At first glance, My Business Venture appears to be an excellent service and an awesome work-from-home opportunity.
It is a service that facilitates website creation and hosting, along with e-commerce capabilities and marketing tools for people with a small at-home or online business. However, if you don’t currently have an online business, My Business Venture will give you one.
So what is My Business Venture about? Let’s take a closer look at My Business Venture review and see if this is worth your time and money.
[Sidebar: If you are not interested in Scams, check out THIS instead! You’re going to like this.]
Quick Review
Name: My Business Venture (aka MBV)
Website: mybusinessventure.com
Creation date: 2003-09-10
Niche: Online webstore business
Price: Starts at $495 + $99.83 per month
Alleged Skill level: Beginner
My Overall Rank: 0 out of 10
My Verdict: My Business Venture is a scam. Stay clear if you don’t want to end up in tears.
Better (and way cheaper) ALTERNATIVE to My Business Venture that will help you make $1200+ a month online. And these testimonials are proof.
It’s FREE to get started, too (no credit card required). You’ll like that part…
Full Review – What Is My Business Venture About
Put simply, My Business Venture is a “built-for-you online superstore” business. They have been in business for over 23 years already, and that’s a good sign.
Why is it a good sign? Because those programs that are downright scams tend to have a very short lifespan. After doing their job (i.e., ripping off their target audiences), the sites disappear or get rebranded.
Back to the MBV business model.
MBV offers a simple drop-ship business model, where they provide an inventory of up to 15,000 products, and a turnkey website, along with payment and shipping. All the business owner (you) needs to do is market the products and keep the profits. This is an entirely familiar business model, seen frequently online.
So what products are you supposed to market?
Well, My Business Venture products include all kinds of electronics, bath and body products, automotive supplies, items “As Seen On TV,” and so forth.
The company presents itself as a way to make money online with no skill or training; they do everything for you and offer training and 24-hour support.
My Business Ventures also brags that it has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau (BBB):
That, of course, primarily because they have a history of responding to complaints made there and resolving them. They have, however, received 27 complaints in the past three years:
My Business Venture Services
These are the primary Website Services and Marketing Solutions that they offer:
The Website Services include:
- Website hosting
- Domain registration
- Video Spokesperson
- Web Builder Software
Marketing Solutions include:
- MBV University
- Social Media
- SMS Chat
- Search Engines
- Website Verification
- Custom Logo
- Professional Video Service
MBV University – According to their own words, MBV University is created “to help small business owners receive continual education on how to successfully run an online home-based business and to help you Profit from the Experience.”
Here’s what the university offers:
- One on one training
- Visual online training
- Access to the Student portal
- Live support and help
- Custom appointments
- Cost-efficient results
Social Media – Again, according to their words these are some of the benefits: Easy to set up, gain a following, social exposure, low-cost advertising, etc.)
Custom Logos – They have hired a professional graphic designer with the sole job of creating professional, customized logos for all of My Business Venture clients.)
Live Chat Solutions – This is a piece of program that “allows any website to easily add a Live Chat System.“)
So far, so good. So what’s the problem?
The Problem With My Business Venture
If an entrepreneur makes an educated decision to enter a dropshipping business, that’s one thing.
But My Business Venture aims itself at uneducated consumers, people who are ill-equipped to market online business and who don’t understand that marketing is the most challenging part.
My Business Venture offers a business model that makes it challenging to be successful. Truth be told, I hesitate to say, “sets their customers up for failure,” but that is very nearly the case.
Why? Because they set up new business owners with the exact same inventory that they offer to the thousands of other websites. They equip you with a design template, language, and capabilities that are identical to thousands of other competing sites. Therefore, you see, the task of profitably marketing these products becomes even more difficult than online marketing is in normal circumstances.
Seriously? Seriously!
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Despite My Business Venture’s claim that you can sell their products for a profit of 35-200%, in practice, the widespread availability of these products makes that impossible.
Therefore, to be competitive, My Business Venture store owners are forced to drop prices. Yet they still have to charge a higher rate than that of the open marketplace. Why? Because they have to pay monthly fees to My Business Venture.
Of the many My Business Venture complaints, this is the most common one: that the products CAN’T be sold. And even if they are, they cannot be sold profitably.
