Episode 107: What exactly is the Empower Network? – with Chris Kostopoulos

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You’ve probably had someone promote the Empower Network to you at some point trying to get you to sign up beneath them. Before doing this interview I kind of had an idea of what it was, but after chatting with Chris Kostopolous I understand it much better now. He’s actually doing quite well with their program and is in the top 200 out of over 80,000 affiliates. I ask some tough questions and get some real answers in today’s interview. Chris also talks about the value of using video for marketing with Video Marketing Exposed.

Watch the show below: Duration: 30:01
[leadplayer_vid id=”5127CD1F46B43″]Stuff mentioned in the show

Video Marketing Exposed (affiliate)- Chris’ video course

Raw transcript

Episode 107: What Exactly is The Empower Network – with Chris Kostopoulos

Mike: Hi there everyone! Welcome to Episode 107 of The Mike from Maine Show, the place where we do daily interviews with successful online entrepreneurs. This is your host, Mike Thomas. And today on the show, I’ve got Chris Kostopoulos on to talk about the Empower Network. Now, for me personally, when I hear Empower Network, I hear MLM — Multi-Level Marketing. I think, okay maybe it’s a little scammy. It has negative — negative reaction from me personally. So I thought, okay let’s give it a chance. Let’s bring on someone that’s having real success with it. And we can hear a little more about it, maybe some of my biases will be taken down by that. I’d love to hear all of your comments in the show notes below if you’ve tried out the Empower Network or if you have friends who’ve had, if you’ve got good stories, bad stories about it. Make sure you make a comment in the show notes below on mikefrommaine.com. But yeah, I’ve got Chris K. on to talk about all of that and more. Enjoy the show.

Mike: So, we’re here today with Chris Kostopoulos or, as he is better known as, Chris K. How are you doing Chris? Chris: I’m good, Mike. How are you?

Mike: I’m fine. Thank you. Now, let’s do as we always do. Let’s start off by having you tell us about yourself, where you started and how you got up to today.

Chris: Ah, okay. Let me start by first thanking you and telling you that it’s an honor and privilege to be on your show today. Um, you’ve had some of the really big guys on your show and I’m just honored to be here with you today.

Mike: Thanks.

Chris: Um, a little bit about my background – you know, growing up – I’m 32 now, I never really expected to be on the online, you know working from home, make money online niche. And ah, my background is actually finance. I kinda grew up, I got a Bachelor’s of Finance from St. John’s. I worked for an investment bank full time. And both my fiancé and I do healthy 6 figures. But we wanted something that would – want as a spare income and to be there as a safety net in case something was to happen. So, I originally got started by getting involved in a network marketing company. I went to — I went to a home meeting, sold bunch of presentations and then, I get involved in that. It’s a good company. It didn’t work for me because I’m not the kind of person to do home meetings and three-way calls and things of that nature. So, nothing against the industry, just not my preference, especially being really busy was my corporate job. So then, I started to thinking going online, looking for different ways to make money online. And I did stuff from um selling event tickets to Amazon products and then getting into affiliate marketing and eventually kinda finding my way into the online marketing niche. Um, which my main focus now is coaching, mentoring and teaching others how to actually take an existing business or build a new business and kinda do it online, not having to do home meetings and three-way calls and things of that sort.

Mike: So are you still — do you still have a full time regular job or are you all online?

Chris: I do, I actually I still work full time um again, it’s a healthy income. Um, my job is very — it’s a very comfortable job. I work with some great people, have some good relationships there. They treat me really well. Um, and as you can see, I’m pretty flexible with my time so I mean, it’s a Wednesday morning and I’m at home, doing interview with you. I don’t have to worry about running for the office. Um, so the goal is eventually when my online income gets to a certain point, my first goal is to really retire my fiancé. I like to just bring her home first. Um, you know, we just moved into a brand new apartment. Um, top floor, on the water, so it’s a good place. Um you know, eventually we’re thinking about starting a family, so I like her to be home to kinda raise a family first. And then, when the business keeps growing, I’ll probably be done, kinda step back and get into this full time.

Mike: So, you mentioned doing some Amazon stuff and some other things in the past. And you know, when you first started to try make money online, what was — when was the first time that you started any money at all?

Chris: Yeah. It’s actually um, I bring money online pretty quick actually. The first couple of days, I just got into Facebook PPC. I put up a couple of ads and I spent 7 bucks an ad. And I sold the product and for me, I got a $10 commission. So I made 3 bucks.

Mike: Good.

