Is the Cliqly Opportunity Legit? A Full Investigation...

(*Note - there are multiple updates at the end of this article because things just kept getting wilder and wilder.)

Now about Cliqly...

Recently, I have seen my Facebook newsfeed covered with this post:

“I found a way to earn money by sending emails in 10 mins a day… 🚫 Not an MLM… SO easy to get going! Make some extra cash! And Plus you build a subscriber list…”

I thought this might be a good gig for my teenagers to earn a few extra bucks so I reached out to one of the posters. She sent me to a webpage, where there was a video with a man claiming that his friend “Bobby” had built an email marketing business (Cliqly) but was running out ways to send emails. So if you can send emails for him through Cliqly, he will pay you. This man claims that the system “Cliqly” is completely free and you never have to pay a dime.

Honestly I had a gut feeling something was "off" but I wanted to see what it was all about. Was it legit? was it a scam? What I found blew my mind. 

As soon as I signed up, I logged into the Cliqly platform, I saw that you could “upgrade” to get more Cliqly email "credits" for $97 and I immediately thought “red flag!” but I kept going - I wanted to give Cliqly a chance. I watched both of the instructional Cliqly videos on the page twice, to make sure I understood it all correctly.

So here’s how it works.

-You take about 5 minutes to send these emails to a list of 75,000 people that is given to you by Cliqly. 

-Over the course of the day your Cliqly commissions roll up to $10-$15, some people claim more, but mine only ever got that much.

-You can do this for 5 days FREE - then you have to upgrade and purchase more Cliqly email credits to keep going. And there is the catch.

In order for Cliqly to “wire” (yes, they say they will WIRE you your money) you have to reach the threshold of $300. So how will you earn $300 from Cliqly in your 5 free days? Do the math, it's not by sending emails... even though these Cliqly fans would swear that you could. 

You are guided to have people sign up to Cliqly under you, and when THEY upgrade their Cliqly for $97, you earn a commission of $97. The Cliqly fans think this is great and PROOF that this "Bobby" just wants to help people. You are also encouraged to buy more and more email credits from Cliqly, to "build your list." You also get to keep 5% of whatever Cliqly credits the people you bring on purchase - so I guess Cliqly keeps 100% of whatever credits you buy, and 95% of whatever your people buy. 

So essentially, Cliqly meets the description of a Pyramid Scheme at the very least.

Here is what Wikipedia has to say about Pyramid Schemes:

“In a pyramid scheme, an organization compels individuals who wish to join to make a payment. In exchange, the organization promises its new members a share of the money taken from every additional member that they recruit. The directors of the organization (those at the top of the pyramid) also receive a share of these payments. For the directors, the scheme is potentially lucrative—whether or not they do any work, the organization's membership has a strong incentive to continue recruiting and funneling money to the top of the pyramid.

Such organizations seldom involve sales of products or services with value. Without creating any goods or services, the only revenue streams for the scheme are recruiting more members or soliciting more money from current members. The behavior of pyramid schemes follows the mathematics concerning exponential growth quite closely. Each level of the pyramid is much larger than the one before it. For a pyramid scheme to make money for everyone who enrolls in it, it would have to expand indefinitely. When the scheme inevitably runs out of new recruits, lacking other sources of revenue, it collapses. Since the biggest terms in this geometric sequence are at the end, most people will be in the lower levels of the pyramid; accordingly, the bottom layer of the pyramid contains the most people. The people working for pyramid schemes try to promote the actual company instead of the product they are selling. Eventually, all of the people at the lower levels of the pyramid do not make any money; only the people at the top turn a profit.”

Do you think Cliqly fits the bill there? Cliqly members earn $97 for recruits and Cliqly itself pockets 95% of whatever people spend on "email credits." It's just money exchanging hands - there are no products or services rendered.

Now the wild part is that I joined a “secret” Cliqly Members Telegram group for people who had started their free trial, and everyone was encouraging new Cliqly members to upgrade… before they had ever even seen a single dollar put into their bank account by Cliqly. Encouraging them to put the $97 on a credit card if they didn’t have it. They were borderline chanting "Upgrade! Upgrade!" (Okay that was a bit dramatic, but holy hell the people in there were on fire to get you to upgrade - and NOW.) There were 150+ members in there at the time. (Now there are 1000+ as of May 22nd 2023, and 1,800 as of July 15th)

Also, someone had posted a screenshot in this group where someone had said that Cliqly was a scam, and it was deleted immediately (of course.) I asked why it was deleted and I was told that the Cliqly chat was positive-only and anything deemed negative (regardless of how truthful) would be deleted straight away.

