The Silk Road Effect program makes some of the biggest claims that I’ve ever seen when it comes to making money online. Who wouldn’t be interested in making $34.000 or more per month?
Well, I bought the program to see what it’s all about and if it can even begin to live up to the huge claims being made. Before you consider buying it, you need to read my Silk Road Effect review–see why this is NOT the money maker they want you to believe it is!
What Is The Silk Road Effect?
The Silk Road Effect is sold as a never-seen-before, make-money-online program, and the creator is unknown. You can access it at SilkRoadEffect.com, and the price is $9. The marketing is a sales video, and I’ll be showing you screenshots of the video throughout the review.
Silk Road Effect is supposedly built upon the ancient principles from the far east–the Chinese Silk Road. Simply put, this was what the route was called that connected China to the West, and was the trade route for goods and services.
According to the video, the only reason that global conglomerates today can make so much money is because of the silk road’s origins and the Far East. In fact, they say that Amazon would not exist without the silk road effect.
All of this is nothing but marketing hype to get you to believe that there is some secret force out there that they’re going to let you in on. Once you learn this, you’re going to get rich!
They make it very clear in this video that you will get rich. Also, you also shouldn’t believe anyone that says you can’t become a millionaire within a year without much effort!Many of you have read other reviews from me, so you know that this kind of marketing is a big red flag. There is NO online business that is going to have you start making $34,000 a month and a millionaire in a year! Experienced people know this, so this sales video is promoting to those who are naive and inexperienced.
In one part of the video they have a testimonial from a woman who claims she’s made incredible money with the Silk Road Effect program. But there’s one problem–she’s a paid spokeswoman that I’ve seen in other MMO, make money online, sales videos! Check it out:
But previously she was in a promotion for a program called the Fast Cash Club, which is a system I reviewed in October and did not recommend.
No legitimate program that actually works needs to use fake testimonials to promote their system. They show you their features, you can see if there is value for you, and then you can make a good decision about making a purchase.
But with Silk Road Effect, they don’t show you anything about what their system is or what it does! You’re supposed to fall for all the marketing hype, incredible earnings claims, and the testimonial and be so impressed that you’ll buy their program.
So I paid the $9, and I’ll detail for you what the Silk Road Effect system actually offers!
==>==> Get my FREE Proven 5 Step Plan For Making Money With Affiliate Marketing <==<==
What Does The Silk Road Effect Offer?
When you’ve claimed that your program will make someone $34,000 a month and that it’ll make them a millionaire within a year, you better be showing them a pretty powerful system. But what you get with the Silk Road Effect is a far cry from anything that will live up to those claims!
The first thing you see when you get access to the members area is an introductory video that encourages you to sign up for Shopify. Shopify has been existence for quite a while now, and is a very popular option for starting an online store. So much for this program being a never-before-seen system!
You can set up your own store with Shopify to sell products online, and they offer you a 14-day free trial. Then you pay a monthly fee and transaction charges–here is their pricing chart:
In the video they basically tell you to sign up for the most you can afford, but how does a beginner who doesn’t know what they’re doing figure out what they need? Not only did they not disclose that you’ll need to pay for this platform in the original sales video, they don’t provide the guidance to know what you need to be successful!
Then you go down and see all the different sections to the Silk Road Effect program. Here is a screenshot of the menu:
At first glance it appears that there is a lot of information here. But when you click on each one of the yellow tabs to access that section of the program, every one of them takes you back to the introductory video!
They’re very anxious for you to sign up for Shopify through them, and the reason is because they’ll get an affiliate commission every month for each person who signs up!
Now, there’s nothing wrong with affiliate marketing commissions–it’s how I make money on my websites. But when you buy a program that promises huge income, it’s a red flag when you’re pushed hard to subscribe to something that makes them money!
So what do you actually get with Silk Road Effect? Four PDF files and 10 videos that are all general information you can get for free online and from Shopify itself.
Are you going to start making $34,000 a month and become a millionaire in 12 months–no way!
Here are the 4 PDF files you’re given:
~ Silk Road Cheat Sheet–A 3 page guide that consists of a cover page and 2 pages with a brief summary of the steps to start an online store.
~ Silk Road Effect–This 48 page guide contains no more information than I could find from Shopify with just 1 Google search! Not only is it general and doesn’t contain any “secrets”, newbies will still be left to navigate through the world of selling products online by themselves.
~ Silk Road Mind Map–This 1 page document is labeled Your eCommerce Mind Map and is a pretty useless page with basic topics and no new information of any kind.
~ Silk Road Resource Sheet–This is simply a list of websites to sign up for to run your online store. No beginner will understand what to sign up for, what they need, what they should pay, or what to do with most of them.
But I’d bet that a lot of the links are affiliate links–so the owners of Silk Road Effect will definitely be making money!
Here are the 10 videos you’re given:
- What is e-Commerce and Why Should You Take Notice
- An Introduction To e-Commerce Business Models
- Creating Your Online Store Part 1–Your Website
- Creating Your Online Store Part 2–Your e-Commerce Store Platform
- Creating A Shopify Site
- Creating A WooCommerce Store
- Designing A Store That Will Sell
- Ways To Generate More Sales With Pricing and Persuasive Writing
- Marketing Your e-Commerce Store
- Starting Your e-Commerce Business
All of these videos together total about an hour and 11 minutes. I can tell you from experience that you won’t find anything in these videos that’s going to make you money.
In my opinion, the most you’ll be able to do is set up a Shopify store and get general info on how to drive traffic and sell products online. You’ll get more information just by going to Shopify and looking over their free guides–which means it’s not worth even the $9 purchase price!
