Is Traverus a Scam? A Rebooted Travel MLM EXPOSED!

Welcome to my Traverus review!

There's nothing more beautiful than travelling the world, and one MLM company can give you the opportunity to do just that. 

That company is Traverus. 

First of all, I must Congratulate you for taking your time to do your own research before buying into any "seemingly good" product.

That's the way to avoid scams and find the legitimate way to make money online!

Let me be completely transparent with you, I'm not associated with Traverus in any form.

So, rest assured that I'm not here to pitch or sell anything to you.

Instead, I'm here to reveal the history behind Traverus, its intriguing business opportunity, and how it fares against other agencies. 

Is Traverus a scam, or can it help you earn a lot of money? 

You decide...

Traverus is a MLM or multi-level marketing company that allows its participants to earn potential income by promoting and recruiting people to use the Traverus Go services.

As I did my research, it turns out that Traverus and Paycation are one and the same.

More specifically, Paycation was replaced by Traverus.

Paycation was also a MLM company that sells cheap vacation packages.  

Both companies were founded by David Manning, who’s also reputed for recycling MLM business models.

So, how are these two companies linked together, you might ask? Through Traverus’ subsidiary called XStream, which also happens to be owned by Manning.

XStream is another company offers travel related services and handles all of the training of all associates to help them become travel experts.

When you book your travel via their Paycation's website, you’ll be taken to this landing page:

This is important because it shows you that Paycation never really went off the market.

It just got integrated into Manning’s XStream platform through Traverus.

So Paycation is still up and about. It wasn’t shut down by the FTC or anything.

If you do a quick search on Facebook, you’ll find these pages and more.

But Traverus is not the only company out there doing travel-based MLM.

MLM companies like Evolution Travel, InteleTravel, and World Ventures provide travel-related services and products for their distributors. 

Traverus’ focus is on selling wholesale priced vacation packages through their associates who join the team.

Now, most vacation sites online are run by two different companies namely Expedia and Priceline.

However, you’re getting the prices of their vacation packages on retail because they’re already taking a profit from the package itself.

Traverus does the opposite and offers the entire vacation package at wholesale.

They are able to do this because Traverus and Paycation make use of a website called “Booking Ninja” who cut out middlemen like Expedia and offers you different choices on wholesale vacation packages.

These packages go for as low as 50% off of retail prices on other travel websites.

As of this writing, I have found no customer complaints or positive reviews about their travel booking system or the quality of their vacation packages for that matter.

Normally, travel companies come directly under fire from customers who either got their flights delayed, hotel bookings changed, and anything that disrupts their perfect vacation.

Traverus is all about recruiting, to the point that I am surprised that they haven’t been flagged by the FTC as a pyramid scheme.

But with any other MLM company, Traverus offers the following means to earn:

1. Commissions from travel packages sold
2. Commissions from travel packages sold by your recruits
3. Residual bonuses

Traverus is far from being affordable in terms of its sign-up fees.

This is understandable given that they are giving you an opportunity to set-up a home-based travel agency. But again, it’s still an MLM opportunity.

There are two options to choose from if you want to sign up with Traverus.

1. Referral Travel Consultant - $199.95

This covers the following:

1. RTC (Referral Travel Consultant) Signup Fee worth $119.95
2. Annual Signup Fee worth $20
3. 1^st month Website Fee worth $59.95
4. 65% in travel commission
5. Travel club membership;
6. Access to booking website to refer people to;
7. Commission tracking system;
8. Virtual back office.

2. Certified Travel Consultant - $399.90

This covers the following:

1. CTC (Certified Travel Consultant) Signup Fee worth $319.95
2. Associate Fee worth $20
3. Website Fee worth $59.95
4. Travel training via XStream platform
5. 75% in travel commission;
6. Ability to book larger groups for travel;
7. Ability to earn top industry credentials through Xstream Travel;
8. Xstream certified training;
9. Access to reduced rate travel.

Traverus uses the same compensation plan as Paycation (because Paycation is now Traverus, just a reminder)

Basically, Traverus offers a 65% or 75% commission that is paid on travels booked from your travel portal.

The company then pays 25% on all referral travel booked by corporate agents and 5% of all the travel commissions earned by personally enrolled consultants (your downline).

When you enroll a third person into the business, you earn $20 or more as coded bonus, and when that third person enrolls his or her first two people, you get a $20 on both of them. And then it goes on and on.

On your referrals, you’re only paid out if they enroll with the Certified Travel Consultant or CTC package.

