Four Percent Affiliate Marketing Group is the latest of many ventures of Vitaly Strizheus (no, that last name is not misspelled). He goes by the name of Vick. I’ve seen his Four percent ads for years and have always been impressed with the retargeting of his ads. I.e., you see an initial ad and then later you see his ad on another website or you see a follow-up ad acknowledging that you recently saw a previous ad. There are previous reviews of this site, but none have focused on the aspects that I will discuss here. First, a brief overview of Four Percent Affiliate marketing:
What it is: Four Percent bills itself as ‘the industry’s #1 rated, world-class e-learning & coaching platform specifically created to help people start and grow their dream business online.’ After reading that you may be wondering what objective source rated them number 1? They are not even in the Top 10 on Trust Pilot in their category. But since they dont supply any references for their claim, it basically stands unsubstantiated. And what, pray tell, is a “dream business”?
What it costs: The various offerings are listed on their getting started page. The monthly charges are $0.00, $25, $297 and $1000.
What i Like About It: That they offer a free membership level.
What I dont Like About it: What I dont like about it is covered in detail in this review. One thing i did not cover below is the apparent paucity of successful graduates, with success being measured by how many people are earning a healthy income after participating in the service.
Verdict: Seek greener pastures.
Problems with the Trust pilot reviews
Let’s first understand that there are two very different ways that a company can be reviewed by Trust Pilot.
- If you visit the Trust Pilot official review page for Four Percent, you see about 4,000 reviews. These reviews are of the company as a whole. They are collected some time after the person has purchased the product.
- By contrast, if you visit the Four Percent website and scroll down you will see 10,000 more reviews (currently about 14,000). These reviews are of individual training modules. These reviews are collected in realtime as the person is training in the material.
So putting this on a timeline, let’s say you see a YouTube video inviting you to learn more and after learning more you decide to get started. You watch a training module an are impressed and leave a quick rating BASED ONLY ON THAT MODULE. And then when you move to the next section, you then have the option of reviewing again.
The important thing to take away from the above is that the review is not based on meeting any income goals. it just means that you enjoyed the material presented
With this in mind, let’s move on to what concerns me about Four percent.
Two very different pictures emerge based on who is soliciting the review
The ratings of Four percent as a company (collected by Trust Pilot) are lower than the ratings of the training lessons (collected by Four percent). The reason for this might be attributed to when the review is collected. Buyer’s remorse is a fact and once the initial newness of a product fades, one’s emotional investment starts to take back seat to rational thinking an comparative evaluation with competing products.
The people with negative feedback don’t stop with Trust Pilot the same students also leave feedback on the Facebook group.
The Trust pilot reviews that are 3-star and lower have a general theme: you are paying $297/mo for videos with no tools to put the video instruction into action.
Lets look at some before and after cases;
- Norman was at first a happy camper but later he was not so pleased as punch.
- Mohamed Ismail – in his 2 reviews we see a completely different story within 30 days.
- Robert Kight – here we see another tragic before and after tale.
- Darrin Stull – states that estage cant even do what a free wordpress site with plugins can do. He went from giving a rating of 5-stars while training to downgrading to 1 star once he was no longer sipping the 4-percent k00l-aid.
- Jerusalem Kidane: initially he gave a review with more stars (4) than words in the review: ‘it is good’. Sixteen days later…. he is screaming ‘scam alert’ to the hills.
I’m going to close this section with a minor nitpick. in 2019, Four percent claimed that they do not solicit reviews but it is clear that they solicit a review after each lesson.
Product and Service Issues
Recycling old motivational material
As one trust pilot review says and another, it is clear that well over half of the training material in some courses is nothing but freely available material. I personally would not be enthused about paying a monthly fee for free material. But one reviewer apparently is enjoying the recycled material. In his training product review he stated:
Great to hear “The Thirteen Principles” of Success… Napoleon Hill… Narrated by Earl Nightingale… Then hearing Napoleon Hill at the End.. Awesome Stuff… All are Great…
Raylon Hill
Their flagship product is estage? Really?
If you look through the course offerings, you are struck by the fact that you primarily are getting information and not useable tools. The one useable tool is estage which is stated to be “The Coolest Website Builder Platform Ever… that allows you to create your own professional websites and brands online, build all kinds of amazing pages, funnels, and even create your own complete HUB”
But the problem is that most of this is available in wordpress for $0.00 per month. At this stage any web building platform trying to outdistance the viral growth of WordPress is fighting a lonely uphill battle. And the Darrin Stull review indicates that they havent even really started to climb the mountain. Not only that but…
Why is the Four Percent Website developed in WordPress if Estage is So Great?
A quick inspect of the Four Percent website reveals that it is a wordpress site. I cant see why they are using a free tool to build their website yet attempting to charge others for Estage.
Conclusion
I’ve tried to keep this review brief and hit some very key points about Four Percent:
- it is useful to view the company reviews collected by Trust pilot because they are the result of extended interaction with the company and it’s products and services.
- I do not encounter graduates of their program that earn a full-time income. In certain industries, the company is required to publish earnings reports. I would be very curious to know how many refunds are requested and of those that do not request a refund, what their earnings amount to.
- The courseware appears to be heavily weighted towards theoretical videso as opposed to practical tools.
4% is constantly trying to upgrade. Yes the trust pilot reviews are often from newbies just lovin that they are learning. But isn’t some feedback better than Zero feedback? They no longer offer the VIP membership. You get their top level Gold lifetime membership for $1,000. and it is a one-time fee. Their Support always responds within a minute or 2. A previous affiliate marketing company whose favorite opening is a free book called the Iceberg Effect is $3,000 and their support often takes a week to get back to your question! and i found that to be very unhelpful instead of reassuring. Finally, i have tried Builderall, and it was a nightmare for any non computer savvy types. At least Estage is much easier to work with and yes…4% is still working on Estage.