Chris: Yeah, it’s not huge but in my mind I was thinking, if I can make 3 bucks once, I can do it multiple times per day. So, I started scaling up my Facebook PPC and I realized quickly that — that initial test run was probably just a little bit a lot. So, I started losing a lot of money in paid marketing very quickly. Um, so from there, I had to step back and kinda really dig down and kinda start analyzing things. And I started kinda going the free route, through article marketing and SEO which is very manual back then when I

was first starting coz I really didn’t — you know, I had the money. I didn’t wanna sort of investing a lot of money in the business coz I know a lot of other people out there that are getting started, they don’t have that money to invest.

Mike: What time — what year are we in by the way? Coz um, when you say — Chris: So, this is probably um about 16 months ago.
Mike: Okay.

Chris: So, it’s just a little under a year and a half. And I knew people getting started don’t have the funds to really throw out the business. They wanna start small and scale up. So my whole philosophy was well, I need to start really; I have this person’s who’s gonna start coz if I didn’t succeed there I can show — Um, so then I got into SEO and blogging. And I started by doing other affiliate products. Um, products that are valuable, I will buy them first, do an honest review and then promote them to people. Um, and that’s when I got um — I got started to sell different products on Amazon, things that I own, that I use. Then I started looking for affiliate marketing niche. Um, and then I eventually landed in Empower Network. Um, I landed in Empower Network on when it launched, actually. October 31st of last year. And the reason for that was just the — mainly, the commissions structure struck me in first. And then, the leaders and the training behind it really got to me. So, I started really focusing on it. And I — what I would say is, what I’m wondering about is that even though I’ve gotten involved October of last year, I really wasn’t focusing on it coz I thought it was just an affiliate — another affiliate product that I was kinda market on the side and kinda see where it went. Then, I’ve gone June of this year, so it’s — we fast forward about 8 months from when I actually joined. I realized that the income is just, it’s rolling in, it’s increasing and I’m really spending no time on it. So then June of this year I decided, well I need to focus on this a lot more because it’s doing way better with less effort than anything else that I’ve been doing. Um so now, my main focus is based on Empower Network. I do a few other things as well but that’s my main focus and kind of the platform I use to train new people into online marketing.

Mike: Okay, now you’ve mentioned the Empower Network which some guest have kinda mentioned before, that to be honest with you, I am not that well-educated about what it is. I’ve heard things about it, I’ve — to be honest with you, I’ve heard some negative things about it before. It kinda has one of those — for me, the initial feeling is that it’s one of those things where you, like a multi- level marketing where you sell to other people and they get involved and it — I don’t know, maybe you can understand where I’m coming from there. But then, the people that are doing it rant and rave about it – of how great it is. So Chris, change my mind about it. Tell me what is the Empower Network and what have you been doing with it?

Chris: Okay so, Empower Network can be perceived as a network marketing with a multi-level marketing company um, because it has a paying structure that’s similar but we’re technically not and I’m a lot more network marketing company. Um, and as we know a lot of those companies, some very successful ones, also have some kind of bad reputations out there. It’s — all people just perceive network marketing as in industry in the whole that they just don’t like. Um, so Empower Network kinda falls on that — in that industry. Um, I was the same way years ago. I always thought of what’s this? You know, pyramid scheme, people are trying to make money off from me. Um, the thing is I sit back and I researched. I always well, there’s 4- to 500 companies that are network marketing companies invested by some really big people out there. So, you realize there’s a legitimate business out there. So, it’s an opportunity. It’s basically like buying a franchise. You’re buying in and your goal is to distribute your products or services to make an income. In Empower Network, the big change in Empower Network is that we’d pay 100% commissions. So, for any product you own that you then resell, you earn a 100% of the — of the cost of the product. That’s a big change compared to other affiliate programs or network marketing companies out there that — because you need to cover a lots of overhead and make your own profits, they pay much more commissions. Now the way it works that it can kinda becomes a multi-level is that there are pass-ups in Empower Network, but people are passed up to you. So technically, even though a pass-up can come from 10 levels down or 20 levels down, they sort of become your first level again. So the whole MLM structure, that kinda looks like a pyramid, it’s a similar concept but it’s not actually there in terms of the payout structure. Now what Empower Network does offer though, it’s different than in other company, is um — our basic product is it’s a viral blogging system, which comes with high authority and being — you have a blog Mike, I’m sure you know how hard it is to get your blog ranking on the search engines, to get high authority and high page ranking on it. So in Empower Network, ranks will come in. In Empower Network blog now, I believe on alexa.com is on the top 500 in the world. So, that’s really powerful for someone new coming into the industry to start over from blog and have a ranking of 500 all over the world in alexa. My personal blog that I’ve been working on for about a year and a half now, it’s on about 100,000. And I kinda know that I’m good coz I started at SEO and I really know my stuff. So, for me to recommend another blog as oppose to starting your own from scratch and building it for a year a half for it to get to 100,000, there’s a lot of power behind that. And now only, I mean, it’s $25 a month and that covers your Word Press posting, your themes, any changes that come down and pipeline for all affiliates. So, for $25 a month, you get this powerful platform that you can use to push traffic to your business. And then from there, there’s multiple other products that we scale up our business with.

