GDI is almost a scam, and here’s the catch.

For all of you out there who are trying hard to promote GDI and develop your business, sorry, I don’t want to rain on your parade, but the simple fact is, GDI (Global Domains International) is a mediocre product at best.

First of all, it’s now 2013 and this was first written in 2008 and GDI is still ‘a hot product’? Not likely. If it hasn’t taken off by now, there’s no reason to suspect it ever will.

Second of all, what is it? It’s domain hosting for $10 a month with a multi-level marketing scheme that pays you back $1 for every person under you for 5 levels.

Okay, that in itself is legitimate, and although any network marketing scheme is an immediate turn-off to many, for others, it’s a reasonably attractive opportunity.

Much better hosting is easily available from many, many providers for less than $10 per month. I searched through many of them and finally decided that PowWeb and Bluehost were two of the best and I’ve been using PowWeb now for several years. (Update, 2013, I’ve now switched to iPage which I think is affiliated to PowWeb.) (ps. The affiliate payment from these hosting companies is very good. iPage pays $105 for each new sign up.)

Thirdly, the product is web hosting and how many people need their own website? Not many, and for those that do, they’re better off with a ‘real’ hosting company.

Of course, the ‘real’ product from GDI is ‘get rich’. And that’s what gets everyone interested. So the real question is can you get rich with GDI? Nobody yet has shown me that they have and it’s now 2013.  Please add your name in the comments below if you have indeed gotten rich with GDI.

2013 Update:  We recently received an excellent comment from someone who is indeed making money with GDI. (See bottom of this post.) I agree with his assessment but still feel that GDI has no real product and ‘over promises’ and ‘under delivers’. I’d like to suggest a “better alternative to GDI” which is now ready.

The one aspect that kept me looking deeper into GDI was the $100 bonus for signing up 5 new members in a week.

Now, with only a slight thought outside the box, you can see that you could pay for 5 new members, that way giving them a free month to test it out further, and then collect the $100 bonus. You paid $50 and got back $100.

Everyone I asked said that yes, the bonus is legitimate and they do pay it. And there are many individuals and groups paying the first month for people.

What nobody told me and what makes it a scam, or at least deceptive marketing, is that in order to get the $100 bonus, you first have to buy 10 DVDs for promoting GDI.

That’s $29.50, so you’re still in the plus, but then you have to add on the shipping and handling. Lots of people play the “shipping and handling game” to send you ‘free e-books’, etc. Come on, if it’s really free just give me the download link!

The killer for everyone living outside the U.S. is the fee charged to send you the DVDs. For anyone in Romania where my friend lives and is trying hard to develop his GDI business, the cost is $162! (2012 update: my friend there eventually gave up on GDI and moved on to other things. He gave it a serious effort with very limited results.)

As he said, “So, I would need 10 people in the same week only to pay off my investment. And then I will be in profit.”

He then replied to my email in which I fumed about GDI: “I knew about that from the beginning, but I couldn’t imagine that the delivery fees are so exaggerate. Lucky me that some days ago I tried to make a “sample order” to see how it goes. And then I was shocked when I saw those 162$!!! I mean it’s like you want to buy a bicycle with 200$ and it cost you 1300$. Prefer to walk in that case, don’t you?”

Definitely! I prefer to walk. That’s the problem with all these ‘special deals’. There’s ALWAYS a catch.

If you want to try GDI, go ahead, some people have had success with it, but many more haven’t. I just want you and everyone else to know as much of the truth as I’ve been able to find.

I double checked with my Romanian friend, and it’s a one-time-only purchase requirement, so to get future bonuses, there’s no need to buy more CDs. Hmmm…, so I offered him a solution. He could have the CDs delivered to my uncle who lives in Florida, thus saving the delivery cost since he doesn’t really need or want the CDs anyway.

Anyway, I decided not to doing anything with GDI, but I was thankful that I stumbled on them in the first place, because it gave inspiration to my idea of how to REALLY help people get started on the internet and do it honestly and fairly, with no catches.

As most of you have learned already, you only ever get a limited amount for free. That said, some places like WordPress give an amazing amount with fantastic quality all for free, and I’d like to know their secret.

The fact is however, that everyone needs money to live, and that includes WordPress and all the people who blog at WordPress and design templates and widgets and everything else. It’s a fantastic community.

Now what if you created a similar community but with the intention of helping “newbies” get started on the internet, totally for free, and helping each other (and the “newbies” as they move on to “toddlers”) to make some money doing whatever it is we love doing? Sound like a cool concept?

It’s a cooperative, or a kibbutz, or a team. It’s neighbours helping neighbours. It’s a community where we all go to work each day and if you need help or advice from an IT guy, a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist, a Mongolian spider expert, or whatever, you just ask! We’re all part of the same community or team.

Everyone in the community has earned the trust of several others, so that trust is easily passed on to the entire community. If anyone betrays that trust, they’re quickly told to shape up or ship out.

If nobody has the specific information you’re looking for, then you go to Google and wherever else to find what you’re looking for, and the next time anyone else is looking for similar information, you’re the one they’re going to contact, because they trust you.

Anyway, all that’s material for other blogs. This blog was simply to make people aware of the ‘scam’ in GDI.

Hope that was helpful,

Best regards,

Brian

(2010 update) That idea never managed to get off the ground, but it was still a darn nice idea. It’s not easy to start a business. All you can do is give it your best effort but first you need to make a choice and decide what that business is going to be. I don’t think GDI is your best option.

Thanks to everyone for making lots of comments and making this a lively blog, and best of luck to all of you in finding a way to earn money online.  🙂

2012 Update: It would be interesting to know how everyone has made out over the years, in their quest to make money online. I’m doing okay with my websites for language learning, and have also gotten into some online stock trading (with limited success unfortunately)

In 2009, after the big market crash of 2008, my brother introduced me to online stock trading and I still believe that it’s an effective way to make money online. A word of caution though, it’s also an easy way to lose a lot of money quickly.

I’ve just never managed to convince myself to get into all this affiliate marketing stuff and CPA and all the rest.  Joining a crowd of other people all competing to sell somebody else’s products and incurring the financial risk to do it, just didn’t excite me much.

The online stock trading is simply me versus the market.  Every day I either make money or lose money.  There’s no waiting for customers, there’s no mailing lists or anything.  Buy low and sell high, and you’ll make money.

I really tried ‘stock trading’ for a while, and was convinced I could do well, but in the end, I had to admit defeat. The market beat me. I still say ‘give it a try’, just be careful.

Of course, online stock trading requires a fair bit of capital to get started with.  $10k is a fair minimum.  For Forex trading you can start with $500.  So what about those of you who are out of work and broke?  Can someone, anyone, please show me (us) a business that really does work?

I still say, do what you love doing; focus on that; be busy with that; and somehow you’ll discover a way to make money doing it. Good luck to all of you!!

2013 Update:  It’s great that people are still reading this post and benefiting from it. And one person recently suggested an online business that does indeed pay. It’s simple data entry and won’t make you rich, but it does pay real money. (See comment below.)

I’m still buying and selling stocks online, but have been extremely cautious, waiting for the bottom to fall out. My brother signed up for a newsletter earlier this year and the guy has been bang on with his prediction for falling gold and silver. He’s still bullish long term on both but says they’re going much lower first before the turn around for a long run back up, even to $5000 an ounce for gold. I’ll add a note here when he says it’s time to buy.

My language website is still growing nicely and I’ve started a new website that will encompass all my ideals, primarily helping people learn languages but also helping them earn money if they want. After all, investing in Apple, NetFlix, Tesla and others, even Rosetta Stone, when they were small would have paid off very, very well. I hope to share that with anyone who’s interested. The new website is ExpressWay Languages and hopefully it will be somewhat developed later this year.

As before, good luck to all of you!!

New Update 2013:  Well, I’m finally taking the step with my language biz to incorporate some of the concepts of GDI and stocks in general.  You can read about it here: A Better Alternative to GDI

Update 2014:  Here’s a simple strategy to start a website for FREE and have ‘full service hosting’ for 2 years, and the hosting quality is much better than GDI, Go Daddy, etc.

Simply click on my affiliate web-hosting link, and get a website of your choice for 2 years FREE.

I switched to iPage last year and they always have a promotion for around $1.89 per month with a free domain. They say “ending soon” but it never does. It simply changes by .10 cents or so.

They provide excellent hosting and a 2 year plan currently costs around $45. The affiliate payment is $105, so I will pay the person back their $45 and help them get their website going and earning money, so that in 2 years time they will re-new the hosting. If not, that’s okay also. That’s the risk that iPage and other hosting companies are taking. Web hosting at iPage

It may seem crazy for iPage to pay $105 when they receive only $45 but it’s actually a brilliant strategy. The regular annual hosting cost is about $110 (which is still cheap compared to most services) so if you renew once, then they’ve made a profit. Most people will continue with their hosting for many years, so iPage is simply getting customers, keeping them happy and then taking the reward after 2 years.

By offering the lowest priced hosting, top quality, and top payments to affiliates, they get the best marketing, the most promotion and high conversions and it only costs them about $55 to get a new customer who will hopefully stay with them for many years. Brilliant strategy, and much better than GDI or Go Daddy.

GDI gives poor hosting at an expensive price and has chosen the MLM system for their business. Go Daddy also gives poor quality hosting, lousy service and spends a fortune for advertising at the Super Bowl and elsewhere. iPage gives great hosting at the best price anywhere and puts money straight into the pockets of anyone who promotes them. I’m happy to help others get started with their own website and want to make it free for them.  Web hosting at iPage

171 comments so far

  1. Charles on

    I did an extensive research on GDI and I found that the company is in fact legitimate. I also found it very impressive that they are a debt free company, and have been listed as one of the fastest growing companies in the US. Their product offering and services are equally as impressive. How you described their product and services as: “It’s domain hosting for $10 a month…” is very misleading and only have partial truth. What you have conveniently left out is their real product offering of acquiring “.WS” (for WebSite) domains. If you need more info regarding “.WS” domains, please go to http://www.freedom.ws/tonyanacan for the complete details.

    Also, you claimed that: “What nobody told me and what makes it a scam, or at least deceptive marketing, is that in order to get the $100 bonus, you first have to buy 10 DVDs for promoting GDI.” It’s interesting how you passed this information off as a fact when I personally got on their website, chatted with a live rep, and did not find any type of rules and/or stipulations in regards to how an affiliate qualifies for a bonus. And just for argument’s sake, if they did require that a certain number of DVDs are purchased in order to qualify for a bonus, I find nothing wrong with that. After all, these DVDs are high quality sales and marketing tools that affiliates use to promote the product anyway, and they also cost money to produce.

    I appreciate your efforts in researching GDI. But perhaps, you should be more responsible and practice to produce only factual, truthful, and unbiased reporting.

  2. brian99 on

    Hi Tony, thanks for your comment, and I welcome the discussion. Go ahead and try and convince me (and others) that what I’ve said is erroneous and GDI truly is a good investment.

    First of all, they’re hardly one of the fastest growing companies in the US. They only have about 80,000 members and they started the business more than 8 years ago. That’s a tiny amount compared to the growth of many other internet businesses. It’s also not much revenue for a major business. $10 per month per member and paying out 50% in commissions leaves them with as little as $400,000 per month, perhaps over $600 since many members don’t have 5 levels under them.

    Next, there’s nothing special about a .ws domain. It originally comes from Western Samoa, since all countries are given a unique domain extension. They did a deal with the Western Samoan government and now market it as WebSite. The most popular domain extensions are still .com, .net, .org and .(your home country extension).

    The fact that GDI is now offering members the option to choose .com, .org, etc as an extension supports this fact. They really are only providing hosting and domain registration with a unique marketing/affiliate program. There’s nothing else there that I can see.

    If they provided top quality hosting along with the 5 level marketing program, then I’d agree it’s a great deal, but their hosting is only average. Likewise, if they provided extensive support to help people build a website and an internet business, similar to Site Build It, then I’d also say they have a good program.

    Please check to confirm the restriction on the $100 bonus. As far as I know, it’s a one time requirement, which makes it manageable if you intend to sign up many people directly under you.

    Maybe they are great DVDs, the online video is indeed very good (thus I became interested in the opportunity), but I don’t want to be forced to purchase them. It should be my free choice to purchase them or not. And shipping and handling fees of $162 is totally ridiculous.

    My reporting is completely unbiased. I was originally very interested in joining but the bonus restriction and difficulty in making payment without credit cards made my concept for Indonesia impossible. Everything I’ve said is also factual and truthful.

    I have nothing to gain from promoting or denouncing GDI. You are a GDI member and obviously want to support them and promote them. Nothing wrong with that, but you can’t deny the facts, so you need to come up with other arguments to justify an investment in GDI.

    The entire multi-level / network marketing industry has developed a bad reputation with people for the simple reason that they ‘never tell the whole story’. Thus most people believe and many have learned the hard way, that only a few people at the top are successful.

    It’s a shame that this has happened since fundamentally it’s a great concept. Too bad the companies aren’t completely open and honest, they rarely have a top quality product at a very competitive price.

    I look forward to your reply so we can answer the concerns of anyone currently deciding whether to join GDI or not.

    • Francisc on

      I just tried to create a account with GDI,and I came across the same problem,they only except payment from a credit card,I could not pay with PayPal funds,that made my suspicious so I gave up.I decided to run a search on the comp. and I found your review,to me it looks Unbiased and truthful and researched, Well Done.You should do more reviews.

      • brian99 on

        Thanks for your comment and glad you found all this useful. I’m not interested in doing more ‘reviews’, thanks. I simply wrote based on my experience, and I’m no longer interested in any such ‘schemes’. I prefer to continue working on my own projects for learning languages.

  3. Ross on

    My bank called me and alerted me that these crooks have tried MULTIPLE TIMES to take money out of my checking account.

    Do not give these crooks your credit card #. They will steal your $ from you!

  4. Matt on

    Hi Brian,

    Thank you very much for the info, I only wish I had found it 30 mins earlier before I signed up with them through “Spider Web Marketing”.
    Neither GDI nor SWM said anything about the dvds and it was a very unpleasant surprise to stumble across it after all the nonsense I had to endure to sign up. I thought I had managed to cover myself to some degree as I researched it a lot before joining and so far you are the only person warning people about this scam.
    I live in Australia so I hate to think what the postage will be to here, maybe I will just have them sent to some poor person that I find in the phone book, lol. Either that or cancel my membership.
    Thank you again mate and I hope more people read this before getting caught in the “spiders web” so to speak.

    Just one other thing, have you or anyone else that you know of had the same problem as Ross has had? Its a very unnerving thought that they may try and take more of my hard earned cash.

    Also I like your idea and if you ever do start up a community to help noobs, I will be one of your first members. How nice it would be if there was a community out there helping others instead of just giving others half the info and selling them something that they know is a scam just to make a few bucks.

    Cheers again mate.

    Matt

    P.S if anyone out there knows of any really good work at home opportunities that require a relatively low investment and pay out a reasonable amount then please let me know if you would be so kind.
    My email is “nocti@inbox.com”
    I dont mind a little hard work and really would like to be able to make a decent living from home.

    Cheers

  5. brian99 on

    Hi Matt,
    Sorry to hear you didn’t find me earlier, but glad that you did manage to find me. I also researched it a lot (both GDI and SWM and others) but I was lucky that the payment was never approved until I finally discovered that it really wasn’t what I was interested in.

    I haven’t heard of anyone having troubles like Ross, and they eventually gave up trying to get payment from me. If you’re still within your 7 day trial you can cancel and there’s no need to phone them and cancel which they insist that you ‘must’ do. Simply change the credit card info to something that isn’t valid. They will try to clear payment about 8 times (every 4 days they try again) and then they’ll give up.

    It is possible to make money with the program, but it’s not where I would recommend focusing your efforts. I would even suggest learning what you can from their system for the month you’ve paid for then cancel.

    I have started the “community for noobs” but it’s still in it’s infancy. I’ll make that my next post and pass on what I’ve learned in the past few weeks.

    I’m convinced that my concept can work and it will be a community of noobs and experts all together. It will be attractive to people who are more than happy to pay $5 a month to get lots of help and information, as well as others who can’t afford $5 and are keen to turn $5 a month into $50, $100 or more.

    In answer to your PS, it’s absolutely possible to build a home business with the internet, but you’re much better off getting good lumber, nails, a hammer and saw and do it right. Hoping that some “out of the box, huge money with no effort” internet business is like hoping for a beautiful new house built from a fold out free gift in a cereal box.

