Ecademy blackstar membership. Is it worth the time and money invested?

I signed up for a week, got spammed to death, and closed my account. Horrible place...

RayB said:

I signed up for a week, got spammed to death, and closed my account. Horrible place...

Click to expand...

LOL! Ray - same here - only I went back on last week to try and find out how to close my acct and gave up.

Same as Ray and Maruby.

Maruby, just send them a brief email direct telling them to close your account and they should - that's what I did.

Thanks folks. Anyone with positive experience? What was spam about? Request for referrals? Offers of goods, services that you don't need?

I spoke with Thomas on the phone, he said that up to 150 members meet in London monthly face to face. The fact that price of membership will go up in next year was mentioned and emphasis was placed upon it. Quite strange if his claims about network quality are true.


Alex.

I know someone who was accepted as a Black Star last week but as it was so recent they haven't had a chance to do much with it.

Personally my experience with Ecademy was that I received messages from people offering services that I didn't want. I have made a few good contacts but have not had any work yet, despite enquiries.

I am an ordinary Orange star member which is the lower of the paid membership options. I have been there six months and personally it is working for me. There is a wide range of people in very different industries to connect with, and I have both given out and received business there. I am happy with my level of membership, do not personally see the need to pay more for the benefit I perceive would accrue. Others say differently. BTW Can't understand why people bang on about the spam - you can switch it off in the options.

rgds
Jeff

Hi

I have been a member (Orange Star) for close to 2 years now and it has worked fantastically for me.

You have to see through all the spam and weirdo's. There are more than 100,000 members, Probably 80,000 are a bit weird, cranks, never sign on, or aren't serious. However that leaves 20,000 legit companies, many of whom will be potential customers.

I work on Ecademy for between 1 and 2 hours every day on average,and it has brought me a vast amount of business, both indirectly and directly. Bear in mind that I live on the wrong side of the atlantic for 80% of the year and am unable to meet face to face with many clients before they start doing business with me, I think this is no mean feat.

If I lived in the UK all year round an actually went to the networking events, and met contacts face to face I'd probably double what I get out of it.

The other thing I find good about Ecademy is the number of New members joining every week, it's enormous. Your potential market probably increases by 100 companies per week.

However, does Blackstar membership justify the 5 times pricetag of Orange star?, I simply don't know. I suspect not. You may well be better off going Orange star. I think if you take Orange star and dedicate 1 hour per day to it, it is probably better than taking blackstar and doing nothing.

I hope this helps, I do have a lot of Ecademy experience feel free to PM me if you want any advice
.
Happy new year

Jonathan

I think anystar is a personal decision based upon what you and your business may stand to gain from it- and what importance you may place on this perception of value.

I know a few blackstars. Some are genuinely successful and probably were so before they joined. Others I have met are 'just getting off the ground' so to speak.

I spent about three years as an orangestar and have in recent months let it lapse to heaven forbid- greystar. I have met some real mental giants and kindred folk on that platform, and conversely some mental midgets and trolls - yet it all comes with the territory. I spend very little time there as in some respects it can be a a timestealer - in my opinion- if you aren't careful with how you manage it.

It's a good community and they were pioneers in social networking when the buzz started almost a decade ago.

I am looking at potential ROI or maybe ROT(return on time).

Time is money. Cold calling, etc are usually designated to the staff. But it seems to me that ecademy networking requires company director participation. I don't mind attending key events prior to the deal closure , but that`s about it I wonder if the links build on the ecademy platform are personal only or a corporate too. Company to company networking initially via selected individuals. Also it would be interesting to know what percentage of FTSE 500 is represented on ecademy. I guess joining as individual at the orange level initially might be the best course of action, in order to fully ascertain ecademy potential.

Alex.

Very few FTSE 500 companies are represented on Ecademy at director level, although often there are lower level employees present.

However it's amazing who you get introduced to by your contacts. Ok I'm not saying you will will get in front of the MD at Ford through Ecademy but I have been put to qoute in front of some very interesting businesses just by introductions.

The owners of Ecademy are an excellent marketing machine, 10 quid a month is well worth it to make use of that.

Jonathan

I would say that it depends on your business. If your business requires you to be proactive in your marketing, and you usually need a "face to face" meeting to deliver your pitch, you would probably find that you get a good return on the time spent networking at ecademy - and it'll warm up some of your "cold calls". Maybe that's why there so many people like life/business coaches at ecademy.

But if your marketing model is mainly reactive, i.e. you get a good ROI from plain old media advertising or the search engines, then networking, whether at ecademy or BNI etc may not be the best use of your time. Time, you could be spending working on your business - rather than just in it. I have often wondered why SEO and Web Designers bother with the networking model of getting work. It is time consuming and distracting. Surely if the internet is your media (and being found on the net, your mantra), you would just display your expertise online by having a well designed website, a good portfolio of your work, .... and especially for the SEO provider, demonstrate that you could do for yourself what you promise your clients ("... we will get you on Page 1 of Google for your top keywords"), and then sit back and simply wait for the phone to ring! That would say to any prospective client that you passed the litmus test (or the pudding test) - that you could do what you say on your tin.

I would also say that the real cost of Black Star membership is not the subscription fee - rather it is the time you then have to put in to interact with the members to try to make it pay dividend.

A point to note: the active membership at ecademy could be much smaller than you think. There are many inactive members .... many sign up and that's the last you see of them .... e.g. "Last visited: 31-Dec-04"
Not to mention that many don't even bother to fill in any info for their profiles.
Although there is a hard core membership who would, if you so much as click on their profile, send you a message saying something like "Thank you for looking at my profile, if there is anything I could help you with, please do not hesitate to get in touch" ..... maybe they have that set to auto-respond.

Also ecademy has a global membership - which could be very useful for some businesses. "A Friend in Every City" as they say at ecademy.