YTB Travel
YTB Travel is a network marketing company that gives people a chance to buy their own online travel business that can be used
like big companies such as Orbitz to plan vacations, cruises, and other travel plans.
I start off saying it's a network marketing company because the biggest thing this company wants you to do is to recruit other
members into the group because that's where most of the money is earned by their membership. If a person can get six other people
go join, then there are no extra fees charges to you, and you get a piece of any business that these people earn, as well as a piece of
any business earned from their recruits. In essence, it's a high tech Mary Kay operation.
And it's somewhat pricey, at least by my standards. My introduction to this company recently came from someone I know in another
state who's always looking for the next big thing online. He joined up with this company and is very enthusiastic about it. I was
contacted and he asked if he could send me a couple of video links; I said sure. I watched the videos and both of them were the same
content, same guy reading the material, but showed different visuals. One gripe I always have, which makes the hairs on my back
(which aren't many) rise up, is when you're watching something and they haven't gotten to the point, the real meat of the subject, in the
first few minutes. Both of these videos never really got to the point.
He had also asked me if he could call me within a couple of days to talk to me about what I'd seen, and I said sure. I got that
phone call in a couple of days, but he wasn't alone. There was another guy on the call, whom I assume was one of my friend's
sponsors, and he started to talk and talk and talk, and twenty minutes later he said he was happy to sign me up for only my
$500 payment. I had to back off at that point and say that I'd never said I was interested, and that I needed to think about it some more.
In truth, I'd already had this feeling of being ambushed because that wasn't the type of phone call I was expecting, so I had already
decided I wasn't interested, no matter what this man had said, but I was still going to be courteous enough to listen to the entire pitch.
All that being said, the sites themselves aren't bad. The templates will remind you of Orbitz and Expedia in a way. The
prices are comparable to those other sites also, so if you decided to book your travel through any of these companies you wouldn't
be losing any money. You can even package hotels and rental cars, just like on the other sites. And, the reality of travel
businesses is that if you make enough sales, you do earn trips all over the world, which is never a bad thing.
But, like most online businesses, it's all about getting visitors to your site to have a chance to make money. I had actually seen the
YTB templates before through other people, but had never made an association with this being the same company until I watched the
videos. This is why it becomes more crucial to try to recruit other people into the process, which is a lot like other network marketing
(also known as MLM, multi-level marketing) companies.
So, I would recommend that, as a business model, YTB Travel may not be for everyone, especially if you don't have the knowledge
on how to drive traffic to your site, and you don't want to pull all of your friends into putting up $500 to buy an online business.
Also, be cautious, as there are rumblings that this business might have some issues going on in the background,
as this link to a video gives some interesting insight.