    Looking forward to having you as a member of our 5plu5team.

    Cheers

    • Francisc on

      I just tried to create a account with GDI,and I came across the same problem,they only except payment from a credit card,I could not pay with PayPal funds,that made me suspicious so I gave up.I decided to run a search on the comp. and I found your review,to me it looks Unbiased and truthful and researched, Well Done.You should do more reviews.

  6. Tony on

    Response to “brian99 on September 17, 2008.”

    I’m aware that by writing and responding to
    you once again that I will inadvertently
    dignify your arguments. However, your gross
    misrepresentation of the facts is what’s
    compelling me to do so again, sadly against
    my better judgment.

    With that said, my responses starts in the order of your paragraphs. From first to last.

    Responses:

    P1 – I am not interested in convincing you or
    anyone else for that matter, about the GDI opportunity. I know the enormous opportunity and value of this business. Some people can see an opportunity when they see one, and some don’t. And that’s ok. In this country, it’s ok to agree to disagree.

    P2 – On October 17, 2002 Global Domains
    International ranked #37 on Inc. 500 list of
    fastest growing private companies. Also, you
    are confusing GDI’s age as a company versus
    when the Affiliate Marketing Opportunity was
    launched. GDI in fact, only started to offer
    the opportunity in 2004. And in a relative
    short period of time GDI currently maintains
    customers with annual renewals and web
    services in more than 180 countries. As for
    affiliate revenue or commissions, here’s an
    example. You refer 5 people to the
    product/program. That pays you $5 per month.
    No big deal? Hang on, you’ll see the power of
    this. Each of those 5 people then refer 5 of
    their own, so you’re now getting paid an
    additional $25 per month on your “second
    level”. Each of those 25 can refer as many as
    they want, but for consistency we’ll say that
    they too refer 5 each. That’s $125 in monthly
    commissions on your 3rd level. If the trend
    continues, you’ll have $625 in monthly
    commissions on your 4th level, and $3,125 in
    monthly commissions on your 5th level.

    That’s a total of over $3,900 in monthly
    commissions for referring 5 people, and then
    teaching those people how to do the same and
    assisting them in growing their own
    organizations. Keep in mind that nobody is
    limited in how many people they can refer.
    Some affiliates personally refer hundreds of
    other affiliates. Just a couple of these “go-
    getters” in your organization can really blow
    your income off the charts.

  7. Tony on

    P3 – Nothing special about the .ws domain? You
    clearly have not done your due diligence with
    your research. Allow me to enlighten you a
    little. Industry experts forecast that more
    than 500 million domains will be registered in
    the next ten years. Currently, there are more
    than 20 million dot com domains, and over 34
    million total domains registered worldwide.
    Top Level Domain (TLD) names for dot “com”
    (commercial) domains are increasingly becoming
    unavailable, and The universally accepted
    alternative domain extension of dot “WS” (for
    Web Site) has begun to experience unprecedented growth despite being in it’s infancy. Because of this, thousands of people around the world are realizing a unique opportunity to join at the ground level of a rapidly growing trend. Thousands of average people around the world are building their businesses; building real, sustainable wealth EVERYDAY.

    P4 – GDI is a domain registrar as well. So
    it’s only prudent and good business to cross
    promote and offer other alternative domain
    extensions. In fact, many “TLD” names are
    increasingly becoming unavailable for dot com,
    dot net, dot org, etc; and people are finding
    them available in dot “WS.” Not a surprise
    there. And indeed a very good way to show the value of the product. Here is a quick overview of GDI’s complete product overview:

    1. Your own dot “WS” domain name. Enough said.

    2. Professionally designed web templates:

    The WebSiteBuilder! 2.0 is the framework for
    your WebSite. Professionally designed by
    graphic artists, these templates give you the
    foundation for building your WebSite. There is
    no programming or complicated coding, simply
    follow the easy-to-use instructions to create
    a dynamic and professional WebSite!

    You can create your site quickly, then make
    changes if you’d like, or you can spend
    several hours creating the perfect site for
    you. You can view your WebSite before you
    publish it for the world to see. You also have
    24/7 access to your WebSite’s control panel and can make changes at any time and as often as you like! You can also view the changes before you publish them to the world.

    3. Custom email addresses – 10 (ten) included
    per domain:

    WebMail:

    WebMail allows you to use your own domain name
    as your email address and you can access your
    email through your account from any Internet
    connection in the world!

    Instead of using a long and hard to remember
    email address like mwalker554878@yahoo.com,
    you can use Yourname@YourDomain.ws. For
    example you could have Sally@Smith.ws and each
    person in your family or business can use your
    domain name as well such as Bill@Smith.ws etc., up to 10 email addresses!

    Email Forwarding:

    WebMail forwarding allows you to use your
    domain name as your email address and forward
    all of your emails to an existing account you
    already have. This way you can use your easy-
    to-remember .WS email account to publicize
    your business or family site and still receive
    all of your emails in your established email
    account.

    POP/IMAP Access:

    Access your email for any domain using your POP or IMAP compatible email program.

    4. URL forwarding:

    URL forwarding option is perfect if you
    already have a WebSite created elsewhere, but
    are unable to move the existing content. Often
    times, your current URL is hard to remember,
    unprofessional, or just plain ugly. You can use URL forwarding to route your new .WS domain to your existing WebSite. When someone visits your .WS domain, they will be automatically transported to your existing WebSite instantly.

    5. Web hosting:

    For more advanced customers, you can take
    advantage of the web hosting service. This allows you to build a site from scratch bypassing some of the user-friendly restrictions built into the previously mentioned SiteBuilder option. This allows you to build a custom WebSite just as you want it, then upload the files to their servers.
    Hosting gives you the ultimate in flexibility.

    6. “Income For Life” business opportunity.

  8. Tony on

    P5 – See previous responses to P4.

    P6 – For every 5 paid affiliates you refer in
    a one week period, you earn a $100 cash bonus.
    There is no limit. Refer 25 new paid affiliates in one week and you’ll earn $500. You must have purchased at least ten (10) DVDs through your GDI account and your account must be paid and in good standing. The reason for this requirement is that they are HIGHLY recommending the DVD promotional method for recruiting new affiliates.

    P7 – No one is forcing you to buy the DVDs.
    There is in fact, a free landing page (which
    you’ve already seen) as an alternative to using the DVDs. However, it is a fact that the
    promotional movie contained in the DVD is THE
    recommended, and most efficient tool, and/or
    method used by affiliates to build their
    businesses because the DVD essentially does
    all the selling for you.

    P8 – Your reporting IS biased. You were
    disgruntled by your failed attempt in joining
    GDI. And when you couldn’t join the business,
    you quickly made up erroneous information to
    justify your failure. It’s not the company’s
    fault that they only accept credit cards and
    Paypal as a form of payment. Besides, last
    time I checked, EFT methods of this type are
    the “norm” in today’s business environment.
    Did you want to send them a check in the mail,
    or perhaps send a cash payment? (That was a lame attempt at a joke). And oh, it’s also very interesting that you “snuck-in” a promotion for your own business at the end of your blog.

    P9 – It’s true that I am a proud, AND also
    successful (I might add), Global Domains
    International, Independent Global Affiliate.
    In fact, I successfully became an affiliate
    shortly after doing extensive research on the
    company. It’s the simplest, easiest, and most
    powerful home based business opportunity that
    I’ve ever seen, bar none. It’s also not right to
    ruin the experience for others and debase the
    company, just because you couldn’t join the
    business yourself. Shame on you.

    P10 – Affiliate Network Marketing is a
    powerful AND completely legitimate business
    structure that continue to give people success, prosperity, and above all else – FREEDOM. However, just like any normal businesses, sometimes there are some “rotten apples.” And it is a tendency that the image of a company takes an unfavorable reputation as a result of that. You’ll be interested to know that more often than not, these bad apples are usually “disgruntled” ex-employees. Sound familiar? *Hint*

    For a real report on GDI visit: http://homebasedbusinessincomeforlife.blogspot.com

    • richie on

      so is possible to start addin people before my seven day trail is up are i can only do so after the seven day

      • brian99 on

        As far as I know you can.
        I wonder how much GDI has (not) grown in the past 3 and a half years since I first looked at it? In the world of the internet, that’s a very long time and in most cases, the concept has either ‘made it’ and is very well known, or it will never make it and never be a huge success.

  9. Joel on

    I am an affiliate of GDI, and yes, to qualify for the $100 per 5 people referred bonus system you will be required to buy the 10 dvd’s and yes the shipping cost is a bit over the top, considering I live in Australia and the conversion rate is insane! But saying that, this is a one time cost and the rest is total profit! Global Domains is the only system I have come across in my 10 years of searching for a legit home business that has actually done the right thing and payed me top cash for my promotions. I am really earning a great income with them to the extreme that I wouldn’t even mention how much I get because I know that you would not believe me and think that it is a scam. LoL… By guys and good luck with everything.

  10. brian99 on

    Hi Tony, nice to hear from you, really. This is exactly what’s needed: an honest open debate and people can decide for themselves.

    So first, I’d like to emphasize that I have not made any “gross misrepresentation of the facts”. I simply said that GDI doesn’t tell you about the DVD purchase requirement and that the shipping and delivery fee is way over the top.

    P1 – Great! I wish everyone luck with GDI and any other business they decide to join. I totally agree with you.

    P2 – I totally agree with you again. It’s a great concept and the potential is definitely there. That’s why I was interested in the first place. Interesting to now know when they started the marketing program. Would be interesting to know the number of members before and after. I’m sure the program has greatly increased their number of sign ups.

    P3 – Disagree. Dot-com is a runaway leader and in almost every other country in the world, the runaway leader is their country extension. (.ca Canada, .nl netherlands, etc). Just do a search for anything in Google and see how many .ws websites you find. Very, very few. Really it’s a small issue, there’s no shortage of names or dot extensions.

    P4&5 – Offering what all hosting companies offer (templates, email, etc) but less (SQL database, unlimited email accounts, etc). Look at hosting companies like PowWeb and BlueHost, compare them side by side with any hosting company including GDI and make your own call.

    P6 – True, no argument, there is no limit on the number of bonuses, and it is a one time purchase minimum of 10 DVDs. I’ve said, GDI is not a bad deal and has a lot of potential, but…. It’s not the best option for everyone, and the DVD and credit card payment issue was a deal breaker for our concept of marketing. Hey, I wish they’d solve those 2 problems and then I would join! But not for any of the reasons listed by Tony.

    P7 – Incorrect. You are obligated (forced) to buy 10 DVDs in order to get any bonuses.

    P8 – Totally incorrect. As I said in P6, I’d still join if they solved the 2 problems of the ‘forced’ DVD purchase with inflated delivery cost, and the payment difficulties for people living in Indonesia. My credit card works fine and I could have joined easily, but my targeted downline were Indonesians and the majority of them don’t have credit cards. Payment problems in Indonesia are not exclusive to GDI. It’s also difficult for PayPal, Clickbank is not yet accepted, etc. They all need to resolve the problems. Finally, I didn’t “sneak in” a promotion for my own business. My new business 5plus5team was only started because of these problems with GDI. Just as Google came in to the market to re-do search in a better way, we’re trying to do things in a better way. And there’s no reason you couldn’t promote our new product as well as GDI if you wanted to. One of our objectives is to provide a “GDI type opportunity” to people in countries like Indonesia that really are not able to join GDI from their current economic position. It’s a HUGE market and I’d rather go after that, then join 80,000 others trying to promote GDI. “Blue Ocean marketing strategy”, right?

    P9 – Totally agree except for your last sentence. You should be proud, and it’s great that you’re successful. I also agree that it’s perhaps “the simplest, easiest, and most powerful home based business opportunity”. So why do they ‘rip you off’ with the shipping fee? I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. I just everyone to make their decision to join or not with their eyes wide open, knowing as much as possible in advance. As I mentioned earlier, I have a credit card and could easily join if I wanted to.

    P10 – True, network marketing (a.k.a. multi-level marketing) and new affiliate concepts are powerful and legitimate, and provide a fantastic opportunity for individuals to gain financial freedom. True also that “rotten apples” and “disgruntled” ex-members/employees can spread some bad press. Or they may have a point and what they say may be true. That’s the difficult part for everyone looking from the ‘outside’ to decide. I would add however, that there are statistics that up to 95% of all people are not successful with networking marketing (online and offline), and that’s why the majority of people everywhere in the world generally believe that it is only the few people at the top that make all the money. I suspect the 95% figure is reasonably accurate but I would suggest that the 5% (or whatever number it is) who do succeed have totally earned it based on their individual efforts.

    It’s really the same for any business. Up to 95% of all small businesses fail, and in all of those businesses, including network marketing businesses, the ‘failures’ are generally not from lack of effort. Most people really do give it their best, so why are so many unsuccessful, and what do they need to do in order to be successful next time?

    I’d also like to ask, why is it that companies with a fundamentally good concept do little things like apply ridiculous exchange rates (Western Union for example) or other fees and conditions which turn people off from an otherwise excellent business, product or service.

    I absolutely agree that you can earn thousands of dollars of steady monthly income with GDI, but it can be a ‘tough sell’ because a lot of people will think it’s a scam. It’s not. It’s a legitimate business and yes there are many people who are successful with it.

    There are a ton of opportunities on the internet and GDI is just one of them. If you’ve got an extra $10 a month that you can afford to invest, I’d say go for it. You’ll make a lot of contacts, learn a lot of other things related to making money on the internet, and you can continue to grow your overall business.

    It is absolutely possible to make money on the internet, earn your financial freedom, and do what you love to do. GDI and many others can help you achieve it, just make sure you go into all of them with your eyes open.

    Good luck to everyone, and sharing information is the best way to help others avoid pitfalls and rip-offs, AND capitalize on good opportunities.

    • A.Zotinkhuma on

      Sir,

      I’ve gone through your mail to Tony (P-8)regarding GDI payments. It’s Absolutely true.

      I am living in India right now, and it is difficult for me to join join GDI because of payment method (accept only credit card) i can’t join GDI till today with some of my friends.

      If you are trying do internet business in a better and easy way please let me know throught my email given below and then i will join you along with my friends.

      Regards

      A.Zotinkhuma
      Mizoram, India.
      email:zotin@rediffmail.com

  11. brian99 on

    Hi Joel,
    Thanks for your comment and your straight forward information. I hope it’s clear by now. GDI is not a scam (and the title of this blog is that it’s “almost” a scam).

    I chose the title simply to draw traffic and interest. The ‘surprise’ requirement for the one time purchase of 10 DVDs, the inflated shipping cost, and insane conversion rates are simply ‘hidden extras’ that take away a lot of trust for many people. And it’s unfortunate because it’s totally unnecessary and is ultimately hurting GDI as a company.

    I can totally appreciate the difficulty in finding a legitimate home business opportunity. It’s a shame that GDI ‘dropped the ball’ on those few small issues.

    They also don’t understand the potential market in developing countries like Indonesia.

    Glad to hear that you’ve got it working for you and wish you all the best. I’m curious as to whether you’ve expanded to other internet businesses as well. I presume you have and it might be interesting for readers of this blog to hear about them. All the best.

    • James on

      GDI had no say in conversion costs, nor the cost of shipping. Please stop saying the rates are inflated. I just started GDI, no DVD sales for me and I got my bonus just fine. I don’t know where you are getting your facts from but it seems like you keep changing your info to sound good.

      • brian99 on

        The prices back then were definitely inflated and it’s good that they no longer operate in that manner. I wish you the best of luck with it, but you have to wonder how bright the future can possibly be when it hasn’t developed much at all over the past 7+ years. I’m willing to agree that it’s not a scam, but I still don’t think it’s a quality product with much of a future.

  12. Rob on

    Hi everyone, I’m glad to have found this blog, and I am very intrigued by your discussions regarding GDI. I started looking into this company because of the buzz its generating and I have also read quite a few good reviews about them. So far, most of the materials that I’ve found about the company are pretty compelling. Then I stumbled on this blog. Here are my thoughts:

    First, isn’t the company’ called Global Domains International and not “Indonesian Domains International? Then why in the heck join for the purpose of targeting a specific market audience and demographic? I see Tony’s point clearly and your retort was not very convincing. But, it was very entertaining I admit.

