How much alex makes, how his business is a pyramid scheme
alex is happy to air dirty laundry about his family but when it comes to how his business runs -- he is tight lipped. well that is his right as a businessman, so let us try to figure it out from what information we do know. What we know: 1. Alex has more than $1million in assets (real estate) 2. Alex can afford multiple expensive ads 3. Alex recruits resellers who pay for some ads 4. Alex's resellers (the ones we know of) are highly susceptible to debt, due to alex's pressure to keep buying ads. 5. Alex resellers get around 50% of sales (is that gross figure? what is the actual figure) please add more facts, and some rough calculations for what alex makes. I believe he is pulling in a 6 figure yearly income at least.

Can we remove this knob jockey from the forum please? Decent questions in the post but the thread title is presumptous inflammatory slander based on your own highly unsubstantiated personal opinion. Your subjective witchhunt of Alex is both tiresome and annoying.

Now now...Alex does not ban people for stuff like this. That is the good thing about the forum. Everyone knows it is perfectly fine to slander Alex or anyone else here.

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I did my calculations for my recent transaction history. In the last 15 days, I have got 69 orders. In the last one month, I have done $11,873 in sales. I payed alex about 47% of that. And I spent $2,288 on advertisement. My total net profit after all expenses was $4,113.

knightwriter, i am trying to substantiate that his business is a pyramid scheme here, designed to benefit the people at the top at the expense of people at the bottom -- if you have evidence to the contrary please present it. I suspect what threatens you is the idea that Alex is a genius businessman who knows what he is doing. It's the opposite of slander -- I am praising him. here is the structure as we know it so far: TOP: ALEX MIDDLE: RESELLERS (franco,sacjb) LOWER: REFERERS BOTTOM: CUSTOMERS SacJB, your expenses are more than that. Do you pay for a website, a domain name, anything else? Do you design your own ads? Do you pay someone to do that? Do you control sales reporting or do you depend on alex for that? How many resellers work for alex? If your 11k in sales is average, if alex has just 10 resellers, that is at least 5k x 10 = 50k in sales per month JUST FROM RESELLERS. In one year that is at least 500k. Keep in mind at every approximation, I am ROUNDING DOWN. Now, let's look at how the resellers do. From sacjb's reports, Alex pushes the resellers pretty hard to take out ads, even trying to put them in competition with each other. FACT: Every ad that a reseller pays for is one less ad Alex needs to place. If an ad does great, now Alex knows which magazine is effective. If an ad does terribly, Alex knows to avoid that magazine in the future. The reseller assumes the risk, and Alex reaps the benefit no matter what happens. BOTTOM LINE: RESELLER ASSUMES RISK, ALEX REAPS REWARDS SacJB, what does alex think of you putting an ad in a magazine that alex himself already uses because he knows it's a winner? knightwriter, please if you have other evidence, present it here.

If your 11k in sales is average, if alex has just 10 resellers, that is Alex have 10 resellers making 11k per month? LOL In one year that is at least 500k. Keep in mind at every approximation, I am ROUNDING DOWN. That is even funnier! Try rounding down a lot more. I mean a LOT more.

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oh no. i guess my only other expense is the website that cost 40 dollars. and paypal virtual terminal that cost 30 dollars. but that is not much. Yah, he does push me a little when we went to borders. National enquirer cost like 3 grand i think. I told him that if I make 6 grand total, I will break even every issue, do all the work and he will make all the money cuz he has no risk. He says that I should still do it because I will get lifetime gorgeouspil sales. But i told him that is not fair to do all that work and process 6 grand of orders, and he gets all the profit. But he says, well then I mise well take it if you don't want to do it. And then we went to magazine store and he shows me the science magazine, and said if you don't do it, I'm going to do it. He said it is for my own good because it motivated me to get more magazines and that he is my mentor.

you don't believe there are 10 alex resellers? there are 2 we know of: sacjb and franco. sacjb talked about one or two others that alex tries to make him compete against. Fine, let's revise this estimate to 5 resellers. it's true that you might only emphasize your best earning months if you are in denial of how badly you are doing overall. So let's cut the 11k figure by half as well. rounding down that is roughly 5k. So 5 x 5k = 25k per month or roughly (rounding down again) 250k a year in sales JUST FROM RESELLERS. Still not too shabby. If you have a better estimate lobsang, please show your reasoning. sacjb, can you explain how you go about generating sales and earning money. pretend you are narrating a movie about how to make money the alex chiu way. I think you are leaving a fair bit out, not just website and paypal costs, but other things such as designing an ad, researching which magazines to advertise in, etc.. etc... let me ask you this -- would alex permit you to advertise your own site in a magazine alex draws a lot of sales from by himself? would alex permit you to undercut him, advertising products at a discount to his prices?