I also saw this information posted in the Telegram chat:

• Paying Cliqly Members Make More and Enjoy perks (Pay to upgrade!)
• $97 Cliqly upgrade gives you 200K & 500K more credits
• Cliqly wants you to pay $97/wk to get the above
• You must earn $300 every week to get paid by Cliqly.
• You must SEND banking Routing/Accounting info to Cliqly to get paid
• You need a signed W-9 US or W-8 Non US
• You have to earn over $300 every week through Cliqly
• It takes 3-5 days to POST in your bank
• Bank wires cost $15 per transaction in most banks

And since I signed up, the Telegram chat has now erupted into feverish chatter with everyone “upgrading” and awaiting acceptance into the exclusive “Cliqly Upgraded” Telegram chat and get the link to the new Cliqly "Milkshake" info.

So back to Cliqly...

I then took a closer look at the email addresses that I was sending these emails to, through the Cliqly platform. It looked like a list of fake emails. I have a real email list with real emails and they look nothing like these. These emails looked like the fake Instagram follower account names. I even tried looking up some of the emails and non of them came up in search. Usually some emails in a list will bring up a FB or IG profile, or sometimes Linked In or an article - but these Cliqly ones returned nothing.

I saw in a FB post about Cliqly that this guy actually used it to drive traffic (or so he thought) and here's what he said "So if you joined Cliqly because you are a marketer yourself and you think you are building a list to promote your own offers to, then I would tell you not to waste your time because the list is absolute garbage and despite thousands of emails Ive sent, I have yet to even get an opt-in, let alone a sale." he went on to say "I originally joined because I thought I was building an actual list. There was also supposed to be auto responders we could use to mail so we could pay them $92/month and make like $300-400/month. Bobby even said this is how you really make money. You build list and open more of these. He said some people had 10 accounts each making $300-400/month. Only the list is horrible so all the emails bounced and I made about $8 in the month and paid $92 for the auto responder."

Oh, and that $97 that you pay to upgrade your Cliqly? That buys you more Cliqly email "credits" so you can keep sending emails. In fact, the woman who showed a breakdown of her earnings from Cliqly in the Cliqly Telegram channel showed that almost half of her commission was paid back in buying "packages" of more emails, and the rest was from referrals, but people aren't talking about that. They are acting like they just send emails and make money - nope.

Do ya'll remember the "Empower Network"? Yeah that...

So here's my final thoughts. Listen, if you want to work a pyramid-scheme style system where everyone makes money by recruiting people, then do it and just say what it is. Collect your money and run. But trying to sell something as "email marketing" but you're only going to make money by spending money on upgrades and recruiting others, I feel is leading people on. 

Honestly, watching how many people who didn't do any research and jumped into Cliqly and ran with it, was mind-blowing to me. I hope I’m wrong, and that Cliqly is not a scam, and all these people make a ton of money sending emails. I hope it turns out to be totally legitimate. I will gladly eat my words!! Is it a scam? I don't think it's an full-out actual scam, because people seem to be getting paid their Cliqly "commissions." But for now, in my opinion this is at the very least, it fits the description of a pyramid scheme. Sorry to disappoint. But that's my opinion.

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MAY 22nd UPDATE: So it's been about a month since I first signed up for Cliqly and even though I never really worked the Cliqly system beyond sending the Cliqly emails for a few days, (never paid the $97) nor ever earned enough to cash out my whopping $23, I am seeing more and more covert curiosity posts about Cliqly on Facebook. They usually share a screenshot of their Cliqly earnings and claim that all they are doing is sending emails. But if you look at their Cliqly earnings, the majority of it is from "CPA & Referral commission" aka Cliqly referrals... because they are recruiting people. Their Level 1 commissions show a small amount (this is supposedly from people clicking on the emails) and the larger chunk is always the referrals. 

I have now also found a FB post that said that many Cliqly members end up debt after buying these Cliqly email credits and not earning enough to cover them. It also said the traffic seems to be fake and Cliqly traffic does not convert into sales and the terms on the Cliqly website do not align with FTC compliance.*

Another person says they tested Cliqly traffic by sending it to a tracking link. Cliqly said they got 283 opens, but their tracking said only 1 click, which was them when they tested the link.*

(*This is just what I saw other people claim, I did not research those claims further.)

