Empower Network debuted with a simple premise: individuals would pay their recruiter $25 each month for access to WordPress. Once inside, members often discovered WordPress was free and not owned by the company. They were then urged to "go all in," purchasing additional training packages that cost thousands of dollars.
After spending these sums, participants qualified to earn commissions. They did this by convincing others to sign up and follow the same process they had. Payments flowed directly up the recruitment chain.
The central issue, and a clear sign of the scheme's nature, was Empower Network's lack of ownership over WordPress. WordPress is a free, open-source blogging tool and content management system. It runs on web hosting and uses PHP and MySQL.
As of August 2013, WordPress powered over 18.9% of the top 10 million websites. It remained the most popular blogging system, used by more than 60 million sites globally.
The facade of selling WordPress access for $25 a month eventually became unsustainable. Empower Network, aiming to convince people to pass thousands of dollars to their uplines, then paid for the development of its own blogging platform.
ENV2 launched in October 2013. Despite marketing hype calling it a "WordPress-killer," the platform delivered reduced blogging functionality. It served as a thin substitute for the robust, free tool it claimed to replace.
A number of affiliates who believed the Empower Network domain held search engine optimization value likely departed. This shift did not go unnoticed by company leadership. The marketing focus moved away from "just blog and earn infinity money" to basic internet marketing courses.
These new efforts aimed to keep people handing over monthly payments to their uplines. These funds passed all the way up to owners David Wood and David Sharpe. The courses primarily focused on traffic and lead generation.
But Empower Network's traffic generation faced a problem. The company directed traffic to an unattractive product. ENV2 could not compete with WordPress, making it difficult to convince new people to pay $25 and then thousands in upsells.
ENV2 proved a flop. No amount of promotion could make it a competitor to WordPress.
Consider the company's own leaders. David Wood's personal blog site runs on WordPress. David Sharpe's also uses WordPress. Wood and Sharpe offer the clearest examples of ENV2's lack of viability. Examine other top Empower Network affiliates and the same pattern emerges. While they might maintain an Empower Network blog counterpart, their primary blog, the one they truly invest in and brand themselves with, is WordPress.