So 5 x 5k = 25k per month or roughly (rounding down again) 250k a year in sales JUST FROM RESELLERS. Still not too shabby. Nah...There are not 5 resellers doing what SacJB is. And Franco is not making any money.

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well, let me ask you why you are so interested in discrediting alex. Ok, alex actually designed most of the ads for me, for free. There are not that many other sellers other than me. Hui and frank my competitor, kind of gave up. So basically i have 6 main sources of advertisement. Sun, the tabloid, google ads, nexus mag, atlantis rising, sedona journal, and wisdom journal. I am also going in national examiner. it cost 1200, alex gave me 600 to chip in. The one thing i am uncomfortable with is when I have big sales day and alex sees the orders he always tells me to go in more mags. and we go to the bookstore and he says if i don't advertise, he will do it. I don't pay to research the ads or anything like you said. No, it is not a pyramid scheme. I was in a mlm company name excel and acn where you recruit people. I bascially sell the product in the ad and then alex gets a cut. I pay the shipping department and they ship it out. What happened was in febuary of 06, I bumped into alex chiu at the stripclubs. And i was already selling things online in my ebay store. I was also trying to make money with mlm. but i lost money in all of these things. but then i first started selling alex's rings on ebay and made some sales but not like major money. I kept asking him how to make more money but he always seemed so secretive. He told me that his friend frank is earning 10 grand a month. I didn't believe him but I wanted to have success as well. The guy frank went crazy though for some reason and quit the business. And then alex suggested selling in magazines. and the first one i did was nexus and it turned out quite well. and so i got in some more and then that's how i turned the business into my job. Kind of a weird story, met him at the stripclub.

If by discrediting him you mean showing how he is actually a shrewd business guy -- my interest is in finding underappreciated or misunderstood people like that. They make for interesting stories. Believe it or not, Alex's business practices are far more interesting than his stripper stories -- the stripper stories make him sound like a fool -- these stories make it sound like alex really knows what he's doing. By pyramid scheme, I mean that Alex is on top making the bulk of the money. People underneath make much less. And those underneath make even less. Maybe what he is doing is standard for franchising but such franchises are also pyramid schemes, designed to benefit the guy at the top much more than the guy at the bottom. If you want to disprove that -- you basically have to show that there are people underneath alex who do much better than or at least as well as him. The way he's structured it, I don't think that's possible. this is good, but tell us more detail. Tell us about Hui. Do you know of any others? If Frank was earning 10grand that means he was doing 20k in sales! Tell us more about your process. You and alex go to a bookstore and checkout the magazines. Is tht the only way you research? Will alex let you design your own ads if you want? Do you have to get his approval for your business decisions? Does alex get the cut through the shipping dept. or is that separate? are you paying two times -- once to alex, and once to the shipping dept? That's an additional expense if that's true.

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Im just kind of curious why so interested in alex. how do you know about alex? Oh, when i first got started, alex agreed not to let anyone in on the magazines because I want to have an edge. but then he told hui the next day and said it's his way of pushing me to strive for me. that's kind of how i landed in so much debt by advertising in lots of ads. And then alex said hui is making a lot of money. I was mad that he tells me right in front of my face because I thought he was mainly interested in helping me and not him. yah at first, i asked alex which magazines are good, it was my idea to make money. but he was kind of slow at first. he said nexus and so i tried nexus. yah, we would go to the bookstores to check out the magazines. but we have already seen all the magazines, and he still wants to go whenever i get huge sales. I don't need alex's approval if i design my own ad because it is my investment. i pay one time to the shipping department and alex makes whatever. they ship out the products for me.

1. The kind of pyramid you describe where it is simply "send each person on this list $1, then add your name to the bottom and mail 12 copies of this letter out" is illegal -- alex would be a fool to do something as simple as that. However the principle is the same -- it doesn't matter whether they work at it or not. It is not just alex that does this -- think of any franchise where dropout rates at the bottom are high, where those at the bottom get disproportionately compensated for their efforts or money spent. 2. If your engineer cousin earned 0.00 over the same period that sacjb was involved with alex, he is still ahead, as sacjb still has debt from this business. If you go to vegas and lose $1000 in the first trip but win $500 in the second trip, do you tell people you are a successful gambler? sacjb has potential to make a lot of money, but whatever money he makes, alex makes more it seems. If this is not the case please show your reasoning.