An old acquaintance emailed me a link to Home Wealth Solutions.net (HWS) as a legitimate work from home opportunity. Foolishly, I trusted the sender of the link and decided to give the money-making solution being promoted on the site an honest try.
The solution being promoted was for independent product/service reviewers who could review a selection of products/services being marketed and sold on the Internet, and write simple review copy for the products or services. The solution included a selection of products/services from which to choose.
Supposedly the solution included a free website that the reviewer would use Home Wealth Solution's Homewebsitebuilder software to easily build and populate with their own content (written product/service reviews).
The front-end marketing copy alluded to HWS's ability to help me get my free product review website, easily distributed online through search engines and their own solid affiliate marketing portals advertising the very products/services I would be reviewing so I could make an income limited only by the time I wished to invest into managing it.
They said there would be no selling involved, no get rich quick capers, and no pyramid marketing schemes. To get started I signed up as a basic member of HWS for $16.97. They quickly started up-selling a VIP membership that would allow me to get one-on-one training and mentoring with an affiliate marketing professional, access to regular VIP team conference calls and access to other unspecified VIP bonuses. I chose to also buy a VIP membership for $19.97 because they said I would have access to my mentor and other bonus materials starting that day.
I was then dumped into several other up-sell environments that I declined. Then I was directed to the HWS member area. No VIP mentor called me and there wasn't much depth to the phony VIP tab. Once at the member page HWS quickly marketed their Homewebsitebuilder software so I could setup my free website. The free website was nothing more than a one-page storefront that I could add my product reviews to.
Once I setup my page I was directed away from HWS to a domain name registration site. I thought the domain registration came with the "free" site. I paid $29.99 there to have my own private domain name instead of a name that also showed HWS in the domain name.
Then I was directed to ClickBank, an Affiliate marketing portal to setup a free account. HWS was in no way affiliated to ClickBank, other than as a crafty affiliate marketer sucking new users into the ClickBank vortex, which I could have found on my own if I had wanted to. Then I was directed to Bidvertiser's page to supposedly tell the world that my page existed online. They offered expensive bid-based advertising options that would eat up any profits I would make from this silly review page. I declined to use their service by NOT giving them my credit card information.
I circled back to the HWS site in hopes that they would have other site marketing tips, advice and free services, like they alluded to on their solution page. There were no other options made available other than Bidvertiser which I could have searched and found on my own after having developed a much better website on my own.
Then I realized the bait & switch in play. HWS presented their opportunity as if it was a legitimate consumer research/education source. They positioned their offering as if they relied on teams of product reviewers who made solid incomes directing people to the best products to buy online. What HWS is really selling is the use of their unsophisticated homewebsitebuilder software to launch generic websites online without any clear membership direction or support.
Anyone can launch a website and probably do a much better design job and develop an online marketing strategy that gets optimized search engine results over time and with great effort. I bought into HWS because I thought their solution was about the product reviewer work. I assumed they had an inside track on affiliate marketing and on how to make money helping people make better buying decisions through an affiliate marketing environment they were actually a part of.
As soon as they took my money for membership services that I still haven't seen, they could have cared less about the tacky little web page they gave me. Also, they said the page was free but to access it the fine print indicated that it was free for only 30 days. After 30 days I would then automatically be charged $9.95 per month for the use of the Homewebsitebuilder software.
I tried contacting their customer support team and I got a 25 minute wait to speak to an online chat rep. I would still be waiting if I hadn't closed the chat window. I tried going to their Contact Us tab. It linked to a "page not found" error notice. I found their refund policy and the terms of refund were so impossible I left that tab completely frustrated.
One of the requirements I had to fulfill to get a refund was to first talk to one of their support staff but I couldn't because no one will answer. Another was that I had to use their websitebuilder software for at least 14 days? I sent the homewebsitebuilder team an email requesting that my account be closed without a refund. I'm waiting to hear from them now.
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