An Honest Global Domain International Review
The internet is an amazing source of new business opportunities. It’s a great source for online stores of all kinds, as well as making money off of things like e-bay selling. Then there are all the creative works online, that allow people to make money in a multitude of different creative endeavors. You can find anything from videos to webcomics to basic story writing thanks to the internet.
One of the biggest growing ways to make money on the internet is by making use of affiliate marketing. But it’s not always clear how useful affiliate marketing even is. Some people refer to it as a pyramid scheme, though in all truth affiliate marketing programs rarely rise to the legal definition of the term.
Still, that doesn’t mean that every affiliate marketing program out there is an honest attempt at business. There are absolutely some that are scams, even though there are plenty that are not.
Which brings us to Global Domains International. GDI is an affiliate marketing program, but with a twist. What’s that twist? And how big of a difference does that twist make?
Before we can get into that, it’s vital that you understand precisely how affiliate marketing programs work, and what GDI claims to be able to do.
How Do Affiliate Marketing Programs Work?
As mentioned before, there are a number of people who compare affiliate marketing programs to pyramid schemes. While it’s true that an affiliate marketing program has some similarities, most completely fail to meet the actual definition.
The main difference is in whether or not the program is actually selling something. In a pyramid scheme, the only thing being sold is registration. That is to say, when you sign up to a pyramid scheme, your main goal is to get people to sign up under your name. You (in theory) get money from the number of people you can get to sign up. There’s a product involved, obviously, but the actual product is nowhere near worth the value it’s being sold for. This means that the main goal is to get people to so the same thing you’re doing.
If that doesn’t occur, then you can’t possibly make money. The amount of money you make from selling whatever worthless product the pyramid scheme is making you sell is tiny. It’s not nearly enough of a profit in order for you to really make any money. So because of that, the product quickly falls by the wayside, and nothing but getting other people to sign up is worth while.
An affiliate marketing program (also called Multi-Level Marketing, or MLM) is a different situation entirely. The main point is to sell a product. Everything they do after selling a product comes from that point. So while they do attempt to recruit sales people, and while those sales people can make more money by getting other people to join the program, those people who sign up are still capable of making money from just selling the product.
Now, that doesn’t mean that MLM won’t lead to losing money. There are a number of different MLM programs that are weighted quite strongly towards signing up, enough that you would have to be the world’s greatest sales person in order to actively sell the product.
That can be incredibly difficult, and would be just as much of a scam as if it was a pyramid scheme. These types of programs are often sold as amazing money-making plans that can get you millions of dollars within just a few years.
When you combine that kind of marketing rhetoric with the fact that an MLM is essentially offering two different revenue streams, you can understand how so many people not only fall prey to the scams, but why it’s hard to trust even the ones that look legitimate.
Where Does Global Domains International Fall?
So given that, where on the legitimate to scam scale does Global Domains International end up? That depends heavily on who you talk to, which makes it a bit more difficult to explain.
The thing to understand about Global Domains International is that the product they sell is domain hosting and a pool of affiliates. They sell only one kind of domain, that being a .WS. So all websites that are hosted by GDI are going to be .WS domains. If you’ve never heard of a .WS domain, don’t worry. You’re not the only one.
And this is the first part where GDI might seem like a scam. Sure, they offer a product, but that product seems to be worthless. Having access to a pool of readily available affiliates means nothing if it’s a tiny pool or if no one is looking for those sites. However, it’s actually a more worthwhile product than it might seem at first glance.
For starters, GDI offers genuinely good web hosting. They provide the name, of course, as well as an entire hosting package, a site building program, 10 email accounts connected to your site, and tutorials on how to build a website. The price for all of this is small, starting at only $10. That’s a good deal less than many other hosting sites charge, which means that on that level alone, GDI does offer a product that’s actually worth while.
However, that’s not the only way GDI makes money and helps you make money in return. The other way is the affiliate partners. The idea is that each and every domain or website that GDI hosts is an affiliate partner. This means that when you direct customers to their sites, you get a bit of money!
But of course, the specific way you make extra money through being a GDI affiliate is by getting people to host their website with GDI. You get $1 per customer you bring them, which may not seem like a lot, but it can add up. It also helps that GDI’s affiliate program is a 5-level program.