The Upsells
Before I was given access to Silk Road Effect, there were 2 upsells offered, which I’ll detail for you:
~ Silk Road Deluxe Club, selling for $197–Becoming a millionaire in 12 months is not fast enough for you? Well, you’re told with this deluxe club membership, you’ll be a millionaire in just 7 months because you can make an average of $155,000 every single month!
As proof, they show you an account making over $5,000 in a day and a bank account with a balance over $1.3 million. But take a look at the image to the right, and you’ll see that it shows over $5,000 in sales, not profits!
Even if the numbers in the image are real for an online store, there’s no way to know how much of that is actual profit. If you subtract the cost of the merchandise, the costs of shipping, transactions, advertising, and the costs of your online store, there can be very little left.
An experienced seller who has put in a lot of hard work to make their store a success would be very happy with a 30% net profit. A beginner who was lucky enough to make that many sales with a 10% profit would only make about $523.
For those of you who think they’d be happy to start making $523 a day, keep in mind that there is nothing in Silk Road Deluxe Club that is going to make you those sales! It just doesn’t work that way–successful online sellers work their butts off to build up their businesses.
I passed on the upsell, and it was offered again for $100 off. They’re willing to give me the key to making me a millionaire in months, but are willing to part with it for $97? That’s pretty much proof, in my book, that the upsell isn’t worth it, and I passed.
~ Marco Polo Secret, selling for $197–This upsell is one of the worst I’ve ever seen. They claim that you can make over $500,000 in 90 days and that many members are making $1 million every month! Worse yet, everything I saw in the sales video tells me that all they’re talking about is using dropshipping.
Dropshipping is a very common way to sell products online where you don’t have to hold any inventory and your supplier ships the products to your customers when they make an order. There’s no big secret, no loophole in the system that’s going to make you rich.
In fact, for more information you can read my blog post, What Is Dropshipping About And Is It Right For You? Again, I passed on the upsell as well.
Red Flags And Concerns
There are several red flags and concerns with Silk Road Effect, and I’ll recap them here:
~ Outrageous Income Claims–Claims of $34,000, $155,000, $1 million a month! Trust your gut–no matter how much you want to believe that there’s something out there that can make you rich without much work, it doesn’t exist. Hard work, time, commitment, and legitimate training are the ways to make money online!
~ Scammy Marketing–Ancient secrets from the Far East, only 20 people will be allowed to be members, you will be rich, it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen–these are the tactics that you find from scam type programs. Legitimate platforms don’t need to do this and simply show the value of their products or services.
~ Fake Testimonial–The testimonial in the sales video was a paid spokesperson who has been used in the promotion of other MMO programs. If Silk Road Effect made actual money, they’d have no problem getting an honest testimonial.
~ Poor Quality–The program materials are general, and the information can be found easily online. There is nothing that the program offers that will produce any of the results claimed by Silk Road Effect.
~ Affiliate Links–This program is set up so that the owners of Silk Road Effect will receive affiliate commissions when buyers sign up for all of their recommendations. In my opinion, they are the only people who are going to profit from this system, and buyers are going to be spending a lot more than they ever planned on!
~ Misleading Income Proof–Experienced sellers will understand that sales are not profits. But newbies won’t see that distinction and understand that even high sales numbers can still mean very low profits depending on expenses.
==>==> Get my FREE Proven 5 Step Plan For Making Money With Affiliate Marketing <==<==
Build Your Early Retirement Rating
Here at Build Your Early Retirement, we give Silk Road Effect our lowest rating of 1 out of 5 and strongly recommend that you do NOT buy this program. Your chance of making any significant money is very low, and your chance of losing significant money is very high in my opinion!
If you are serious about making money online, I recommend that you check out the review of my #1 rated platform. I have 6 websites hosted with them now, and I learned everything I know about starting an online business from their training. An awesome community platform, 1000’s of training modules, 2 free websites–these are all offered in their starter membership
They are confident in the value they offer, and you can join their starter program for free to see all the features and if it’s right for you–with no credit card required!
Have you heard of Silk Road Effect or had any experience with a MMO program? We’d love you to share them with us below along with any questions you may have!
The first and major red flag noted was the fact that the author is unknown. That certainly would have tipped me off right away. Anyone who won’t associate their name with the product isn’t someone I would want to do business with. Why hasn’t this company been flagged by the FTC? Small potatoes, I guess. I wonder how many people are still falling for this? Seems like a big scam but not one I’ve heard of before. Thanks for the great information.
Small potatoes is right, and that’s why they get away with it. They make their money, and when enough complaints get made, they can just shut the website down. Unfortunately, it’s pretty easy just to repackage the materials under a different name, change things up a little, and then market it again as a brand new product.
People are willing to take a chance on something when it can mean changing their lives so much, and the ones who are marketing these programs know exactly what to say to get people to try it. Years ago I was one of them!
Hopefully people will read reviews and get a better perspective before buying the program!
Hi Janelle,
I have never heard of this program before but thanks for steering me away from it. It sounds like a total scam. It honestly doesn’t even look professionally built or assembled. What an outrageous claim that someone can immediately start making $34,000 a month and become a millionaire within a year. Not going to happen. Frustrating how these programs always prey on people desperate for money who probably need it the most. I feel bad that they waste so much time before finding the truth that there is not quick route to riches online. You can make money yes, but it takes time and hard work. Thank you for writing this.
You’re welcome, and I appreciate you weighing in on what it takes to make money online. So many people could be really successful at it if they avoid the get-rich-quick programs and put in the time and effort with a legitimate platform!