Mike: Okay. It’s interesting that you say “we”, which is — it’s not, it’s kinda like you’re an owner in it kind of. Is it the way it’s kinda structured, like you’re an investor in the Empower Network? Is that how that works?

Chris: Well, I say “we” because I consider us a team. And, not just the people in my team but even cross line. I’ve helped tons of people in Empower Network there are — there’s no direct relationship to me or my business. Ah, but we’re all very helpful. All the leaders that I worked with, some do multiple 6 figures a month. Some of them, I’m not even their downlines but they’re willing to kinda reach out and give you a hand up. So, I’m willing to go out there and help others crossline or downline. Um, And that’s the great thing about Empower Network. We consider ourselves a team and we just wanna change the industry. Um, because I’ve seen on other companies where you have people crossline and on different teams. Instead of helping each other, they’re competing with each other. And I just feel that’s — that’s bad for the industry as a whole, not just the company. So, I consider us a team. And by being kind of an owner, I guess technically, you’re kind of an owner of the company in a way because any product you own, you’re getting a 100% commission on it. So, in that sense, it’s like a franchise that once you buy it to the franchise, you own that franchise and you own that income. Similar concept in the Empower Network, I think.

Mike: So, if I go to chrisksite.com and to sign up for the Empower Network through your affiliate link, I would initially start by paying $25 a month and you would, initially, you would get that $25-commission, correct?

Chris: It would either come to me or be passed up, depending on where you came in on the sign up. So, the way that the pass-ups work is um, your 2nd, 4th and 6th person that you sponsor and then every 5 after that gets passed up. So, initially people that are new to the industry say, “Well, I’m making all these pass-ups, how is that fair?”. Well, the fairness comes in that we’re gonna basically teach you and train you to be able to market online the way we do and then you’re gonna be the one getting those pass- ups. So, I kinda — I came from that mindset of the lag in the beginning of my business where I would think, “Well, how come I’m only getting 10% commissions and why am I making these pass-ups?”, to the mindset of abundance now, I realized that there’s so much out there for all of us that it’s gonna come back to you ten-fold. So, that’s kinda how the structure works. If you went to my site, signed up through my link, among the other bonuses that I offer to my team and sign-ups there, you’re basically gonna get ongoing training from not just myself but a couple of 6-figure millionaires we have on our team. And we do trainings weekly.

Mike: Do the training through webinars or through videos? How does that work?

Chris: Yeah, mostly webinars and videos. And then, we’ll do some um, some live calls actually once in a while. We’ll do small group calls, usually with — once somebody shows a proficiency and kinda able to follow what we’re saying and actually take action on it and we see are getting some results, we’ll do some smaller group calls that are more private because there’s probably a lot of people online, they don’t take it seriously. It’s only $25 to get started. It’s a pro, it’s a con coz to most people are like, well $25 a month to get started. It’s not that big of an investment. I’ll try it out for 30, 60, 90 days. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll just move on. But if you come with that mindset, it’s not gonna work coz you’re not taking it seriously and if you’re not gonna put in the effort in it, it’s just not gonna work for you. So, once we see someone serious and they’re putting effort into getting the results, we’ll do a smaller group call of 5 or 6 people in the call just to help them get into that next level.

Mike: If I signed up under you, would you be able to have direct contact with me afterwards? Would you see that I was your — I guess I would be in your downs, your downline? Is that how that that would work?

Chris: Yeah, for sure. I would see. Even if you’re a pass–up, I still see you coming in through because I’m technically your sponsor regardless of where you get passed up to. Um, and generally, most of — most of the people that are coming in my team, they will get a call either from, from me or my assistant. Um, just to welcome to the team, make sure they get log in coz I have a whole training camp set up for them, make sure they get that information and they get to starting off from the right footing.

Mike: Can everyone in your team also see each other in the system?

Chris: No, that’s one thing. You can’t see each other. You can only see the people that you bring in because the information that’s there ah, it’s usually name, email, phone number. So, the phone number is a little personal. So generally, unless you’re the person sponsoring them, I guess you don’t wanna look and see everybody’s phone numbers.