    Second, Tony clearly stated that the company in fact has a “landing page” which contains the same promotional movie In lieu of purchasing the DVDs. So in other words, you clearly have a choice. And that’s hardly considered being forced to do anything. As far as the “bonus” goes, it implies just that. It’s a bonus. A “benefit” if you will. Benefits are “extras” (that’s a good thing) and are “privileges.” Not “entitlements.” And I also see no fault in the company imposing their own “rules” in order to qualify for bonuses.

    Third, the company is hardly to blame for higher costs of shipping due to varying conversion rates around the world. Different countries simply have different rates of exchange for the US dollar. Some countries enjoy lower costs due to having a higher currency value versus the US dollar, and some have higher costs due to lower currency value versus the US$.

    Cheers!

  13. brian99 on

    Hi Rob, thanks for the comment and glad you found us. Honestly, I agree with you and most reviews are good and the company is fundamentally good.

    Yes, GDI is Global Domains International not Indonesian… There is nothing specific with Indonesia or anywhere else. The Indonesian aspect was specifically related to my situation and concept for marketing the business.

    In order to be successful with GDI you have to be able to market it. There are many possibilities and strategies for that. One, family, friends and current contacts. That was a no-go for me (and would be for many). They immediately think ‘scam’ and warn me to be careful. I can be bothered trying to knock down that brick.

    Secondly, which most are doing, is marketing via the web with promotions, ads, autoresponders, etc. It’s an interesting option, and I’m curious to learn about it, but I just don’t have time to jump in and start “competing” against 80,000+ others trying to attract interest and get people to join under them.

    Thus, I had my own strategy which I still believe would work very well in countries like Indonesia. The problem however is that most Indonesians don’t have credit cards so it suddenly took away 90% of my intended market.

    Of course, the entire world is your market but that took me back to option 2 essentially and I just have too many other focuses at the moment.

    Your second point, yes, you get a landing page and don’t need to ever buy the DVDs which is great. It makes it an optional purchase.

    To catch a fish, you generally need some bait, and my marketing strategy revolved around the “bait” of the bonus and was actually a foundational “need” because I was looking at a market who don’t have an extra $10 but who are willing to work to get it.

    So yes, it is a bonus, but it was a key to my particular strategy. And yes, it’s the company’s right to set their own rules. I’m simply saying don’t keep any hidden so that people get surprises. The network marketing industry is famous (infamous) for this strategy!

    I really don’t think it’s necessary to follow such a strategy and it has hurt the industry overall.

    Shipping costs are often used as a way of getting extra profit and often it’s terribly excessive. Charge a fair market price. Sending DVDs by registered mail costs less than $10. Charging $162 is excessive and uncalled for.

    Hope others following this blog are getting lots of benefit. And good luck to you all!

  14. Andrew on

    Brian…you remind me of a used car salesman. You’re a slick talker, but so full of sh**.

  15. brian99 on

    Andrew.. how can I be like a used car salesman? I’m not trying to sell anything. I’m just suggesting to anyone looking to buy a “used car” from the “GDI Car Dealership”, that there are a few ‘hidden’ costs to buying from them. I tried to buy a “car” from them, but they weren’t able to process my Indonesian credit card and they were going to charge “$200” to deliver my “car” complete with 5 “CDs” for my stereo, instead of simply letting me drive it home and play my own music.

    And try to keep your comments useful to others. Tks

    • James on

      Earlier you said you had a card and could easily of used it but chose to not even attempt this business…

  16. Genji on

    This is a great system which incorporates GDI web hosting.

    It is the most POWERFUL system I have ever seen, this almost forces users to sign up.

    Have a look I promise you won’t be disappointed.

    http://www.genji.ws/

    Enjoy!

    (…for everyone’s info, the above link goes to the spiderweb marketing video. Brian)

  17. 20dollarcash on

    Check out this new business with 202up. It’s a low cost direct sale business with a 2 up comp plan that builds residual income and teaches online marketing with how to videos.

    http://www.20DollarCash.com

    Thanks

  18. Michael Truong on

    Guys guys guys. Relax a little bit.

    I see both sides of the story. I used to be on one side of the fence regarding affiliate and MLM marketing. I used to think it was a scam and no one actually made any money at all.

    After joining GDI I’ve found that this is not the case. They have a good program going on with an excellent compensation plan.

    You would be hard pressed to find ANY business model out there that can be run for only $10 USD a month. With a free 7 day trial, how could you possibly go wrong?

    If you’ve got friends and family members you can help out. Then by all means, why not do it? I personally would like to take care of my family and all my friends. I’m 24 years old and I now have the financial freedom to retire if I choose to!

    Get that. You could work hard for the rest of your life making someone else rich… or you could just join GDI, put a little effort in, and retire not before long 🙂

    It works. It’s proven. GDI is not a scam.

  19. brian99 on

    Thanks Michael (and everyone),
    I hope we all agree by now that GDI is not a scam, and you can make money at it, but it’s not an easy sell for everyone.

    I know that none of my family or friends are interested so for me to sell it I’d have to look elsewhere. There are lots of opportunities out there so just look around for what suits you best.

    I’ll add as a comment a very helpful email I received when I was first looking into GDI.
    Good luck to everyone regardless of what business you choose to pursue.

  20. brian99 on

    Hi Brian,

    Nice to hear from you!

    GDI is a great program for people new to this type of business concept, as well as those with limited start up capital. I wouldn’t have it in my portfolio as a primary, but it’s good if you utilize it the right way. (By the way, I’m not a GDI rep.)

    GDI gives them the opportunity to get involved, learn the ropes, make some money, all without risking much to get started.

    The downside of GDI is that most will not make a significant amount of money. When you are talking about $1/mo. per person, well…. you do the math!

    Think of GDI as a great lead generation tool. For a low monthly cost (which is not inflated much – unlike many companies) they can quickly cover their costs, learn about marketing, and
    participate/observe GDI’s techniques. The last I looked, GDI has some very good marketing in place, including their win-back tactics.

    For those that like and are successful with this model, there will come a time when they’ll come to you and say, “I like this but want to make m0re m0ney.” Simply add them to a primary company. By that time, they’ll understand the concepts and can repeat them with a higher ticket company.

  21. Shirl on

    Hi Brian,

    I find it interesting that so many responded to your article to support GDI. I guess that says that GDI, like most MLMs, has a lot of folks really brainwashed. Their supporters seem to believe GDI’s inferior web services are the best when in fact they are at the very bottom of the list. The simple truth is that you can get far superior, cheaper and better supported domain/hosting services from just about any other company out there!

    I agree totally with your comment that GDI is a scam without being overtly so. I have friends who tried to get me in. I tried to talk to GDI’s ‘live’ responder. It wasn’t live. It was an autobot. I asked some pointed questions via their support email. I received nothing but canned answers that again said absolutely nothing. At that point I starting doing some research.

    So what if this is an income opportunity? Guys, you’re promoting, using and making money off a clearly substandard product! How can you sleep at night knowing products exist that would service your friends better and at far less cost? By the way, the fact that GDI requires CD purchases for bonuses or promotes using ws or any other domain extension has nothing whatever to do with the fact their product is clearly not worth its asking price!

    Yes, I can almost see a web product with ‘slightly’ higher costs to allow for an MLM except the value here to customers for $10 monthly is little more than what’s being offered on totally free sites or email services. The value just isn’t there.

    This is an inferior product and that’s the real bottomline of what needs to be exposed here.

    Thank you Brian for helping that happen!

  22. Steve on

    A very interesting discussion on GDI and a must read for anyone who likes to join GDI in particular or any MLM scheme in General.

    GDI is a business working on the principles of MLM – everybody agrees it. And any MLM is a scam by its very nature. So GDI is a scam and there is no doubt about it.

    However GDI seems to operate on good trust and business model and rewards its members liberally and honestly for their sales. In MLM point of view GDI is better than most of the other MLM schemes.

    What is the actual product in GDI? A domain + web hosting. And it costs $120 per year for a person to get this product a domain+webhosting from GDI against its actual cost of $60 even on high estimate.

    So, it’s members are paying roughly $60 a year more than the actual price of the product/service from GDI.

    So, GDI as a business makes normal profits like any other web registrar do with in this $60 (say) selling price. As their cost price would be anywhere between $40 to $30 they make a profit of $10 to $20 on each domain.

    And they share the excess $60 on each domain with their refers of 5 levels deep. So who is loosing in this? Every one who can not promote GDI to others after the purchase is loosing to an extent of $60 a year and their loss is their refers’ profit – the basic principle of MLM.

    An ideal MLM is something that distributes its saving on advertising costs resulted by virtue of its MLM to all its members on a scientific formula like commission on sales and an yearly distribution of surplus to all members in the form of bonus. Well some one may quip then its called a co-operative association not MLM. Yes it is. An IDEAL MLM is a co-operative association in its basic form and GDI is not an ideal MLM.

    GDI is an MLM working on scam principles like any other MLM online and all these MLMs just designed for and cater efficient sales professional and skilled marketers to make them rich in less possible time at the expense of their victims money. If you do not have good skills of marketing or if you can not hide bitter facts from your prospects or if you do not have the means of reaching a wide range of people or if you do not like to cheat the people, DO NOT GO for MLM.

    Finally, if you are a person that like to play lottery or gamble you can go for MLM as MLM is better than a lottery and gambling. As Brian pointed out that an extra $10 a month of a person’s income could be a wise investment in GDI provided he has marketing skills.

  23. brian99 on

    Hi Steve and Shirl (and everyone),
    Thanks for your comments. It’s good information for everyone. Here’s a tip for anyone looking for website hosting. Lots of the hosting companies have affiliate programs, so sign up with a few that you think are best, then if anyone you know wants some hosting, have them access through your link. For example, I use PowWeb and they’ve been really good. They pay affiliates $77 for every sign up. At the moment, they have a sale, 6 months free, so one year hosting is only $3.88 x 12. So, you can even give them free hosting for a year and pocket about $30.

    Now if we could cut through the massive volume of “make easy money online” promises and get to the heart of basic, honest methods to starting an online business, then we’d really be getting somewhere.

  24. Slittlzethe2nd on

    It claims there’s no product to sell, but the site itself is the product. The site is a subscription – you have to pay to potentially ‘earn’. So you’re selling the website to others in the hopes that they will pay the subscription fee and you get a commission. Here’s how it really works:

    Everyone starts at the bottom, you have to pay them $10 dollars. Then you’re told that to make money you have to refer people to sign up for their scam service.

    So you refer one person – who ends up paying them $10.
    That person refers another person – who ends up paying them $10

    The owner is making $30 a month so far. Now it’s the end of the month, so he has to start paying – so you get paid $1 because you referred one person, the person you referred also referred someone – so he gets paid $1. But the last guy didn’t refer anyone, so he gets nothing.

    Owner makes $30 – $2 (that he pays out) = $28 net profit for him. But as more and more people sign up and refer, this guy gets a larger and larger share, and unless you’re near the top – it’s a SCAM. You would need to sign up 10 people who stay with the program in order to maintain this system – and break even. People at the bottom aren’t going to start since they’re paying $10 and getting nothing back. So they’re the worst off in this scam. The people who have more than 10 steady referrals will make money – but again what they’re doing is diputs since you’re only keeping 10% of the profits for all the work you do and you end up giving 90% to the owner of the scam site – who does nothing, but gets you to do all the referrals and then pay him to do it.

    You could just copy his site and start the scam yourself – and then you’ll be at the top of the pyramid and be collecting 100% of the money, and then you just payout that measly $1.00 to the referrers. People get desperate after paying for these things and they give out false testimonials about the product in hopes of breaking even and getting out of the scam, or just to continue making money – if they are successful at it – which again is diputs, because this entire process revolves around making the initial guy money – and you can make more if you take the reigns and start this scam on your own.

    • brian99 on

      Hi everyone,
      Nice to see that people are getting some good information in this post. Thanks for all your comments. I’d like to add one point to the above comment and then put out a general thought for consideration.

      At the very top, where people connect directly to the owner of the site, yes, he only pays out $1 of the $10 paid to him from new members that they sign up. At the next level, he pays out $2 for new members. Once you get to five levels removed from the owner, then he is paying out $5 for all new members. Not quite so bad as keeping 90% of the money for himself.

      I think it’s obvious that the effort made by the members to acquire other members is easily worth $1 a month, and for first level references a 10% commission is a fair price to pay a ‘salesman’. Paying 10% on every sale to a manager, and paying 10% per sale to the sales staff is probably not very fair to the staff. Paying 10% to each ‘manager’ 5 levels up in the hierarchy is definitely not fair. That’s the same as these massive bonuses to CEOs while they lay off workers to up the stock price.

      I say paying 2-5% to a first level manager would be fair, since it’s his expertise which is helping his team be successful. Similarly a ‘regional manager’ would be ‘worth’ say 1%, remembering that he’s getting 1% of a much bigger total so it is in fact a much higher dollar value.

      Many companies have some type of compensation system for their employees that has a proportional reward scheme. My question is how can an internet based business and perhaps an MLM / Network Marketing business set a fair and effective compensation program?

      Here are my thoughts. First, you have to have a good product at a good price. Sadly, GDI and many other MLM type companies, to my mind, do not have good products at a good price. Secondly, what you’re trying to achieve is to set up members as your marketing/sales team. Thus, money that you would normally spend on marketing, advertising, salaries, etc. is allocated to an affiliate program or a multi-level payment program.

      I think 20% is a reasonable amount to pay for marketing and advertising. Of course it varies with the business and the industry, but I think that’s a reasonable number to consider. So, if I had a 5 level reward program, I could pay 10%, 5%, 2.5%, 1% and 0.5% giving a total payout of 19%. Sounds fair, and, as you can see, the ‘big money’ comes further down the line with the small percentages, but it’s still ‘fair’ since they’re not having to put much effort into finding and supporting new members at this level.

      If each person signs up 5 people:
      $10 x 5 x 10% = $5.00
      $10 x 25 x 5% = $12.50
      $10 x 125 x 2.5% = $31.25
      $10 x 625 x 1.0% = $62.50
      $10 x 3125 x 0.5% = $156.25

      I think such a reward structure could work for any industry, and if sales are thousands of dollars, it can still work.

      Now, I want to set up a website for learning languages. Other sites charge around $10 per month, but I could still make a profit at $5 per month and pay 20% for marketing/sales using a commission structure similar to the one above. We definitely have the best product and at $5 a month we’d likely be the lowest priced. Therefore, sales shouldn’t be a problem and members/customers would be more than satisfied, even if they didn’t participate as ‘sales staff’ and earn money in the affiliate program.

      So, to learn a language online you could pay $5 per month, get everything you need, enjoy learning, then go on vacation and use your new language skills. It’s a pretty easy product to sell and a very fair price, so you could easily pass on the word to others and get a ‘thank you’ commission. It wouldn’t be a lot of money, but it would very quickly mean that you learned your language for free and even earned some holiday money.

      Following the same example where each person told 5 other people:
      $5 x 5 x 10% = $2.50
      $5 x 25 x 5% = $6.25
      $5 x 125 x 2.5% = $15.63
      $5 x 625 x 1.0% = $31.25
      $5 x 3125 x 0.5% = $78.13

      It looks okay, but nobody is really going to bust their butts telling people about your program for such a small payback. They’re happy with the program, they’re happy to pay $5 a month for a great language program and it’s nice to get money back, but that’s about the end of it.

      So…. I figure, why not price it at the same value as everyone else, $10 per month, and put all the extra money into the marketing/sales program. Go ahead and pay 1% at each level, which doesn’t philosophically sound fair to me, but it’s a hell of a motivator to anyone who wants to do the marketing. And $10 is still a fair price for a great language program, so everyone who’s not interested in promoting the product is also still satisfied.

      Here’s how the numbers look then:
      $10 x 5 x 10% = $5.00
      $10 x 25 x 10% = $25.00
      $10 x 125 x 10% = $125.00
      $10 x 625 x 10% = $625.00
      $10 x 3125 x 10% = $3,125.00

      Now you’re talking some serious coin for the people promoting your product but you’ve still managed to provide the best product possible at a competitive price. Not the cheapest price, but a competitive price, and honestly, if it really is a great product, chances are you’re going to tell someone about it, so even if you are absolutely not interested in sales, you will likely be getting your course for free and earning a bit, simply because you told one person who joined. …and they told someone, and so on…

      For the company, or me at the top of the chart, it really makes very little difference but the second scenario is probably better since it will likely grow much faster. Charging $5 and paying out 19% nets the business $4.05 per customer. Charging $10 and paying out 50% nets the business $5 per customer.