Now, there are 6 ways for you to enroll off your recruits, and these are as follows.

1. Residuals on Coded - This allows you to earn 8% for each person coded to you who pays their monthly subscription of $59.95 (the website fee).
2. 100% Match on Personals Coded Residual - You earn 100% match on all the residual coded bonuses your personally enrolled CTC’s earn.
3. Business Builder Bonus - You can earn over and above 5% starting with your 7^th person on top of what you’re already earning from recruits. This goes on indefinitely.
4. 3×7 Matrix - This pays out 3 levels wide and 7 levels deep every month.
5. 10% Match on Personals Matrix - You earn a 10% match on Matrix Commissions earned by your enrolled consultants.
6. 8% Match on Coded Matrix - You earn 8% matrix match on all earnings from those who’re coded to you

I won’t go into the nitty-gritty details of their compensation plan. This video will help explain the details on how you can earn from Traverus:

Remember what I said about this business opportunity not being flagged by the FTC as a pyramid scheme?

In their posted guidelines for MLM companies, the FTC mentioned about any MLM company that focuses too much on rewarding recruitment more than sales of a product is an indicator of a pyramid scheme.

But one reason why they were never flagged is that the commissions that you earn from the travel packages are high (between 65% and 75%), and travel packages are often priced in the hundreds or thousands of dollars.

Granted, there’s little to no proof at all that Traverus is a pyramid scheme but it does rely too much on rewarding recruitment than selling products.

You’re paying about $400.00 to get started with their business opportunity.

On top of that, the $59.95 website fee looks to be a monthly recurring fee.

Let’s do some quick math for a bit to show you why it’s an expensive start-up.

My first month would be around $399.90 plus the recurring $59.95. Let’s all round this up to $400 and $60.

Right off the bat, I would have to get commissions that would help me recoup my costs, which is $460. And then my succeeding sales would have to cover for the monthly website usage.

If I am unable to recoup my expenses on my first month, it goes over on my second month. So, let’s say that I only earned $80 in commissions.

I’m still in the red and have about $380 to recover. But now, the 2^nd month comes in and I have to pay for the site fee, which is another $60.

So, my total expenses for the 2^nd month is now $440. If I don’t make that on my 2^nd month, the remainder gets carried over to the third month, and every month until I recover my losses.

Do you see where I am going with this?

If I earn $80 on commissions every month, it would take me 6 months to get my money back, which is just the $460.

They have an impressive commission rate of 65% and 75% for any travel packages booked by their agents.

That would mean that if someone books a travel package worth $5000 from my portal, I would earn a commission of $3,750 – no questions asked.

But why did I say that they pay better than other programs?

I compared their program with another program from their competitor, Expedia.

Expedia has a program called the Expedia Travel Agent Affiliate Program where people earn commissions from hotel bookings, attraction bookings, and vacation packages.

In total, your earning potential with the TAAP program is 41% at most, and that is if people book all of the packages in one go.

That's nowhere near Traverus' 65% or 75% commission rates.

For their vacation package, you’re only earning about 5%.

This one’s available only to Certified Travel Consultants.

But I believe that anything that can help me save money on something as luxurious as travel is a good thing.

I don’t know how much discounts CTC’s are given on their bookings, but if it’s anything higher than 20%, then they already got a good deal.

Traverus is a legitimate MLM company that provides a somewhat decent business opportunity to the public.

But despite its lucrative opportunities, I cannot recommend this to anyone.

Like I've explained earlier on...

First, this program relies heavily on recruitment more than sales to make it worth your while. Their compensation plan proves just that.

Second, their business startup is expensive. Sure, the commission rates are impressive, and it would probably take a $5000 booking to help me recover my expenses, and more.

The problem is that no one’s ever going to book a $5000 package from an unknown travel agent, especially from an agent of an MLM company.

And based on my math above, I need to make sure that my commissions can help me recoup my losses if I don’t want to recruit people.

But I will say this. Their business opportunity is lucrative if you know how to market travel packages and if you know how to recruit people.

I'm not a fan of MLM, not because it's illegal or not profitable, but because of all the restrictions and the expensive costs involved.

Instead, Affiliate Marketing is my top recommended business model for anyone to make money online.

The reason is simple...

• You don't have to recruit anyone to make money
• You have the freedom to promote any products you want and not being restricted to only promote the products from one MLM company
• It's Free to get started

In fact, with affiliate marketing...