Has somebody approached you asking you to join Team National? Telling you that it’s a life-changing business opportunity which can see you becoming your own boss & earning money from the comfort of your own home?
Yeah – me too, but I never listen to the advice of somebody trying to get me to join their business opportunity because the information they’re giving you is always going to be biased & since they’re making money by getting you to join they’re going to say whatever they can to get you in…
So for that reason, I decided to do my own research & in this blog post, I’m going to putting together a Team National review where I’ll be explaining what the company is all about, how the opportunity works, whether you can really make any money & my thoughts on the Team National scam rumours.
What Is Team National?  |  What Are The Products?  |  The Business Opportunity  |  Is Team National a Pyramid Scheme?  |  Should You Join?  |  A Better Alternative
What Is Team National?
Team National is a monstrous networking marketing company that was founded by a guy named Dick Loehr way back in 1997 and since it’s initial launch it’s generated over $1 billion in total product sales (which is a pretty impressive feat considering I only know of 3 other network marketing companies that have gone on to achieve that).
The reason Team National has become so popular is that their product line (if you can call it that) consists of memberships that provide you with discounts on various everyday purchases (and also some not-so-everyday purchases too).
Everybody loves to save money & everybody loves to make money too, so with Team National offering a way for you to do both it was kinda always set to take-off from the very start really.
However whilst it all sounds good on paper I do personally feel that there are some issues with the company which is why I never decided to get involved. I’ll explain more about those in a moment but firstly let’s take a look at the actual memberships that they offer…
Free Training:
What Are Team National’s Products?
As mentioned above Team National’s products aren’t really products as such, they’re memberships that are designed to get you access to various discounts so that you can save money on your every day (and not-so-everyday) shopping.
I’ll run through each of the memberships below so you can see what you actually get & then I’ll go over the business opportunity compensation plan so that you can get an idea as to how much money you’ll make reselling them onto other people.
Team National Factory Direct Membership
Up to 65% off various items including jewellery but with a primary focus on products for “around the home”.
Group Buying Power Membership
Savings related to vehicles (such as sales, rentals, parts/servicing), savings on financial services (mortgages, loans etc), savings on health plans, savings on travel & savings on insurance.
Team National Business Exchange Membership
There’s an ever-changing list of businesses signed up to this but basically, you can get savings on any business that’s listed in their business exchange. They generally tend to be smaller business & savings vary but as far as I’m aware it’s limited to businesses n the USA only.
eCommerce Membership
Get discounts of up to 30% at over 100 big-name online retailers (again it’s an ever-changing list).
The Business Opportunity
Being a network marketing company, alongside the opportunity to purchase memberships & get access to discounts Team National also give you the opportunity to make money by reselling the members onto other people.
And in typical network marketing fashion as well as being able to earn from your own efforts you’re also able to recruit other people into the business & earn from their efforts too (aka building your network).
To be honest their compensation plan is fairly complex & whilst I could take a stab at explaining it myself Team National has put together a pretty good video which does just that.
So if you want to get a better idea as to how the opportunity works & how you can make money be sure to watch the video below, but remember that the video has been created by Team National so it will be biased.
(update: Team National have deleted the video, sorry!)
Admittedly the compensation plan is fairly lucrative but it relies heavily on recruiting, so whilst you can make money by reselling the products yourself the “real money” that you see people boasting about is made by bringing people into the opportunity & getting them to make sales so that you can earn from their efforts instead.
Is Team National a Pyramid Scheme?
I know what you’re thinking – selling the opportunity to save money & having to pay to get access to discounts to save money all sounds a bit… well… weird.
Couple that with the fact that their compensation plan pays out on infinite levels meaning if you want to make “good money” through the scheme it’s not just a case of getting people to buy the memberships, it’s a case of then getting them to get people to buy the memberships too it all starts looking a little pyramid-shaped.
And that’s probably what’s got people talking about it being a pyramid scheme…
To be honest, it’s not just Team National that gets slammed, nearly every single network marketing company out there gets slammed for being a pyramid scheme because they are so similarly structured – the difference is that a legitimate network marketing company has genuine products in place & those products are primarily being purchased for the value of the products themselves not to qualify to participate in the opportunity.
As to whether Team National specifically is a pyramid scheme or not I simply couldn’t comment because I don’t have access to their sales data – but based on the fact that they’ve been operating for over 20+ years they must be doing something right otherwise if they were a flat out pyramid scheme they’d have been shut down by now.
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Should You Join Team National?
To be honest I quite like the idea of Team National helping people save money & make money at the same time, but based on the fact that it’s a network marketing company which means success relies heavily on recruiting I personally couldn’t recommend it as something for you to join.
I’ve tried my hand at network marketing in the past & since then I’ve learned there are much better ways to make money – network marketing is far too frustrating & very people who get started with it ever manage to find any success.
Don’t get me wrong though after reading through consumer reviews I do believe that the savings membership packages Team National offer do genuinely help people & that you wouldn’t have to make as hard a pitch selling them as you would with some of the junk from other network marketing companies, just with it being “multi-level” you’re always going to get people saying that your part of some pyramid scam.
Therefore if Team National was just an average company offering out savings memberships with a free-to-join affiliate program through which you could earn commissions then I’d probably recommend you giving it a try but because you’ve got to pay to join & you’re going to be expected to hard-sell people into becoming distributors themselves I just feel that it’s going to be more hassle than it’s worth.
