My Business Venture is an interesting online business opportunity that’s been around for a long time and in this post, I’d like to share my opinions on it as well as objective views on all sides. Over the past few years, this article has undergone many updates because the MBV program has too, from the inside and out and before I go any further, allow me to share some highly important things:
Disclaimers about this My Business Venture article:
1) I am not an affiliate nor promoter of MBV. I also did not buy their services.
2) I am someone who is familiar with the online business MBV helps you set up (more on that later).
3) I am also familiar with numerous online businesses approaches out there and personally practice one called affiliate marketing that earns me money. I prefer that over what MBV teaches, but that’s just my personal opinion.
4) I will also be providing several sources of information I have found online about MBV to help you make an informed decision.
5) This is one of those articles where I will not be rating the program, even though I think it’s legit. I am just going to provide objective views, including my opinions on several ends to help you with your decision, but that aside, I highly encourage you to do your own research after reading this to help you with that decision (as with any program, including the one I personally use to get my results online).
My Business Venture (the short information):
Name: My Business Venture (Also known as MBV).
Owner: Thomas Stridiron.
Price: Well, it depends on the package you buy (Enterprise, Premeir, and Millenium), but all of them are quite expensive in my opinion:
- One is close to $500 up front.
- The next is almost $2,800 and it’s a one time fee.
- The last is almost $4,000 and is also a one time fee.
- Other fees may exist but you have to check out the site. Certain features and tools are included in one of the 3 main memberships too.
Basic information on My Business Venture:
What is My Business Venture?
It’s a company that helps people with making done for you online business websites of the eCommerce type (turnkey websites as their site says).
There are usually 2 types of categories of people for whom MBV can be suited for:
1) People who have no products of their own to sell in which case MBV (through their connections) can set you up with one and offer you access to tons of products being sold on the site and sold to the customer through dropshipping means (more explained on that later if you’ve never heard of it).
2) People who have products of their own to sell but need a website and other features included to run the business.
How can you make money through My Business Venture?
To understand this, we go to back to the 2 types of people this opportunity is suited for:
1) If you have no products of your own to sell, then My Business Venture can help hook you up with products to sell on the site through dropshipping. Dropshipping is an old but still useful means of making money online where you gain access to a wholeseller (which MBV helps you with here), they give you access to their products, and you post them on your site. But when people buy the products from YOUR site, you order them from the wholeseller and they send it to the customer.
The way you make money through this process is by setting your own prices for the products that are higher than what the wholeseller charges. The more orders your site gets, the more it can make.
2) The second option is if you have your own products to sell and in that case, it’s pretty self explanatory (you set the prices).
Note: Understand that just by getting a turnkey website, that is not enough to make money. Every website needs people to come to your site to actually (potentially) buy the products you are selling and in many cases, you may have to rely on methods of traffic generation like paid ads to do this (extra costs involved, perhaps huge ones too).
Is My Business Venture a scam?
I don’t believe it is. I do think it’s legitimate, but there are 2 main things which at least for me hold me back:
- High costs (done for you programs are usually expensive so it’s understandable).
- Done for you carries it’s own risk. Though a lot of the set up and operations on your site are really done for you through MVB, in my opinion, knowledge of the business and how to operate it and adjust it when necessary is essential to it’s success.
I am not a person who believes that when you buy a done for you system or site, that it guarantees profits and I have to do nothing (in many cases through my own experiences, this is not the case). MBV in my opinion can help you in a lot of ways, but you can’t be lazy and expect it all to be done for you, no pun intended (this can increase your risk of it not working out).
Does My Business Venture offer sample websites for proof?
Yes. I was provided with info on this stuff and here’s a link to MBV demo websites they help you set up which you can check out.
Positive things I have found on MBV (pros):
- They are BBB accredited.
- There is an actual address, with real people and employees, plus contact number.
- They have been around for a long time.
- I do believe they are a legitimate service.
- Many features in MBV are truly done for you (good for beginners).
- I’ve had good discussions with the owner of MBV (more on that later).
- There are success stories in MBV.
- I do believe you can make money if MBV’s site’s are applied properly.
- They have made good improvements to their services/value like getting connected with BigCommerce (for better performance on their sites and more).
Cons:
- I think there are decent and cheaper alternatives to MBV like Shopify (you have to set that up though, it’s not done for you).
- Done for you is again not always as simple as it sounds.
- I think the pricing is very high and I normally do not endorse high ticket opportunities (even if they are legit).
- There are some mixed reviews of this program (I will do my best to include all the sides).
- Of course, no guarantees (You have to understand that).