Mike: How many people do you have in your downline right now?

Chris: I’m about at 40 right now. Um and honestly, that really all started back in June. I really started taking it seriously coz in June I think I only have 2 or 3 people. Um, and — but it was constantly, from those 2 or 3 people started really performing. And I wasn’t really doing much at the time, you know. I was only providing a lot of training. I was taking — like I said, it was a little side affiliate form to me. And those 2 or 3 people were performing without really much training from me or mentoring. So I decided, well there’s

power here. So then, from June to about I would say October or November, I got to 30, 40 people. Um, but that’s, well I think the last couple of months, I’ve been going through some personal issues um, so it’s been really tough to kind of focus on the business the past couple of months. Um, but even the last few months, the whole purpose behind the system is — there’s a residual part of that system. So, even though I have some months where I’ll make several thousand dollars, even when I do nothing, um I have a residual of about $2500 a month rpllong in right now. So, 2500 a month isn’t really a huge number, especially living in New York, it’s not a huge number but it’s about 30,000 a year. Um, and that’s residual, meaning that I wouldn’t have to do anything. Whether I work on my business or not, that money’s gonna keep coming in. And the way my team is performing now, it’s probably only gonna increase. Um, because my team is really performing now. And I see new people coming in daily that they’re able to just take our training and run with it and within the first couple of weeks or months, really start seeing results.

Mike: How’s your retention rate go?

Chris: I think our retention rate is huge and our company again — I don’t have any of the exact figures on hand, obviously. And we always like throw big income disclosure income out there. So, for anyone looking for specifics on income and disclaimers about it, go look at our income disclosure at our site. Um, from what I’ve seen, our retention rate is huge. Just from my personal downline, I’d say I have an 80-90% retention rate out of my members. So, there are people that have come in, have come to my team. And I had people that within the first two weeks just cancelled. And ah, you know, it kinda gets me off guard coz I’m like, what do you expect to do in two weeks, really. Um, that’s like saying, I wanna become a doctor and you go to school for two weeks and then you realized they won’t give you a medical degree. Um, so I mean, you have to be willing to put some work into it. It’s not gonna happen for you with no work. So there’s people, I’ll give them a call and they’re basically, you know, screaming it’s a scam, it doesn’t work. And my question is, “Have you gone through any of our training?” And they’ll go, “No”. And some people at that point decide, why don’t we check out the training and welcome back to the team. Some people just don’t wanna deal with it because they want some kind of magic button that you’re just gonna push that button and money’s gonna fall out of the sky for you. But people who are willing to do work, they stick around and start seeing results.

Mike: The sources of revenue from the Empower Network are people primarily making their money through referring other people or is there a way that once you’re in the program, you make money by selling to other people outside the Empower Network. How does that work?

Chris: Yeah, I mean. Both ways, right. So, that one thing that we in Empower Network always say is, if you come to Empower Network, we’re gonna teach you how to market any business. We recommend that you use our platform to do it because everything’s set up for you. The capture page, sales funnels, emails. The whole system is set up for you so we recommend you start there. But once you started getting more advanced, the whole goal of Empower Network is to teach people how to market any business, mostly network marketing companies. We have some traditional people, like dentists, photographers, that are learning how to market their businesses using Empower Network strategies. So, once you really start learning how to build Empower Network, you are able to not only earn commissions from people in your downline that you sponsor, but then you can actually go out there and start marketing other products more effectively coz now you know the whole concept of how to market online. And that’s where it comes down to. What you really need is — you need traffic, to be able to generate traffic from one source, convert that traffic into leads and then sell those leads into some kind of product or service to make your sales. So to me, it’s three simple steps but everybody gets it very confused and it gets convoluted. So we break it down. We keep tons of strategies on how to go about that.

Mike: How long does it take for someone to start earning once they’ve joined the Empower Network?

Chris: Funny question. You actually have start earning the same day and there are people — again, it comes in disclosure unless this is probably not the norm, there’s people that signed up and in their first day, they sponsored someone and already started making income. But I’m not saying sponsored someone as in you know, their called – you know, their brother or their cousins or something. They actually went through the system. They bought the blogging platform, they put up a blog, they pushed traffic to it and they got someone to sign up into their business that they didn’t know from their blog online. So that’s — I mean, that’s really powerful when you’re able to come in and make money your first day. Generally, people aren’t able to do that, people aren’t coming in with big list or already have a huge database of contacts. Um, and they’re able to get a lot of interest. They hear the new person can come in, learn how to push traffic and start generating an income.

