Now my network statistics look like this:

From which you can drill down to “My Immediate Network”:

This did not increase my BlastOff Status, which remains at 30%.  The next step is to test a sign-up from my recruiting page, any volunteers?

In the meantime, I will kick back and let my new network send me to an early retirement.  With zero work on my part, of course, which is everyone’s MLM dream.

I went to go check out the HOT HOT deals, and to see how my invitations are doing:

I guess the mad crush of people waiting for the clock to hit midnight took down the poor BlastOff Network.  Oh well, I guess I’ll go find cheaper deals elsewhere.

The e-mail contained no text, just the above image.  By itself, that is not very interesting.  The interesting part is the e-mail was sent from blastoff@jangomail.com.

That’s right, because their regular domain name and ip addresses have been repeatedly flagged as spam, they had to resort to using a 3rd party e-mail service called Jango Mail to communicate with their own members.  I can confirm that regular BlastOff Network e-mails are still having blacklist problems, as Doo Dilly has not received my invite.

Happy Blast Friday and enjoy the “massive discounts going on throughout the Blastoff Mall”!  I’ll be sleeping in.

Option 3: Printed Invite

I did not test this, but find it quite silly that they give a prevalent option of printing invite cards.  The service is offered through VistaPrint, which may or may not give you cash back for ordering!

Option 2: Facebook Invite

Another prevalent invite option displays a popover that uses Facebook’s standard link sharer code to let you quickly annoy your social network.  Alas I did not test this either, because I don’t want to spam even my “Facebook friends”.

Option 1: E-mail Invite

My favorite part is the “exclusive” feel they give by limiting you to 250 invites.  I clicked the Manual Entry option with launched the following popover:

I sent the invite to Doo Dilly and got this summary:

My BlastOff status is now 30% complete after sending the invite.  I will wait for Doo Dilly’s response and then post the results.

UPDATE 12/01/09: The resulting network.

“From time to time, we make the e-mail addresses of those who access our site available to other reputable organizations whose products or services we think you might find interesting. If you do not want us to share your e-mail address with other companies or organizations, please let us know by or selecting the option which states that you do not which to have your information shared.”

Assuming they meant “do not wish” instead of “do not which”, I went to look for the option to turn off this e-mail sharing, which they had declared they would never do.  There is no check box on the sign up page, so maybe on the account settings page?  See below:

Hm, I don’t see it either.  In fact I can’t find the option to turn it off anywhere.  I guess I will sit back and wait for exciting offers from reputable organizations.  In the meantime, I’ll be enjoying my possibly negative savings.

Sign up page:

The join process first asks you to confirm which network you are joining.  This is determined by a cookie that is set when you click the join button on a recruiting page of a current member.  So, for example, if you come in through the Pizza Hut network, you will be placed in the pizza giant’s MLM network and your nickels will be shared with Yum! Brands.  If you don’t visit via a Fortune 500 company or your granddaughter’s page, the network defaults to the Blastoff Network, meaning they will not have to share any revenue with your recruiter.  I confirmed I wanted to join the root level and was redirected to the…

Landing page:

My BlastOff status is 0% complete, a reminder that I should now start annoying everyone I know to try and get them to join my network.  My favorite part of this design is the basic HTML button in the top right corner prompting you to set this page as your browser’s home.  Seriously, that is the best design and placement you could come up with, CTO and gang?  A minute later the following gem hit my inbox…

Confirmation E-mail:

This was the friendly threat I received via e-mail:

Congratulations on successfully activating your Blastoff account! 

You've taken the first step toward enjoying the best of the net, saving on all of your
online purchases, sharing the experience with friends, and getting paid when they shop.

Please confirm your email address by <a href="[..snipped..]">clicking here</a>

Note: If you do not confirm your email address, your Blastoff account will be suspended.

Welcome message:

After clicking the confirm link in the e-mail, I was given this welcome to the BlastOff Network.  That’s right, I’m now going to “buckle up, kick back, and enjoy the ride!”

