The Vick Strizheus Four Percent Challenge – Or Chump?

I’m kinda catching up on articles I’ve been meaning to write for a while, and Vick Strizheus’s Four Percent Challenge is one I really should’ve done before now.

This appeared around April of this year, and wasn’t really anything new, being a continuing rehash of Vick’s original Four Percent group.

I’d thought Vick might’ve plugged Ecom Entrepreneur (EE) a while longer, maybe waited till summer at least before promoting the next “Big Idea” (a reference to a now defunct group/product of his) but I guess EE either didn’t have the launch money Vick was hoping for, or it was drying up.

Or he’s a greedy swine and the trough is never big enough and full enough.

I don’t know, but whatever, Vick decided to repackage his Four Percent group – slightly.

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The Challenge

The real challenge is in finding anything that that’s different from the original. There’s a few more frills and buzzwords added, but it’s still the same shtick.

That shtick being it’s another affiliate wrapping to give Vick as much recurring commissions as he can make off his members, who all want to be like him (minus the jail sentence for fraud).

The bullshit starts here. That countdown timer resets.

This time round Vick’s dropped the free membership in favour of grabbing at least a buck out of you even if you don’t decide to join up, or forget to cancel before the first $49 is withdrawn from your bank account. And if you want to cancel, you’ve got to contact Vick’s own “support” team, you can’t just hit a button and it’s done – so that allows some more delay/intentional confusion to hopefully eke a few more bucks out of you, too.

There’s some pretty graphics been added in terms of business red pills, which serve as the entrees to your daily lesson. These lessons being the teaching required in order to get you on the road to success and the life of a four percenter i.e. someone actually making money on the net.

Problem is, like the potent medicine they pretend they are, you only get one a day.

Unclear if to be taken orally or as a suppository…

That means that $1 seven day membership you start off with, doesn’t really do shit.

And Vick isn’t really giving you any advice for $1 as those first seven days of videos are motivational fairy dust rather than practical tutorials.

Makes you feel good and pumped, though: prepped for the success that’s promised in the following thirty-odd videos… if you let your membership continue on.

But what is it that’s the vehicle to success with Vick?

Well, same as it’s ever been in the Four Percent group: commissions drawn from selling “picks and shovels” as Vick is fond of saying. That is, get the affiliate commissions from signing folks up to the tools for internet marketing: Clickfunnels, Aweber and a tracker etc.

Clickfunnels is an additional $97 a month itself.

Of course before you do any marketing yourself, you have to signup for these services, too – through Vick’s affiliate code, or maybe another Four percenter’s. That’s if Vick hasn’t swapped it out for his own one.

So like I said in my original review of the Four Percent group, the real cost per month of pursuing this system is way more than $49.

Try $175.

And that’s before you start doing paid traffic drives. At which point the sky’s the limit.

Now, you can certainly apply the advice Vick gives to marketing anything, but the program leans toward to marketing the Four Percent group itself, and making your money from signing folks up to the tools they need… to market the Four Percent group.

So Vick’s really promoting his own little MLM-lite, network marketing scheme.

Subtle & realistic expectations

Vick says he’s concerned to only pick the best tools and companies to associate with the Four Percent group and his members, and that sounds good, but this is the guy who made a shit ton of money saying the same thing about Empower, so you can take that with a Russian salt mine of the stuff.

The big ticket item he used to push on Four Percent was TecAdemics, a marketing course that went for $12,000. A high price to give high commissions to affiliates who managed to sell it… It wasn’t priced high because of the content. In reality you could get everything TecAdemics had to say off the net for free, it’s function was to sell itself via folks who bought it so they so could sell it for the commissions. You know, like MOBE and Digital Altitude. And Empower. Believe me, TecAdemics is a whole article in itself.

Oh, and like MOBE affiliates, I doubt Vick ever bought the program himself – he’ll have had a deal in place in which he got commissions for promoting TecAdemics due to his reach, sales record and record of influence. An arrangement like that is common and in TecAdemics interests as much as his.

Vick’s swapped TecAdemics out now with some other upsells (“World Ventures” and “Enagic”… whatever they are) because TecAdemics has changed owners and no longer doing the MLM sales thing. It’s still the same information and courses, just not the 40% commission. So if Vick can’t make money off it, then he’s not recommending it.

If you bought it though, you’re stuffed now. Haven’t seen Vick address that…

To make up the short fall he’s created new membership levels: Pro Monthly. Pro Lifetime, Gold, Platinum and Diamond.

Pro Lifetime is the same as Pro Monthly except you pay a one off fee of $497 instead of being billed for eternity. The idea is to save you money. Which it may do if the Four Percent doesn’t just up and closed down one day like Vick’s past businesses.

You’re forced to buy that Pro Lifetime membership if you want to move up to Gold. You also need to avail yourself of eStage at another $497 and Vick’s Internet Traffic Mastery Course – which will be in same price range I bet.