      Anyway, hope this little example sheds the light on some general ideas and helps each of you make some progress on whatever business you happen to be involved in. If any of you whose native language is not English are interested in joining me at the top of my ‘little’ language project drop me an email and I’m sure we can find a spot for you in our team.

      • Tufa Girma on

        I will. I want to learn French in a very, very short time.

  25. aler on

    Another Pyramid doomed to fail, stop this rubbish

  26. GDI MEMBER on

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  27. Steve on

    I agree while GDI looks good as with other opportunities, the fact of what will happen is that the newbie trying GDI as his first money maker will think “Gee I can make $3000”, but no one has told him he needs to recruit 3000 people to get it, and most guru marketers will tell you the average newbie can only recruit 2 people, not 3000.
    If GDI was a forced matrix the little guy would fair a lot better.
    But this is what will happen, after 3 months when a person has no recruits and not earning $3,000 they will drop out as there is a limit to the number of people out there, willing to sign up, next comes attrition and the bottom dwellers drop away, then the next line and so on.
    It happens all the time.
    Another problem where do you advertise, people cant afford paid advertising they join GDI because of its low cost.
    Use free advertising? These sites are filled with people trying to recruit people to some opportunity.
    I was in GDI for 6 months and just quit?
    Why? I dont have a mailing listof thousands. Disabled pensioner who can’t afford paid advertising. Joined about 6 programs that help you to build your downline no luck, advertised on dozens of other free to advertise sites got swamped with junk emails asking me to join this or buy that.
    I asked a couple of friends no go, one said why would you pay $520 a year for a domain name and webhosting when you can get far more for less, one hosting company pays you $100 for every referral and it’s free to be an affiliate.

    I believe GDI is in danger of severe attrition unless they can offer a lot more, and make easier for the average Johnny Sixpack to make money.

    Unless you come up with your own system like Tissa (people search engines) or the GDI GoldRush Team, it will be hard to promote through free advertising, as GDI has 80,000+ members of which at least 60 – 80% are probally advertising for free there is a limit to free advertising sites.
    GDI is a very well set up opportunity no doubting that, but there is a limit to every thing and once reached attrition sets in and like rust will eat away at it making it weaker and weaker.
    Just my 2 cents worth, it’s up to the you if you join GDI that is your choice, and I hope you succeed with what ever opportunity you go with, my choice was to quit GDI.
    I don’t want to upset anyone this is just my point of view and I wanted to express it, so please respect it.

  28. karen on

    Agreed. But I’m impressed. This debate has gone on for over 6 months already..

  29. liar on

    these people are NOT brainwashed, they just want to maintain the LIE! they want to recruit others in their little covenant! they want to brainwash others, how else are they gonna survive?!

  30. phil on

    Hi all,

    I read through every exchange of words from everybody. I have been with GDI for 4 months now. Not one signup. i did what my upline told me, but I am not going to try to get my family and friends to sign up. I would go that route if
    I were making money already. I know some people stoop to low levels to make a sale. Sorry about their luck. I am not going to spend thousands of dollars advertising, and am pretty busy most of the time. You do need to spend alot of time and effort to promote any business.

    As for the GDI reps that posted here you guys have helped me make my decision and that is to cancel. Not saying this program does not work for some people, but for you to not understand marketing any better that you do and try to force feed your ideas to others to make them change their minds is very unprofessional.

    The good thing that came out of this venture for me is that I learned alot of information as to exactly what it takes to run your own business on line. I mean alot of info. From building a wesite using html, to getting free webhosting, to advertising, blogging, and social networking. I expended my time and not any money. Another thing that was a plus is that in doing a research paper for my college marketing class I was able to do actual SWOT analyis on internet companies.My findings believe it or is that GDI does a piss poor job of thouroughly explaining what you need to do to be an online marketer. I was told by my upline that it would be easy, that should have been a warning sign to me, but I was taken in by the interest and desire created by the ads that GDI uses in its promotions.

    To all good luck in what ever venture you choose and GOD BLESS

  31. phil on

    Hi again
    It is a done deal. I have cancelled with GDI. When they asked why I told them about the postings here by the GDI reps and they told me they did not blame me. That alone should send a flag up. Not just to the reps, but to all who want to get involved with marketing, especially when in the end there is no real product to sell. I have plenty of blue sky for sale.

    Just one more note for you GDI reps. If you post or advertise that you GUARANTEE SUCCESS you are the one that is liable if anyone decides to take action and sue. GDI will not back you on this so be careful. This does not just go for GDI reps, but all involved with marketing of any type. Find out the real rules of the game by contacting the online BBB. They should clear up all of the murky water and give you valuable tools for properly promoting your business.

    Good luck in all of your ventures and GOD BLESS

  32. Not Kevin on

    Global Domains International (GDI) is a terrible deal – average hosting and very overpriced domain names. Why would you want a .ws domain name anyway. .com is more recognised, more trusted, will rank better in the search engines and is MUCH cheaper ($7.95 at hostway.com or $6.95 at godaddy or namecheap with coupons + often free with webhosting at good webhosts)

  33. Ivan on

    Can you just get 5 people to sign up for GDI. Buy the DVD’s & Pay the shipping costs & get the $100 bonus. Of course you will lose…but on the subsequent months you won’t pay for the DVD anymore so you can recruit more than 5 people and EARN. Bonus caps at $5000 btw but still a profit. You can make those members quit anyway so they only pay $10 once.

    • brian99 on

      Perhaps what you say is possible, but it sounds like you’re clearly trying to “milk the system” and not genuinely work with the program and try and build a legitimate business. Trying to “get something for nothing” is never a good long term plan.

  34. Daulat Singh on

    I have read all the comments here on this site. They are confusing me more than before. I had joined GDI last year and canceled my account after 3 months because of this credit card problem. Most Indians (I live in India) still do not have a credit card of their own. I joined again this year hoping that I will get some signups from foreign countries. Two months later, I am still in the same place, still no signups. May be I should quit again.

    I wonder if there is an opportunity like GDI but better…..and does not charge automatically from my credit card like GDI does.

    • brian99 on

      My suggestion: quit again, it’s obviously not working for you. The guy from Romania who I was originally going to sign up under is actually doing okay now with his GDI business and has about 20 people under him. Nothing great, but not bad for him living in Romania. As for something better than GDI… I haven’t seen it, but I’ve done better just putting people onto PowWeb as a good hosting company. They pay $77 to you as an affiliate and the cost for the first year is currently on sale for $47 (50% discount). So, you can help someone get setup with a free website for one year and pocket $30. It’s really very good hosting; way, way better than GDI and as good as any I’ve seen. That’s a lot better than trying to get someone to pay $10 per month for very poor website hosting with GDI and you only pocket $1 per month.

  35. Sean F on

    Interesting how any commentary whatsoever on GDI turns up thousands of cut-and-paste “testimonials” hosted and registered by–yep–GDI and “affiliates.” Even more interesting how the “rebuttals” are cut-and-pasted off GDI’s homepage.

    GDI is most CERTAINLY a scam. It’s a classic pyramid.

    The legions of followers don’t change this fact. Nobody cares if you bought yourself a champagne-glass hottub with your GDI earnings. That GDI paid YOU doesn’t make it any less of a pyramid–or any less of a scam. Calling it a “Multi-Level Marketting” system deludes only yourselves AND your victims.

    Yeah, sure, that’s my opinion etc… But the math doesn’t lie. The user base is a completely unsustainable geometric progression–i.e., why pyramid schemes are scams

    For example, to be break even on GDI, each and EVERY participant has to enlist a minimum of 10 zombies. In turn, each zombie needs to recruit 10. Even if it’s a “one time thing,” it’s a mathematical impossibility from the get-go.

    At present, there are about 1.5 billion internet USERS, the vast majority of whom don’t want, won’t want, and won’t ever need their own domain–much less a “ws” domain. But that’s neither here nor there. Let’s assume for sake of argument that EVERYONE wants a WS domain!

    The ENTIRE population of the internet would account for 8 “levels.” The entire population of the WORLD wouldn’t even breach 9 levels. The entire population of the planet–living and dead–over the past 10,000 years would just brush 10 levels. Factorials are FUN!

    The hard, harsh reality is that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot, and anyone who profits off of it is a crook. Me, I prefer to WORK for a living. And I do just fine by it, thanks!

    Cue the links to the “spider marketting video” or whatever the bollocks they call it in 3… 2… 1…

    Sean

    • brian99 on

      Love the math! Thanks Sean.

  36. Brandon on

    Hello, I have been reading all these posts and I just had to put my opinion in here also.. I have been a part of GDI for like 2 weeks now. I have no sign ups and the people in my upline do not help what so ever. You can write them emails all day long and they will not reply to you. They are only there to make money. I will throw out the main person that got me to join cause he was convencing with his proof videos. So anyone that reads this next will know exactly who im talking about.. His name is Brian Bear he has done created sites and links and convencing marketing to get you to join.. He even said in one of his videos that everyone that joins under him will get 5 people in their downline supplied by HIM! I am here to tell you that is a LIE! He will not do it and when you ask him about it during his webinars he avoids the question. Also when you write him an email asking he doesn’t write you back. He claims he has all these emails and he cant answer all of them. But when you have new people hurting for the info that you promised you would provide for them and you dont give it, it will make some people pissed off.. ME!. I hope Brian finds this blog and reads it and I hope that he realizes that he is being put out because he is a lying snake. I havn’t yet canceled my account but trust me im going to.. And as for the people in here that are writing taking up for this bull shit ass company are ridiculous! You actually come to a forum that is trying to determine if gdi is a scam or not so therefor you searched “is GDI a scam” or something close to it. And then you have the nerve to try and promote your site on here. All that does it prove that GDI is a bunch of bull and mostly the only way you are going to get people to join is if you convence your family or you pay for people to join just so you can make proof videos. I have no doubt in my mind that people dont make money off of it but you have to be a real ass to do it. They say there is no selling. Well, In order to get people to join using blogs and such is selling. Using proof videos is selling. You are selling yourself and you are selling GDI. Ive even had blogs deleted from ezine and ehow for trying to promote it. and hubpages wont even let you post on there about gdi unless you select the high level of ads for your blog. Im sorry but making it where you have to use ads on your blog because your trying to convence people that gdi is not a scam says that its a scam.Duh!. Granted you are going to have some people that are going to fall victim to it because so many people want to work from home. But all in all you have to be a liar to get people to join and im just not like that. I would like people to be able to make money online from home and not have to worry about reporting to dingbats. It sounds great but there is no easy way to do it. People should look into free advertising if thats what they want to do. they can make commissions and all that good stuff but there is still the selling aspect of it. I feel for anyone and everyone that will go through this and I hope they find this blog before its to late for them.. Hence their 7 day trial period.. Oh, and one other thing. I didnt even know that you have to get the dvd’s to even qualify for the 100 dollars for 5 people. I just found that out here. And during my seach for if gdi is a scam even came across people using scam websites to promote gdi.. That is crazy and funny all at the same time.. I looked at the top people on gdi and the people that are actually paying for a .com are not even on it.. so they created a scam site to promote gdi for nothing. Way to go people. HA HA. Anyways.that is basically my 2 cents. I hope that everyone learns from this and they come across this blog. Im glad I did and thank you brian for creating this also.. You will probably help alot of people with this including myself. So once again thank you. Take care everyone. And the people trying to promote GDI on here you should really stop.. THis is not the place to do that. Have a good one. Brandon.

    • brian99 on

      That was more like 25 cents, not 2 cents, but definitely helpful for people. Thanks, Brandon. My question still remains: is there a multi-level marketing system that really is good? Does one exist that has a good product at a good price which really does help people, and people can make good money from it if they want? It’s a shame that so many people “want to believe” and do take the chance because it’s so compelling, only to end up with a bitter experience.

  37. Andy on

    So now when those who are still interested to join GDI, are welcome to join this fantastic home based income opportunity, click to my website at idarbs.ws

  38. Raj on

    Friends, I’ve read almost all of the previous comments, including its author Brian’s. Actually what’s the fact behind this?
    He is trying to promote his proweb hosting service and also his Carboncopy pro service by underestimating another web domain service provider. Nothing at all!! What a business strategy??!! It is so digusting.. Certainly, he is so afraid by the worldwide spreading of GDI business. Nothing else.
    When I go through the comments of different people, I could understand one thing that most of the people have no idea about GDI’s prospectus and also they have no idea how to market it. Friends, I kindly request to you that before you join with any program you should have an idea about how to market this. You’ll not get any followers or leads just by joining with GDI or any other online programs. So before you join with that program you must study that how to market it. If not all your effort will be utter futile.
    Just imagine, that you want to start a mobile shop in your city. You do not expect that all people who want to purchase a mobile phone definitely will directly come to your shop. They can find out a lot of other shops in your city also. Then what you’ll do? Here is the importance of marketing, or when you consider online business you should consider traffic to your site. You should try to apply different marketing techniques and tips to attract customers to your shop. I hope you can understand the importance of marketing. You’ll not get any customer just starting a shop and sitting idly. It’s a competitive world. Then you should understand how to compete with others. Then only you can achieve success. If you want to achieve success, definitely you should try to study the successful ideas of success people. And also we should add a good effort from our side.
    Ok , I agree with some previous comments that GDI’s hosting service cost is little bit higher than other domain providers. But I want to ask them only one thing, Do you get any online job opportunity from other so-called providers? GDI is not only a domain provider, but also it provides it’s online business opportunity to the public. Ok, if you only want to take a web domain hosting for your website, there is no need to join with GDI.You can approach any other hosting providers. But here, when you join with GDI, you’ll get double bonus, first one is just any other normal case, you’ll get a good web hosting service for your website. The second one is you’ll get an opportunity to do a great web domain online business with an Internationally well-acclaimed DSA approved business Concern.
    And I’d like to ask them one more important thing. Why should you waste your time by thinking about the 100$ bonus offer. Firstly, try to put your first step properly. Don’t expect you’d be rich with in a week or month. You should be patience and also you should have a hardworking mentality.
    One more thing, I found one person’s(Daulat Singh) comment previously. I agree with his point partially that “most Indians still do not have a credit card of their own”. I suggest him just check each week’s ‘Leader Board’ status from GDI’s site. You can find out a lot of people especially from India achieved their goals. How they could achieve that? Why can’t you achieve? That is why I already mentioned about the importance of marketing. Don’t try to stick on only one marketing strategy. May be they would be outdated. Try to find out and apply different marketing strategies. Because if you want to achieve success, you should come out from the nutshell. Friend, I’m also from India. Initially just like you I didn’t get that much of leads what I expected. But at the same time I tried to spend my time to find out and study different marketing techniques to promote my GDI site. Now I earn a satisfactory income through their business. Here is my site http://www.incomews.ws/ . I provide my full support to my downline members. But don’t expect that I can give 5 leads to my downline members freely(One person made such a statement like this. May be his upline member tried to fool him). So don’t believe this kind of exaggerated offers. But at the same time if the upline member is an efficient one, he can point out his downline members about different marketing technics and tips. They can only point out the proper way to you, but the effort should be from your side.

    • brian99 on

      Dear Raj,
      First there’s no need for rude comments like “It’s so disgusting.” And learn to read. I’m not promoting anything. PowWeb is not mine, it’s just good hosting like BlueHost and others. Big names like GoDaddy aren’t as good and GDI is definitely not as good. That’s a simple fact. Do the comparison and evaluation yourself.
      Second, of course I’m not “afraid by the worldwide spreading of GDI business”. Go ahead, knock yourselves out. I’ve simply said I don’t think it’s great and many people agree. Others like yourself don’t, that’s your prerogative and go ahead, spread it, this blog thread is simply a means for people to see both sides of the story before they make their own decision.
      Third, I’m not carbon-copying anything. My 5plus5 site which is basically dormant at the moment was simply to help friends in Indonesia and elsewhere who could have benefited from GDI but can’t really; certainly not as easily as I had hoped. I have no desire to be a competitor with GDI.
      Fourth, other hosting companies do not have GDI’s multi-level business concept but they provide very attractive affiliate programs which are arguably more profitable than GDI’s, but again, that’s for each individual to decide.
      Fifth and finally, absolutely success with GDI as in any business comes through effort and good marketing. I, like many people, don’t like marketing, which presents a very big problem if you want to pursue a business like GDI.

