Ecademy - Has anyone else joined

[telemax]

Ste, At least you know why you were kicked off!

I found many friends there, but in the last year the place has become impossible. Perhaps they can no longer make money from the forum from the UK community and have to focus on members from abroad? I have given up trying to second guess people who have so much emotional wealth there is no space in their brains for common sense or business acumen.

I think it's such a shame because it could be so much more.

I would like to think that anyone was welcome, but the welcome messages from people are now just big fat sales pitches.

I will miss a lot of the community, I am happy to spend more time on other UK focused forums as well and will hope to meet old acquaintances as well as new ones.

Sarah
PS how do I change my user name to something sensible?

I remember you from Ecademy,

When it comes to Ecademy it's amazing that something that was so good, could go downhill so quickly.

Jonathan

 

[ArrowLightHaulage]

I believe we have even spoke a few times, when you were in Canada.


Sarah

 

[Jim Wade]

Jim - She wouldn't by any chance be the 'rat' that was ejected from the ship that found itself sinking, would she?

Or do you mean the one who elected to go, all guns blazing?

No, Linda, this refers to yet another, who quit the place in disgust.

 

[ste]

Ste, At least you know why you were kicked off!

I know why I was kicked off, and you probably know why you were kicked off. These won't be the same as the reasons that Ecademy management give on their forum after you have been disappeared, and therefore have no chance to defend yourself.

I was supposedly booted for abusing other members of Ecademy, though they produced not a shred of evidence to back this up.

It has been reported by somebody who had access to the complaints system that the majority of complaints logged against people come from Ecademy management themselves, rather than other members.

 

[Smartamatt]

We launched Smarta.com last month and during the research one of the resounding messages we received was 'don't make it like ecademy' and 'don't bombard us with emails'!

Networks and communities are like reputations, they can be ruined very quickly. The sudden rise in ecademy hate is interesting. I never liked it that much anyway, but perhaps people have become more vocal recently because their standards have been raised by superior social networking experiences elsewhere (not necessarily business sites) and realised how archaic and spammy ecademy is. Who knows.

Anyway, for us at Smarta this is an interesting debate and I'd love to hear more about what people DO WANT from business networks as we're very much work in progress.

 

[Onehourpa]

I joined Ecademy a few years ago and I never got to grips with it really. It seemed very time consuming. I recently went back to it and decided to give it another try and put some time into it, but after a couple of weeks I gave up again and have now deleted my profile on it. I found it awful, some really low quality businesses on there and if I wanted to find out about Get Rich Quick schemes and that kind of rubbish I'd just start reading the stuff in my junk mail folder.

Another online networking site that I revisited recently was Ryze - I joined a couple of years ago and never really made much of it. However, on going back to it I found that it's actually even worse than Ecademy, all MLM schemes, free teleseminars on health and wellness, promises of prosperity, etc all from alleged millionaires who can't spell. Shockingly bad.

The only one I really bother with now is Linked In. That's a good site, much more professional and good quality contacts.

I guess the real issue for the success of any online networking site is getting enough people to join without compromising on the quality. But personally I think once you start filling up a site with get rich quick stuff and other such junk, it's just going to put off any genuine business people.

 

[FreelanceSEO]

The decline of Ecademy was one of the major factors in me coming up with Networkology.

However, we do VERY well out of Ecademy. Almost 75% of people who visit our site directly from Ecademy go on to sign up and attend our web-events, which I guess tells a story in itself.

Long may the decline continue

 

[telemax]

I believe we have even spoke a few times, when you were in Canada.


Sarah

Why did they boot you off?

 

[ArrowLightHaulage]

Why did they boot you off?

Depending which day of the week it is, depends on your answer.

First my account was inaccurate (they wouldnt say what) then I was a fake account (hmmmm who did you talk to I wonder?) then my mum who joined Ecademy on an invite from me was a false account, according to them that was dodgy and we were inextricably linked (of course we are, she's my mother).

Said they found it suspicious that she didnt get in touch when they banned her? She is a corporate, has no need of google seo or business advice etc, why would she be bothered that she was thrown off? she finds it all very amusing.

