eCosway Makes it easy for ordinary people to profit from E-commerce.

How the Business Works

When you enroll as a Business Owner, you are instantly given your own branch of the eCosway mall. Your Business Owner ID serves as the website "address" of your branch. From this branch, you can build a global network of shoppers and other business owners, and earn profits from the sales that are generated.

Shoppers get More Shoppers

You shop and invite others to shop at your branch.

Then we entice your shoppers to refer other shoppers with our incredible Shopper Rewards Program – which gives them big discounts, exclusive value-buys and the chance to buy highly desirable, brand name products for only ONE DOLLAR.

The system helps to build your ever-expanding Shopper Network as excited shoppers bring others to shop at your branch.

Branches get More Branches:

You can also bring in other people who, like you, want to be business owners.

Each new eCosway Business Owner you bring in creates a new branch that is linked to yours. These new Business Owners will attract more shoppers and create even more Business Owner branches. All of these endlessly multiplying branches contribute to your profits.

We make branch expansion easy by giving you all the tools and materials you need to get people’s attention, and offering them a system that eliminates the usual risk and hassle of starting an online business.

Many of your Shoppers will also see the Business Ownership profit potential and decide to become Business Owners themselves.

You Eventually Develop a Global Business Network.

With the power of advanced communications and the Internet, your Shopper and Business Owner Branches can one day span the world even if you start off with just a few friends and neighbors. We call this your Global Business Network and it can generate sales 24 hours per day from endlessly multiplying branches. This perpetual growth means perpetual profit for you.

The problem with online shopping malls is that they came and went in the 1990s. They were fizzers and duds ("fads" for short) then, and they're no different now. They sound great, but the reality is something else entirely.

They keep bobbing up as new generations of Internet users arrive online, but they're almost always offered by people out to make a fast buck by flogging an unsustainable concept to ignorant, inexperienced, desperate or gullible people.

They never last.

They're the 21st century equivalent of the Brooklyn Bridge. (Never heard of that old scam? Well... I have this wonderful bridge I'm not using if you have a little spare cash. Contact me at suckers@oneborneveryminute.com.)

Here's why I've been so opposed to Internet-related MLM 'opportunities' over the past 13 years.

There are two primary reasons.

1. Deception

"If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..."

There are some VERY questionable "opportunities" out there on the Wild, Wild Web.

The ones that trouble me most are the self-perpetuating Internet marketing "systems" that simply sell you a web site designed to sell others an identical web site for selling others an identical web site that sells an identical web site (and so on and on and on).

Most bear strong similarities to chain letters and pyramid selling schemes where the product is either spurious or merely an attempt to legitimise a scheme in which the real money is made from recruiting, NOT from the sale of a truly substantive product or service.

EXAMPLE 1: Chain letters, including the notorious "Edward L. Green" letter, and the "Self-Help Co-operation Program" (aka "Mutual Assistance Program"), usually offer a series of "information reports" that you purchase from the five or six people listed at the end of the letter. What you receive are usually poorly-reproduced, umpteenth- generation photocopies of a single page, the sole purpose of which is NOT to provide information (it's either barely legible or of dubious value), but to legitimise the scam by creating the ILLUSION of supplying a "product." These scams are illegal. They contravene most anti-pyramid selling laws around the world.

EXAMPLE 2: You're referred to a web site that, in very compelling language, skillfully-written, promises you riches beyond your ability to conceive when you buy a web site just like this one (for prices ranging from $29 to $50,000 -- yes, $50,000!) and recruit people into the system to sell web sites that are simply copies of this one (but with your name and contact details, etc.)

Oh, yes... you receive access to all kinds of educational material about the internet, and you may even receive free server space and a template-style or "cookie-cutter"-type web site building facility, plus marketing and promotional support to sell your program, all of which can be had FREE from hundreds of sources on line... and, somehow, this spurious "product" is supposed to legitimise a blatant system of "reward for headhunting"?

Can someone explain the essential differences in principle between these two examples?

One is just a hi-tech (well... maybe not all that hi-tech) reincarnation of the other. Their target audiences are the same... the ignorant, the inexperienced, the naive, the desperate, the lazy, greedy or just plain gullible, sucked in by the lure of "get rich quick" promises for little or no time or effort.

Regardless of any highly-emotional rationalizations to distract you from the truth, or to make you feel all "warm and fuzzy," such as "we're going to save the world's children" or "we're going to bring e-commerce within the reach of everyone," the reality is still the same:

"You can dress yourself up as a legitimate business and call yourself something you're not, but a pyramid is still a pyramid, and pyramids are illegal,"
-- Jodie Bernstein, Director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1999/9912/2xtreme.htm

On the other hand, opportunities which are legitimate, vertical marketing systems for distribution of genuine products, and which offer opportunities for part-timers to earn extra income, have a definite place in the free enterprise system. As always, though, you need to be sure of the motives of the seller.

