tells you right there on the ad how much and what type of point/credit you get. With these offers you will recognize elements of some of the other programs I have talked about here in the past. It is like Paid surveys (My Survey), Pay-per-Click (Clixsense) and getting paid to fill out forms, ( Fusion Cash) all wrapped into this one social network site.
People Points are earned for the things that show you are using the site. The number of People Points you gather is what they use to figure out how much of the 70% they give back ends up in your account. You can get these points if you click on ads on the site, or you use their branded Google Search Bar, or you sign up for a free newsletter and if you use their email. You get points each time you log in, so you could sign in and out up to 4 times a day for more credit. Believe it or not, you get 10 points for linking to your Facebook account. Why would they reward you for using their rival? My best guess is there is some computer information sharing thing happening. But I think you get the picture. Use all the stuff they throw on there, and you get points. Points convert to dollars from the company. 100 points is worth One Dollar.
Money Credit is for when you do things that go to the next step. If you BUY something from an advertiser, you get lots of Money Credit. If you take a survey, or write reviews you will earn Money Credit. To make spending your money so much easier they have this thing called Shopping Mall where it links to major online shopping spots that PeopleString.com negotiated ways to give cash rebates for purchases. Shop online through these links, you get money credit to you account. This should all sound familiar if you have used SwagBucks.
How to make more money with PeopleString.
1. Mailbox-Cashbox is their signature money making offer.
Filling out an interest survey gets you $1.50 to your money credit. Next, you get a postcard in the mail with special codes. This verifies that you are a real person. Go back to Mailbox-Cashbox area of the site, enter those codes, and you officially entered to the program. PeopleString will now send you advertiser's postal mail with unique advertiser codes that you enter into your account. You can even set the number of mail that you want to receive. Some will arrive in your mail, and some will be found on your Mailbox-Cashbox online account. Credit is earned based on the number of advertisement codes you enter. This whole thing is kind of like Hits4Pay, but to me it gets complicated as they do it through the mail! Confused? You are not alone.
In order to build up your Mailbox-Cashbox account members will receive up to $1.00 per person for getting other members to sign up and to enter their Mailbox-Cashbox codes.
2. Referrals To People String
All of this is well and good, and there is evidence that people actually make money with these programs, yet the expectation has been described as minimal. The real money comes from referrals which I get, they need to build up membership on these new sites and the quickest way to do it is with referrals.
At PeopleString.com, when you refer a new member, you not only get People Points, but you are also awarded 5% of the revenue that new member brings in. If you refer 100 members, and they each earn $25 in Money Credits, it falls out like this $1.25 a person X 100= $125). The idea is that those 100 people will love is so much that they go off and start referring more people that we in the business call it your down-line. You earn 2% of down-line revenue.
Between the original referrals and their down-lines, and getting all of your referrals to sign up for Mailbox-Cashbox, there is potential money to be made.
At the end of the day, getting massive number of referrals for programs like this is always much easier to achieve for trained affiliates because we know how to get in front of a large number of people using various internet marketing techniques. Most people find getting referrals daunting without such training. So you may need to focus on your individual efforts or convincing your family and friends why it's worth it to them to socialize on PeopleString vs Facebook.
3. Entrepreneur Package
As I mentioned earlier they have an upgrade membership that gives you a greater share of the advertiser dollar earned at PeopleString. Like it or not, most programs will have some kind of up-sell offered. It is how they make even more money. With PeopleString.com, you pay them $200, a one time fee, and your earning percentages are upped to 20% on your referrals and 6% on your downline. This package also gives you a domain name with 20 email accounts, and unlimited video email. I want you to remember guys, this site is free, and there is no huge push to upgrade, From where I stand, it is just an option to use when you find you are making money, particularly from referrals. Some will pay the $200 right off the bat, thinking they will get all these referrals to sign up and get the 20%. Me? I like to see how it works first before I spend my hard earned dollars, and so should you, if you get my drift.
When will PeopleString.com give me my share of the profits?
Free members will get paid once a month if they reach a $25 threshold, which rolls over if you did not meet it. Payment is by through a partnership with AlertPay, direct deposit or the old reliable check in the mail. You must fill in a IRS W-9 tax form before getting paid. All the information I read on the forums confirmed this, people did paid. Entrepreneur members will get paid twice a month, if they meet the threshold, of course.