- Driving visitors to your eCommerce site may incur it’s own extra high costs for things like paid ads (you need traffic to sell the products).
- If you don’t have the money to invest in MBV (or aren’t ready to work hard), I would consider alternatives (but you still have to work hard either way).
Note: Some of the cons on this list are not directly associated with MVB, but with the business in general.
What do reviews of My Business Venture say?
That depends on which source you read. I’ll link you to several positive ones first:
- First, here is MBV’s own testimonials page.
- Second, here is a positive MBV review.
- Third, here is another positive MBV review.
- Fourth, another positive one.
But of course there are neutral and negative ones out there. I have included links to the ones I feel are least unbiased:
- First, we have this one.
- Second, we have this one.
- Third, we have this one.
Either way, like I said before, please draw your own conclusions. I’m not here to tell you to get or not get MBV, but just providing you objective info.
My positive experiences with MBV (specifically with the owner):
I’ve spoken with Thomas the owner of MBV numerous times via email and I have to say, I always appreciated his paitence and clarification on several topics that came up when I wrote this article. There are unfortunately a lot of people out there who are not as friendly in my experience and do not like to have open debate and even respectful disagreements. Thankfully Thomas is NOT one of these people and there are 3 specific things I want to note here:
1) Thomas struck me a good guy and I have no reason to not believe his words. Since we’ve also spoken a number of times, each time I had questions, he always provided proof of his points, which I like.
What I did also like a lot is that Thomas wasn’t asking me to promote his company, he only really wanted a fair review of it so if there were inaccuracies, he provided me with proof to show that, and I happily made the updates based on that. This type of action is very positive in my opinion and shows high quality on the part of the person.
2) I still believe my alternative to MBV which is Wealthy Affiliate (which is about affiliate marketing) might be better for people if they are not looking to get into eCommerce, dropshipping or are not able to afford the prices MBV charges (or other alternatives in similar fields like Shopify).
3) If you have several $100 or $1,000’s to invest, MBV may be a good investment for you, but personally, I still stick to using Wealthy Affiliate because I personally think it’s a better entry into online business vs paying a lot for eCommerce sites (unless you know the topic well).
Either way, if you decide to go with MBV, take a look at their site here, make your own conclusions.
My final thoughts:
Look my main points about MBV is this are as I said before:
1) If you have an extra couple of $1,000 to spend and don’t know how to run a site/do marketing for it, then MBV might be the business opportunity for you. If not, there are less costly ways to build a successful online business site.
2) Again, there are simply no guarantees, especially with “turnkey” businesses. Every single investment has it’s risk, please do not believe that there’s actual “full proof opportunities” out there, it cannot happen with MBV, even the alternative I provide, nothing. It depends on the business and the work you put in, remember that.
3) And finally, MBV as I said numerous times may be more appropriate for those with money to spare and little time to work on their websites. My experience has taught me to do these things myself and start websites from nothing and build them up on my own (and hire freelancers as well). But there are good programs which can help you avoid that work. MBV is quite possibly one of them.
I know my review is a bit open ended and if you should try MBV or not, but I have changed my viewpoints on it since I spoke to the owner. I still don’t like the idea of putting in so much money into the business, still recommend my Wealthy Affiliate alternative if you are of the same opinion and still believe in doing that myself so avoid that financial risk.
It’s been a while since no one has spoken about MBV and coming from experience of working with someone who dealt with these dolts, I’d say forget about it. All the stuff they have you can get it for half the cost on Amazon. They claim you can start selling right away and that’s also false. People are not going to flock to your site of overly expensive products when they can get the same exact thing elsewhere.
They try to sell you the wholesale business to business scheme and guess what, others are doing the same so you need to be really creative if you do that.
They mislead you with shipping to Canada as their supplier only has a limited amount of items to do that plus once your site is created Canadian customers are unable to order from you so that’s the point?
Forget about their marketing section. Supposedly they partnered with a big digital marketer but it’s much to be desired. I also saw that they do it internally and it’s laughable at best. Keep your money and do your instagram, tik tok, facebook yourself. If you’re going to do ads well keep that in mind as you will need to bring traffic to your site. It will take a long time.
They also sell you on the affiliate marketing but the rate they want to give to affiliates will kill your bottom line as for a lot of the high cost products, it eats away at your profits and you end up losing if you don’t do your homework and are decent in math.
Lastly if you really want to do your own business, it’s better to start off with affiliate marketing. Build your brand and then once you know the business, you can branch off and do your own thing. Maybe by then you may only want to stick to affiliate marketing. If not, you might find the new hottest thing to market and your skills will be toned so you won’t have a problem selling it. Good luck.