      So, best wishes to everyone in whatever online business they choose, but let’s keep the comments friendly and polite, and know what you’re talking about.

  39. brian99 on

    For all of you, like me, who aren’t keen on marketing and relying on others, either customers or downline members, I’d like to suggest an alternative online method of making money: trading.

    My brother started last November and after seeing his success, I got started in February (2009). There are many, many options and styles to choose from (stocks, index minis, forex, etc) but I simply began trading the same stock my brother was: Suncor Inc (su.to), a Canadian oil and gas company.

    I also simply used the same online trading service that he was using (Questrade). It’s Canadian based and reasonably good but I suggest you surf around and see what you can find.

    The beauty of this business is that it’s simply you versus the market, and every day you either make money or lose money. It’s entirely in your control. No marketing, no waiting on others, no list building, no nothing. Just ‘place your bets’.

    Many people say it’s gambling, but it’s not really. You learn the patterns and you make intelligent decisions. If you simply follow your strategy and don’t get emotional, it’s pretty hard not to make money.

    In the 5 months since starting, with absolutely no experience (and making LOTS of mistakes), I’ve more than doubled my money ($20,000 original capital). My brother has more than tripled his and my mom’s investment.

    I’m currently training my Indonesian staff to do the trading for me since I don’t want to put in the time on a daily basis. If you’re interested in learning and trying this online business also, have a look at this short video to help see why it’s a bloody crime so many people loss massive amounts of money as the stock prices tumbled in 2008. Don’t trust the experts. Take control of your own investments. It’s easy and profitable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tWQ4QOsgMU&feature=channel

    And here’s a link to a good free ebook to give you a lot of information on all aspects of online investing. http://www.rockwelltrading.com/free-ebook

    Again, best of luck to all of you with whatever business you choose.

  40. roberto on

    hey there brian99

    thanks for taking the time and effort to create this blog AND your ongoing energy to reply to many of the posts 🙂

    …and all word perfect!!!

    BUT, i’d just like to point out that i’m currently in the market for an *additional* web host (been with dreamhost since 2005) and was pleased to see your bluehost and powweb recommendation UNTIL i checked them out with DNSreport.com

    http://dnsstuff.com/dnslite/?r=toolspage&domain=powweb.com

    – 5 WARNINGS

    http://dnsstuff.com/dnslite/?r=toolspage&domain=bluehost.com

    – 4 WARNINGS

    for comparison try http://www.site5.com/

    – RESULT: Congratulations, your test results are clean. Well done!

    oh and please don’t try to tell me the errors ‘don’t really matter’!

    – that’s what all the live chat support agents ALWAYS say :-/

    peace

    roberto

    • brian99 on

      Thanks Roberto, for the information. I’ve never heard of DNSstuff and don’t know anything about DNS or protecting my site or anything else, like most people. Site5 definitely looks okay. I still imagine powweb and bluehost are okay also, but, hey, I don’t know any of the technical stuff. I haven’t had any problems yet with powweb, touch wood, but for all of you looking for new hosting: buyer beware. Gather all the info you can then make your call and hope it works out. Best of luck to all.

  41. GDI Believer! on

    I couldn’t read through all the comments, they were depressing me..QUIT WHINING!!! GDI is a legit business, you can quit whenever you want, and they are not crooks! It is like ant other business you have to market and promote it, but they give you the complete package of product and tools. Now if your regretting the move to join GDI…Get out! simple as that…If your thinking about joining..Do it!!It is dirt cheap and you can cancel any time, If your scared to start a business for yourself with $10/month, then you shouldn’t even think about starting a business period!
    ANY online business is hard unless you know about online marketing,It is true you dont have to sell to your friends, As a matter of fact I hate selling…But I still am developing a GDI downline business..Willing to take a tiny risk…Join me! and i’ll show you everything you need to know!

  42. ct1967 on

    Sorry to disappoint someone but I did something 99% of people usually doesnt do: I red their policies!!! All!
    I wasted my time to read GDI’s TOS, that should be for Terms Of Service but after I red the right meaning should be Terrifying Obstacles for Service I am not joking.
    Everyone can do it at http://website.ws/glossary/mlm_agreement.html
    Don’t you believe me?
    Ok. I will proove it.

    Title: TOS for Web Email and Web Templates
    Article: 1. ACCEPTANCE OF TERMS

    “(…) WebSite.ws provides its service to you, subject to the following Terms of Service (“TOS”), which may be updated by us from time to time without notice to you.”

    This means GDI can change the deal when they want without saying anything to clients even if they change it for worst for them. And GDI can do it because so it’s written.

    Article: 2. 2. DESCRIPTION OF SERVICE
    “WebSite.ws currently provides users with access to free unlimited Web Based email”.

    This is not true. I don’t know but at elementary school they tought me the difference between 10 and infinite (or unlimited). Was the same for GDI?

    “WebSite.ws assumes no responsibility for the timeliness, deletion, miss-delivery or failure to store, any user communications or personalization settings”

    This speaks by itself about the Great Service!

    “In order to use the Service, you must register a .ws domain name for a minimum of 2 years.”

    Why don’t they tell it clearly that everyone who registers in GDI has to pay for 2 YEARS????
    No they prefer to hide it in the middle of thousands of bla bla they know none reads. That’s why they put it there.

    But better to go on: the surprises aren’t finished yet!

    Article: 4. MONITORING WEB E-MAIL AND REMOVAL OF CONTENT

    “WebSite.ws does not pre-screen content, but WebSite.ws shall have the right (but not the obligation) to monitor any and all content posted on the free Web Templates and in their sole discretion lock, move or remove any content that is posted on the free Web Templates.”

    That’s simply terrible.
    But they weren’t satisfied still and you continue …

    “Without limiting the foregoing, we shall have the right to remove any content that violates this Agreement or is otherwise objectionable.”

    What? What is objectionable? Who is the judge? And the defense lawyer? Are they telling seriously?
    This means that if one day one of GDI decide to delete the site of one customer (and why don’t do it to someone who has in his downline 10,000 people so they don’t have to pay him his commissions?) because you don’t like a picture or because their dog that morning didn’t poop well they can delete it without notice. And because the member violated the User Agreement or the TOS they are in the right to close also his account and delete in a second all his earnings.

    WOW!

    Not finished yet!

    Article: 5. MEMBER CONDUCT

    “The Service is provided to individuals only. Any unauthorized commercial use of the Service, or the resale of its services, is expressly prohibited.”

    Now a question: what the hell do I have to spend 120$ yearly for a website if I cannot use it for exemple for my job?

    To post my vacation’s pictures?
    ‘Cmon!

    But the best of the beast is now

    Article: 8. MODIFICATIONS TO SERVICE

    “WebSite.ws reserves the right at any time and from time to time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, the Service (or any part thereof) with or without notice.”

    As to say … when we want we can desappear with all your money!!!!

    Article: 9. TERMINATION

    “You agree that WebSite.ws, in its sole discretion, may terminate your password, account (or any part thereof) or use of the Service, and remove and discard any Content within the Service, for any reason, including, without limitation, for lack of use or if WebSite.ws believes that you have violated or acted inconsistently with the letter or spirit of the TOS.”

    Spirit of TOS: AHAHAHAHAHAHHA

    I want to suggest GDI something. So at least people can avoid to read tons of unuseful bla bla bla.
    Their TOS can be shorted in one only phrase:

    YOU ARE AGREE THAT website.ws can do what it wants and likes with your account and also can delete it for any reason without informing you and website.ws doesn’t care if you paid for it and you still have pending commissions. So eat the shit and shut up!

    More clear no?

    But there is another page to read!

    Click to access Independent%20Affiliate%20Agreement%20Terms%20and%20Conditions.pdf

    Article: 5
    “(…) I understand that these Terms and Conditions, the GDI Policies and Procedures, or the GDI
    Compensation Plan may be amended at the sole discretion of GDI, and I agree that any such amendment
    will apply to me. Notification of amendments shall be published in official GDI materials.
    Amendments shall become effective upon notification. The continuation of my GDI business or my
    acceptance of bonuses or commissions shall constitute my acceptance of any and all amendments”

    What if will GDI modify the agreement telling that to be elegible to earn commissions a member has to pay for exemple 5,000 $?
    That’s called BLACKMAIL!

    Article: 6
    “The term of this agreement is one month from the date hereof and shall automatically renew for
    successive one-month terms unless cancelled as provided herein or in the Policies and Procedures. I
    understand that either party may elect not to renew the Agreement by notifying the other party at
    least five (5) days prior to any monthly renewal date. If GDI elects not to renew the Agreement,
    such notice shall be emailed to Affiliate at the last email address provided by Affiliate to GDI. If
    I elect to not renew the Agreement, I understand that I must call (1) 760-602-3000 M-F 8-5 Pacific
    Time and go through the cancellation process at least five (5) days prior to the monthly renewal
    date. If either I or GDI elects not to renew the Agreement, or if it is canceled or terminated for
    any reason, I understand that I will permanently lose all rights as an Affiliate. I shall not be
    eligible to sell GDI products and services nor shall I be eligible to receive commissions, bonuses,
    or other income resulting from the activities of my former downline sales organization. In the event
    of cancellation, termination or non-renewal, I waive all rights I have, including but not limited to
    property rights, to my former downline organization and to any bonuses, commissions or other
    remuneration derived through the sales and other activities of my former downline organization. GDI
    reserves the right to terminate all Affiliate Agreements upon 30 days notice if the Company elects
    to: (1) cease business operations; (2) dissolve as a business entity; or (3) terminate distribution
    of its products and/or services via direct selling channels”

    TRANSLATION: THE AGREEMENT IS RENEWED EACH MONTH. WE PAY THE COMMISSION EACH 15 OF THE NEXT MONTH. SO IF WE HAVE TO PAY YOU WE CAN DELETE 5 DAYS BEFORE THE RENEWAL THE AGREEMENT SO YOU WILL NOT RECIEVE FROM US NEITHER A CENT!

    Are you all sure you will want to sign agreements like that?

    I did it and after they understood what I was learning about them they terminated my account (thanks God!) and if I try to sign up they terminate my account immediately (I think to be in the black list lol).

  43. pressedpennysg on

    I am using this webhosting called justhost. http://www.justhost.com

    It is only $3.95 per month. It’s cheap and they have a lot of things for you! Design templates, banner rotator, scripts, forum, forms, SSL, security certificates, and even free credits to promote your site on Yahoo, Google, SEO, etc.. It’s a great website. Support is very good and fast! It’s a pity I can’t join their affiliate program which is limited to US, UK, Australia else I would be promoting this great website! One catch here is that in order for it to be $3.95 per month, you have to get it for 3 years. However, although they are based in UK, they actually charged in your own country currency, not pounds! Great site! Great work!

  44. serge on

    it’s been a week for me thinking if I would take my credit card from my bank and register to GDI. the promotion is very DAMN encouraging. first of all, i believe that storing your money in an operated electronic device will make you somehow lose that money without knowing it. I tried to google “GDI scam”, and I found this site. A BILLION THANKS TO ALL. I’ll just follow what the bible says, “from the sweat of your face, you’ll eat bread”

  45. mike on

    just watch video and try the free trial you will be impressed and go to mikecontreras.ws

  46. rjcb3 on

    I’ve read all of these comments and have been going back and forth deciding whether or not to finally decide to join.

    I shan’t discuss my decision here on the board…however, you have helped me decide my course of action.

    Thank you.

    Robert

  47. john on

    hi, brian99!

    thanks for putting this blog up. really helpful in making an informed decision on whether or not to join GDI. not!

    i have a question tho. and hope this merits a reply from you, which i would very much appreciate. what do you have to say about 202up.com, the ad of which was posted above.

    thanks!

    john

    • brian99 on

      Hi John, I had a quick look at 202up.com and it doesn’t look very appealing to me. It seems like a lot of the same ol’ stuff, promising all the answers but still leaves you wondering how to actually make it work. It’s also a bit pricey.

      • john on

        hi, brian99!

        thanks for the reply!

        btw, i’d appreciate if you’d update me about your yet dormant online endeavor.

        all the best!

      • brian99 on

        Hi John, unfortunately it’s still dormant. I’ve just been too busy with other things and nobody else picked up the ball and carried it forward with that idea. I may get a portion of it going soon. I’m doing some online stock trading where I’d like to have traders in Indonesia following the stocks and suggesting trades, so that I and others don’t have to spend our time watching them on a daily basis. I need to finish fine tuning the trading strategy then train a few people. My main interest however is language learning and I want to set up a site for learning languages and we would have a multi-level “Thank you” program to members who got others to sign up. I want it to be absolutely the best way to learn a language available anywhere, plus something where you can earn money if you want. It’s a big project but we’re making progress. Thanks for your interest and I’ll be sure to let you know when things get rolling.

  48. John on

    Hi, Brian99!

    What a coincidence! Two of the things that i am most interested in: learning languages and earning (not necessarily in that order).

    Yeah, I would be most pleased if you could fill me in on your plans. I could probably even help you out. Just let me know if you need to assess my resume for anything that you think my skills can be used. Would be glad to be working with you, in case.

  49. thevermin8tor on

    Brian;In reply to your comment: “Now what if you created a similar community but with the intention of helping “newbies” get started on the internet, totally for free, and helping each other (and the “newbies” as they move on to “toddlers”) to make some money doing whatever it is we love doing? Sound like a cool concept?

    It’s a cooperative, or a kibbutz, or a team. It’s neighbours helping neighbours. It’s a community where we all go to work each day and if you need help or advice from an IT guy, a lawyer, a doctor, a dentist, a Mongolian spider expert, or whatever, you just ask! We’re all part of the same community or team.
    Everyone in the community has earned the trust of several others, so that trust is easily passed on to the entire community. If anyone betrays that trust, they’re quickly told to shape up or ship out.

    If nobody has the specific information you’re looking for, then you go to Google and wherever else to find what you’re looking for, and the next time anyone else is looking for similar information, you’re the one they’re going to contact, because they trust you.”
    I have an ideas concerning this.Though I am not skilled in google requirements etc,makung pro websites etc.So I doubt it would get iff the ground.Any suggestions? email me:Hannam at hotmail.com

    • brian99 on

      Thanks to you and everyone for your interest and comments. I will send you an email also. I’d still like to get such a concept off the ground because I think it’s really needed. Problem is, I’m tied up with a language learning website which will also allow people to make money by inviting others to join. I’m happy to help as much as I can though if someone else wants to take the lead with it.

  50. thevermin8tor on

    was about to sign up & pay $10 per month for GDI as part of the New rich system plan.But found another that is FREE and is affiliate based.http://www.theaffiliatecode.com.All these business promise all rhe earths riches getting you to commit,then part with your cash then you get scammed.As a community nationally and internationally, bond anfd fight this kind of crap, by getting all the materials needed from them and use it to defeat them monetarily! What do you think? e-mail me.

  51. thevermin8tor on

    why go through all the spiels desined to confuse you, when it’s best to pay 4 something that’s all done for you.All sites made,free hosting & dmain name or a 1 time only fee,secured,links and HML codes secured so you don’t get ripped off.I can’t join a business online paying me via Paypal as 1 company tried to access it and it was then limited for security purposes or I just didn’t use it and make money,put into it 4 1 year.

  52. Josh on

    I have been with global domains international it is not techically a scam but it is more like a vitual cancer on the web. Businesses like this make there money by spamming people all over the world sucking them in with empty promises and making it near impossible to get out so they can keep riping you off for as long as they can.

    Let me tell you my experiance with GDI.

    Over the past 2.5 years I have converted about 100 people to GDI and I have yet to recieve a payment from them as I still havent earned the requiered minimum payout.
    Most of these people cancel within the first few days (Shows its a good product hey)
    I finally realised that this will never work after tons & tons of effort I have put in.

    I cancelled my paypal subscription with them.

    Then they started billing my credit card. My credit card expired and they managed to guess the new expiry date and kept billing my card (ilegal).

    So I recently cancelled my credit card and now they have started billing my paypal account again even though my subscription has been cancelled (very dishonest business).

    There is only one way to cancel your account and that is by phoning them.

    I have been trying to ring the number they gave me at least 10 times it dosnt work here in Australia. I have sent a heap of emails and they reply with the same thing (cancel by phone no exceptions).