What if I live outside the US?
According to the website, everything except the Mailbox-Cashbox is available to members outside of the US. Mailbox-Cashbox is only activated if your country can get vast numbers to join. That whole thing is advertiser driven. To get around that obstacle, outside the USA members can set up a Internet marketing campaign to target USA members to sign up under them, and then they get the % share. With that being said, I have to say the most common forum complaints I found were from outside the US members complaining about not getting paid and accounts being shut down. If I lived outside of North America, I'd probably pass on this one as a money maker.
Okay so now that we've babbled on about how this works. What's the dirt on this company because we all know no company is perfect. All of them have cons and it's always important for you to know what they are because we all view certain cons differently. At least knowing them can help you make an educated decision. So with that in mind, let's break them down.
Cons
• Complicated for no good reason. The first thing that stands out to me is how confusing and complicated their main money making offer, Mailbox-Cashbox post card system, seems to be. If you are familiar with Hits4Pay, it pretty much the same thing, you get credit for viewing ads, only PeopleString.com makes you put advertisers codes into their site yourself. I found all kinds of confusion out there about the post card thing. Bottom line? Way too complicated for many people, when it does not have to be.
• Large payout requirement. Like most of these non-traditional opportunities there is always a minimum payout amount before they send you a check. For PeopleString that magic amount is $25. It's not outrageously high, but let's keep it real. Without referrals it will take awhile to reach it as you can assume the advertisement payments are along the lines of Hits4Pay, Clixsense and other Pay-per-Click programs which don't pay a lot for viewing ads. That being said, you know I feel about multiple streams of income. The more the better especially when you get paid for stuff you're already doing for free. But I'm a wild boy like that with my wacky way of thinking.
• Expensive upgrade fee. Compared to Clixsense which only charges about $10 for an upgrade fee and offers similar money making options, $200 seems excessive to me and most people. If you're anything like me, I would at least wait until I earned my first $200 and use that $$ to upgrade, and even then, I'd have to have amazing monthly results to consider it. That being said we have to keep this all in perspective. The upgrade is purely optional so it's not like you're being forced to pay it.
• Lack of training on how to use the site. When the first thing you see is ads, and then you see a Facebook style page, and there is not an obvious TAKE A TOUR HERE button, you are just asking for confusion. To be fair, I saw on the PeopleString.com website there are links to two options for webinar/video training series. There are several videos on the forum on how to use the site. But you should not have to search that hard to find out how to use something like this.
• No sense of the number of advertisers. 70% sharing income sounds good, but 70% of nothing gives you nothing. Yeah, that is kind of extreme, but it is why I took so long investigating this thing. I simply cannot tell how many advertisers are joining up and if there is a good balance between earning from ads, surveys and signing up for newsletters and how much is based on referrals. What I do know, is everything I read mentioned how minimal the amount earned from using the site, and that referrals is the true money maker.
• Program may be on it's last legs. When this thing first started, in 2009 , there was all kinds of online chatter and blog posts by enthusiastic members trying to build referrals. I first started to look at this in the spring of 2010 and when I went back a second time a few months later, I did not find nearly the amount of chatter or current posts. Yea, there are still some blog posts trying to drum up referral business, but not at the same level. So I have to tell you it is a kind of red flag for me, as I have seen Beta tested sites like this fizzle. It could be just a fluke, but I am just tellin' ya what I noticed. I checked out the site, it is still there, up and running and functional.
Conclusion Is It a Scam?
Honestly, I'm really undecided about this company which is probably why I never joined even when it was being hyped up to me via private emails and all the banners I saw all over the web at the start of 2009. It just never sat right in my stomach. I also just felt it was too complicated to understand how to make money. My thought was if I don't understand how this damn thing works, how am I going to convince my loyal users to join it? So with that in mind I have passed on this opportunity and will continue to do so. Yes there have been some people that have been paid. There is no denying that. But it doesn't look like a lot of that has been happening recently that me and my research team can find. In my years of experience in this industry, that's usually a sign of sinking ship. I'm no Popeye the sailor man but I know that people shouldn't board sinking ships or stay on them. But that's me. You do what you feel is best for you. I could be totally wrong. I'm more inclined to stick with something similar that has been proven over the years at MyLot.com it's not perfect either but they consistently pay me every month and have been for years. It's where I go when I want to do some social chatting that gets me paid for my nonsensical online conversations.