Don’t do it, it’s a scam! You can’t compete with the money that Amazon, etc. has to even be relevant in people searching for your business. They only have a good BBB rating because they settle when you’re not happy and they also have you sign a contract that is incorrect (lie) as to why your business is closing, but you do it because you’re desperate to get money back. The contract states that you can’t bad mouth them on any social media. I’m tired of being taken advantage of these types of predatory people. Don’t lose your money to a literal “dream”.
Hi Julie, I’ve seen similar thoughts on MBV before but I think I’ve been pretty objective on my views of it (I think Wealthy Affiliate is better).
I’ve also communicated with the owner several times to get their side of complaints. While I’m not discrediting what you’re saying, I do believe in offering both sides the option to say their positions, so if the owner of MBV chooses to respond to this, I’ll be publicly making that comment available.
Hi and thank you for helping me to better understand this business. I have a marketing idea in mind based on the fact that I’d like to target a specific niche (hair and beauty), due to my husband’s long professional experience in this.
My Business Venture sounded very interesting because the amount they ask for, I thought it was reasonable, even in the $4K program. I just don’t know if the products that I’d like to sell have an affiliate program or not, because they would be top products in the industry.
What you are saying is that you offer the same type of service with Wealthy Affiliate, but it would request more work to set it up and less money to invest, correct?
Thanks
Basically yes, Wealthy Affiliate does provide a lot of free tools you’d pay for within My Business Venture, which would actually be set up on their own without you working on it: Initial site set up, hosting, support, other tools for it and training.
But you would have to grow the site yourself and to be honest, I would 100% suggest you do it that way than through MVB because of 3 reasons:
1) It sounds like you’re very new to this, so even if you do pay for a site from MVB, running it will still require you understand marketing, so you’ll still have to learn it anyway.
2) WA is one of the best ways to become an experienced marketer and honestly, knowing marketing yourself saves you more time and headaches in the long term, whereas in the beginning you do need to put in the time to understand the general principals and do the work.
3) Price. Absolutely WA is a better deal. You basically save $4k right away because you can join it for free and their $49 a month or $357 a year deal is SO much better and provides way more than you would imagine.
The idea you have about starting a site for hair health is a good one, and I would recommend it be on something like hair loss solutions for men and women. With that, you are 100% sure to find TONS of products to promote on the site, and WA will show you how to find the specific affiliate programs that pay well.
So, I am looking at MBV and too are skeptical. My thing is that if this opportunity is real why won’t they give out a couple of real recommendations from their clients. Second, if that wiseowlretail is their template, that’s not good. I do not have a problem with the packages (if they are real). One question I have for the author (Vitaliy) is if anyone can create or have created a slick website, where do you get inventory to sell.
The free shipping (MBV) talks about is intriguing. I am a former business owner that had a on-line business (technology) with a back end merchant account and did pretty well. It was not cheap to set that up so that is why this is intriguing to me. Lot of gray areas here and not a lot of clear concrete evidence. I very much appreciate your review and your insight on this type of business.
Hi Denny, as an online business owner myself, people often ask me that same question regarding inventory. There’s actually several answers:
1) You can buy inventory wholesale and re-sell it on your site as a merchant.
2) You can promote the item via affiliate marketing in which case you do not need any inventory, you just find a place that has it, and promote the items.
3) You can create your own product and sell that. Now if it’s digital, then really don’t need inventory since it’s limitless, because it’s digital.
I personally rely on options 2 and 3, but that’s usually not a problem for me. What is most important is finding a niche audience to sell to. That’s why I tell people to try Wealthy Affiliate as it shows them that, and gives them websites to use for this as well as where to find products to sell on that given website.
Vitaliy,
I’m not affiliated with MBV in any way. I only have had some experience with talking to one of their sales reps over the phone, and from what I have researched online about MBV. I too have thought about trying MBV out to see if I could make money with it.
From what I can tell, the president and CEO (and I would assume the founder) of MBV is named Thomas Stridiron. He is the former president of a company called E-Commerce Exchange.
The sales rep that I spoke with was named Thomas Sullivan. He told me that basically they don’t do anything in the way of marketing, they ONLY run the back-end of the website, while YOU the customer are responsible for how you market your website, and for the customer service end (albeit, he did say they teach you how to market correctly).
In their defense he also told me this website is not for everybody. He said he has turned people away before because they thought they could just work on the business only a couple hours a week. He says you need to put at least 9 hours a week in(I would presume he means putting time in to market your website).