Do your due diligence. ALWAYS.

And listen to your HEAD, not your heart! This is BUSINESS.


2. Limited Opportunity -- Low margins, fast-changing technology

Apart from any legal or ethical concerns, the other problem with technology-based MLM businesses is that they suffer from three major threats:

a. Rapidly-changing technology

b. Hyper-competition

c. Low profit margins because of a. and b.

No sooner does someone come up with a new angle on internet or telecommunications technology and finally puts it into place, than someone else comes up with a newer and better one.

WARNING: If any technology-based opportunity begins recruiting and taking money BEFORE its system is firmly in place and PROVEN, give it a H-U-G-E miss... you can safely conclude that your cash is going to fund their research and development!

This alone makes them illegal in most countries, because they're really taking money under false pretences... they're not revealing the risk involved. This contravenes most corporations and securities laws. Be prepared to kiss your money and your dreams goodbye.

Internet-related MLM opportunities are failing at an accelerating rate. (For all kinds of reasons, too -- not just rapidly changing technology. Some things NEVER change! Nor do some people.)

In any industry or profession where there's a lot of money to be made, there will be sharks and other predators waiting to feed off people's ignorance, naivete, greed, fear, laziness and bone-headed stupidity. (That's where you refuse to listen to anthing but what you WANT to be true, regardless of the F-A-C-T-S -- including recent H-I-S-T-O-R-Y.)

Ironically, the fact that they exist in such large numbers in network marketing is actually PROOF that it's possible to make very substantial income -- or they wouldn't bother hanging around!

Your best defence?

Education. Knowledge. Common sense. Rational, objective analysis combined with a dash of healthy scepticism.

Crunch the numbers (the REAL numbers!). Do the math.

And if it doesn't add up, don't join. Give it time. Listen for the crash (or the whimper.)

There's NO SUCH THING as a legitimate "ground floor" opportunity. All anyone using that ploy is REALLY saying is this (to get you to act out of fear of loss, without thinking):

"The sooner you get in, the more money you'll make."

Of course, what they're not saying to you is this:

"Get in now, because this thing is going to get LESS attractive."

The other thing they're not saying is that they expect to do better than you! (After all, they were in before you, and they're trying to recruit you!)

No matter how they dress up this B.S.*, usually in such terms as "first-mover advantage", remember this...

Legitimate MLM opportunities actually get BETTER with time. You can afford to wait a little for that new glamour deal to prove it's not a flash-in-the-pan.

Don't give in to the BIG Five Failure Factors in any business model:

• Fear of loss
• Ignorance
• Greed
• Laziness
• Gullibility

Hope this helps!

John Counsel

Oops... forgot the *!

(*B.S. – Bogus Science, Bozo Statistics, Beguiling Sophistry, Bewildering Semantics, Blatant Salesmanship, Blarney Stoning, Blind Stupidity, Baiting Suckers or Bovine Sediment. Take your pick... it's all just the same old deceptive B.S. anyway.)

Great post John. You have some good points. I fully agree about the mall concept. This is far from anything new. It is a complete waste of time IMHO.

__________________
Internet Marketing Consulting
Advanced Marketing Training

Thanks Jamison

I really like this forum, by the way. (Fendi told me more than a year ago that I would, but this is the first chance I've had to spend any time here. I just posted my background on the introductory board in case you don't know me from the proverbial bar of soap!) *lol*

John

Glad you like the forum. We are just getting it ramped back up. Management changed hands a couple times and things went out of control for a while last year. I am working on getting everything back on track.

I have a vision for this place to be a community where people can get the TRUTH about business opportunities and marketing. More of the right people are finding their way here and beginning to stick around.

You seem like a guy who calls it how you see it. I like that! I am going to pm you.

Jamison

__________________
Internet Marketing Consulting
Advanced Marketing Training

Anyone remember the WSI mall? A lot of people got sucked into that one.

Hi John

Really enjoy your post. That is exactly the way I feel, you do have a way with words.

The word the comes to mind is eloquently.

If only people can really think with their heads and not with their hearts, the failures on the net won't be so high. I guess all they see is the $$$$ sign.

helenaz

Ooooooooooops!


Sorry for the link. I tried afterwards to take it out - unable to do so

Please forgive me!

helenaz

Great post John!