How Does Empowr Work?
How Does Empowr Work?
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Overall Rating - 4.0/104/10
Summary
Pros
Earnings can be accumulated by engaging in simple tasks such as uploading and sharing posts.
Cons
Unlike in affiliate marketing where you earn commissions directly once you make a sale, Empowr is based on a more complicated system where your earnings are revenues and not profits you can easily cash out.
Your profits are calculated by the system, depending on the activities that you engage in Empowr and are only available to be cashed out after three months.
I was introduced to social media community, Empowr (without the ‘e’), by a LinkedIn acquaintance.
Just to emphasize, this is not to be mistaken for Empower Network (by David Wood and David Sharpe), the blogging platform.
I tried to find out more about Empowr but realized that there are very few reviews out there that would help to determine if it could really be a reliable source of online income.
So in order to find out how Empowr really works, I signed up and have since been watching the training videos and trying out the different features provided.
What did I find?
Well, read on as what you are about to find out might help you decide if Empowr is something that you want to try.
What is Empowr?
After using Empowr for several days, I found out that it is not a totally new company. Created by Michael Pousti and Brandie Williams, it was known previously as Fanbox.
From the image above, you can see that Empowr claims to be a company committed to democracy and aims to share 97 percent of its revenue with members.
Through the training videos, I understood that Empowr is a social community where you build your circle of trust (comprising other members) and make money through posting, sharing other members’ posts, selling items and bidding on products others have put on sale.
For each of the task, you have a daily goal to meet and the system will tell you if you have reached those goals. Your account would indicate the earnings you achieve as you meet those goals but don’t set your hopes up high because these earnings are not really tangible commissions like you would get in affiliate marketing. Specifically, your earnings are revenues rather than profits/commissions.
Below is my Empowr balance, a few days after being in Empowr.
Posting
You can post on almost anything (although I haven’t seen any ‘adult’ or X-rated postings by members, so far). I tried to post my website link but was prompted with “Is it relevant or spam”, so I abandoned the idea.
Sharing
Liking someone else’s post is equivalent to sharing and it’s encouraged as a way to support others in the community.
Listing
You can make money by selling your own products or items that you no longer need. I was unclear on the shipping arrangements for selling such products. So I sent a query to my ‘Empowr Coach’ but received no reply. Hmm ….
Bidding or Sponsoring
This means you could either buy or bid for an item and put it up for sale again for a profit. I ended up buying a gardening tool that I placed for bidding again because I don’t have a garden in the first place. I believe I made a few cents of profit from that ‘sponsoring’.
The idea of sponsoring is to allow you to re-sell an item you don’t need, for a profit. Empowr claims that you don’t have to worry about the prices of the items for sponsoring as the system ensures that you gain a profit once an item is placed as a sponsored product.
Forms of Support
While you can refer to the training videos to find your way around the platform and learning to ‘optimize’ your membership, you can also send queries to the coach assigned to you.
Empowr allows you to switch your coach if the information he/she provided is not to your expectations
I won’t bother changing mine…..
Other Terms/Features
Earnings
You can withdraw your earnings through ‘matured’ cash out or ‘early’ cash out. Matured cash outs are unspent profits that have matured for 90 days after they were first generated.
According to one video, sometimes Empowr receives more revenue than it expects. So early cash outs is a way of sharing this revenue with its members (purportedly so as to achieve its goal of returning 97 percent of revenue to members).
There are however a few conditions set before you can make an early cash out, one of which is the validation of account. This is done through providing Empowr with your credit card or Paypal details.
I have not provided my card or Paypal details to date, for reasons you’ll find out below.
Power Up
There are different ‘Power levels’ which defines the rate at which you can advertise and earn. The higher the power level, the more you can potentially earn, so Empowr claims.
When you first joined, you are given the Basic Orange Level for free for a month. You can choose to power up, but there are costs involved and it starts at $6 per month for the Orange Basic to a whopping $60,000 per month for the Teal Star Level! What?!
My Take
After finding my way around Empowr for a few days now, I still feel there are quite a number of issues I can’t wrap my head around.
I have noticed that I get $0.60 to $2.00 just for posting into my feed but I don’t understand how Empowr arrived at those numbers.
I also don’t see the value in ‘posting anything’ just for the sake of getting compensated for it.
Although Empowr claims to work out a product’s price such that you make money through ‘Sponsoring’, I didn’t really understand how much I made by bidding and re-selling any product.
Validation
I have received two notices to validate my account. Now this validation is claimed to be necessary if I want my account to be ‘protected’.
Don’t worry. I have chosen NOT to validate because through my research on this program, I found that some members have to part with money for advertising credits (the calculation of which is a mystery), owing to them providing their card details. Most don’t understand why they had to pay the amount claimed.
If I were to put money for advertising or promotion, I would rather do it in Facebook or Twitter. The calculations are clear and I can monitor my campaigns to determine if they’re successful.