Mike: One thing that I think is interesting about the Empower Network from what I’m understanding, correct me if I’m wrong, but you can’t just go and promote it unless you’ve actually bought the product. Is that correct?

Chris: That’s correct. And we feel that’s just good business. So, I know there’s other people out there that would go out and they will promote any type of affiliate offer, just trying to make a buck. And our philosophy is, if you’re gonna promote a product, you should

own the product, have used or reviewed the product and be honest about the product. So if you’re not gonna be using the product, why are you promoting it? Um, and I’ve bought tons of products online, just trying to find my way around kinda the online, you know, industry. And there are products out there that are extremely good, have tons of value and I do recommend and I promote them. And then, there’s other products that are not reliable and you almost feel that, you know, a person putting it together was just trying to make a buck. And those products I won’t promote them. Um, I consider them an investment to learning what not to do in any products. And when people asked me about them, I advice them to go turn to better product. So yeah, I mean if you’re gonna just try and — and then, what happens when someone — when you’re trying to promote a product, let’s say it’s a $100 affiliate product and the person you’re promoting it to says, “What do you think about the product? What do they really teach in there?” If you haven’t bought it or go through it, you can’t even answer that question, honestly. You know, so our point-of-view is whatever you own, you can market and get a 100% commissions off it.

Mike: You have a product that you are — well, at this time that we’re speaking, you’re gonna be putting out. And by the time that this interview goes up, it will be released by then. It’s called Video Marketing Exposed. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Chris: Sure, yeah. Video Marketing Exposed is actually the way it came about, wasn’t even my original intention. What I started doing was getting into video and Youtube marketing online to start helping me build my online business, Empower Network and a few of other affiliate products out there that I’m really promoting. And what happened was these videos really started taking on a life of their own. Um, I have — I have one cha — I have multiple Youtube Channels set up. Um, and I discussed why I do that in the product but just one on my channels alone has gone, you know, over 6,000 views. And those 6,000 views obviously turned into a ton of leads and those leads turn into sign-ups and sales. And the great thing about that is that those videos are out there marketing for you 24/7, 365. You don’t need to be at your computer doing anything. You don’t have to be on the phone, talking to people. You don’t have to be doing home meetings. The videos are doing the work for you. So, a lot of people in Empower Network, we had a live event in San Diego. I flew out there. And a lot of people really wound want to see how I’m getting my results. And I told them, I’m doing videos. Then, we got into this conversation and before I knew it, I was surrounded by 20 or 30 people at the event, just kind of discussing video marketing and Youtube marketing. And then, one of the leaders comes up to me and Lawrence Tam, and he’s one of the No.1 earners at Empower Network. And I’m on his team. He’s been coaching me and he’s like, you know you should just turn this into a product. He’s like, take your knowledge, turn that into a product. And ah, you know, it’s someone like him, here’s a good idea and you run with it. So I kinda work from just giving away that valuable information to decide to package it into a product. There’s several modules in it. I’ll teach you from, whether you have a business or not already, I teach you how to build it online, how to properly create your videos to get more traffic, how to increase your conversions and how, if you have a product or not, how to find products that you can actually promote that you don’t feel that you need to learn some new skill. So, the main example I use — I have someone on my team, he’s a golfer. He loves to golf. Now, do you know you can actually make money just by talking about your passion which is golf. And you know, at first, people aren’t really sure how but I — I’m like, what kind of golf clubs do you use? And he’ll tell me. And I’m like, Why do you use those golf clubs? And he’ll explain his reasoning. That’s a perfect video or blog post. And then, pretty much any product you can think of is sold on Amazon. You can become an Amazon affiliate and you can earn a small income off that from Amazon. So, there’s so many strategies that I kinda discussed with strategies, I discussed how to use the video marketing in Youtube to really generate a business online. And most of it are really free. I mean, Youtube is a free platform. It’s got so much authority and power. And Mike, as you know, you do a lot of videos. Videos are so powerful when it comes to converting, capturing attention and really building relationship with cold traffic. So I mean, video marketing in 2013, Cisco came out with this statistic basically saying that 90% of consumer traffic online will be video traffic. So, if you’re not building your business using videos and – at the upcoming year, you can be losing a lot of business, um and just a lot of leads and traffic and money from your business.

Mike: Well Chris, I just want to thank you so much for taking the time out and coming on the show today. Is there anything that we didn’t touch upon that you wanted to make sure that we talk about before wrap it up here?

