IM Mastery Academy, was launched in 2013. Originally known as iMarketslive, they sell their financial trading and education software.

Along with the range of IM Academy services, they claim that their software can trade for you. All you have to do is turn it on, and it will copy the trades of ‘experts’ on the Foreign Exchange market. They also offer a bunch of packages they call the IM Academies.

IM Mastery has chosen to sell the iMarketsLive system through network marketing. Here at The Finance Guy, we believe you can’t make money with MLM, but we’ll go ahead with this full review of IM Mastery Academy. We’ll find out if they have a real opportunity or just another MLM money losing scheme.

How Do You Make Money With IM Mastery Academy

If you join iMarketslive, they say their philosophy is to educate, empower, and enrich. To understand how this business opportunity works, the best document available online was a copy of the 2016 iMarketsLive Compensation Plan. This documents explains all the different ways you can earn an income through the IM Mastery Academy

Given that the company has changed names, and perhaps some of their business practices, we also looked at a less official copy of the more current IM Mastery Academy Compensation Plan. Our review will be based on information found in both documents.

The first thing we learn, is that becoming an Independent Business Owner (IBO) with IM Academy, will set you on the path to ‘securing your financial future’. We’ve heard similar claims from many MLMs in the past, but we’ll keep going.

You can join the compensation plan without buying any products. You would just need to pay the $15 monthly fee to be an IBO.

If you do become an IBO, then they do recommend that you also become a member of their ‘Platinum Package’. This package gives you access to the full range of IM Mastery Academy products and services.

The Platinum Package will cost you $324.94 upfront, then $274.95 per month. This is quite a hefty expense, but they tell us that once we see how well the products work, we’ll happily recommend them to others.

The first way you can earn is by recommending 2 friends to also buy the Platinum Package from iMarketsLive. If you do this, then you will get your package for free.

IM Mastery calls this the 2 and Free promotion. If you continue to sell any packages after that, you can get upfront commissions on each sale. This would be their version of paying retail commission.

Platinum Bonus
Like all MLMs, the commission doesn’t end at just making sales yourself. You can also make money by recruiting others to join IM Academy as IBOs.

iMarketslive is a little unique compared to other MLMs in that it pays a fixed weekly amount of residual income. The amount each IBO earns depends on their rank and their Group Volume (GV) with IM Mastery Academy.

The amount of Platinum Bonus you can earn, and the qualification requirements are shown in the image below:

Aktive Kunden is German for - Active Customers

As we noted earlier, if you sell 2 platinum packages you get your own one for free. We are assuming that if you sell a third one, you will become qualified as ‘Platinum 150’, and will start to earn $37.50 per week as as well as get your package free.

To get to any rank above Platinum 150, you will need to have at least three legs. Every time you sponsor a new customer or IBO, you have the choice to either start a new ‘leg’ or place them on an existing one. The need to balance legs prevents you from sponsoring just one superstar who does all the work for you.

The people you personally recruit are known as your ‘first line’. The people they recruit are your second line, and so on. Group Volume (GV) is measured from all the money spent by all the IBOs and customers in your downline.

To qualify for Platinum 600, you need to have at least 4 customers on each leg. So it is possible to achieve this with 12 referrals, if they are evenly split with 4 on each of your 3 legs. At this level you will earn $150 per week, which is quite respectable. Keep in mind there is also the minimum GV of $1,740,.

Each active Platinum package is worth 150 in GV per month. So you’d need most of your customers / IBOs to be on this package or you’d need more than 12 to hit the minimum GV.

Chairman Infinity Bonus
As the name suggests, this bonus is only available to IBOs who reach the chairman rank or above. It is paid on top of the platinum bonus shown above. The amount of Chairman Infinity Bonus you can earn is shown below:

As we can see you can earn up to 2%, or $40,000 per leg in your downline. Unlike the platinum bonus, you can earn this on all your legs, and there is no upside limit on your weekly earnings.

It’s nice to know that IM Mastery Academy is being so generous, but keep in mind that all these commissions are included in the price you pay your platinum package.

