Empower Network Chairman David Wood stated the company "wasn't about the product" in a YouTube Hangout. This admission followed the October 11th launch of ENV2, their proprietary blogging platform, for which they reportedly spent $500,000. Critics had long questioned the value of the company's core offering.
For years, Empower Network faced criticism that its monthly subscription model required affiliates to pay each other for products readily available for free. Members paid $125 monthly to their recruiter, plus an affiliate fee to the company, primarily to recruit others into the same system.
Empower Network responded to this ongoing critique by investing millions of dollars to develop ENV2. The company promoted the platform as a "WordPress-killer" that would "change the way people blog forever."
The ENV2 launch, however, did not generate the anticipated interest. Despite a reported half-million-dollar expenditure on the launch, David Sharpe later revealed the product "did not turn out the way we wanted it to turn out." The new platform resulted in "no more sales than a regular week."
This suggests that from a retail standpoint, consumers showed little interest in paying Empower Network $25 a month for what many considered a sub-standard WordPress clone. The only remaining participants were those already paying $25 or $125 monthly, hoping to succeed within the system.
The core issue lies with affiliates paying affiliates. Empower Network's marketing language claimed a unique concept of 100% affiliate payments. However, cash gifting schemes have used this model for decades.
What product or service attaches to this payment structure often becomes irrelevant. Success or failure in such models depends on the number of active participants paying each other and their ability to bring in new members.
Empower Network's original premise was for affiliates and retail customers to blog, thereby gaining exposure for whatever they marketed. For affiliates, this meant promoting Empower Network itself. Retail customers typically marketed a third-party business.
The reality was that Empower Network's rebranded WordPress platform failed to deliver significant exposure. In early 2012, only 2% of domain traffic originated from search engines. This figure rose to 4% at the start of 2013, briefly peaking at 6.5% around March. Today, search engine traffic has receded to approximately 3.5-4%, similar to early 2012 levels.