Does That Make My Business Venture a Scam? Keep reading.
Is My Business Venture a Scam?
Simply selling a dropshipping business to customers who aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the complexity of the undertaking doesn’t make it a scam.
Here’s what makes My Business Venture a scam, though:
Red Flag #1: Lack of Transparency
The mybusinessventure.com website repeatedly encourages visitors to sign up now via a signup sheet that includes their credit card number, without EVER disclosing any pricing information upfront.
See yourself:
Surprisingly, they give you no pricing plans. You are left to pick a package and fill the form (including submitting your credit card details):
It is very alarming, to say the least.
[Sidebar: Package prices are disclosed instead at mbvsites.net. But how on Earth do visitors of mybusinessventure.com know that? The answer is – They don’t.]
Red Flag #2: Cheating the Return Window
Customers have three days to cancel their contract, but My Business Venture doesn’t have their new website ready for them to review and begin to customize until the 4th day after the cancellation window has closed.
Disgusting, do you agree?
Red Flag #3: Predatory Fees
Because they don’t disclose fees upfront, and the resolved BBB complaints are hidden, it is difficult to determine what My Business Venture costs.
You have to go to a different website altogether to find the prices.
- The Standard package costs $495 initially, then $99.83 per month for 36 months.
- The Diamond package costs $2795 and includes 24 months of search engine submission.
- The Enterprise package that includes “MBV university training,” costs $3995 upfront.
It gets worse, though.
They also charge 2.19% plus $0.20 per transaction, plus a $15.95 monthly e-commerce fee. Not only that. My Business Venture charged $240 one of its customers for “Google verification,” according to his complaint on a different website.
Can you imagine!
These fees are outrageous and designed to take advantage of ignorant people by telling them that it’s an investment and that it’s a low price to buy an entire turnkey business. It is neither of those things. For the cost of the Enterprise package, people could go to a real university and learn internet marketing from unbiased experts.
Nothing that My Business Venture offers is worth the fees they charge for it.
Presumably, a person could purchase web hosting or marketing services from My Business Venture, without buying their dropship store. At least, that is implied on the website. But prices for those standalone services are not disclosed, and one could reasonably assume they would be outrageously inflated.
The Good News About My Business Venture
The good news is that My Business Venture appears to be trying to maintain a good online reputation.
Thus, they respond to many visible complaints, negative online My Business Venture reviews, and try to resolve the issues. Whatever motivates that behavior, it’s good news for unhappy customers. Because public, visible complaints appear to elicit a response and resolution. It is not always the case with internet scams.
But several My Business Venture customers have indeed received refunds in this way, so that’s something.
The My Business Venture scam is arguably the worst way for a newcomer to enter the world of online businesses, e-commerce, or internet marketing. Why? Because the scammers behind My Busines Venture have specifically designed it to take people’s money and blame them for their losses.
Final Verdict:
Some internet scams teach marketing skills at an over-inflated price, taking people’s money but at least giving them some knowledge. Yes, a very enthusiastic learner could get some advantage from My Business Venture. But remember, the system is NOT designed for that purpose.
My Business Venture is designed to reach customers who don’t know what they are doing. In fact, they discourage comparison shopping, standalone services, or even fully informing people before they take their credit card information.
Verdict: My Business Venture is a scam. Better if you avoid it.
If you’d rather make money than get ‘raped’ of your life savings… Why not try this? It’s FREE to get started, too. You’ll like that part…
What About You?
First, thank you for reading the My Business Venture review. I hope you found it helpful.
Second, here’s the question found in the headline – What is My Business Venture about? So what do you think? Is the MBV platform a legit and real business opportunity or not? Please drop me a comment into a comment box below. I’d like to hear from you.
Stay safe,
Egon (EgonSarvReviews.com)
ARE YOU looking for ways to create a legit passive income online?
TOTAL SCAM!! A small crew of people who give the impression they’re a big company. The only reason they don’t have a bad BBB rating is because they settle and give people back a portion of their money if they complain loud enough. Your so grateful to be getting some back, you sign the settlement which lists an incorrect reason (lies) for your “business ending” and they also put a clause in there that you’re unable to post, bad mouth, etc. them. DONT DO IT!!!!!!!!!
