Reverse funnel system

The Reverse Funnel System (RFS) is a Pyramid Scheme or Multi-Level Marketing device originated by Ty Coughlin and his company, InnerCircle. It makes heavy use of Internet marketing schemes to build keyword and relevance-driven websites and to achieve sales. The asset behind the scheme is timeshare right-to-sell.

The system works by taking visitors to a marketing site, typically through a scheme such as keyword bombing a free site (for example YouTube) or building splogs which invite the user to provide some details and follow the enrollment process. Initially, a signup is requested to place a deposit (usually $50) to get all the information about the program. The initiate is then asked to purchase membership in a travel network for up to $2995 for a premium membership. This represents membership to a worldwide resort organization and is ultimately the product users can resell. However, as with most pyramid systems, income achieved from selling resort memberships and associated products pales in comparison to that received from signing up new recruits to the system. In addition, users of the system are charged $200 - $300 per month for an automated marketing website and an additional $200 - $300 per month for advertising expenses.

RFS is also notable for its extremely aggressive internet marketing, utilizing techniques such as Google bombing to ensure any information negative to the system is drown out by marketing. A search for the term returns hundreds of thousands of results, almost all of which are sites selling the product and fake or transparently biased positive reviews of the system. This makes investigating the cons of RFS almost impossible as critical links are outnumbered thousands to one by repetitious, automatically generated marketing sites.

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