Chris: Yeah I mean, I like to — I’m really big on mindset. So, one thing I like to kinda just throw out there for people um, looking to build a business is that it’s a phrase I kinda coined a while back, it’s “Life is always gonna get in the way”. And what that means is if you’re always waiting for the right time, trust me it’s probably not gonna come. So, stop procrastinating and start getting it done. And my personal dent with that is that back in September, took my girlfriend at that time to Paris where we got engaged. So, we got engaged in September and then have to start planning wedding stuff. We were in the process of buying our new apartment where we’re in now. So we had to deal with closings and moving. And in the process of that, we had a couple of family members, we each have a family member laid in the hospital. So, we spent weeks in the hospital. Thankfully you know, any prayers out there, we appreciate it. Thankfully, they’re both recovering and doing much better. Um and in the mean time, we both have full time jobs and I’m still building a business on the side. So, in the last three months, a lot has happened in my life to kinda realized that it’s still possible before that going on, to build a business on the side coz my business is still increasing. So when people tell me – when people tell you they don’t really have the time to build a business and all they do is go to work 9 to 5, that’s just an excuse that they’re not — they’re not really fully believing themselves to be successful. So, don’t let them hamper you because I see these people

come home at 6 o’clock, they watch TV for 4 hours, they play around in Facebook for 3 hours and they’re not really building anything long term. So, don’t let that stop you. Stop procrastinating and just start today. If you start today, the potential where you could be 1, 2, 3 years down the road is huge.

Mike: Great advice, Chris. Good advice. Where can people reach you at if they wanna get in contact with you?

Chris: Yeah, definitely it’d be on my blog. It’s chrisksite.com; C-H-R-I-S-K-S-I-T-E dot com. I’m always updating that with new videos and content, things of that sort. Um, it’s been a little stagnant lately, again I’ve had a lot going on. I will be getting back there. I have my Youtube channel, my Facebook account, all the infos on my site. You can contact me there. And again, look out for that new product that’s gonna be coming out coz videos are gonna be huge in 2013 and you wanna get on that.

Mike: Great. Thanks again, Chris.

Chris: Mike, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

Mike: I hope you enjoyed the show with Christ today. Go ahead and check out his website. It’s chrisksite.com. That’s where he talks about all his different business thing — just his blog, you know all how that works. And also, if you go to mikefrommaine.com/chrisk, you can go ahead and check out his Video Marketing Exposed website where he get to talk about the power of using video. I obviously believe in that type of thing as well coz I use tons of video for my business. Well yeah, check that out. Have a great weekend and — oh stay tune tomorrow, on Saturday, I’ll be sending you a video about the — I had my Youtube channel from mikefrommaine.com banned. I’m gonna send out the video that I think might have been responsible for getting me banned. I’ve put it up on Vimeo so yeah, I’ll send that to you tomorrow. Have a great weekend.

  1. Forgive me for passing judgement, but Empower is one of the seediest, spammiest, get-rich-quick schemes out there, both in their advertising and what they teach their affiliates.

    It’s a real pity that you are giving them airtime alongside so many other incredible and truly-great business models.

    1. Quinton,

      When I first heard of Chris K. and his success I didn’t even know how he was achieving it. Upon further investigation I discovered he was using the Empower Network to make money online. I decided to use this as an opportunity to have an honest discussion about what it actually is and how it works.

      I’ve asked Chris to monitor the comments here, and I invite you, Quinton, and anyone else interested, to use this comments section to ask Chris any questions you may have about how the Empower Network functions.

      Feel free to ask tough questions, but all I ask is that you remain respectful in your discussion.

  2. Mike, let me just take this opportunity to thank you again and say what an awesome job you are doing.

    Quinton – I’m sorry to hear about your negative experience with Empower Network, but the sad truth is every business out there involved in the “Network Marketing”, “Online Marketing” or “Home Based Business” Niche has people participate that don’t know how to correctly market a business. Therefore they ALL wind up having people join that start to spam and misrepresent exactly what it takes to become successful at one of these businesses. How many emails, facebook messages, etc do you get on a daily basis about checking out the greatest new push button system to make a million dollars from some random stranger? I’m sure you get a lot like the rest of us. When I first got started in a traditional network marketing business, they actually told us to go friend as many people on facebook and send this template email they prepared, which was basically spam. That WAS their marketing strategy, but I was new and didn’t know any better, so I thought that was marketing. Thankfully I know better today…

    But here’s something I’d like you to consider. Empower Network is a training/educational platform and what we teach is pure/real marketing methods. Stereotyping the whole company based on experiences with a handful of people (keeping in mind we have close to 100,000 affiliates) is sort of like stating Harvard Medical School is a scam, because their students that just enrolled in the school yesterday don’t know how to perform a triple by-pass surgery. It’s a learning curve that people must go through and you wouldn’t expect these new students to know how to perform a triple by-pass; just like we can’t expect newbies in the industry to know how to market correctly.