I wish I had read this a few weeks ago. Clearly their services a rip off.
Hey, Mark, and thank you for taking your time and giving me some feedback. Yes, Business Venture is an obvious scam. No doubt about it. The con masters don’t have a single moral fiber in their body.
As for you… Did you get ripped off by them?
Stay safe,
Egon
Hi
I fell into the trap of this company, they are real scammers. I have 7 months long experience with the My Business Venture and I have not made any sales on the website. I spent more than $11,000 on their website. The system simply does not work, I’m ready to make a complaint with another victim like me against this company My Business Venture (MBV).
Regards
Hi, Gargouri, and thank you for your honest (even though sad) feedback. So sorry to hear that the My Business Venture scam has ripped you off (and in such a bad way). Terrible. Their arrogance is breathtaking.
I hope you (and the other victim), can get your money back. And thank you very much for sharing about your personal experience with the My Business Venture scam. Because it will be helpful for other potential victims as well.
After you have filed a complaint, please let me know if it helped you get your money back (if you don’t mind).
Stay safe,
Egon
I purchase one of there plans. I had the same issue Ashly and Don. After you make your purchase that tell you the only why you can make money is by investing over $7,000 in advertising and that they are the experts.
As much as I advertise myself and did research on the items that were on my website. The products are junk and outdated.
On facebook they used to rating & comment section they got rid of it. I was going to give them a bad review and warn people to stay far far away from this company!!! Its a Scam!!
All I know is if you want your own online business do your research. You will find the key to success! Get your business license, tax Id, find your product, find a supplier, (no manufacturer will give the time of day if you don’t have your BL) Register your business name. That’s the basic of starting a business!:) So anyway stay away from all them scams like MBV!!
I wish I had read this article before I signed up for them earlier this year.
Everything this article says is true and I could add to it.
1. They claim they have support, but all their support tries to do is sell you additional packages on top of the initial ones. For example $499 to set up:Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogger, Pinterest, and Google+. $499-$999 toast up a Facebook store. $295. For the webspokesperon. $395 for a predetermined everyone gets the same web sliders, $395 for a package that enable people visiting your site to contact you (not them) for questions about product. $395 t one able to add products from other sources to your site. $295 to be able to have a “professional;” email address.
2. I launched another business and it is getting lots of traffic to the site without me promoting it. It does not do sales though just info on the product. The MBV site is averaging 1-2 people a day and that is with Facebook posts, Linked-in posts, blog posts, Craigslist, posting to other online classifieds, running adds in paid papers, handing out business cards, and many other things. There is something wrong when an unpromoted site gets more traffic than one that is.
3. The article is correct in that everyone gets the same product, but the markups are not even 35%-200% to begin with. Sure some are, but there are also many that are less than 10% some are even at negative margins. Very few product (mainly fragrances are over 65%). And as the article says to make them competitively priced one has to drop the price even further. I have had to remove over 500 products, because if I try to promote the site by offering a 10% discount on the site it drops them to a loss.
4. There are many products that are not categorized properly and so they cannot be found, when contacting MBV about it they say they have no control over that contact the drop shipper. The drop shipper won’t respond. The improper categorizing also makes thing look over priced because they have many bulk buys that are not categorized as such and do not say that in the item title.
5. They claim they have training, but the training is a pathetic joke. It is a few short webinars and one 1on1 with someone who bumbles and stumbles through basic, or wrong, or inapplicable information like someone who is failing 6th grade speech class. The “ums” and the “likes” were almost unbearable.
6. The article is correct in that they don’t have the site up until after the return date, but it is more like day 7 and then they start telling you this site won’t work unless you buy these other packages.
7. They also tell you that if the site isn’t working to just try selling on Ebay and Amazon to promote the site, but you have to pay extra shipping charges often equal to over $9.00 per an item to do this.
Stear away from them.
I actually bought this so called franchise and I can tell you first hand that it is a total rip off and a scam.
When I initially inquired with the owner, Thomas Stridiron, about the franchise, he called me consistently trying to convince me to buy into it. He made it seem like I would be trained on his proven systems (like any franchise would) to guarantee my success.
What franchise doesn’t want their franchisee to succeed?