    This company is so desperate to rip people off they are resorting to ilegal and dishonset practices.

    Has anyone ever seen a decent .ws domain NO cause everyone is in it to make money which only .000001% is acually making a profit the rest a sheep handing over the hard earned every month.

    You need to be in this company long term to make any money and they will not be around for that long. So if you want to join this company and there scamming tactics go ahead throw away 10 bucks a month and go through all the crap I have been through to get out.

    That is why I think GDI is a virtual cancer and I feel sorry for its victims.

    Anyone who is promoting GDI cannot tell me that they acually believe they are selling a good product because you not it isnt true you are trying to promote a lifestyle that will never ever ever eventuate. Get a ligit online business.

    I am trying to stop GDI from taking anymore of my money, every month they perform an unauthorised transaction on my account I will be posting 100 posts similar to this one.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Josh, great info!! Nice to get the full story from someone who’s been in the trenches! It’s still really disappointing to hear that so many companies are simply trying to grab money without providing a quality product. Buyer beware!! It really does motivate me even more to get something legitimate setup for helping others.

  53. chris redmond on

    wow very interesting dialague. i was very interested into doing business with GDI but after reading all of these post i have decided to not be so foolish as to join a professional rip off company and chose to put that ten dollars somewhere that would make a difference. and to anyone who is thinking of joining GDI i suggest you do the same thing that i did and donate it to the earthquake victims. Thankyou very much for all the info everyone you saved me from stepping on my own d-ck and getting ripped off.

  54. Dane on

    I don’t think MLM ever made anyone money, except those at the top. It’s a legalized ponzi scheme really. Any opportunity that claims you will be rich overnight is absolutely false. If you want to do that, buy a lottery ticket. For the rest of us, we need to learn the very important steps to securing recurring income online. There are steps and affiliate marketing is front end heavy with the learning curve. Here is a review of an Affiliate Marketing University that I joined: http://wealthyaffiliatepreview.com

    I love this site, and the best part of it is while you are learning, you can earn if you have any special skills, such as web design, article writing, squidoo building, etc. They have a jobs section where members hire each other or offer services for pay.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Dane,
      Glad you found something you’re interested in and enjoying it, but I’d like to add my thoughts on Affiliate Marketing and Online Stock Trading (or Forex). These and so many other businesses are really so completely ‘non-productive’. I mean you’re not really doing anything productive that benefits anyone. Especially with online trading, which I’ve been doing for the last year, it’s totally parasitic. There is absolutely no benefit to society. Even a janitor or a garbage picker collecting bottles is producing a service that is worthy of receiving money for. Investing in a business, providing capital for it to grow, is good and necessary, but most stock trading and especially day trading, is totally non-productive.
      For affiliate marketing, which I’ve looked at quite a bit but never jumped into, it seems like it’s really a whole bunch of people all chasing the same golden eggs. The companies have it made in the shade; they get an unlimited number of affiliate marketers to risk their own money marketing their products and they only pay a commission once they get a sale. Absolutely no risk, all upside. I suspect that the number of successful Affiliate Marketers is about the same percentage of successful MLMers.
      It also seems that most of the money being made in Affiliate Marketing is by people selling info on how to make money at it. I hate being negative, and wish I was wrong, but it sure seems that way.
      I think the ultimate solution is to, as you say, “earn if you have any special skills”. We all have skills and abilities that can be put to productive use in some way and what’s needed is to find a way to make money by doing something productive that you enjoy doing. I know I need to switch my focus and spend less time trading and more time developing my language learning websites. That lure of cash is hard to resist though.
      “Securing recurring income online” is still the ultimate goal, and the way to get that is to offer something of value. You can then apply affiliate marketing techniques to bring in the traffic, but you’re not competing against hordes of others trying to sell the same product to the same people.

      • Dane on

        I don’t think it’s true that I am not doing anything productive. Far from the truth actually. I get checks from clickbank and other affiliate sites monthly, and the more content I get out there, the more money I make. Better than sitting there waiting for other people to join above you to make you an income.

  55. Dane on

    Well, I am sorry that you feel that way about affiliate marketing. There are plenty of ways to make money with it, the main thing is that people do new searches each and every month on google. Keywords and niches are always changing. A good affiliate marketer knows this, they know who they are selling to and the provide a product of interest. Simple., but then again if you saw the inside at WA, you would know this. Plus you would have the support of thousands of successful members.

    Just sayin.

    • Brian on

      The good thing about affiliate marketing versus MLM is that (like online trading) you’re not reliant on others and keeping them motivated. It’s more pure sales which is a common business in any industry, online or not. The skills you learn are also transferable to any internet business you may later chose to do. In that sense, it’s perhaps the best of the 3 options for making money online. It seems strange to me to be paying people 50-75% commission on sales though. Wouldn’t it be better to offer it at a lower price? Good luck with it, and maybe I can finish developing a product that you can then market! 😉

  56. kevin and nicole on

    hi Brian me and my wife joined GDI 4 days ago. and after reading this entire Blog you cant believe it that this going on with this company. we are going to get out we have a paypal account that we my have to cancel i am using a visa gift card.we may have to use all up so that they cannot put through i spent a least 30 hrs learning the system then i just saw this sit. man its depressing anyway good to see this page.please email back on this thank you K and N

    • brian99 on

      hehe… too bad you found us AFTER you went ahead and joined. Ain’t that often the way though. Better late than even later though!! I really wish all the bad news about GDI wasn’t true and it would work out well for you, but I really don’t see that happening so best to cut your losses and look elsewhere.

  57. Serdar on

    Hi Brian,
    First of all,i read many comments but i could not read all of them,because there were too many:)I apologize first if the answers were given in the comments that i am gonna ask.

    First: Do we have to still call them for any cancellation?If yes,i dont think its true forcing someone to call them for cancellation,what if they dont speak English?So they will be charged forever!

    Second: I am from Turkey and you know affiliate marketing in non-english speaking countries improves slowly,i am one of the best affiliates ”in Turkey” and if i join gdi,i can find many members,so i am sure i can earn some $,but the problem is can my members make money?What do you think about that?
    And the third is,if they are still forcing people to call them for cancellation,do you have a better idea in order not to call them for cancellation?Because in turkey not many people speaks English,and if i say them;you dont speak english then you can not quit it,think what happens:)

    Brian i am looking forward for you reply and this will be important to me.And the other guys that want to share their ideas about my questions,they are welcome,too.
    Thanks for this great blog!

    • brian99 on

      Thanks Serdar,
      I’m happy this post is helping people. I never expected it to grow so large! 🙂
      1. As far as I know, yes, you have to call for cancellation, or perhaps simply stop payment via your credit card.
      2. As anywhere, some people make money with gdi, but overall, I don’t believe it’s a good product and believe there must be better options.
      3. Put a block on your credit card, but really, if you start with the idea of cancelling, what’s the point of starting?

      I really do want to get my website going for language learning, and particularly for people to learn English, because then all your contacts in Turkey could make money and learn English at the same time. A nice prospect. 🙂

      If you’re interested in that, and want to help motivate me, and help get it started in Turkey, then let me know… perhaps it’s time.

      • John on

        I filed a dispute on paypal and they replied:
        “Auto-renewals have been cancelled so no further charges will incur on your account. If you wish to deactivate your account completely please call us at 760-602-3000.”

      • brian99 on

        Well, that’s a good sign. What’s important is they don’t charge you anymore. If they want to keep your account activated, no big deal, so long as you’re not getting charged. Thanks for passing on the info.

  58. Serdar on

    Hello Brian,

    I am sorry i was a little busy and could not answer to you.That’s interesting what you said,learning English and making money at the same time sounds good:)So what can i do for you?And what is your project,if you tell me its details,we can of course talk about it.

    • brian99 on

      Hi! Sorry for my slow reply, but I’ve been waiting for some possible developments here with a friend in Indonesia. Hasn’t happened yet, so decided I’d better drop you a quick line. Basically, we have a lot of good material and techniques to help people learn English (and other languages) and want to make them available online. The main hangup is that I’m not a web developer, so until we can get someone managing that aspect, we’re going to be limited. Keeping my fingers crossed that something happens soon. Cheers, Brian

  59. Danny on

    Hi Brian,
    I want to ask that I live outside US, but I have few relatives who live there in US, so if I want to send the DVDs to them, what amount will I be charged for shipping ?
    Like 29.50 + … ?

    Another question, like say if I havent already paid for the dvds(1st time) , & 3 ppl have joined my downline & then I buy the dvds that very week & then another 2 ppl join my downline later the same week, then will I receive 100$ bonus for that week ?

    Btw, when do I get into the leaderboards, after I have ordered the dvds or after I have received the package at my home ?

    Kindly help me on this, because I havn’t started GDI yet, but I want to join it with proper knowledge.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Danny,
      Sorry, no idea on the details for that. I presume your upline sponsor should be able to give you that info. I didn’t join so don’t have any current information on GDI.

  60. uae on

    hi brian,

    thanks for this blog of yours about GDI stuff before i joining this GDI thing… 🙂

    • brian99 on

      You’re welcome!

  61. john on

    hi, brian!

    would you know anything about clixsense? what do you have to say about it?

    thanks for your views!

    regards,
    john

  62. Trent on

    Hi,
    Well it’s good to see a site like this where everyone can have a say about the company GDI, SCAM or NO SCAM?
    Let me first clarify the system used by GDI it is not a pyramid sales model. The system used by GDI only goes 5 levels deep. Now if the system had no end line or cut off level then yes it would be a pyramid model, and NOT GOOD.
    GDI stops at only 5 levels deep which equates to a 50% return to members.
    People think MLM or affiliate marketing is just a pyramid sales model, WRONG!. What most people don’t realise is that many companies have some form a MLM or affiliate marketing payment system.
    You only have to look at insurance companies, mortgage brokers, they all have a level of MLM payment when a person renews their policy or continues paying off a mortgage. But if the company is online people think automatically it’s s scam, you have to do your research about the company.

    Like any business you get out what you put in. If you think you will make money over night when you join GDI then you are deluding yourself, and if you hear someone tell you can make thousands for only $10 per month run the other way FAST!!. There is no get rich over night company in the world. YOU are the key to your own development and level of success, no one else.
    You maybe wondering am I a GDI member or not?
    Well the answer is “YES” I have just started with GDI in the last month, and to date I have only shared this with one friend who is paying $10 bucks a month.
    But what I have learned in the last month is I can’t expect to make money from this company by doing nothing.
    The product it’s self is pretty good.
    One thing a lot of people are focusing on is trying to sell the concept of signing up people and then getting them to sign up. Don’t get me wrong this is a factor we need to grow in any business but I’m not focusing on getting people involved if they have a quick get rich mantality.
    If I was a small company or business I would love to pay $10 a month to build my own web site. Yes you can go and buy Domain names for around $8, but you then have to pay someone to host it and build or design the site.
    Now I’m looking at promoting the GDI product to people with a small business eg: hairdressing at home, garden maintenance, etc you get the picture.
    People which want the product and not really looking the side of promoting the GDI to other people.
    By applying this to people that don’t want to spend hundreds of $$$$, but see the benefits of having their business on the web is far better. Then I will help them promote their business on the internet and show them how to advertise their business using Google, Yahoo, lead capture pages ect.
    Yes, by only showing this to people locally it will in short term take longer to get any return.
    But I feel the retention will be there and in the long run if the people wish to promote the GDI side of things I will assist them.
    I started two accounts with GDI and only last week canceled one because I just didn’t need it any more. I simply sent them an email wishing to cancel and they rang me within the hour and I canceled over the phone. They offered me 2 more months for free but I declined.
    Look the bottom line is you will only get out of it what you put in, nothing more nothing less.
    The company is real and people are making money but they are putting in the effort.
    If you really want to make something of GDI you need a mentor or someone in the MLM affiliate game to show you how to do it properly.
    I work full time as a Police Officer and I’m just starting out in MLM affiliate marketing business because I can see that’s where the money is. I have spent hundreds of dollars over the past month learning from one of the most powerful and leading experts in the MLM game Mr Jonathan Budd. It’s like putting yourself back in school, and my head hurts from the hours I have spent teaching myself the art of marketing online.
    Well that’s my little comment.
    Good luck to anyone getting started with the MLM and Affiliate game.
    If you have any questions about what I have said please email me at trent.mel04@gmail.com
    Regards
    Trent

    • brian99 on

      Hi Trent, thanks for your thoughts, and I like your approach, that you want to help people who actually want a website. It’s also very true that most companies have some form of MLM system, even if it’s for their own sales people. It’s a shame that it has developed a bad reputation.

  63. x y z on

    is GDI still going stron or cheating people?

  64. x y z on

    is GDI still going strong or cheating people?

    • brian99 on

      As far as I know it’s still going, but doubt it’s “going strong”. It certainly won’t ever become anything as well know as Facebook and such.

  65. Steve on

    Global Domains International ( GDI ) demanded I send them my “drivers license” and other vital documents before they pay me. I toiled and sent them the documents via Express USPS delivered and signed, to the address they gave me. (I have a USPS receipt) GDI claims they can’t find my documents. GDI is now telling me to fax the documents as their mail service is incompetent.
    I find this probable cause for mail fraud/theft.
    What do you think?

    • brian99 on

      I agree!! And perhaps if someone like you takes legal action against them, perhaps they will either improve their business or end their business.

  66. AshMaxHawaii on

    There is a New System out that was released only a month ago, developed by Ash Mafareh GDI’s Leaderboard KING! I too already had a GDI account, and was struggling to get sign-ups!

    So Yes this system works! It takes Two Highly Respectable Companys GDI (Global Domains International) and FTS (Freeway To Success) and combines them.

    All you do is find 5 serious people within 20 days to join AshMax and you make 20K in 100 days. Your serious people on your team do the same and the system duplicates itself.

    There is something that I would like you to know upfront before you sign-up , With AshMax you do have to sign-up under your AshMax’s Sponser’s Link for this system to work. Which means you can only have 1 GDI account. So GDI rules are that you must call to cancel, and wait 14 days before signing up again.

    You can sign-up for free here http://www.ashmaxhawaii.ws to learn more about AshMax.

    I had to do this too, when I started, and it was well worth it for me, I went from 5 sign-ups in 3 months to 20 sign-ups in only 5 days!

    Let me know what you think,

    Thanks,

    • brian99 on

      “…and you make 20K in 100 days.” Sounds like another pipedream to me. It’s really a shame I think that so many people are trying to make money without actually contributing anything of value. When you provide a service or work at a job, you earn the money you make. If you’re a farmer or manufacturer, you produce things of value for others.

  67. Tracy Adams on

    Ashmax is definitely something that can benefit people like AshMaxHawaii said. The only thing you have to do is have 5 serious people. I have found the same information on http://www.cashprofit.ws and the whole system sounds very well. Basically you must work your tail off to get 5 referrals using one referral system in 20 days or your account is deleted with Ashmax. This makes your gdi business go from 1-2 years for most to make much money to 100 days since everyone is in a race against the clock to get their 5 paid up referrals in 20 days. You will only want to get successful people though in this because your success depends on the success of your down line.

    • brian99 on

      I can’t see the sense or long term potential of something like this, with people racing against each other and under a time limit. My brother recently got interested in FHTM and I’m rather doubtful about it too, but would like to know if anyone else has had experience with them. I still feel a simple, honest system with a good product is the best way to go. Getting very close to starting that with my language learning biz.

  68. Cocombee on

    The main reason why so many people have failed in online business is simply they have given up to soon. They are negative people. Negative people always expecting success by overnight, Lol. If yo want to succeed in any kind of business, you’ll have to strive at frist. And sometimes you’ll fail. But that’s where everything started..

  69. john on

    Fuck all these idiot people who just come here to post links to there own personal “scam pages”, faggots. Sorry to be so *un-educated* but when i get angry…oh who cares thanks i almost went for this bullshit scam. Now i am running the other direction, thanks to this wealth of information. Don’t bother writing back to this as i will not be returning here ever, solely because i have no need to. Good luck to you all who helped me to see the light at the end of the, rather long-winding tunnel.