Rank Achievement Bonus
As the name suggests, this is a one off payment you can earn for achieving a given rank with IM Mastery Academy. In order to get paid, you need to remain qualified for the for the ‘payout period’.

The rank achievement bonus and the time you need to be qualified with iMarketslive, is shown below:

Once again, all these generous bonuses are included in the price you pay to IM Mastery.

Are IM Mastery IBOs Making Money

To find out if IBO’s are making money with IM Mastery Academy, the best document we could find was the 2018 iMarkets Live Income Disclosure. This document shows all the commissions paid to IBOs at each rank during 2018.

The information was given to us in the table below:

The first thing we notice is that 45,924 of the 52,706 never made it past the entry rank of ‘IBO’. In other words 87.13% of IM Mastery IBO’s failed to achieve any promotions with iMarketslive.

If we look at the averge income for the year, we see that those at the IBO rank only made $52 for the year. But in reality, the numbers are worse!. This income only measures Active IBOs. Only 20,107 IBO’s earned any income at the entry rank. The remaining 25,817 earned absolutely nothing. From this we calculate that 40.25% of all IBO’s earned nothing from IM Mastery Academy

As expected, once those that reached the ‘Chairman’ rank or higher earned a decent annual income from iMarkets live. In 2018, there were a total of 58 IBO’s who made it to the top levels of this MLM. This represents 0.11% of all IBOs. Again doing some math we find that only 1 in 909 IBO’s earns a full time income from IM Mastery Academy

Maybe 2018 was just a bad year for the IM IBOs, so we decided to come check again and we found a copy of the 2020 IM Master Income Disclosure. Once again, they’ve done their best to tell us as little as possible, all they gave us was 1 page. The most important information was in the table shown below:

By doing a little math, we see that 99.21% of IBOs earned less than $25,000 in 2020. Keep in mind that there is a difference between income and profit. These figures do not include any expenses incurred. If we were to look at the costs involved, the results would be even worse.

Another point to consider is that IM Mastery has only included IBOs who earned a commission. They have conveniently disregarded all of the ones who earned absolutely nothing. IM have made the classic MLM statement, that ‘most people join the MLM just to be customers’.. This is their standard explanation for why so many people in the business opportunity fail to earn any income at all.

If we were to look at all IBOs who sign up to opportunity, we think we’d find that most IM Mastery IBOs are losing money.

Why Is It Difficult To Make Money With IMarketsLive

We believe that the problem is not unique to IM Mastery Academy / iMarketsLive. The problem is with the business model. In his book, Multi-level Marketing Unmasked, Jon Taylor found that 99.7% of people who join direct selling companies end up losing money. Despite what you hear in the sales pitches, it is highly unlikely that you will make money from any network marketing company.

The reason is because MLM is a system designed to sell products to customers. When you sign up as an IBO, you are in fact a customer or IM Mastery Academy. They have no intention of making you a business partner. The goal is to make profit when you spend money.

Is IM Mastery Academy An Illegal Pyramid Scam

Even though MLMs closely resemble pyramids, they are not illegal. The technicalities date back to a 1979 Amway ruling. To the best of our understanding, Amway managed to word their documentation in a way that bypassed the pyramid scheme laws. This opened the doors for other MLMs to do the same.

While the paperwork may make them legal, that doesn’t mean that MLMs are ethical. If you join any MLM, you have to realize that the only way to make money is if people below you are losing money

We looked at the 2018 FTC Business Guidance for MLMs. This explains when MLM participants are acting in a way that is misleading or unlawful. Examples of breaches include pressuring downlines to purchase products, and making unsubstantiated claims about earnings potential. Based on what we’ve seen, it appears some IM Mastery IBOs are in breach of the FTC guidance.

As always, we’d love to hear what you think in the comments section below, especially if you an share your experiences with IM Maastery / iMarketsLive

Are you wondering if you can make money in an MLM? Check our our list of mlm reviews before you join. If you find one that’s not on the list, let us know and we’ll do our best to write a review