Besides, if I do have unspent profits, why do I have to wait three months to cash out?
Conclusion
Thus far, as hard as I tried, I have yet to find Empowr members who have made real money from this platform. None!
So would I recommend it to anyone. Honestly, if you are curious and just want to have fun posting stuff or see what Empowr is all about, go ahead and check out their website.
However, let me warn you – Do NOT provide any credit card or Paypal details, unless you are really certain on how Empowr calculation system works … or you might regret it.
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About The Author
Zailinah
I was a serial online product buyer till I found success in affiliate marketing. I created About Online Business to share my experience. As you are well aware, success is no walk in the park. But perseverance pays. Your opinion is important to me so feel free to share your thoughts. Our views may differ but that does not mean we can't learn from each other. Go ahead, leave me your thoughts below:)
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Hi Zailinah,
Thanks for bringing up the issues on the operation of Empowr.
Many of these platforms are there only to make money from us with some goodies from the start.
If they are holding your account money for 90 days, it probably by used up to pay their other services and you are back to nothing.
I would not want to be in that situation.
Regards Sadie
Hi Sadie,
You’ve put the intention of the program creators in perspective – trying to suck us out of $$$ with goodies.
That’s what I was thinking as well – they probably hold your earnings to pay other members – like in Ponzi scheme.
I don’t really see the meaning of getting paid to post on my feed as that post is not really seen by my targeted audience. I understand that my post will be seen by people ‘geographically’ close to me. So if I were to promote my business, I can only hope that they want what I’m selling but I can’t expect them to actually buy my products.
Hey Zailinah
Thank you for sharing about your experience with Empowr and alerting everyone about bad guys on the internet. We need good people like you. On the top of alerting us about the online trap on our way, thank you for sharing the right stuff we can use to get our ultimate success. Your review is terrific, because it is your personal experience. Please continue to expose other cyber thieves and benefit millions.
Thank you Josi, for the heads up.
While there are many who self-proclaimed gurus out there who would shove you products after products to buy, there are still reliable guys who have your success at heart. The reality is that people are usually lured into fast money-making gimmicks that some marketers are selling. But the onus is on us to do our due diligence to research on their backgrounds and programs before plunging into any.
Yep, I will continue to do what I can to ensure that people out there get the unbiased information that they need when they’re looking up a program!
What a great and well-written review. I had a so-called guru trying to sell me this garbage product through email. As soon as I heard the name I could hear alarm bells going off. You definitely saved me some money because of your article, so I thank you for that.
I like how you mentioned Wealthy Affiliate, this is by far my favorite way of making money online, and I stand behind this site 100%. Great post!
Kind regards,
Brandon
Hello Brandon,
When I write on Empowr, I intended to ‘chronicle’ the experience that I have with the program. To know that this post has helped you save money, that’s really a bonus for me.
Programs like Empowr make you believe that making money online is really easy, when in reality, there’s quite a bit of knowledge to acquire, setting up your business and allowing some time before you see real success.
The reason that I join some of these ‘new’ programs is because I want to have hands-on experience on what the program is about, whether it really delivers what it claims. What sounds like too good to be true, usually is … from what I gather.
Hey All,
It seems that you have some questions in regards to the empowr platform. While we’re sad to hear your negative thoughts toward empowr, we gladly welcome the opportunity to better educate others and help you to better understand what empowr is all about.
empowr is a free platform that has been carefully designed to enable people to build and monetize a large network of fans, starting with no outside capital.
There are many optional products and services for sale on empowr, available mostly from other community members, but the basic product is offered for use without charge.
From day one, all empowr citizens are provided $1,000 in Ad Credits and a free $6 Power User subscription that they can utilize to immediately accelerate the growth of their fan base, views and earnings.
In exchange for the use of those services, there are fees that empowr citizens can choose to pay upfront; or, they can opt to pay the fees when they cash out. If at any point they no longer wish to take advantage of those services, they can stop using them. They can even delete their account at any time and owe nothing to the platform.
All of this is detailed in the FAQs(http://www.empowr.com/socnet/Business.aspx) on the empowr homepage. To ensure this information isn’t missed, all new registering empowr citizens must verify twice that they have read, understood and agreed with the plain English terms(http://www.empowr.com/navigation/ProductTaC.aspx) as opposed to fine-print legal jargon like many products have.
We understand that empowr is different than any other platforms currently available, which is why empowr has placed such emphasis on providing its citizens with as many resources as possible. With free, trained, 24-hour Success Coaches available to answer questions, and over 30 tutorial videos addressing major parts of the site, we are only continuing to add tools to help our users be successful.
Additionally, thanks to the feedback from our advisory board over the past several years, we are constantly improving our business model – enabling our members to experience greater economic and democratic prosperity through our platform as time passes on.
With that being said, we always welcome questions/feedback and will be here to help anyone who wishes to better understand what empowr is all about.
Thanks for the attempt to explain on Empowr’s business practices.