    • brian99 on

      hehehe.. well John, I can’t bleep out the swearing and I know how you feel. It’s really a shame how all these concepts don’t seem to deliver on the promise. My brother recently got into FHTM but I think it’s going to be a disappointment like all the rest. Time will tell. I’m getting very, very close to kicking off the language site and time will tell there also. Can I manage to build up a site that delivers on the promise and helps everyone learn languages and make money? It will be interesting to find out. 🙂

  70. TC on

    I am quite aware that GDI hosting fee is not among the cheapest and I think that MLM is a legitimate business. Whether or not you succeed with GDI depends very much on your effort. What I find depressing reading through almost all the postings is that (1) GDI may not pay you (2) GDI keeps deducting from your credit card or Paypal a/c despite your cancellation. I have just joined GDI and if GDI is not going to pay me, why bother even to ‘sell’. Can someone give a definitive answer about their payment. Thanks.

    • brian99 on

      I’m not sure there is a “definitive answer”. I suspect that (1) GDI will pay you based on their established system but be prepared for loopholes in getting any bonuses outside the basic structure. As for item (2), others have had bad experiences so I’d suggest getting a new credit card that you use specifically for GDI (and other questionable payments), and if push comes to shove, cancel the card all together.

      Perhaps you could answer a question for me though: Why GDI? All they’re offering is hosting that is below standard? Right now I’m considering getting another hosting account at PowWeb because it costs just $3.88 per month at the moment during their promotion ($46.56 per year) (regularly $7.77 per month). As an affiliate, you get paid $77.77 for every sign up you get. Thus, you can basically get excellent hosting for a year plus get $30 in your pocket. That’s better than free.

      Like I said: Why GDI? They’re selling hosting, so why not sell better hosting at a better price and sign up as an affiliate at PowWeb or other hosting companies? That makes more sense to me. It’s not an MLM structure, but you can make money selling hosting and then develop a website for whatever purposes you wish. If you’re simply interested in getting involved in an MLM business, then I suspect there are better ones out there, and you may want to check out FHTM which my brother recently got into.

      If you want to try the PowWeb deal, you can click on my link, get your hosting and when I receive my affiliate payment from PowWeb, then I’ll send you the $47 and you’ll have top notch hosting for a year. I’ll even split the $30 profit with you. Alternatively, get someone you know to sign up as an affiliate, click on their link and do the same thing. Cheers.

  71. Beautiful American Women : on

    there are so many online jobs that you could apply for, some pay well and some does not`.;

    • brian99 on

      Very true. They won’t make you rich, but you can earn money. I’ve passed on a few links to friends, but never heard how they made out. If someone knows of some that are good (data entry, etc), please let everyone know here. Tks

  72. Dress Pants on

    building websites is not only fun, but it can also generate an income for yourself ‘:.

  73. Brent on

    Wow! What a plathera of good information. Thank you Brian for creating this blog. I am always looking for new business ventures and GDI caught my email somehow. It does have a good sales pitch to say the least. But being scammed before, I don’t sign up for anything without some dilegent research. Hence stumbbling across your website! You sound like the right kind of guy to do joint ventures and fair with assessing business opportunities. I am just going to throw this out there. Obviously people who are looking for homebusiness ventures use the internet to find those results. I have been using another method outside the web to promote some of the businesses I am an affiliate for. The cool thing is brings a captive audience right back to your hoplink or squeeze page or right to the selling page. I can’t tell you what it is but you can cerntainly go to my website link and read the sales page and email me directly if you have anymore questions! Take care

  74. fr33 on

    WOW! I can’t believe I read all this post and information here, and now I think I am not going to make that GDI account I was thinking of. Thanks, Brian for posting this site and letting us know the truth behind all these crap!

    Why, well all the stuff said here, and all the crap you got to do. I mean I don’t want to get ripped or scammed again (it happened once, not GDI of course), I had never wanted to look for other of these “fake” scammed HomeJobs! But then I saw this GDI, all good to be truth, then I googled “GDI fake” and “GDI is a scam?” and I found your page, and read all treads here, I can’t believe the different kind of post people put here supporting GDI and opposing to it, I my self believe that GDI is another piece of Sh..! but some people knows how to work with it and make income from it with the help of their suckers… lol I meant their affiliates, but where’s the f..king product?!, sorry, just make an .ws site with what?! O yeah, make your .ws GDI site so you can too make others make their GDI site and bull…! lol Well, If I ever happen to get on MLM or whatever of this Affiliate Market sh..t, I meant GDI, I will get a new and with the necessary and fixed amount of money GDI would need from me to pay them, and also a new Pay Pal account with almost-fake info(just to not give them my real identity, or they will steal it or something… lol) and then suit up in the Trial, but before doing this, have a business plan and a budget, to set up this so “acclaimed” GDI site, with my business plan on it, and before that have already ppl that I trust of customers that I know they will pay me for my service, and of course not, I won’t tell them about this GDI crap, all I want is to host their site using GDI and charge them the 10 dollars for their GDI site and also the Hands on Work (designing web and all that technical crap…) and promotion, let;s say 45 dollars or more, I don’t know for site design/building + hosting. Again, why would I tell them about GDI, I would just use it as a site host/provider for my site to sell my service (to make sites and host them cheap) and make their sites with GDI and managing their accounts and their GDI site to sell their products/service like for example, this local shop wants to have a website, the since I promote my service of making sites cheap and well-designed, they contact me, I stipulated a contract, where they see my business rules, their benefits, their price for site creation and hosting plan. Also their Pay Pal account that I will make with the site @email or perhaps I make it with other email provider for security reasons and then they use that account to pay me for the website creation and hosting or just hosting and website creation is cash/check as initial payment when the contract is stipulated. Then automatic payment for hosting can be configured in pay pal account for the service I provide, not GDI(even if GDI, site hosting) but still to charge more for hosting (10 dollars) and management of site (like more cash of course) like 35 to 45 for that and for site creation like above 100 dollars, depending of site (if tiny site, well less in creation cost and hosting (10 always cuz GDI crap) and management (less here for small site). Of course a well defined report of website traffic activity and all that crap sites build up data statistically to show the client the progress of the site in interested audience (client’s clients, lol) of course, depends of which type of business or company the site has. Everything will be stipulated in the contract, even the GDI crap, but not the ” here have your GDI site, is yours now you hosted, managed and then sell to others more GDI sites for the same sh..” no! Only to show the host site/domain to the client, to be honest and not have cover ups! then my clients will have more clients for their respective sites, only if their sites are visited by them, and that happens if I advertise it on social networks, news site, train stations, schools, directories, bathrooms lol, I don’t know, all depends of what type of business the client has. If is a sex shop, then I post it on social networks, sex site news lol, definitely barrooms :D, pops, hotels, motels, college :D, of course in form of PAPER POSTER, Fliers and Presentation cards and even STICKERS!! All you need is a mind blowing innovative creative brain and a purpose… Or mission or meaning to follow and with a lot of motivation you get where you want, you get to be serviceable doing what you like, helping without ripping other’s people’s wallets! And not making friends, enemies and clients to be upsets! Treat your audience, your clients with kindness, politeness, care, and professionalism, not to scam them, but to sell them your service in a legit and legal way. Why GDI, well since they have the MULTI-UNI CRAP, that for every 1 you refer and then they refer others and others refer more, in this case, since the client will not care or know about GDI crap, I will be managing their accounts, I will be managing their GDI site and making sure they pay for the service (10 bucks monthly) and also pay for the management of site and promotion (advertising). Let’s say, I got my site with my building site service and I got 3 clients, I create,manage, host and promote their sites and bill them the creation price of site(using webtools GDI give and also inmate web designing skills I got 🙂 to make it real cool and awesome) then I charge them the host, management and promotion/marketing service ( 10 + 35 (more or less) ) and then get profit of creation like 100 dollars each, and (45 – 10)*3 like 315 or so… not bad, but then, since I manage their accounts, their GDI accounts with their emails, the next time I have more clients, I use their (my 3 original clients gdi account emails) to make profit and sell my service trough those emails… Not sure if I can do that, But probably is possible… I will be the manager of the GDI sites, their accounts and the promoter/marketer lol, of their sites so their business is known well around the net or may be is a selling products website, like online retail store… Well, that’s all I got, may be I am making all this too fantastic, well after all I can work for it, still need to develop the work plan… even better…. What do you think Brian about my deep-in-s[p]ace plan (lol) ?

    • brian99 on

      All in all, I think GDI is a dead end, not worth pursuing at all. You can get much better hosting elsewhere and provide sites and manage them for people from there. Providing websites and managing them for people is definitely a good business to pursue, but then you’re providing a service and you need to develop your skills as a programmer.
      I recently tried the following program which was for helping businesses promote themselves on Google maps and mobile. http://www.mobilelocalfusion.com/ It’s quite a good program and concept but in the end it didn’t really work out for me and I requested a refund which was given within a few hours. Great service and I think it’s a good program to check out. And you know from me that their 2 month money back guarantee is completely valid.

  75. Emanuel Davis on

    You do not need any programing skills at all to be successful in gdi. They already provide you with one, or you can use WordPress which is dummy proof for making a site (WordPress FTW). There are tons of ways to get sign ups. If your focus isn’t on building a website, there is always video marketing, or email marketing, or make flyers and pass them out to people, etc. I won’t lie though, having a wordpress site is the best way to go but all in all, if you want to become very successful in gdi, I’m talking making over $2000 a week, you need to master it all.

  76. Emanuel Davis on

    O, sry for the double post but one more thing, this blog is really old. They don’t do the DVD thing anymore. Instead, they offer GDI premium which allows you to get 75% commissions over basic hosting which is insane. Also, you can now add plugins on their host. You can use wordpress or BB forums, etc. You should take the time to see what they have to offer now instead of showing people old and now false info.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Emanuel, thanks for your posts. Fair enough, GDI may have changed and improved a lot, I have no idea since I haven’t looked at it again. I still think all the info here is useful for people to help make their decision and it provides a place for people to share their ideas and opinions, and if they decide to go for it, maybe they’ll even join under you, so it’s a useful blog, right? 😉
      And have you received a $100 bonus for signing up 5 people in a week? With no ‘catches’ like the DVD issue before? If you have, then I’d be willing to give it a go, and if I got the bonus also, then I’d support it.

  77. Sergy on

    GDI is an scam. Why?
    Ok. Let´s go to suppose that GDI don´t sell anything.
    Would be and scam then? The answer is YES.

    What´s selling? A domanin name and host that is overpriced.
    Conclusion: Nothing of value.

    Be serious. Peopel don´t give a shit for the domain name, people want to make money.

    There is not product when the product has not value.

    Is a fucking piyramid scheme, but it is legal because they are selling a product. A product that nobody want to buy but they must buy to get the opportunity of make thoundsands of bucks of money. The people in top will make money and the people in the bottom will lose money. That is works, folks.

    pd (i apologise for my grammatical mistakes, i am not a native english speaker)

  78. weight loss on

    Thanks , I have recently been looking for info about this subject for ages and yours is the greatest I’ve found out so far. Really nice article. Thank you.

  79. Ric Old on

    I just wanted to add 1 small point of interest. Blogger (Free website) lets you host a bought domain for free. And you can even add your own favicon (16X16).

    • brian99 on

      Interesting.. I wonder how much space you get?

  80. Mhar on

    Oh.. It takes me hours to read all the comments here. Brian, i commend you for making such a nice topic out here and to all of you guys who devoted your precious time for newbie like me to learn from your point of views and experiences. Like others, i’m looking for a legit part-time/full-time online job for years now but i find the web full of scam 😦

    Ps. is there anyone who knows legitimate data entry job that is free to join?please share the link. thank you in advance =)

    Mhar-K.S.A.

    • brian99 on

      I don’t know any data entry jobs that are free to join, but have seen a few that look reasonable. Sorry I don’t know the link anymore.

  81. Vadim on

    Multi-level marketing scheme itself is just a means of selling goods. And there are lots of good companies with REAL good products that use MLM for selling. Also they give people opportunity to make money. Of course there are other “companies” that use the MLM technology to do bad things. BTW I could tell you more how to make money with a nice MLM company (legitimate company with quality products). Write back if you are interested

  82. […] this review of GDI claims, there are way better products out there for your money than what GDI offers. GDI hopes to make […]

  83. […] this review of GDI claims, there are way better products out there for your money than what GDI offers. GDI hopes to make […]

  84. Troy on

    I wish i would have found you sooner I have been signed up with this GDI for over two months and have spent over $160.00. Including Purchasing 10 leads from them. In short I have made nothing SCAM SCAM SCAM. My f___ing question is HOW HAVE THEY AND ALL OTHER SCAMS BEEN ON THE NET FOR SO LONG AND WHY IN THE F__K the governments and law enforcement not to mention the domain host that host this shit allow it to continue PEOPLE NEED REAL JOBS TO SURVIVE!

    • brian99 on

      Well, be thankful it was only 160 bucks. I don’t think it’s the government’s role to control it though. We need less government (which leads to less debt), opportunity for real businesses to grow (ie, just get out of the way), and an informed public (which is our own individual responsibility, and the internet generally provides the means of finding the truth, even if we have to dig a little). Good luck on your next venture!!

  85. Jure on

    Thank you brian99 for not joining GDI.
    Have you heard for JSS Tripler?
    What do you think about that?

    Is your -language learning- site working?

    Best wishes

    • brian99 on

      Hi Jure, sorry for the delay in approving your comment but I was sick and then on holidays and simply didn’t see some email notifications.

      Yes, my language sites are working. One for learning Indonesian, http://bintangbahasa.com and the other for learning Russian, http://elearnrussian.com and as you can see in a reply a few weeks ago, I’m ready to get started with the ‘networking’ concept, but also include ‘ownership’ as well with a shareholding concept.

      I think I should make a new post to begin collecting ideas for it. Perhaps “A New Concept for Network and Affiliate Marketing”.

      Likewise, best wishes.

  86. Hans on

    Wow! This blog has been going for a long time. Many interesting inputs.

    I am a firm supporter of NWM/MLM as a business platform because it ena
    bles those involved to engage ME (The Multiplier Effect) which essentially is ‘Financial Reward …for effort made ONCE…duplicated many times’. Very few jobs empower a person in this way.

    The one thing that bothers me with many NWM/MLM operations is that they sell their supporters marketing tools in the form of DVD’s etc. Surely a company selling websites (for example) would want to help their newbies succeed by GIVING them the tools. Especially since these can usually be offered as easy to download pdf’s.

    One gets the sneaky suspicion that selling these DVD’s is a big source of income for the movers and shakers in the business.

    Not many NWM/MLM companies publish their finacial reports on what the average networker earns. One that does is Nu-Skin … and it makes very depressing reading. 99% do not make significant incomes.

    This is a hard business so if you want to succeed expect to work your butt off 🙂

    • brian99 on

      Hans, thanks for your comment. I totally agree with you. I also like the concept, but have yet to see it actually work as it does in theory. There always seems to be a catch, and like you say, the insiders seem to making their money from the members buying things and working their butts off with little or nothing to show for it.

      I’ve had an alternative slowly growing and evolving for a long time, and I think it’s ready for a very ‘soft opening’.

      I’ve been busy with language learning and have two sites doing okay. One for learning Indonesian, http://bintangbahasa.com and the other for learning Russian, http://elearnrussian.com

      I want students/members who are happy with the material, or anyone who believes it’s a good product, to be our ‘sales and marketing staff’. To avoid the nasty reputation and label of ‘MLM’ and ‘Network Marketing’, I’ll stick with the term ‘affiliate’ which hasn’t yet gotten a bad reputation (but it will, probably soon).

      I also want people to become ‘owners’. Average people almost never get a chance to ‘get in on the ground floor’. I want to give people that opportunity. And such opportunities are never available to people in developing countries like Indonesia and Ukraine. I want to give them the same opportunities.

      So, how will I do it? It’s pretty simple. We currently have members paying $10 per month and are very happy with their membership. 30% will be allocated for ‘marketing and advertising’, which will be paid to affiliates. It will have 5 levels. Your direct introduction is paid 10% ($1 per month) and for each level below that (for 4 levels) you earn 5%, thus totalling 30%. Simple, right? If you introduce 5 people and each of them introduce 5 people then you would be earning nearly $2000 per month. Not bad for telling 5 people about the best method for language learning anywhere.

      People in Russia, Ukraine, Indonesia, etc can invite people to join, help them with their language learning and begin earning dollars. More dollars than they could possibly earn otherwise. It’s their opportunity for a completely different life. Same with anyone in South America for people wanting to learn Spanish, or in China. In time, we’ll do those languages also.