    We teach everything from SEO and Video Marketing, to Solo Ads, Magazine Ads, and I can list dozens of other marketing modalities we teach and I guarantee that if you look at the leaders in Empower Network you would agree we all market correctly and we can pretty much market anything using the methods we teach.

    Unfortunately newbies get started and they’re excited and don’t know any better, much like myself when I started in network marketing, so they start spamming people online before they really start to educate themselves on the correct methods of marketing we teach. We are trying to help them all learn how to market, because honestly there is a real need for it in the market place and when I get those facebook messages today I just shake my head, but understand where they are coming from and try to help them realize there is a better way to market a business online; unfortunately I’ve seen some people that won’t change their ways for years. So we try to help everyone, but you can only really help those that want to help themselves.

    I’d be more than happy to continue the discussion or answer anyone else’s questions, concerns, comments on Empower Network or just marketing in general.

    Thanks,
    Chris K.

  3. Hi Mike,
    I am following your show for quite some time now and just want to say that I like it a lot. How ever, on this show I am with Quinton.

    Maybe they teach you how to market in general but the truth is that it does not matter. Because the problem is that one can earn money just from getting more people to sign-up. Where I come from (Switzerland), this is a scam and even criminal. Obviously in the US I guess it is not… But still I find it troubling.

    Sorry that my first comment is so negative… I try to do better next time 😉

    1. Hi Dani,

      I would say you have probably misunderstood one aspect which is we don’t earn commissions for people, we earn commissions for product sales. We sell products, therefore, according to your definition any business that sells products to earn a profit is a scam?

      There’s always been a big debate about the legality of network marketing, affiliate marketing, etc. but those are legal business models that can operate and some are even traded publicly on the NYSE.

      That’s not to say the industry hasn’t been tarnished by some less reputable business people that have other agendas, but what industry hasn’t been affected by someone trying to take advantage of others; think of the Madoff incident, or how many supposed “charities” have been uncovered to simply be lining peoples pockets and doing no charity whatsoever.

      So we offer great products that people can use and most people need if they are serious about learning how to make money online/from home and we earn commissions for that; because we are running a business for profit; not a non-for-profit. But at the end of the day regardless of what business you decide to get involved with you must do your own research and due diligence, because it is your choice at the end of the day.

      Hope that clears up the confusion a bit for you.
      Chris K.

      1. Well… You call it a product… But is it not just a membership?
        And if there is some other product, why didn’t you talk about?

        1. We offer several products actually. A SEO Optimized Blogging Platform which if you want to market online you NEED a blog; our Inner Circle product is audio trainings provided multiple times per week by all of our top leaders in the company, our 15k Formula is exact how-to strategies of how anyone in our company making over 15k per month is actually accomplishing it (SEO, Video, Solo Ads, Magazine Ads, etc.) and there’s way more.

          I didn’t get into specifics about each individual product, because that information is readily available on our site; however, what’s important is that at the end of the day we are about Empowering people in doing better things in their lives and we do that by working as a team. My team currently has over 2,500 members supporting and helping each other on a daily basis. So although you will get the people that join our company and just want to sell as many products as possible, there are those of us that truly are trying to make a difference in people’s lives by showing them how they can accomplish better things.

          Chris K.

          1. This is confusing to me. You have this great blogging plattform to promote what ever but all I see from you is chrisksite.com. Why don’t you use the awesome blog plattform? Or can you only promote the network on that plattform?

            And can you show me a specific product?

  4. Dani,

    Of course. Here’s my Empower Blog:
    http://www.empowernetwork.com/ChrisK/

    I’ve been using my personal site for much longer so it’s force of habit that I use it everywhere. Habits are tough to break, but I use both blogs for marketing, traffic and lead generation, as you’ll see.

    Regarding the products I don’t usually like to drop links on other people’s sites, but I’ll provide a link for you to our products and if Mike has an issue, Mike please feel free to remove the link and I’ll chat with Dani in private.

    Here is our product line:
    http://www.ChrisKsite.com/empowernetworkproducts

    Enjoy =)

  5. Hey Dani,

    Shoot me an email and I’d be glad to answer your questions and provide you additional information for your review. I don’t want to be dropping links on Mike’s blog.

    Talk to you soon,
    Chris K.