I have read Empowr’s terms of service and found in the TOS Section XIV “Empowr may award you virtual currency in the form of earnings (“Earnings”) in connection with your use of the Services. Your investment of content, earnings, time, payments, including the purchase of Advertisements on the Empowr Network and relationships, may never materialize or result in any direct or implied benefit or asset for you. Any Earnings, payments, or in-kind benefits will be made solely in the discretion of Empowr, and you waive any rights to receive revenues, profits, Earnings, and any value of any kind other than any of the foregoing actually paid you by Empowr”.
I believe that is self-explanatory and speaks more than the ‘training videos’ that I’ve seen.
Success Coaches
My success coach was suddenly changed without me requesting for it. What I find peculiar is these coaches provide me answers to questions I’ve never posed but evade questions that I actually sent. The coaches use ‘standard response’ that are aimed to get citizens to be more active in using Empowr.
I also understand that these ‘coaches’ are not Empowr employees but rather, they are volunteers.
Actual Earners
If you could just illustrate with few ‘success stories’ – people who ARE actually making REAL money from Empowr, then perhaps that might change how people generally perceive the platform.
As for now, I’ll stand by my decision to stay away from it.
I’m interested in empowr so I’m informing myself by communicating with the people on the “Leader Board”, and by reading all there is to know about it including the book by co-founder Michael Cyrus Pousti “America is an Idea”. I’m also fascinated by your response to the empowr support team, and I will include it in my conversations with members, so thanks for contributing to my research.
I’m happy to learn that people actually do “cash out” as the business model describes, and I’m confident that I will cash out also. In all my research I have not found anyone who felt his/her time was wasted or could not cash out with minimal effort. If you do find someone for whom the business model did not pay as described I would like to know. Please message me at http://www.empowr.com/hey. Thanks!
.
Hello Marty,
My coach pointed me to one lady through this post. She apparently made use of her earnings to get a new iPhone. Good for her.
But I have more questions – if I’m the seller, how’s the shipping and more importantly how’s the after-sales service, because I’m pretty sure she got that phone from another member.
OK, she got the phone – but then what? Did more cash outs come her way?
As much as you want to know of people who don’t make money from Empowr, I would also like to know of anyone who have made surplus from Empowr. If I get to know of this person(s), I would gladly interview him to be included in this post. I’m always for fairness.
Perhaps your experience has been different from mine. Seriously, am waiting for anyone to tell me how they have made money there.
This is really enlightening Zalinah. At first, I thought it was infamous Empower Network and also thought there was something wrong with the spelling. But I was wrong because that was a new social network site.
Going by your analysis, I will rather not go for it because something you can’t really understand how they operate is questionable and asking for your account details which you also said it is not wise to divulge, so, is a no-no for me.
Thank you for such a wonderful article that is geared toward directing people to the right path. One question, though, it is free to become a member?
Hi Nnamdi,
I write based on what I experienced and it’s readers’ call to make their own decisions on what the platform really is or if it’s something they want to be a part of.
To answer your question on whether Empowr is free, you will be given 1000 ad credits and you start at the Orange Basic level which is $6/month. You get the first month free, after which you decide if you want to continue at that level or upgrade.
Hi Zailinah,
Thank you for a great review on this business. I was receiving the same exact emails you were, and had been trying to figure out how I was making this “money”. However after reading this and seeing how the “support team” failed so miserably at explaining anything or even providing an example of success there is no way I will try this.
Hey Sam,
No worries. I’m more than happy to share my experience. I recently had my ‘success coach’ changed again, not at my request. I believe that’s the fourth change so far, none as a result of my request. When I asked these success coaches if they had actually made REAL money from Empowr, one of my success coach showed me a credit of $10 that he received. OK, good for him. But in my thinking, that’s it? Soon, that success coach was no longer assigned to me.
Anyway, the moral of the story is if you have doubts about the business practices, then best is to stay away. And also, research, research, research before getting into something:)
Hello, Zailinah (what a beautiful name, by the way)!
How long have you been there? I noticed that periodically they show an example of someone that cashed out an amount of xxx (it depends on the person). So, this is not true???
I agree it is something fishy about the fact they complicate so much the things and I also don`t like the idea of cashing out after 3 months.
Hi,
Oh thanks for the compliment on my name!
I’ve been a member for about four months, although I have to admit I’m not that active in posting or sharing/liking somebody else’s posts. The reason is I really don’t see the value in the activity.
I still hold the membership because like most people I want to get to know members who have actually cashed out. Like you said, I also came across posts on people who have cashed out. But so far, I don’t get any response from the ‘earners’ I try to get in touch with.
As of now, I still get notifications that I earn few dollars daily. By the way, my coach has also changed – think it’s the fourth time now already (without me requesting for a change).
I haven’t verified my account. Even if I decide to place some ads for my business, I’m not sure if the members in Empowr would present as my targeted audience.
And … I always wonder about the sustainability of a business such as Empowr.