Said I had unauthorised access to her account as I had helped her upload a CV and a photo to her profile, as she said on the phone to Glenn (yes, he takes HER calls) that she found nothing wrong in a mum being helped by her daughter.

The last bit of contact (despite phoning them and they never answer or return my calls) stated that they wanted to meet us and check our ID and ask us some questions... in other words hold a kangeroo court and validate what fabricated evidence that they have...

I got banned from twitter and reinstated in 40 minutes on a Saturday when I helped others join twitter and it looked suspicious, they had the evidence in front of them and were happy to discuss it with me, and it was resolved in 40 minuites. Long live Twitter....

 

[findnetworkingevents]

I got fed up with people on there who had nothing better to do than spend their days belittling the comments of others.

I stopped subscribing when I finally realised that I got more value from free sites like this.

 

[adventurelife]

They have just lost another paying customer of 6 years standing. Me. ( if I have managed to disable my subscription that is)

I actually think you should pay in £ terms to be a member of a forum if the forum gives you value and I am happy to contribute to places I value.

Peter

 

[telemax]

Depending which day of the week it is, depends on your answer.

First my account was inaccurate (they wouldnt say what) then I was a fake account (hmmmm who did you talk to I wonder?) then my mum who joined Ecademy on an invite from me was a false account, according to them that was dodgy and we were inextricably linked (of course we are, she's my mother).

Said they found it suspicious that she didnt get in touch when they banned her? She is a corporate, has no need of google seo or business advice etc, why would she be bothered that she was thrown off? she finds it all very amusing.

Said I had unauthorised access to her account as I had helped her upload a CV and a photo to her profile, as she said on the phone to Glenn (yes, he takes HER calls) that she found nothing wrong in a mum being helped by her daughter.

The last bit of contact (despite phoning them and they never answer or return my calls) stated that they wanted to meet us and check our ID and ask us some questions... in other words hold a kangeroo court and validate what fabricated evidence that they have...

I got banned from twitter and reinstated in 40 minutes on a Saturday when I helped others join twitter and it looked suspicious, they had the evidence in front of them and were happy to discuss it with me, and it was resolved in 40 minuites. Long live Twitter....

Oh well,

I don't think you are losing much anyway. I used to get a huge ROI with Ecademy, now it has dwindled to next to nothing. If it's the same for you, just don't bother with 'em.

 

[wecandobiz]

We welcome all frustrated Ecademists to WeCanDo.BIZ. We are picking up all the waifs and strays it would seem.

IH

 

[wecandobiz]

I joined Ecademy a few years ago and I never got to grips with it really. It seemed very time consuming. I recently went back to it and decided to give it another try and put some time into it, but after a couple of weeks I gave up again and have now deleted my profile on it. I found it awful, some really low quality businesses on there and if I wanted to find out about Get Rich Quick schemes and that kind of rubbish I'd just start reading the stuff in my junk mail folder.

Another online networking site that I revisited recently was Ryze - I joined a couple of years ago and never really made much of it. However, on going back to it I found that it's actually even worse than Ecademy, all MLM schemes, free teleseminars on health and wellness, promises of prosperity, etc all from alleged millionaires who can't spell. Shockingly bad.

The only one I really bother with now is Linked In. That's a good site, much more professional and good quality contacts.

I guess the real issue for the success of any online networking site is getting enough people to join without compromising on the quality. But personally I think once you start filling up a site with get rich quick stuff and other such junk, it's just going to put off any genuine business people.

Thomas Power, chairman of Ecademy, is on record as saying it will take 2 years of membership to really start to see the benefits of Ecademy. I know devotees who think nothing of spending an hour a day on the site and I am sure Sarah Arrow would agree that it's easy to do. But when you do the maths, that is actually quite a lot of time accrued before the tide turns. You then need to account for what you then spend from that point before you can start measuring a return. OK, you'll have got yourself out there in that time, but it's easy to forget that networking in itself is JUST a means to an end, not an aim in itself.