It turns out that to get the training one would need to actually be profitable, you would have to shell out an additional $300 – $500 per course!
The Franchise itself costs $5,000. I did the payment plan with $1,000 down and about $100/month.
They make you use their hosting company which runs you about $400/year. I can use my own hosting company for cheaper, but they say you have to host with them to have the “back office”.
Then they have the service fees for the merchant account (which I didn’t use because I didn’t make ONE sale) and that ran about $50/month. There were a few times were they double charged me and I had to complain and had my money refunded twice.
The domain name is ridiculously expensive. They are basically buying it from Go Daddy and charging you more than double. I complained about this and then they transferred it to my Go Daddy account.
It was very frustrating trying to get the store going with zero help. I didn’t know what I was doing.
I bought this franchise thinking that I would actually get an education on how the drop shipping business works so that I can run my store profitably.
With the money I spent, I would have been better off buying a few items wholesale and trying to sell them on eBay or Etsy. I’m just going to call this the school of hard knocks. A very expensive lesson indeed!
The store was stocked with basic items that anyone could buy anywhere. I didn’t get to choose what I wanted for my store. When I asked if I could pick what to sell in my store, I was told that was another package which cost even more money.
So exactly what did I buy here?
They really sell the logo that they create for you. Um…I can create my own logo! As a matter of fact, I can build my own store.
What I really needed to learn was how the business of drop shipping works, which Thomas led me to believe that buying his franchise would do that.
The only thing this business is definitely good at is selling their franchise and scamming people out of money.
I had to tell them to shut it all down because it wasn’t working for me.
They didn’t even show empathy or try to help me in any way. They said I still have to pay the balance, even though I’m not using the store and it never produced income like I was led to believe. They are calling me every day now and threatening to turn my account to collections. I don’t have any money to pay this bill because I didn’t make any money.
So save your money people and learn on your own because “My Business Venture” is a scam.
Hey, Ashley, and thank you for sharing your experience with the My Business Venture scam. It is just sickening how they deceive and then treat their customers. You have paid a lot of money without getting the service they have promised to give you. Maybe you can report to feds or something? They just cannot rip off people like that and get away with it.
The only good thing here is that other people can (and will) read about your experience and avoid that ugly trap called My Business Venture.
For those who are still on the fence – Please read Ashely’s comment and think if you really want to end up like that?
I, for one, would like to see the replies of other people posted here. My only other feedback is that the “fees” quoted are for payment processing. That’s the price paid for accepting credit cards for payment, and is a part of doing business that way. To throw MBV under the bus by attributing those fees to them is unfair.
Hey, Kevin, and thank you for the feedback.
I went and rechecked their pricing plans (in their *other* website). However, all I see, are 3 different plans with the lists of what these packages include. OK, let me pick their “Enterprise plan” ($3995.00), hit the SignUp button and see what happens.
Well, it will take me to their signup form where I am required to submit my credit card data.
Their application form says that after filling and submitting the form they are going to contact me and… ( I will quote): “I understand that after I complete this agreement, a representative of MBV will contact you and we will send a full set of agreements to review and endorse to complete this transaction.”
In other words, I have to shell out $3995.00 to get their Enterprise plan. Am I right? And that’s what I wrote in the review. I could not find any information that these fees are for payment process only.
Plus, these fees were not the only reason why I considered MBV a scam. There were other red warning lights as well.
If you still disagree with me, please let me know.
Cheers,
Egon
Hello,
I appreciate your candid review of a company I was considering investing into. I will continue to do my homework and thank you for your input which helps me get off to a great start. Keep writing!
Hey, Teresa, and thank you for your feedback. I am glad to hear you found the review helpful. And thank you for the kind words as well :)
Doing a homework in the first place is very wise indeed. Because that way there is much less chance that you fall victim to some wicked online scam.
Just remember – Never trust those offers that promise you a great fortune (or whatever income it is) by tomorrow (or next week). Get-Quick-Schemes are almost certainly scams. Real, genuine, and legit ways always require time and work. At least in the early stages. And especially if one happens to begin as a novice.
But it is possible. Be very encouraged. Making full time income online is absolutely possible. And one of the best place to learn that (in my humble opinion) is here. Click, read, and see if it can help you.
Cheers,
Egon