He also told me he can’t guarantee any success because it depends on how well you market your site as to how well you can do. (Makes sense).
He did however give me an actual website that one of their customers owns so I could look it over. The name of the site is wiseowlretail.com
I seriously thought about giving this a try to start a dropshipping website of my own. If I do, and this site is still up and/or active, I may try to drop another review to let you guys know how it is.
However, one sketchy point for me too was the lack of actual customer reviews ANYWHERE! The only reviews I can find are pretty much “generic” reviews, you know, the regular run of the mill things people say when they are PAID to say something (not saying they are paid to give reviews, it just seems really odd), (unless the business is soooo good that they don’t want to spill the beans, and have EVERYBODY trying to get into this business model or something lol).
Anyways, I just thought I would post my experience with MBV so you folks could see another perspective.
Cheers.
Hi David, thank you so much for taking the time to post your experience with MBV and being so thorough yet open minded about them. I also took a look at the site you mentioned in your comment (with the owl) and I have to say, nothing about that site speaks towards the success of MBV.
These days, making such websites isn’t exactly difficult nor expensive. Plus looking over it, it seems like a general, sell anything type of eCommerce website. People who do not understand websites, traffic or making sales look at websites like those and think they must be doing well, since they sell over so and so types of products, but frankly, it’s pretty easy to set this up and do affiliate marketing/drop shipping, just get the links, pictures and make people think you’re successful with the site.
But in reality, there’s far more than this required for it to make bank and that’s just something MBV has not sold me on, not even close frankly.
In fact, if someone came to me and gave me that particular site as an example and told me to make it, I would tell them no because it doesn’t appear to have the right type of marketing in place to actually have it making sales.
I would instead try to convince them that they need to start fresh and not be given all this stuff at once to figure out. A big problem also is there is no niche specific focus, just a general, “sell anything” type of website. Successful websites these days are not like “superstores” that sell anything, they are niche oriented blogs/eCommerce pages. The only examples of the Superstore websites that sell well are Wal-Mart, Amazon, Best Buy and others like it, which there are few of and I can tell you, people will buy from them more often than look alike websites.
Anyway, that’s my overall position. You strike me as a person who does his research and is genuinely interested in these things. Have you taken a look at Wealthy Affiliate? That’s a great program in my experience and I think it would really interest you.
I read about selling turnkey websites for the first time. I find this topic very interesting.
I totally agree with listed risks of buying/selling turnkey websites, especially from the point of the buyer.
And…without having skills, you’re not in charge in your own business. Personally, wouldn’t be happy with that solution. For the same reason, I wouldn’t purchase MBV. I find it too risky as well.
Well with MBV, it’s more than just a turnkey website, it’s really just a brand new site which has NO history of success of proof it works and I’ve already listed why that is very risky, so add that issue on top of the regular turnkey website argument I make and the risk is even bigger then…
Not sure if this a scam or not; but it does not seem like something I would purchase for the amount of money they are requesting. Building websites and adding links is something anyone can do. As you pointed out this does not guarantee profits. I have never heard of this company. I know you mentioned that they are not a new company. Thank you for the review.
I’m not against the idea of buying their services, but I do question their transparency and that they aren’t showing me enough examples of what they make so an experienced guy like myself can judge if it’s legitimate or not. This lack of showing me stuff, makes me question if it’s good or not.
Sure if you read their site where they list all of the things that go into their website building process, it sounds great to someone who doesn’t know a thing about this business, but honestly a lot of it is not that special. I honestly need to see examples before I give this program more stars.
Wow! I read about turnkey websites for the first time last week, but the post I read was actually endorsing the MBV model.
I had a few questions when I read it, but I’m so glad I came across your review. It is way more in-depth and explains things so much clearer.
I feel I have a better understanding of what MBV actually sells and now I don’t think they’re as worth it as I had previously thought. It does sound like a risky business. Thanks for shedding light on this!
You really just have to look past the fancy bullet points they make and understand most of those things aren’t that big of a deal Kayla. it is the quality of those things they put in the bullet points I am more interested in and like I said, they provide NO example websites for me to see that they know about this stuff.
This is actually the first time that I heard about this company online. After reading your review about it, I would also be reluctant to invest such money for a business that I am not sure of getting profit from. They are asking for huge amount of money even for their starter finance package, I would think twice and read more reviews about it first before letting my money go down the drain.
Yes this is why I told people to look at other reviews of people who did use it and NOT just to depend on the one I put up here Carol, you’ve got the right, idea about being careful with this investment and not buying it right away.