For me personally, out of all of the screenshots I have seen of these payments, NONE of the "Level 1 Cliqly Commissions have ever been $300 and I personally don't believe anyone can make the $300 required to cash out the Cliqly commissions without spending money or recruiting. The Cliqly "Free Trial" is just to hook you in. You can't make any money with Cliqly without spending or recruiting.

So this confirms my suspicions that Cliqly is a true Pyramid Scheme but you'll have to decide for yourself.

MAY 30th UPDATE:

You have to pay the Cliqly upgrade to get paid! So when they told me that you could just earn money through the Cliqly email-sending alone - that was incorrect.

Unreal. 

June 15th Cliqly UPDATE:

I really thought Cliqly would have died out by now, but it seems to be gaining momentum, as I am still seeing posts about it. There are now 1,400+ members in the group, which seems to be slowing down in growth since it's explosion in May. The group is now absolute chaos. People asking questions and other people sharing info, and the leader reposting the same stuff over and over. Now they post a "Congratulations" graphic with the persons name and face when they upgrade.

As I'm sitting here typing this out, I just saw this post, that says - "Recommendations on how to stay compliant with Cliqly and Share Safely at the same time: 

🛑 Don’t mention anywhere the word “Cliqly” on any commission posts in your newsfeed or stories.

🛑 Don’t use Cliqly’s white commission box to share commissions on public forms. 

✅ Do share your commission earnings if you would like in private messenger with someone who is interested in seeing how you are doing with this income stream 

✅ Do share your commissions inside our telegram chat as telegram chats are private encrypted communication links for our private community

✅ Do post your commissions (if you wish) with a box of your own and/or the direct deposit screenshot from your bank. You can add a message that is general like interested in a side hustle? Would you like to know how I earned this much? Dm me for the details. 

⚠️This way we can STILL market and share but stay totally compliant with Cliqly and keeping them safe too. Ultimately we want this company around a long time and everyone making money for the long haul. Win win.

Why does everything Cliqly need to be in secret? If Cliqly is an ethical company, why do the affiliates need to keep them "safe?" Why can't they mention the name? 

You can make up your own mind on that.

Cliqly Update July 15th 2023

This Cliqly things is still going. I just saw ANOTHER Cliqly post on social. I looked up the Telegram group for Cliqly members and it's now up to 1,800 members - wow! I see in here now they are sharing about a new "Tier Jumper" and pushing "My Inbox Pro."

I also see a post addressing why people have not received their Cliqly "upgrade" that they paid for and/or Cliqly credits they have purchased - whoa! It must be happening a lot for them to actually address it. What they are claiming in this "announcement" is that you must have used a different email address to purchase the Cliqly credits or Cliqly upgrade. That's it. No fix, no solution, just "make sure to use the same email address." 

Oh dang! They also have disabled commenting, so now all you can do is read through their Cliqly propaganda. I'm surprised at how many people are still joining this Cliqly group though. Yesterday July 14th it looks like 12 joined this group and today, another 5 came in so far today. Now keep in mind that this is not an official Cliqly group - as in it's not created by Cliqly corporate. It's more like a recruiting-info group created by people who are pushing the Cliqly agenda.

Also apparently there were issues with the site so to make it up, "Bobby" added an extra 10,000 subscribers to everyones account for free. They seem to be very excited about getting an extra 10K fake Cliqly emails. "Bobby" is reaching Mother Theresa status now. Geesh.

Okay that's all for today's update. I would scroll around in the group more, but honestly it just kinda makes me feel like I need a shower after. 

Cliqly Update November 26th 2023

OMG ya'll. I noticed I was getting more spam messages. I started researching my inbox after I signed up for Cliqly and boom! The spam emails started a few weeks after I joined. UGH. (I signed up with my real email address first, then after I had them remove that account (did they really remove it though?!) and I re-signed with a different email. I think they are selling the USERS email addresses!! I have no actual proof of this, other than what I am experiencing, so if you are getting more spam, let me know! These emails are not the usual "spam" they are from what seems like legit companies, but they use sub-par email hosting and I know I did NOT sign up for their stuff. So if this is true, that means they are gathering legit email addresses through people who sign up for the free opportunity and then turn around and sell their emails - and make money on that too. Wowwww.

FINAL THOUGHTS ON CLIQLY - I will continue to add updates so bookmark this page and come back in a couple weeks. But as someone who has made over half a million in my online business in the last few years, I really do believe that if it sounds too good to be true - it probably is.

And you can also follow me on Instagram where I serve up no-fluff business talk on the daily. See you there!