Shopping Genie Is Going To Be HUGE - Avoid It Like The Plague
It's getting bigger every day but 'My Shopping Genie' has underlying problems where they'll appear to the public sooner rather than later.
I wrote a review for my subscribers all about it. Here it is.
My Shopping Genie - Review
A repeat of the 1999 Skybiz business
opportunity has hit the UK (although operating from the USA) after being
launched in Ireland. It's called My Shopping Genie and, I must say, a
very clever computer application is involved.
The Shopping Genie
app is a program that launches itself onto your computer desktop every
time the user completes a Google, Bing or Yahoo search using their
Internet browser.
Bascially, it finds any product that you're
searching for but only cheaper than you may find it without using the
Shopping Genie app. So far, so good.
It works pretty well and you can also compare prices and find money off vouchers as well.
End
users of this product will be pleased at how clever it is at placing
the cheapest products on the first page of the results which would
otherwise have been hidden deep down on much later pages and, therefore,
possibly missed by the person who is performing the search.
For us Internet marketers, though, we're only interested in business side of it and how we can get involved.
I
was invited to review My Shopping Genie by someone who was already very
active in the business, so I joined to find out what it was really
like. I even started promoting it, as suggested, to see how customers
would react to it.
As you know, I always use the product that I
review, otherwise I'm just guessing and the review is too shallow to
give an honest opinion which helps no one. So, getting stuck right in,
how did I fair?
I got my own 'back office' to set up a website,
put branding on the Shopping Genie apps that I'd be giving away for free
and generally adjusting the odd setting in order to make everything
work to my liking. I paid $199.00 and set up monthly payments of $29.00
to stay in as a distributor.
So I had my own Genie site for promotional use and my own Genie app to give a way for free.
I also had my own back-office to check statistics and update profiles.
So,
how does a distributor earn money? You earn nothing for the My
Shopping Genie product as that is given a way free. When you promote
it, you send potential customers to your unique website which is coded
with your Genie ID.
You can earn a penny or two when a user
clicks on the 'Compare' button which compares prices from different
search engines like Google etc..
This will give you around two
pounds a month on average, apparently. However, the big money is earned
by introducing a downline of other distributors to the system. You
will be paid for bringing in a new distributor and then each month that
they stay in it.
This creates a problem for UK users if My
Shopping Genie ever opens a registered office in the UK as it will
become a 'Trading Scheme' and promoting any business on the strength of
getting funds mainly from getting other people to join, is illegal.
Which probably explains why the system operates from the US and not
anywhere else. UK users will not be covered by UK law in this case.
My
other issue is that one of the main guys behind setting up My Shopping
Genie has a bit of a chequered past, even a prison sentence for
committing fraud.
I mentioned Skybiz earlier, which became Skybiz
2000 before it was closed down around 10 years ago. They owed millions
of dollars to customers but before the court case, they hid a few
million dollars in an Irish bank account where authorities couldn't
touch it. It was this cash that was used to launch My Shopping Genie in
the first place.
So, after this research, I would not recommend
you join it, although I realise many thousands of people already have.
The marketing is very clever and well set up, I noticed.
I have
also found out that certain distributors have found that their up-line
sponsors have changed ... moved to another position in order to enhance
their status to 'Diamond' which people normally only get to after
introducing a certain pre-determined number of distributors and have
made a certain amount of sales.
According to the terms and
conditions of My Shopping Genie, this is totally illegal and not allowed
in any shape or form. However, it does look good to announce to the
multitudes of followers at the Shopping Genie conventions (they're
happening all over the UK, it seems) that 'all these distributors have
gone Diamond in just 10 weeks' etc.. when they actually haven't, rather,
the guys at the top have 'allowed' this to happen to manipulate sales
and income for those higher up the network.
I witnessed this
happening in front of my eyes and found it a little distressing to say
the least ... so I cancelled my membership immediately. You have to
send off a fax to the USA and wait for confirmation in order to get your
'30 day money back guarantee' sent to you, which arrives in
approximately ten days from the confirmation email.
More people are joining My Shopping Genie every day but more are also cancelling, too.
On
further research, eBay are no longer associated to My Shopping Genie
and nor will they say why they pulled out. Also, the use of the Google
logo on the software is being used without the express permission of
Google themselves. These aren't major issues but there's no smoke
without fire, I say.
There's money to be made with My Shopping
Genie but those Internet marketers with the biggest subscriber lists
will take all the market share and saturate it to shreds leaving the
small time guy with nothing ... penniless, that is. It'll be closed
down within 18 months, I predict, possibly sooner judging by the way
it's motoring, which is why certain sponsors are now not being very
polite to their downlines when they call, if they answer their
telephones to them at all, that is.
They'll need to get the funds in fast before it's all shut down, just like Skybiz was all those years ago.
On
a recent television documentary, the guys at the top all walked off the
set when being interviewed after the reporter started asking probing
questions into the honesty and checking how legal and ethical My
Shopping Genie was. I wonder why?
They also swore that it was
the application they were promoting and NOT the networking side (which
would be illegal) however, on going to any of their seminars around the
country, you'll notice that they perform the American Big Shot style act
of 'earning 1000s of dollars in just a few weeks' by building a
downline network which is where the big bucks are earned. Again, this
is illegal.
I rarely condemn a product and come out with dozens
of negative comments but, I'm afraid to say that, as big as it's
growing, My Shopping Genie is a badly, potentially illegally run
business (the DTI are waiting for them) but with a half decent product.
If the product could be marketed correctly, the Genie would be
fantastic, that's what it needs. The networking side is totally
unacceptable where thousands upon thousands of distributors will lose
their money and, if they leave it more than 30 days, they'll never get
it back.
Not recommended.
The TV Documentary is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhf82b5aUUc
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