YTB: To Join or Not To Join?

Recently (the last couple of years) I've noticed a surge in people I know getting involved with YTB. In fact, in my last post, I got two comments requesting that I do a little ditty on YTB.

For those of you who are clueless as to what I'm talking about, YTB stands for "Your Travel Business." Basically the way it works is that you pay $500 plus $50 a month afterward, and you get an already designed webpage that acts like Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, or any other online travel agent. That's right, you basically become a travel agent. Also, when you sign up, you basically do so "under" whomever you heard about YTB from, by going to their travel page, signing up, and paying up.

I'm going to give you an unbiased yet personal view of YTB (and similar companies like Traverus, or World Ventures etc). They all operate pretty much the same with slight differences in sign up fees, compensation plans etc.

So for the last year, a friend of mine has been telling me all about how great YTB is. He's signed up and has been trying to convince me to. I've resisted because I'm a natural skeptic of a plan that is "too good to be true." Also, he's not quite making beaucoup bucks yet, so I had no tangible proof that it's legit.

Then, to satisfy him, I spoke with his "mentor," (the guy he signed up under) a ridiculously rich and successful guy named Maurice Maio and he was pretty convincing...but he also came off as "sales-ey" and since we only spoke briefly, I dismissed the idea of going to a seminar.

Recently though, my friend Heather decided to join YTB full boar, and invited me over to her place for a going away/YTB presentation party (very clever to combine the two) where her "mentor," another ridiculously successful person named Sabrina Dagostino did a full presentation on YTB. Obviously, I was skeptical.

After leaving Heather's house though, I was seriously ready to sign up.

Sabrina is an extremely compelling speaker and it's obvious why she's done well. In the presentation she outlined all of the great benefits in joining YTB:

- As a travel agent, you get free upgrades on travel and hotel.
- Owning your own business means you can write off tons of things for taxes (gas, eating out, etc)
- When people book travel through your site (which is marketed to be as cheap or cheaper than expedia), you make a commission
- When people sign up under you, you make a commission
- Any money that the people under you (and the people under them) make, you get a cut of.

Sounds amazing doesn't it!?! Again it was a very compelling presentation, and my knee-jerk, in-the-moment reaction was, "Where do I sign up!?!"

Luckily, I'm a rational, think-stuff-through-and-research type of person.

First of all, let's think about the presentation. Why is she doing a FREE presentation? Well, it's because anyone who signs up under Heather, is money in the bank for both of them!

Cha-ching!

And if you're thinking this is a pyramid scheme, you'd be essentially right. In her presentation, Sabrina mentioned multiple times that Pyramid schemes are illegal (she's an attorney which added to her credibility), and that YTB is not a pyramid.

Well, if I made a Peach Pie with Nectarines instead, sure it wouldn't be a peach pie, but it sure would taste, smell, and do everything pretty close to what a normal peach pie would do. It may not be "technically" a pyramid scheme, but it damn sure acts like one.

In the presentation, it sounds like you'll be making EASY money for the rest of your life! Well if it was so easy, then why is it that something like 94% of YTB agents make less than $90 per year? (By the way, some of my numbers might be slightly off since I didn't write any of my research down, but they are pretty close).

Another interesting statistic is that only about 14% or YTB's total revenue comes from booking travel. Pretty astounding for a travel business, eh? So where does the rest of the revenue come from? Well 72% of it comes from sign up fees and monthly dues! Hmmm....smells like a peach pie to me.

So in order to make any serious money (or even semi-serious money) you can't really rely on booking travel, unless you book a TON of it. People aren't going to find your webpage on google since there's about 200,000 other YTB travel pages (unless you get tons of people to shamelessly link to you). You might be able to convince your family or friends to book through you, but if you're like me, you like to check a few different websites to get the best deal. I usually check a few (including a friends YTB page), and although they're competitive, I can usually find cheaper rates elsewhere.

That means if I want to make the dough, I need to get people to sign up. This is the biggest problem for me.

I hate salespeople. Actually, I don't hate salespeople, but I really dislike people who try and sell something to you, be it a car, a religion, or a travel business, as if they are just looking out for your well being. Nope. I'm personally a super social person and get along well with everybody, but I would hate to start telling my friends about my travel business to get them to sign up.