Anyway, if you have joined People String and have been paid recently I would love to hear from you below. If you haven't been paid or experienced other issues, with this company, we'd like to hear from you too. The more information from both sides, the better. In any event this wraps up my review regarding PeopleString. I wish I could definitely say it's something you should try but I can't if I wouldn't try it. That's not my style. So we'll be moving on to the next one!
Sponsored Listings For ...
Did you know Eddy earns 5 figures monthly at home w/o a job?
All this, just by giving helpful solutions to hundreds of people.
You can too, with the right guidance. How?
Click here to find out...
BBB Listed Work At Home Company
Get Paid To Type Your Opinions.
No Fees, No Scams. Start Today!
Get Paid To Search Google!
No Fees! No Scams! No Hype!
Start & Earn Today!
Get Paid To Click on Ads!
Work At Home Now - No Fees!
No Scams! No Hype! Start Today!
- Do you need help finding legit ways to work from home? Our FREE Work At home Guide will help you avoid scams and find FREE opportunities! Click here for more...
Weekly Work At Home Recap 8-06-2010
Hey Guys,
Hope you had a great week. I'm going to keep it short this week. Mentally, I'm on vacation mode as you can tell by the picture on the left except obviously I have a year round tan. lol I'm heading back to the Bahamas for about a week. So it's hard to focus on anything of substance to inspire you. I'm also in the process of trying to buy my dream house. Hopefully by the time I get back that is a reality. Those of you that are fans of my Facebook fanpage know the pain I've been going through with this process. Thanks for the support ya'll have been giving me on that.
In any event, since I don't have much in the way of anything informational or inspirational, I decided to refer you to an interesting article I read: Want More Profits Send Your Workers Home. It details how at home workers tend to be more productive and help companies make even more money. It's a great article to send to your boss if your job can be done from home and wanted some documentation as to why it helps the company. It's also a great piece to send to anyone you know that think people that work at home goof off all day and are lazy. (Haters!)
Well that's it for me. I'll leave you with the following quote:
"Failure is success if we learn from it."
- Malcolm Forbes
Too many of you aren't seeing your failure as such and as a result you're holding yourself back from the success you deserve. Get your mindset right, take action and everything else falls into place. It may not be on the time table you want but if you stick through with it, you're bound to succeed.
In any event, enjoy the leads below!
I
Monday 8/02/2010
Tuesday 8/03/2010
- Advertising/Marketing Copywriter
- German to English Document Translator
Wednesday 8/04/2010
- Dutch Localization Translator
- Principal Technical Writer/Project Lead
Thursday 8/05/2010
Recommended Instant Work At Home Opportunities
Ad Clickers Wanted (Clixsense)
Get Paid To Search The Web (SwagBucks)
Get Paid To Search The Web (iRazoo)
Work At Home With Amazon.com (Data Entry, Typing, etc)
More Job Leads
HomeJobStop.com (Membership based site)
- Do you need help finding legit ways to work from home? Our FREE Work At home Guide will help you avoid scams and find FREE opportunities! Click here for more...
Is Arise.com A Scam?
If you've been in this industry long enough, you've probably heard that any work at home opportunity that requires a fee is a scam. I know it was something that was pumped to me many times over on various sites. The intentions behind this piece of advice is good. But today I'm going to turn it on it's head. Because the folks that have given you this advice are guilty of some "Simple Simon" behavior. This basically means they're over simplifying advice that should be prefaced with certain exclusions. This is going to make a lot more sense as your read this review of Arise.com so sit tight if you're interested in another legitimate business opportunity outside of affiliate marketing. If you have any work experience in Customer Service, Tech Support or Sales, you'll want to read this review in detail.
What is Arise.com?
So how does this all work?
How do you make money with Arise.com?
What is the pay scale?
How often do you get paid?
Is this available for people living overseas?
Arise.com is a good home based business because…
Cons
So Is Arise a Scam?
- Do you need help finding legit ways to work from home? Our FREE Work At home Guide will help you avoid scams and find FREE opportunities! Click here for more...
That is too funny! I can’t believe I didn’t pick up on that...