Platinum and Diamond must be on request, because there’s no info on what Vick’s trying to milk folks for those membership levels.

Suffice to say, this is one very expensive program to join and progress through.

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The Payoff

Vick cares most about Vick. Always has done. He’s likeable, though, which a good salesman should be, and Vick is one of the best. Spend thirty minutes listening to Vick on YouTube and you’ll be convinced he has your best interests at heart, at all times.

And it helps, that unlike a lot of other internet marketing gurus, Vick does actually know what he’s talking about. You will find a lot a gold in what Vick has to say about driving traffic and how to best present the offers and products you’re pitching for a commission sale.

You get weekly webinars with Vick as part of this program, and from what I’ve seen these are pretty good. Not good enough to justify the expense of the whole program, but good.

Combined with being likeable AND knowledgeable, that makes Vick a pretty powerful con man. “Con”, as in getting you to sign up with him and give him your money – both as a membership fee and recurring commissions from the tools he advised you subscribe to.

I reckon Vick knows that your chances are next to nothing of getting anywhere near his first challenge of $10,000, never mind the others.

Zero to $1,000,000 – for Vick

Because even if the advice is good, the reality is that his program is costly, and on top you have to have the money to gamble with the traffic sources he recommends. I say “gamble” because you have to be okay about losing that money without a return on it.

But here’s the thing – Vick is smart. He’s every bit the money grubber as Matt Lloyd or Michael Force, but he’s not as dumb.

I reckon Vick would love to do the big MLM MOBE-thing, and he’d front it superbly, and gain himself tens of millions of dollars, but he knows the FTC would eventually take it all from him. He knows it’s just a straight up, indefensible scam with little to no merit.

But his Four Percent group… well that’s kinda more slippery and harder to aim that charge at. You do get education. Vick does impart knowledge that the other “gurus” in the industry aren’t parroting. And you get an actual product in that regard… plus the monthly costs of the program, while high, aren’t anything like the eye watering prices of MOBE or Digital Altitude.

And Vick is only indirectly benefiting from those additional costs as an affiliate, and he’s not responsible for the services themselves – which are entirely legit.

It’s a very clever scheme – wrapping all those affiliate commissions and rehashed products of his under the Four Percent banner. Vick can make a great deal of money, and the program can almost escape the charge of being primarily centred on further recruitment to the group, rather than the training and products.

That recruitment – if you want to partake of that, and promote Vick’s products, will cost you $197 to be an affiliate!

Which is outrageous. That’s not how it works as an affiliate… it was how it worked at MOBE though, now I think of it.

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Challenge or Chump?

To be honest I think it’s split evenly 50/50.

I say that because Vick can be a fountain of good advice, the sort you won’t hear elsewhere and will get you thinking, but that advice is being charged way too much for with all the add-ons in this program – that you’re pushed to signup for.

If Vick released a book à la Russell Brunson, $9.99 or thereabouts say, I’d buy it. I’d be interested in what he had to say.

I don’t think he’ll do that, however.

As for the Four Percent Challenge… if it wasn’t so damned expensive, I’d say to signup. If it just stopped at that $49, then I’d say to jump in, get what you can, take plenty notes, and then get out.

Remember too, that there’s a wealth of “pirated” Vick Streizheus vids on YouTube, so you can find a lot of what Vick has to say for free there.

But it’s just the cost of all those tools you need to signup for, and then going after paid traffic – paid for by you – to drive to your Clickfunnels site. That can get real expensive, real fast, and lot of folks won’t have a few grand to drop and just shrug their shoulders if they get no return from it. Especially as folks who turn to these sort of courses are looking to make money.

There’s no organic SEO in any of this: Vick doesn’t have time to waste waiting around for people to find his offers, he wants money now, and to circumvent the whole building an audience thing, he pays to funnel people to his sites.

Because he swaps out offers frequently. This all costs.

With no guarantees.

So, I say approach with caution and don’t let your guard down with Vick. I still say check him out – he’s not a total charlatan like lot of gurus, but he shares the same desire to rinse you of every penny you possess.

Always wear a crucifix and carry garlic around Vick Strizheus.

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An Alternative

A similar price to the Four Percent group is Wealthy Affiliate (WA).

But where it differs is that at WA their monthly membership includes everything: WordPress website builder, keyword planner, tracker, content writing tool and a free week of membership, no $1, and no credit card signup – to see if you really like the place.

And all the classrooms, tuition and training on offer. Plus access to a community of other internet marketers, and not on a free (closed) Facebook system to save a few bucks, but within the site itself.

Also WA deals in growing traffic organically i.e. for free, so it’s a damn sight cheaper.

But slower. It’s the long game. The longer investment.

And less risk because of that.

But potentially higher reward.

You can read my review of Wealthy Affiliate here.

Check it out, see if it suits you too.

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Recommended further reading:

I’m sure Vick’s read this one.

The Millionaire Fastlane

Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!

by M. J. DeMarco