That means you get money not just from the people who sign up immediately under you, but also the people who sign up under them, and then the ones after that, for 5 tiers. This means that the maximum amount of money you can make via the affiliate program is $3900 a month.
Why Would People Think It’s A Scam?
There are two major reasons why people might think GDI is a scam. One is the fact that the thing they’re selling seems worthless. But as discussed, their site hosting is actually a fairly good deal. It offers you a lot of what you would want out of a site hosting company, and does so at a good price. So people who complain that GDI doesn’t offer a solid product are simply misinformed.
The other reason is because it doesn’t seem to offer any path to huge piles of money quickly. That may seem rude to say, but the simple fact is that many affiliate programs make a number of extravagant promises on the amount of money you can make.
This can include marketing that involves the supposed creator of the program making an infomercial to show off how rich they are before promising you a “fantastic secret way to make money that ‘they’ don’t want you to know.” They never have any explanation of how “they” have not yet found out about a product you can get via e-book on the internet, they simply assure you that you’re totally getting one over on “them”.
Because of this, people get the idea that affiliate marketing programs are supposed to be able to make a great deal of money. Sure, not the amount of money some creators claim, but surely a lot of it. Unfortunately, most of those claims are outright lies, for products that will never, ever be able to make that much money.
Yet it doesn’t stop people from looking at the paltry amount of money GDI affiliation offers, and presuming that the amount is actually closer to $0. Any affiliate program worth the price, they presume, is going to offer you way more money than that.
Yet the real, simple truth is that GDI is giving an honest assessment of what kind of money you can and can not make. In addition, it’s just as much a domain hosting company as it is an affiliate marketing program. Which means that it doesn’t promise you lots of money because it’s supposed to be up to you to be able to make money using the site.
The idea is that you buy into their company, and you make your own online store. You can’t simply coast off of affiliates, not at first. You have to actually put in the time and the effort to bring in the affiliates, and use your e-store (or other business) to bring in the primary amount of money.
Sure, you could absolutely retire your e-business and make money purely off the affiliates. If you managed to get the maximum amount, you’d be making $48K a year. That’s not a huge amount of money, but it’s well above poverty wages.
However, you absolutely can not go into GDI with the idea that you’ll be able to make money off of affiliates early on. It simply won’t happen. With GDI, you need to be looking into running a legitimate e-store of some kind. The affiliate marketing is just the icing on the cake.
Is Global Domains International Worth The Time And Effort?
All of this still boils down to one specific question. Namely, is it worth it to join up with Global Domains International?
The answer to that is in whether or not you plan to run an actual store. If you’re looking for an affiliate marketing program that’s simply going to give you a way to step in and start making money off of affiliates, this isn’t it. Nor is it a good program if you’re not already used to the ins and outs of how affiliate marketing works. Global Domains International is not the kind of program that offers full tutoring in how to make SEO work for you, how to draw more people to your site, or anything of that nature.
What they do is offer you a great domain and a ready-made group of affiliates. They offer some basic training in building a website, which can be a good way to branch off into your own studies on SEO. But in terms of pure, full-on affiliate marketing training, they don’t offer that.
So the question you should really ask yourself is whether or not you’re ready to run an e-store. There are a lot of reasons why you might be ready to do so, after all. If you’re a brick and mortar store, you practically need to have an e-store if you want to continue making money.
With everything for sale on Amazon and E-Bay, it’s nearly impossible to make money just by selling at a physical location. Having an e-store can let you get rid of extra stock, as well as make extra money from people who would buy your product but aren’t ever by your store.
There are other e-businesses that are a great idea, as well. Perhaps you’re a band or a musician trying to sell your CDs and book tour dates. Maybe you’re a creative type who wants to sell your creative works or simply broadcast your creative works so that people can find you and order commissions. Whatever it is you may want to do, consider whether or not an online store would be beneficial.
If you decide yes, then there’s your answer. However, if you’re not ready to run your own e-store, then you’re probably not ready to dabble in the GDI affiliate program. It’s simply not designed for people who aren’t ready, willing, and able to jump in head first, build a great website with great SEO, and make their presence known on the internet. So make sure you’re ready, and then you’ll have your decision made.