If you really are set on joining a network marketing company then I’ll probably say that as far as network marketing companies go Team National does seem to be a fairly legit one but overall I think you’d do much better in the long-term by doing something like affiliate marketing instead, that way you can take full control of your income without having to pay anything to get started (or recruit people!!).
A Better Alternative
The sad truth is that unfortunately most of the programs promising to help you make money online are scams. I can say that confidently after exposing over 500+ of them here on this blog.
But the good news is that even though most of them are indeed scams, there are actually some very good programs in amongst them - some programs that can truly help you to earn money.
And out of all of the legit programs I've seen, the one I would recommend the most to anybody looking to get started online is Commission Academy. In my own opinion, that's the best place to start.
At Commission Academy, you'll be provided with everything you need (including the training & tools) to begin earning real money by promoting products or services for companies like Amazon online.
The best part is that there's literally no limit on the amount you can earn with it & the process is pretty simple which means that it's absolutely perfect for people that don't have much experience.
Some wealthy affiliates even earn as much as 5-figures per month... Or more!
I mean don't get me wrong, that kind of money won't just fall into your lap without doing any work... But the harder you're willing to work at it, the more you stand to earn with it.
So if you're looking to get started but don't know which route you should go down or which program you should join (and don't want to waste money on bogus things that don't actually work), then I'd highly recommend checking out Commission Academy first. You can learn more about it here.
I agree with you about the network marketing pyramid scheme. I like the idea of earning a residual income thru recruiting others to join, but if there’s no real value for buying their products, it’s going to be more of a scam instead of being a benefit for customers to buy their products. I joined a pyramid scheme network marketing company called MOBE: My Online Business Empire. Later around 2016, Matt Lloyd changed the company name to My Online Business Education. He also had a marketer named Michael Force who broke away from him and started his own network marketing pyramid scheme called Digital Altitude that has a compensation plan that’s similar to Matt’s. But both businesses were eventually shut down by the FTC in in 2017 for Digital Altitude and 2018 for MOBE. Anyways, I’m sharing this with you because I recently learned about this. And I paid and lost lot of money with MOBE, because their business platform is to pay as much as possible up front with no guaranteed ROI. So I was skeptical about it at first, and should’ve followed my gut, but the speaker at one of the free events told me about the high ticket program, and how that you can make just as much as someone else selling lower priced products but you only need to sell fewer products and make just as much as they would or more when they sold 1000’s of products. So that’s what sold me on their concept. But I soon realized that it’s an uphill struggle to actually launch the business because they were misleading and didn’t tell me how much $ I was expected to pay until I already made the financial investment. So I joined all the way up to the Platinum level: there’s 4 levels. The 1st one is reselling their online business products as a outsider marketer. My Top Tier Business or MTTB. It’s $49 to join, but because I went to their event, I got that 1st level for free. And afterwards, it takes you thru 21 steps to achieve the supposed MLM training. But they now can market their high ticket programs to you. Some folks said that they had to buy their up sells to finish the 21 steps. And unfortunately, I was gullible enough to fall for it. I went to 1 mastermind event that I paid $9000 to join at the Titanium level. And took my mom with me to the Bahamas back in 2014. But I never attended the 2 week $15,000 Platinum mastermind that I paid for because I just recently learned how the FTC shut them down recently. So the pro side is they won’t be scamming others under that name in the future, but they can always reenter with another name. Their highest level is Diamond, which is a whopping $30,000! And keep in mind that each MLM tier is sold separately. Luckily, my credit card doesn’t allow me to afford that level. But that’s their highest level and they claim you can get back around say 1/3 the initial cost when you successfully recruit others to join their program. My experience is that you can make money with their program, but if you don’t know what you’re doing: like me, then you’re part of the 98-99% who got scammed and fail. And those who do know what they’re doing and have the required skill sets in place make all the money. Luckily, my sister is a successful brick and mortar warehouse small business owner. And she helped me out with getting off of most of my credit card debt. And I’m making interest free payments taken out of my pay stubs back to her. I also paid $7000 for Prosper’s coaching and products before that with no success. So I’ve
invested and lost 10’s of 1,000’s of
dollars with nothing to show for it except credit card debt. But I’ve been researching a lot more now, and you’re not the only one to refer to Wealthy Affiliate for Internet affiliate Marketing.
I’m also considering drop shipping. But I currently work 2 FT jobs 7 days per week with Friday being my most time off. And I don’t plan on giving up the hope of someday being free again and working for myself as a employer. And seeing $ work for me instead of me for it. But anyways, I wanted to share that with you about my situation. Some folks lost $100k by joining MOBE on the Diamond level, unless they knew what they were doing to effectively recruit others to join. So I’m thankful I couldn’t afford to join them at that level back then. As much as Matt tried to get me.
Yeah I heard about both of those programs, not good at all. The problem though is that whilst there are perfectly legitimate, honest platforms like Wealthy Affiliate, most people are not drawn to them because they’re not “shiny enough”. Platforms like MOBE promised access to easy riches, whereas platforms like Wealthy Affiliate tell you that you can be a successful affiliate marketer. “Easy riches” sounds like much more of a draw than successful affiliate marketer, even though it’s a scam.
I recently heard of a similar company like MOBE, but is called My Online Business. But it sounds like the same business model as MOBE. it’s a scam.