LinkedIn is very well supported, but it doesn't work as a business development tool. There are few devices on the site to help introduce you to people outside your network who you may want to deal with (or they deal with you) and LinkedIn does in fact advise members that they don't connect to people they don't already know and trust. To me, that is like a face to face networking event where you are warned not to talk to strangers. That's just not networking as many people see it and it runs counter untuitive to what the WeCanDo.BIZ/UKBF networking survey of September showed -- that many people network to get new business.

IH

 

[Eagle]

Thomas is also on record as advocating "quantity over quality" when it comes to connections (yes you read that right). The vast majority of Ecademists are 'people collectors', not networkers. They wouldn't know what networking was if it smacked them across the teeth with a chair...

We have quite a few Ecademy members now who've seen the light so we must be sharing the exodus Ian.

 

[Bernard]

fruit bats and seriously deranged

What a wonderful phrase

 

[CatchFriday]

Interesting thread - was a member for a number of years. Made around £25k turnover on site, mainly through connecting with other members.

Got fed up with spam, particularly MLM, Roger Hamilton, Wealth Dynamics etc.

Wanted to leave, but they refused to refund my powernetworker subscription, so eventually got banned!

If you type Ecademy cult into google.com amazingly the blog is still top!

I did though learn an enormous amount of sense and business acumen in those early days, and oops I have a PR person to write some of my blogs and PR releases.

I am also a member of Ecademy Watch on Ning.

 

[BeautyScientist]

I got onto UK Business Forums as a result of Ecademy. I joined Ecademy about 4 years ago after hearing about it on Radio 4. It was quite good from my point of view. I used to read the blogs every morning and found it a nice alternative to reading a paper. I was on the lowest grade which met all my modest needs. I spent some money on services offered by people on there and the whole thing seemed pretty reasonable.

They then decided to abolish the cheap grade. This was communicated to me by sending an e-mail telling me my account was being closed down. Not very customer friendly!

Anyway, I wasn't prepared to pay the higher fee and so left. Within days of discovering UK Business Forums I realised that for what I was looking for they were miles better and didn't cost a penny.

It beats me why anyone sticks with Ecademy. The fees are now very high and alll you get is the chance to be sold to. I don't begrudge them the £25 I paid them. I would have happily have carried on paying it - though now they have cheesed me off there is no chance that I would go back. It seems odd to run your business in such a way that you positively alienate paying punters.

 

[Ian PES]

I joined a couple of years ago and at that time I think you only had free membership for a month or so and then had to subscribe or you couldn't use the system(?). Now they allow free membership forever and so we have thousands of hopefuls in India etc hoping to get lucrative work here. They need to prune it by having limited free membership. I pushed it for a while and managed to get one job from contacts. I ended the subscription about a year ago. By the way I ran a creditsafe check when i unsubscribed and the numbers are pretty impressive!! I supose greed has played a part now?

 

[Rienne]

I joined Ecademy about 18 months ago, and fairly quickly got some sizeable business which would have paid my £10 a month until long after I retired, had I not cancelled after about a year. A great concept which is spoiled by the management running it like a personal fiefdom, even to the extent of Thomas Power using the public diary system for his personal appointments (e.g. "going to get a haircut"). The "exclusive" Blackstar membership is completely devalued each year by having a "buy before 31st December or it doubles in price" sale. Great shame from the UK SME point of view, but they will continue to thrive as long as they run it like a cult, as there are plenty of people around the world who think they need to join one.

 

[CompleteTrainer]

I find ecademy quite useful for finding trainers (internationally, not just UK) but I won't Blackstar - I agree with some of the cliquey comments, but I do gather that they do a lot of business together. So, good for them.

It's like any of these things, you get out if you put in I would say.

CT

 

[YODspica]

I'm on ecademy, what I like most is that many of my local competitors are on it as well, some have photos with smoking cigars from many years ago.

 

[Eagle]

I got a mass Private Message the other day from someone who wanted me to view his 'Happy Birthday to Me' thread. What a dick! Goodness knows how many people he messaged...

And the community condoned it by posting all sorts of twee messages.