It's getting bigger every day but 'My Shopping Genie' has underlying problems where they'll appear to the public sooner rather than later.

 I wrote a review for my subscribers all about it.  Here it is.

My Shopping Genie - Review

A repeat of the 1999 Skybiz business opportunity has hit the UK (although operating from the USA) after being launched in Ireland. It's called My Shopping Genie and, I must say, a very clever computer application is involved.

The Shopping Genie app is a program that launches itself onto your computer desktop every time the user completes a Google, Bing or Yahoo search using their Internet browser.

Bascially, it finds any product that you're searching for but only cheaper than you may find it without using the Shopping Genie app. So far, so good.

It works pretty well and you can also compare prices and find money off vouchers as well.

End users of this product will be pleased at how clever it is at placing the cheapest products on the first page of the results which would otherwise have been hidden deep down on much later pages and, therefore, possibly missed by the person who is performing the search.

For us Internet marketers, though, we're only interested in business side of it and how we can get involved.

I was invited to review My Shopping Genie by someone who was already very active in the business, so I joined to find out what it was really like. I even started promoting it, as suggested, to see how customers would react to it.

As you know, I always use the product that I review, otherwise I'm just guessing and the review is too shallow to give an honest opinion which helps no one. So, getting stuck right in, how did I fair?

I got my own 'back office' to set up a website, put branding on the Shopping Genie apps that I'd be giving away for free and generally adjusting the odd setting in order to make everything work to my liking. I paid $199.00 and set up monthly payments of $29.00 to stay in as a distributor.

So I had my own Genie site for promotional use and my own Genie app to give a way for free.
I also had my own back-office to check statistics and update profiles.

So, how does a distributor earn money? You earn nothing for the My Shopping Genie product as that is given a way free. When you promote it, you send potential customers to your unique website which is coded with your Genie ID.

You can earn a penny or two when a user clicks on the 'Compare' button which compares prices from different search engines like Google etc..

This will give you around two pounds a month on average, apparently. However, the big money is earned by introducing a downline of other distributors to the system. You will be paid for bringing in a new distributor and then each month that they stay in it.

This creates a problem for UK users if My Shopping Genie ever opens a registered office in the UK as it will become a 'Trading Scheme' and promoting any business on the strength of getting funds mainly from getting other people to join, is illegal. Which probably explains why the system operates from the US and not anywhere else. UK users will not be covered by UK law in this case.

My other issue is that one of the main guys behind setting up My Shopping Genie has a bit of a chequered past, even a prison sentence for committing fraud.

I mentioned Skybiz earlier, which became Skybiz 2000 before it was closed down around 10 years ago. They owed millions of dollars to customers but before the court case, they hid a few million dollars in an Irish bank account where authorities couldn't touch it. It was this cash that was used to launch My Shopping Genie in the first place.

So, after this research, I would not recommend you join it, although I realise many thousands of people already have. The marketing is very clever and well set up, I noticed.

I have also found out that certain distributors have found that their up-line sponsors have changed ... moved to another position in order to enhance their status to 'Diamond' which people normally only get to after introducing a certain pre-determined number of distributors and have made a certain amount of sales.

According to the terms and conditions of My Shopping Genie, this is totally illegal and not allowed in any shape or form. However, it does look good to announce to the multitudes of followers at the Shopping Genie conventions (they're happening all over the UK, it seems) that 'all these distributors have gone Diamond in just 10 weeks' etc.. when they actually haven't, rather, the guys at the top have 'allowed' this to happen to manipulate sales and income for those higher up the network.

I witnessed this happening in front of my eyes and found it a little distressing to say the least ... so I cancelled my membership immediately. You have to send off a fax to the USA and wait for confirmation in order to get your '30 day money back guarantee' sent to you, which arrives in approximately ten days from the confirmation email.

More people are joining My Shopping Genie every day but more are also cancelling, too.

On further research, eBay are no longer associated to My Shopping Genie and nor will they say why they pulled out. Also, the use of the Google logo on the software is being used without the express permission of Google themselves. These aren't major issues but there's no smoke without fire, I say.

There's money to be made with My Shopping Genie but those Internet marketers with the biggest subscriber lists will take all the market share and saturate it to shreds leaving the small time guy with nothing ... penniless, that is. It'll be closed down within 18 months, I predict, possibly sooner judging by the way it's motoring, which is why certain sponsors are now not being very polite to their downlines when they call, if they answer their telephones to them at all, that is.

They'll need to get the funds in fast before it's all shut down, just like Skybiz was all those years ago.

On a recent television documentary, the guys at the top all walked off the set when being interviewed after the reporter started asking probing questions into the honesty and checking how legal and ethical My Shopping Genie was. I wonder why?

They also swore that it was the application they were promoting and NOT the networking side (which would be illegal) however, on going to any of their seminars around the country, you'll notice that they perform the American Big Shot style act of 'earning 1000s of dollars in just a few weeks' by building a downline network which is where the big bucks are earned. Again, this is illegal.

I rarely condemn a product and come out with dozens of negative comments but, I'm afraid to say that, as big as it's growing, My Shopping Genie is a badly, potentially illegally run business (the DTI are waiting for them) but with a half decent product. If the product could be marketed correctly, the Genie would be fantastic, that's what it needs. The networking side is totally unacceptable where thousands upon thousands of distributors will lose their money and, if they leave it more than 30 days, they'll never get it back.

Not recommended.

 The TV Documentary is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhf82b5aUUc