Once more with feeling — Is Dubli a Scam or Ponzi Scheme? September 29, 2008
Posted by admin in : How it works , 2commentsOn certain sites and blogs I see that some people still claim that Dubli is a scam. I’ve read through their comments and much of the time they seem to have their facts wrong or just don’t understand how Dubli works. Some think that Dubli is a pyramid or ponzi scheme but I really don’t think so.
In a pyramid or ponzi scheme, people only make money as long as more and more people keep joining the network. Usually there is no product or service of value so the revenue only comes from new members. Ultimately there are insufficient people left to join and the whole thing collapses.
Dubli on the other hand has a service and customers which ultimately generate most of the income. When a customer clicks on one of the reverse auctions for example, they pay 80 cents to see the price. Some portion (25 cents I believe) of the 80 cents goes to reduce the price of the item being sold and the rest goes to paying affiliates and profit. At the business associate level of Dubli, we get 10% of the 80 cents. As we grow our network, the percentage inceases for our personal customers and we start getting a small percentage of the revenue from our network’s customers. (Note you can now see for your self. Until October 31st, Dubli is offering three free credits so you can play with the auctions. Register here)
To me it is pretty obvious that there is a net revenue inflow of revenue from customers. That means it is not a pyramid or ponzi scam. It is true that we make additional money from building a network and in the short term (particularly before Dubli launches) that will be the majority of the revenue. After the launch however, as people start buying products on Dubli, the affiliate percentages from clicks will far outweigh the network building revenues.
It gets pretty exciting because if you build a network you can end up with hundreds of not thousands of customers and you get a percentage of their clicks! Remember it’s not just the customers you introduce to Dubli but also the customers of the people in your network AND — the referrals from customer to customer. The data in Germany suggests that each customer refers 5 other customers. You can image how big your customer base can get.
If you have questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to let me know.
Early Dubli Problems. Is Dubli a Scam? August 25, 2008
Posted by admin in : Is it a scam? , add a commentOf course, for any business a key element is the customer experience. Does Dubli provide something that customers want to buy? I think the answer is yes. Of course Dubli has had their teething problems.
You might find on the web a few posts about how horrible Dubli is and that is is a scam. My understanding is that the main problems were with something called the “Market Place”. This was an area where individuals could place items for sale in a similar way to eBay (Dubli is a reverse auction however). What happened is that a number of people did not fulfill the sale. People were scammed but this was not really the fault of Dubli. Because of the complaints, Dubli shut down the “Market Place” and now only sell new products from authorized resellers and themselves.
(See also this newer post about whether Dubli is a scam or not)