Though I can’t yet prove the company itself is behind any of the scam scams, there are some interesting correlations.  For example, the number one search result for “BlastOff Scam” is currently blastoffscam.com, which is registered by Domains By Proxy.  That company, owned by GoDaddy CEO Bob Parsons, offers a service to hide actual domain registration information and is sold as an add-on to GoDaddy domains.  Coincidentally, this is the exact same registration technique used for blastoffnetwork.com, the official company web site.

Why a legitimate company would need to hide it’s registration information is unknown.  I failed to find an example of another “major” internet company doing this.  What is known is that they are trying to drown out other voices.  See below for proof:

That’s right, the company is purchasing Google AdWords to capture the eyeballs of people trying to do honest research, redirecting them to standard marketing pages.  Note the Freudian slip in the title of their ad.  Also note the number of results; 220,000 is a high number of associations with the word “scam” for a recently launched service.

Robert explains that the U.S. market for pre-paid legal services sold to individuals through a MLM network has saturated, evidenced by flat sales the last several years.  When companies stop growing, their stocks naturally decline.  However, despite the zero growth and a collapsing global economy, Pre-Paid Legal’s stock price has held surprisingly steady.

How is this possible?  An ingenious massive stock re-purchase program has masked the declining market capitalization, allowing insiders to dump their shares while propping up the stock price.  You see, they are using money from new recruits to purchase their own stock, a significant portion of which is held by the company directors.  This means there are less shares in existence, so the remaining ones will naturally have a higher value.

Without understanding that a company is valued by it’s stock price multiplied by the number of shares, it’s associates still perceive the company as being an engine for growth.  That is why people continue to be duped into joining the network.  Kudos to China for banning MLM.

Well, the SEC is finally looking into this practice and legal action will most likely follow.  Any bets on whether their own pre-paid legal services cover the cost of litigation with the government?

While these offers are probably legal (depending on the placement of the fine print), the most dubious end up being the most profitable.  Michael coined the ecosystem “Scamville”, saying,

“The reason why I call this an ecosystem is that it’s a self-reinforcing downward cycle. Users are tricked into these lead gen scams. The games get paid, and they plow that money back into Facebook and MySpace in advertising, getting more users. Who are then monetized via lead gen scams.  That money is then plowed back into Facebook and MySpace in advertising to get more users…”

and simply,

“The games that scam the most, win.”

This is essentially the same thing that could happen with the BlastOff Network.  As they get more and more people to spam their friends, they will earn more revenue from people shopping through their platform.  Thus they will have more revenue to pay for seminars and other advertising to grow the network.  This is not necessarily illegal, but it can really drive up profits for a service of questionable value.

With similar ethical profiles, the BlastOff Network and OfferPal would make a great team.  Any predictions on when they will form a relationship?  The over-under is 6 months, by May 1, 2010.  Add your predictions to the comments below.

“The Blastoff Network and their reps are using spam to get this particular rocket off the launch pad. Blast Off is expected to grow faster than Facebook?  The only people who expect that are the ones who are spamming.”

He also quotes someone that says each instance of this spam is subject to an $11k fine.  I don’t believe the CAN-SPAM act covers Facebook status updates (unless of course you are phishing from someone else’s accounts), but this phenomenon is causing people to temporarily and even permanently hide updates from their friends on Facebook.

In addition, BlastOff seems to be have already been flagged by enough people to be added to various e-mail blacklists.  The scrupulous team has suggested to it’s members that they use their own e-mail addresses to bypass this problem, thus causing personal e-mails to get flagged as spam.  A customer quote:

“Perhaps so, but after using the blastoff emailer, Hotmail now considers my email address as SPAM and blocks even normal mail to my hotmail contacts.”

The obvious fix to this compounded problem?

“You may have to establish an alternate email address for awhile. Yahoo allows an extra email address, as well as disposable email addresses. Gmail account is free.”

If their goal it to blacklist everyone on the Internet, they are off to a good start.