      And the extra concept I want to incorporate is ‘ownership’. Facebook started with an idea and $1800 from a flatmate. (I think that’s what it was in the movie.) Well, we’ve already started and we’re making money and don’t really need investment money, but we also don’t really need to keep the future 80 billion dollars all to ourselves. So, we’ll give people the opportunity to become ‘owners’ by buying shares. It will all be ‘in-house accounting’ until we get to a larger size, and by then the ‘share price’ will also have grown substantially. So, the ‘early birds’ will get the best deal, but they’ll also be the ones who have to trust us the most. That’s pretty easy though once you get to know us.

      Most companies you never have a real chance to own. Apple was an exception. You could have bought it for less than $10 back in 2001 till 2003. Did you? I didn’t. In 2004 it started to take off. Did you buy shares? I didn’t. Did you buy an iPod? I didn’t but millions did. Did they also buy shares? I doubt it. In case you don’t know, the share price is now at $600. A hundred dollars invested in 2003 is now worth $60,000 just 9 years later. Not bad.

      Would you like to have had an invitation to be an owner in Apple or Facebook or Google when they were small? I would. But I’m not worried about it now, since I think we can make this just as big. After all, virtually every person in the world could (should) be interested in learning a new language, and if we have the best method, and we’re offering them to join us and share the wealth, then it could (should) become something very, very big.

  87. yurian on

    Looks like a bunch of whining on here to me. This scam sure has been running a long time. Takes skin in the game to make it my friend, nothings for free.

    • brian99 on

      Thanks for your comment, but I’d only partly agree. For sure, nothing’s for free and you have to work at it to be successful. But, you can also use the expression “there’s a sucker born every minute”. There’s always someone new, full of enthusiasm, hope and energy, and far too often they end up cynical and ‘whining’. Perhaps the ‘blame’ is 50-50, maybe more, maybe less, but I still think there are better places to put your ‘skin’.

  88. Ernest on

    As an entrepreneur I find it best to research a company before making an investment, which is why I decided to use a Green dot debit card with GDI so just in case it didn’t work out I had nothing to worry about. The other day a friend of mine asked if I sent GDI a W2 form and I said no because with all the scams out there I refuse to give anyone my social security number. After one of month with GDI, I can honestly say I’ve made no money at all and everyone I spoke to were trying to get me to invest in their program. Personally, I think anyone can be successful on the Internet if they put in the time and effort but for now GDI isn’t for me especially when I’m struggling to stay afloat with the bills that keep coming every month. I keeping my fingers crossed on face book and pray that my investment pays off when I’m ready to retire but who knows.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Ernest, thanks for your comments. Wise words of caution for ways to protect yourself when you do try something on the internet. I think ‘anyone’ as defined in the movie Ratatouille can make money on the internet. Meaning a select few. It’s not easy, even with a good product. I hope you didn’t buy a lot of shares in Facebook since they’re likely to go down a fair bit before and if they turn up. Day 3 today and I suspect they’ll fall again. If they drop to $20 I’ll try buying some.

  89. brian99 on

    Here’s an interesting article I came across today for another ‘scam’ business: Global Business Solutions
    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/05/23/that-what-if-moment-on-the-way-to-vast-riches.aspx

    Btw, if you’re interested in investing and stock trading, fool.com is a great website for getting information and ideas.

  90. motykosenterprises on

    Thank’s ,it helped me to make a decision and take no action onGDI.

  91. pike on

    Hi all,

    The reason why most people don’t succeed in MLM business it is because most people don’t have marketing background, and All MLM doesn’t have a step by step plan like McDonald’s, Burger king and other franchised business. You also have to have a business sales skills and a thick skin to be able to survive in these kind of business and pretty much you have to figure things out yourself. I have tried other MLM business and spent hundreds of dollars and to be honest GDI is the cheapest. You don’t spend hundreds of dollars just to secure your place like amway, tanguska etc. I’m still looking to find a way to earn extra income but since I hate selling ill probably going to do what I do best. That is repairing electronics.

    • brian99 on

      I agree with your comments and would add that McD, Burger King and other franchises are successful because the owners don’t have to look for customers. The customers come to them with no marketing required essentially. MLM businesses don’t have anything that can be ‘copied’ and ‘reproduced’ in many locations like a franchise business. MLM businesses are all about marketing and getting people to buy something that they otherwise wouldn’t buy. And that’s why it’s difficult. It’s like trying to convince a health nut to eat at McDonalds. It’s not easy.

      If a business concept requires strong ‘survival skills’ and ‘thick skin’, then perhaps it’s not such a great concept. Tupperware products were successful because people wanted the product. You didn’t have to convince anyone to buy it. They wanted it and had to go through an agent to buy it.

      Even if GDI is the cheapest and ‘best’ MLM option, they still don’t have something that people want and are looking for. It’s a bit like trying to sell electronic repair service to someone who doesn’t have or want to have any electronics. I think everyone should focus on what they do best, especially when it is something that really helps other people, like repairing electronics.

  92. Manish on

    Thank you brian…

    I was also going to sign up for GDI, but now i wont, thanks to you man you saved me.
    After reading all the responses (yes i did spent 3 hrs just now reading everything from top to bottom) from victims of GDI as well as you people with experience in MLM and affiliate marketing fundas, I as a newbie want to Thank you for the great information that i have gathered here.

    Reading this discussion was worth my time.

    Manish

  93. michaelz64 on

    Hi Brian

    WOW what a blog and what a discussion, some good content…far better than the usual bunch of whiners and self promoters.
    I would like to comment on MLM/NM in general. I’ve been online for sometime now and I’m successful in 3 programs and failed at several others. I congratulate anyone who is enjoying success in MLM whether it be GDI or any other, I understand only too well the courage, committment and persistence required to take on an industry with a 97% failure rate and emerge victorious!
    Kudos to you all and enjoy your profits…you’ve earned them.

    To all Noobs looking at MLM opportunities PLEASE take the time to understand the numbers…as I’ve already said MLM has a very high failure rate.

    For my experience: in my profitable ventures I have built downlines of up to 1500 members and the majority of my income comes from less than 1% of those people … so ask yourselves, how good am I at recruiting and marketing? 2 or 3 signups isn’t going to get your bills paid…sorry but it’s true.

    Another example is Bill Britt, Amways Superstar and multi millionaire,
    when asked by a TV jounalist (20/20), what was the secret to his success, he replied “there is no secret, I simply showed the business to 1200 people, 900 said no, of the 300 that said yes only 30 did anything and of the 30 remaining 11 people made me a millionaire”

    Check the math guys…it’s less than 1% of the original 1200.

    If you can accept those numbers and committ to the process, there are some fabulous rewards to be had in MLM. BUT if you are a bit of a dabbler then just forget it right now!!

    thats my 2 cents so

    All the Best and good luck to all of you, my fellow online entrepreneurs!

    Michael

    • brian99 on

      Thanks for your “2 cents” Michael! 🙂 Those numbers help give a new perspective on it all.

  94. Dean Modaff on

    Hi Brian,
    I’m still looking at GDI and will look more deeper for more info. I think the most important thing in any mlm, Is Company and upline support. I have been with few mlm company’s and did not get much support. I found a company that i will never quit, It took me over 1yr. to join do to other things going on. The products are easy to sell, I’m having good success in selling to friends and others that i do not know. I a few coworkers try the product. and they joined on the spot. The product is jerky if you could go to my site http://www.jerkydean.com and give me feed back on the mlm company I’m involved with.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Dean,
      Thanks for your comment. I had a quick look at ‘jerkydean’ and I have two first impressions. One, the commission is a bit high ($5 of $12), and I don’t think there’s a real benefit to going 7 levels with a higher payout at lower levels. I think 30% is top end for total commission, but that’s just my opinion. I don’t want to be selling to friends and taking a big lump of their money off the top. Especially for a food product, I think higher volume is more important than big margins.

      Second, the product and its quality need to be front and center. The product needs to be something people want at a price they are happy to pay. Period. The money opportunity is secondary. It needs to be the best jerky at the best price anywhere. Period. Then it will gain loyal customers and the money they earn will be a bonus.

  95. Ali on

    Hi All,

    i was about to join this, but i am seriouly confused after going thorugh all the -ve comments, i have not expirenced network marketing before but i am willing to get into this home buisiness i dont know should i be the part of this company or can i earn from this, or if this is a scam ?
    can any one help me out in this?i am based in Dubai.

    thanks

    • brian99 on

      Hi Ali,
      I’d have to still say there are much better options for you to build an online business. Let’s face it, if any online product or company hasn’t grown substantially in 5 years, then they don’t have a product that meets the demand. The average person doesn’t need their own website, and for anyone who does need a website for their business or hobby, then they will choose a better option for hosting, and not GDI.
      Honestly, the only reason they’re still around at all is because there are still people like you wanting and willing to give it a try, hoping for the best. I’d save your time and money and try something else.
      Either way though, wish you the best.
      Brian

  96. Lazarus Barse on

    What do you think of this company SFI? How genuine are they? The seem to have put everything in place and the company is backed by product which makes it stable to give out payments. Pl do shed light on this also if possible.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Lazarus, thanks for your question but I’ve never heard of them before so I can’t really say. From a quick look I’d say it’s legit. They have products so as long as they’re good products at a good price, then why not. Competing against Amazon and others could be challenging though. Good luck with it.

  97. Pityi16 on

    In the end of the article, you asked about an online business which would work finally. In the past few days I stumbled across a site which will not make you rich, but will pay correctly and due date. You can earn up to 200$ per month without affiliates. You only have to type data. They’ve already payed me so I can vertify they are not a scam.

    I also tried GDI and other multi-level-marketing sites, but there is no guarantee that they will pay-off. Also without connections you are lost in that business. The site I recommend is simple, it won’t make you rich, but if you are between two jobs, or in urgent need of money, it can help you out.:)

    The site I’m talking about is:
    http://www.megatypers.com/register
    You will need an affiliate code to get start which is: 64PR

    As I mentioned you won’t get rich, but you can make money without bothering your friends.

    Good Luck Everyone!:)

    • brian99 on

      Thanks for the post and the info! Getting started with something small and certain is a good approach I think. Chasing the ‘big fish’ rarely brings success.

  98. Andrew on

    Hi Brian, i’m from Romania and i wanna know more about this “business” so can you tell your romanian friend to contact me please !!??
    I really need your and his help!

    Thank you so much!

    Dejeu Andrei
    dejeu.andrei@yahoo.ro

    P.S.
    I`ve been searching for a blog or discusions like this for so long and this is the best i have ever read. Keep it active like you always did.

    • brian99 on

      Hi Andrew, the comment. I will contact my friend and give him your email. He gave up on GDI several years ago and has tried several different things since then. It will be nice to contact him again and see what he’s currently up to. Best of luck, Brian

  99. Stan Tomaszewski on

    Hi, many interesting comments here. The one from michaelz64 on September 3, 2012 offered the most realistic picture of “MLM’s” and online marketing in general. I have been w/ GDI for 3 years, recruited over 1800 and have a nice mid 4 figure income. Some might say that’s not a lot and I am not “rich”. But compared to the 98% who fail online in ANY program they join, it isn’t that bad. Also, what I like about GDI is the $10 cost and 7 day free trial, makes for easier sales for new people. What it takes to sell online often is determined by the cost of the item and how well your website can do your selling for you. GDI sells more readily from a website than something that is $50 or more. Those higher cost items often need a phone call to “close the deal” which many newbies can’t or won’t do. I am not a sales type so I prefer making automated GDI sales. Then show them how to COPY what I do. This is why more new marketers CAN see a sale with GDI. The problem then is realizing that all we need is a handful below us making only a few sales to grow a large income. Most won’t do the work and quit in a few weeks or even days. Businesses cannot grow in a few days folks! If more people understood what effort is needed to make a sale in GDI for example or anything online , many could be setting on nice residual paychecks. Here’s a “tip”– posting a couple ads a day will not get enough traffic to most any program online. Joining 20-30 list builders as a free member then blasting out maybe 20-30 times, 1000-3000 emails in a weeks time WILL get enough eyes on your business to see sales. That could be 20,000- 90,000 emails- see the tip? Again this is one way to get started but most won’t put in the time. Hope this helps. Stan

    • brian99 on

      Thanks Stan, I really appreciate the comments. I fully agree with your assessment, and my congratulations to you. I think 3 to 4 figures is what everyone should limit their expectations to for residual income. My question remains however, “What the heck is the product?”. There is no real product. The website is not intended and is rarely used as a platform for an independent business. It’s simply a ‘game’ of recruiting which by definition is unsustainable. A real business produces something that is valued by others. If you plant a tree, harvest the apples and sell them, then you’re running a business. If you tell people to give you $10 and you’ll help them get $10 from other people, that’s not a business.

      • Stan Tomaszewski on

        Hi, Thanks for the reply. Interestingly, of all my downline I believe a large majority maintain the “product” for email services, some build a website using the website builder, some use it for a blog, and some use it to forward a domain which is high priced for that purpose but often used in the various “systems” that sell GDI. We earn commissions for all those reasons plus those that work the business aspects. That is one main reason I stayed with the business- it was one of few that actually grew (duplicated) on its own. I see sales on my 4th or 5th levels from many I never will know. I am aware that I have people down 11 levels deep. However one will not see this happen if they don’t treat it like a business and stay the course. I recruited some of my best people in these past 6 months, some 2.5 years into it. It is a slow build, and totally dependent on ones efforts and many will look for other quicker, and faster ways, which rarely exist. Yes it can appear to be w/o a product, and many do not agree the cost is reasonable compared to a Godaddy domain, but it does offer a simple way to start a home business, w/o investing hundreds or more with the hope that that program will in deed work. Hope this helps.

  100. Jasa SEO on

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  101. diran hatchadourian on

    GDI is one of the safest bussiness on the net, i think you are one of those that you never had made any penny and yes we get paid from gdi every month and we get rich

    • brian99 on

      Congratulations on your success, but I really doubt you’re getting ‘rich’. I’m making a living with my online language websites which help people learn Indonesian, Russian and English. So, I’m helping people and making money, that’s a nice combination for me. GDI still doesn’t offer a quality product and is really more of a ponzi scheme than Herba Life which actually has unique and healthy products. Anyway, thanks for adding your opinion and readers are free to make their own decisions.

  102. Wonderful blog! Do you have any tips and hints for aspiring writers?
    I’m planning to start my own website soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
    Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or go
    for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m completely confused ..
    Any tips? Thank you!

    • brian99 on

      Hi Real Racing, I should do an update for this year, explaining how I’ve helped a few people get started with their own websites. It’s best to get ‘full service’ hosting and I even offer to help people get it for free. Basically, the affiliate payment for iPage and others is more than the hosting cost when discounted. Thus, if you buy it through my affiliate link, I’ll reimburse you the cost of the hosting for 2 years (about $45). Then, your only ‘investment’ is your time. Hopefully you’ll be successful and continue your site after your ‘2 years free’. You can read more about it in another post that I made last year. https://brian99.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/get-paid-20-dollars-to-learn-a-language/

  103. joideviv on

    Thanks for this review!! Whats the info for the data entry?

    • brian99 on

      I’ve never bothered to try any of the data entry stuff, so don’t know.

  104. Prem on

    Should i join or not? So much conflict in data here! Thanks however for your post!

    • brian99 on

      Hi Prem, glad to hear you found the post useful and I can’t hardly believe GDI is still operating! I really advise you to spend your time, money and effort on something else, not GDI. Perhaps they have changed since I looked at them, but if they haven’t become a common concept 10 years later, then there’s little chance they ever will. Best of luck with whatever you do.

      • Jure on

        You saved lots of people, me for example. 10 years after everybody can see results of GDI. All Your words came truth. Thx Brian again, 10 Years later.

  105. Justice on

    Ok, now I am a bit worried. I came to this site because a friend referred me to GDI and I was about to sign up. After reading comments here, I am a bit reluctant.

    I personally believe that it is important to try several networks until you get what works for you. For me though, it’s important to know who the owner of the company is because the reputation of the owner matters a lot. In addition, the company must be legally registered and properly regulated. Companies that are genuine have nothing to hide.

    There is a company called Mirror Trading International (MTI). What do you think about it? You can check it here (https://youtu.be/bj4SX_BVs6c). I am already involved in it and I will be happy to hear your views.

    • brian99 on

      I’m surprised GDI is still operating. Good luck with MTI. I prefer to manage my own trades.


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