  6. Chris,

    Thanks for taking the time to answer questions here. Feel free to drop a few links if you need to if it helps the conversation.

    This is a great opportunity to clear any confusion that people might have.

  7. Hi,

    I’ve thought about joining this before ONLY because of the affiliate program. I’m sure it makes people quite a bit of money. The main problem I have is that I would not pay $25/month for the blogging system if there was no compensation plan for referrals… there are tons of other options that are free if you just wanted to blog. (wordpress, squidoo, hubpages, etc.)

    …btw, great site Mike …i enjoy watching your interviews

    -Drew

    1. Hey Drew,

      I agree and disagree with your point. If you’re just looking to blog and are not looking to monetize your blog, then yes there’s tons of free services out there. I used Ezine Articles for a while and they are free, because THEY monetize your traffic; your content makes THEM money. Time is our most precious resource and I would not spend my time doing something for free when I could be monetizing it, otherwise I’d rather just go on vacation with my fiance and enjoy our time together.

      The free services, also, control your content meaning if they don’t like it they shut you down. So really you would need a self-hosted site to discuss topics freely and that takes quite a bit of work to set up; especially for those us that are technically challenged.

      And once your new self-hosted site is up and running, it will take you months to rank. I know because it took my personal blog about a year to get in the top 100k on Alexa and it still fluctuates, even thought I know A LOT about SEO.

      With Empower – you come in and your blog is ready to go, optimized and currently were in the top 500 Globally and top 200 in the US. That is Very Powerful. So even if someone didn’t want to be an affiliate of the blogging platform, our platform allows you to discuss ANYTHING and get ranked FAST because of the power of our platform.

      Surprisingly I had a few affiliate marketers join our team to take advantage of the features specifically for affiliate marketing, because they understand the power of a high ranking blog and before you knew it obviously they became affiliates because what we offer is powerful for those looking to run a profitable business. I actually have specific training for my team about how to rank for Amazon products that people use every day and research to earn affiliate commissions from Amazon through the Empower Network Blogging system. The possibilities are endless once you learn how to rank on the search engines with a high authority blog.

      To wrap up… If someone’s just looking to run a non-profit or “have fun” and not monetize their time, then sure I agree no need to invest in the Empower Network Blogging platform. And the funny thing is as your self-hosted site gets more and more traffic and you need to upgrade more and more it actually gets much pricier than our measly $25 price tag. Some of us spend upwards of $200 per month for our sites and others yet I’ve talked with are in the $500 per month range.

      Chris K.

  8. I am an affiliate with the Empower Network and have been with the company since July, 2012.

    Previously I had done MLM from 2006-2008 with some success but I got burnt out and just got tired of the grind so to say.

    I then started to work for a company here in the Phoenix Metro area in early 2012 by the name of My Phone Room (www.jcbustillos.com/myphoneroom) where we assisted home based business and local business owners in doing their phone calling. I was a sales rep at this place and It was my job to learn about every opportunity that was out there.

    This is how I came to be aware of the Empower Network. What drew me to it was that it was not a MLM but more of an affiliate program. I would best describe it as a Hybrid of sorts and something unto itself.

    My life has changed drastically because of the products offered in the Empower Network. For one I would describe it as an Online (and even Offline) Marketing Educational System built on a Blogging Platform.

    The Blogging Platform with its very high Alexa rating gives you a HUGE leg up on getting your content ranked on Search Engines which results in more Traffic to your site. I now advise business owners in SEO and giving them a web presence and one of the first things I recommend is that they at the minimum get this platform so that they can bring in more traffic to their site.

    It can even be a mirror site as you can very easily customize the site and mask it with a URL for your own business and use the EN side of things to help your content get ranked.

    Secondly the higher educational products in the backoffice are quite simply the best on the market. There is no one that is better at Online Marketing then the Leaders that Chris K and I are learning from in the ENTIRE Industry.

    The products that have been put in place have helped me start my own consulting business and allow me to work FT from home while I market EN on a part time basis.

    You can look at any affiliate system or home based business out there. Again, I have done this, and quite frankly there is nothing out there better then Empower Network.

    Just my two cents. 🙂

      1. Well Drew,

        Ponzi and Cash Gifting is illegal. Empower Network is a Blogging Platform that teaches you how to do Internet Marketing.

        There are PLENTY of people that buy the products to just learn pure marketing and then apply it to their traditional and/or MLM business.

        Success is mindset my friend. If you are always looking for a scam you will find one. Empower Network is not one and there is incredible value in what the company offers and provides.

        The education alone is worth the cost.

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