Empower Network, How I Lost $1,000!

To some, $1K isn’t a lot of money. But for the ones on budgets and working crappy-paid JOBS (especially in retail), it’s one heck of a BIG deal!

Wouldn’t you agree?

2013 was the year I lost $1,000 over an 8-month period with a scammy “high-ticket scheme” called Empower Network (EN).

I had high hopes of being one of the next EN top earners, but unfortunately, it was never meant to be.

Most of my spare cash each month was tied up in EN’s viral blogging system (which didn’t work) and the “Inner Circle” training which also failed to come up with the goods.

It was just a bunch of successful marketers sharing expert secrets on mindset, leadership, team building, and strategies, etc, via audio interviews.

There was never any “REAL” step-by-step training on blogging.

I think to get anything worthwhile out of EN, you had to fork out $5,000 to go “all in” or you got called a “wussy” by David Wood and David Sharpe (co-founders).

But still, there wasn’t a chance in hell I was gonna pay $5K because I only just scraped by with the monthly costs for the blog system and Inner Circle.

How EN Worked For $1,000s in Commissions…

When the hyped up EN was first released, Mr. Wood and Mr. Sharpe had vulnerable folks believe that all they had to do was blog daily using their highly-powerful system which easily got high rankings in Google.
 

 
The WordPress blog template was ‘Done-For-You’ and had EN banners in strategic places, so anyone who also joined EN via your blog, banked you a nice affiliate commission.

“KA-CHING!”

In fact, you could earn $1,000s in commissions if your blog visitors purchased any of the high-cost products.

But like any high-ticket scheme, you obviously had to buy the same products yourself, otherwise, you’d lose out on ridiculous commissions.

The two Davids basically said “just write about whatever you like”, watch your blog gain momentum in Google, and the commissions roll in.

But it wasn’t as simple as that because to become successful at blogging, you needed to first select a niche, learn how to do keyword research, and write high-quality content.

Unfortunately, EN provided ZERO guidance on any of those aspects – just a basic checklist of simple tasks to do.

However, luckily at the time, I also found Wealthy Affiliate and applied what I was taught to my EN blog as well as my free SiteRubix one.

And guess what, I got numerous page-1 rankings in Google which generated some free SEO blog traffic.

Happy Days!

But despite working my socks off, 8 months down the line – the EN blog produced 3 lousy EN leads and $0 in affiliate commissions! *SIGH*

To add insult to injury, Facebook banned EN bloggers sharing their websites on its platform, and then Google dropped a bomb on EN by punishing its blog network, thus lost rankings and traffic for members.

I guess it was time for me to chuck in the towel with it, having wasted $1,000!

Something Was Fishy About EN All Along…

Unfortunately, most members (newbies especially) who got sucked in by all the hype of making $1,000s and living “the dream” – never became successful.

But on the other hand, a certain group of individuals crushed it with EN – they literally made $10,000s in commissions!

One guy, in particular, ‘Simon Stepsys’ – received numerous giant checks at stage events (totaling $100,000s) from David Wood and David Sharpe for being an “Inner Badass!”
 

 
Unfortunately, since 2013, Mr. Stepsys has been involved in other “unethical money-making schemes”  – raking in $1,000,000s in commissions by exploiting the vulnerable.

But his story’s for another day. 😉

Another couple, ‘Chris and Susan Beesley’ also cashed in a nice fortune from EN.
 

 
They also joined MOBE to make a much bigger fortune.

However, MOBE was halted by the FTC in June 2018 for being nothing but a “money-grabbing scheme” and ripping people off by $10,000s.

But how did the likes of Simon, Chris, and Susan make so much money from EN if most people struggled to make even $1, huh?

It just so turned out that these Super Affiliates already had business-building experience prior to joining EN.

All they had to do was apply their “know-how” for peddling EN’s products to their audiences, and BOOM… tens of thousands of dollars rolled in!

If they cared about your success, why didn’t they recommend legitimate platforms like FIMP, Affiliate Bootcamp, Affilorama, and Chris Farrell Membership, to name a handful?

In the lyrics of Jessie J: “It’s not about the money money money…”

Don’t get me wrong, there’s no doubt they got to that point due to hard work.

But these high-ticket affiliates gave people like me a false-impression that EN’s blog system actually worked. When in fact, it was just a scheme for everyone to make money and the successful to become EVEN richer!

Unless you could afford $5K to go all in with EN and already had some Internet Marketing experience, you had fat chance of earning.

The Collapse of EN (Good Riddance)…

To cut a long story short, David Sharpe left EN for reasons unknown in 2014 which left David Wood struggling to steer a sinking ship.

In 2017, Wood finally closed EN’s doors for good due to bankruptcy.

But luckily, he did himself a favor before the FTC came down on top of him like a ton of bricks just like what happened to Michael Force’s Digital Altitude too.

Wood even released a video online making the announcement that EN went bankrupt.

But let’s just say David went a little loopy within his video, and in fact, in a series of videos.
 

 
At first (like most folks), I just assumed EN had made him as nutty as a fruitcake lol.

But it soon came to light that he was on drugs and was admitted to rehab.

And then it was said his public meltdown on the web was nothing but a marketing ploy for attention.

The truth? I guess nobody knows what really went down.

However, I found an interesting article: Founder of EN, Ex-CEO David Wood Speaks Out. – Where Mr. Wood actually came clean on Facebook about being a sh*tty Internet Marketer.

Is it just another attention-grabber? Again, who knows.

But either way, at least he still had the balls to confess he was in the wrong, unlike Mr. Force and Matt Lloyd – co-founders of other high-ticket “schemes”.

My Final Thoughts…

Today, I’m not as bitter about losing $1K with Empower Network as I used to be because I’ve found other affiliate marketing avenues to recoup that money.

However, it will serve as a very expensive lesson on not to fall for “shiny objects” in the future, especially overpriced ones.

But it still doesn’t excuse the fact that David Wood, David Sharpe, and top their affiliates (aka Wolves in Sheep’s clothing) exploited newbies for “their” own financial gains.

Do I see a future for this high-ticket-ripoff-stuff?

HELL NO!!

With EN, Altitude, and MOBE out of the picture, you can bet your bottom dollar the FTC will clamp down on others like AWOL Academy and The Super Affiliate Network.

It’s about time these “unethical opportunists and their money-grabbing affiliates” learned some harsh lessons of their own.

Thanks for dropping in…

Your Friend, Neil 😀

If you have any questions or thoughts that you’d like to share on EN – We’d LOVE to hear your comments below…