Hell, even if it's people I don't know, I find it totally disingenuous to talk about something where their participation nets you a commission.

I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it was MY company or product (ie the ebook I'm releasing pretty soon), but peddling someone else's product just to make yourself money isn't my cup-o-tea not what I think of as a positive social interaction.

Hell, even with my book, I might mention it in conversation, but I wouldn't try to sell it to anyone I'm socializing with. I'm going to sell it via online marketing. You might see an ad, click on it to get information, and if you like it, you can buy it.

BUT, I wouldn't call YTB a scam by any means. You know EXACTLY what you're financial risk is when you get involved, and in all fairness, it's not that much. What is a little misleading, is how easy they make it seem to get rich. It's not. To make money, you need to really sell the product to people. But as far as I can tell, nothing they claim about the compensation you are awarded is false.

At the end of Sabrina's presentation, I remember she said something like, "you have an option now to change your life. In one year, you can be in the same place you are now, or you can make a change that will affect the rest of your life." Convincing indeed. But you have to keep in mind that 94% of us are not going to be any different except maybe a few hundred bucks in the hole, but we WILL be contributing to her retirement fund! That's not a knock on her, but she's not doing this presentation to change YOUR life...she's doing it to enhance hers.

If I were to sign up, I'd probably give a similar presentation. In fact, she, like other mentors, WANT you to succeed. It behooves them financially if you do well, so they offer all types of free coaching. But, as I mentioned before, it takes a very particular personality type to succeed.

If I were to sign up, I might reap some tax benefits, and travel benefits, but it wouldn't offset the amount of money invested. (Although, once you get six people signed up under you, the $50/month fee is waived. But, again, you have to SELL six people your business plan)

Sabrina Dagostino has enough people signed up under her, where now, she can travel doing presentations, getting people to sign up under her understudies, and add to her riches. She's good at what she does.

It's certainly not impossible to make a lot of money through YTB, but it's very tough. You need to have a charismatic personality and be willing to talk about your travel company all the time. I actually think I could make pretty good money by joining YTB. I'm social, love giving presentations, and have been told I'm charismatic, but I'd be selling myself out.

When I worked at Tennis Warehouse, we used to get incentives if our order averages were high (dollars spent per order). They never encouraged us to try and "sell" stuff to people, but rather to inform them of the special deals that are available with they're order (essentially a "win-win" since the customer gets a special deal available only with that particular order, and Tennis Warehouse makes a slightly higher sale).

However, many times I was tempted by people calling wanting to get the "latest and greatest" racket technology to start playing tennis. Now I could have sold them a $300 racket, and they would've been happy to get the newest and best! Plus, my order average would've gone way up. But, I couldn't do it. I usually convinced them to get an older yet comparable model for like $60 because, in all honesty, as a beginner they wouldn't feel the difference. Sure my order average tanked, but the customer always appreciated my honesty, and I felt a lot better about being so.

Similarly, this blog is popular enough where I could start writing sponsored posts on different products for money on here, but if you saw my monthly earnings in my adsense account, you'd realize I don't write this for money. I'm not willing to dilute my amazingly insightful content :) with review drivel, just for money.

I'm also not willing to sacrifice my genuineness and social freedom, to make a buck.

I suppose I could join YTB, write a post on how awesome it is and why you should join, then put a link up to my YTB page so you can sign up under me and make me rich!

I am curious though to here about people who have signed up and had a lot of success, like Maurice Maio or Sabrina Dagostino. I suspect you're few and far between. If you'd like to convince me to sign up, give me six understudies (since I don't want to "sell" the business myself, nor do I want to pay the monthly fee), and I'll see how it goes, and write an honest first hand review. In fact, if I knew six people who really, legitimately wanted to get involved in this type of plan, knowing how difficult it is and all of the sales aspects, I'd probably sign up and have them under me. But I'm not going to "sell" it to people.

In the meantime though, I have no interest in joining. Hopefully you can make an informed decision as well. And if you think I'm wrong, feel free to let me know about it! (although, really...am I EVER wrong? :)