The Home Business Academy
A legally clean affiliate structure wrapped around economics the company publishes, and which almost never clear.
A real single-tier affiliate program whose main product is selling the program.
Disclosure
The editor of this site, Rob Fore, holds an affiliate position in the Home Business Academy. He does not set scores: this report’s grade is the weighted composite of its nine published dimension scores, and the build rejects any page where those two disagree. Our full conflict-of-interest statement, including every position held, is on the About page.
Can you actually make money with Home Business Academy?
Yes, under conditions, and you should hear them from me rather than from somebody holding a link. I hold an affiliate position in this company. That is disclosed at the top of this page and it is why this is written the way it is.
The structure is honest. Single tier. No matrix, no binary, no points, no quota, nothing paid for signing anybody up. The one exception to “nobody above you gains” is a lapse rule: after 60 inactive days your referred customers pass to the next active affiliate in the upline. You earn 80% recurring on products you own yourself. And the company publishes the number most programs leave out: of 2,890 people who paid it money in the twelve months to 31 August 2026, 46.8% have no affiliate participation of any kind. Nearly half its customers just wanted the software. In this industry that is rare enough to be the headline.
Now the number that decides it for most people. The median affiliate earned $0 over those twelve months. Not the median of everyone who joined and drifted - the median of every active affiliate. Among the half who actively promoted, five or more unique visitors, the median was still $0. You have to get into the 27.2% who made at least one sale before the median becomes $214 for the year. The average of $519 sits above all of that because a small number of people at the top carry it, and $519 is gross of the $120 to $1,920 a year you pay to stay eligible. Those are their figures, computed by a method they publish, not mine.
So it is a real business with an honest structure and a genuinely hard middle. What it is not is a place to be passive about, and the arithmetic says so more clearly than any warning could.
the compensation page opens commission eligibility on any one core subscription - Let's Goal at $10, Funnel Builder at $25 or Premium at $125. You earn only on products you own yourself, so earning across the line costs $160 a month
- You can sell to people who are not already in the business. Nearly half of HBA's customers are exactly those people, so the market is demonstrably there - but the affiliates who never find it are the ones sitting in the $0 median.
- You already have somewhere to put an offer: a list, a channel, a room of people who take your word for something. Two Funnel Builder customers cover the $25 subscription. Thirty-two full-stack customers replace a $4,000 job, at a churn rate of zero, which does not exist anywhere.
- You can carry the subscription for a year without it hurting. Eligibility starts at $10 a month, but earning across the whole line costs $160 a month and the median says most people are paying it without earning it back.
- You read the Affiliate Agreement, not just the compensation page. The current agreement, last updated 18 August 2026, carries the same 19-day recovery window and 60-day protection as the compensation page and states that it replaces any prior agreement. Read what it still lets the company do: forfeit unpaid commissions on a termination for cause, reassign your customers upline after 60 inactive days, and send every dispute to binding arbitration with no class actions.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL - and structurally so. Not an MLM. Single tier, no matrix, no multi-level payouts; a lapsed affiliate’s customers pass upline after 60 inactive days.
Confidence: High
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
A one-tier affiliate program wrapped around four software and training products, run by two named men in Idaho for ten years. You pay $10 to $160 a month, and you earn 80% of whatever your referrals pay - every month, for as long as they stay.
The structure is not multi-level, and it is worth saying so plainly, because the assumption runs the other way. There is no matrix. There is no binary. There is no override on anyone else’s recruits. The current affiliate agreement states it in writing: "We’re a single-tier program. You earn commissions on your direct referrals only." While your account is active, nobody above you earns a cent off your customers, and you earn nothing off anyone else’s. The exception is a lapse: after 60 inactive days your customers are "reassigned to the next active affiliate in the upline." The two-prong pyramid analysis that decides most cases in this category does not find much to grip here.
Ten years of operation have produced no FTC action, no SEC action, no state attorney-general action, no self-regulatory case, and no class action. The Idaho registration is current and has been continuously so since 8 June 2016. BehindMLM - which covers this sector exhaustively and rarely leaves a stone unturned - has never published a word about the company or either founder. Searched and empty, after a decade, is a finding in the company’s favor and it should be counted as one.
The company publishes the two numbers that matter most here: a median, and a customer split. The disclosure for the twelve months ending 31 August 2026 reports 2,890 distinct paying customers, 46.8% of them with no affiliate participation of any kind, with a written definition of how a customer is counted and a stated method for the average and the median alike. Nearly half its buyers just wanted the software - that is the answer to the question this site cares most about, and it is why no cap holds the grade down. But the credit sits in the same paragraph as the harder finding: across every active affiliate the median earned $0 over those same twelve months. Among the 49.8% who actively promoted, the median was still $0. 73.4% earned nothing at all, marginally worse than the 72.4% recorded a year ago, and the $519 average is gross of the $120 to $1,920 a year an affiliate pays to stay eligible. So both things are true at once, and the report says both: this is not a pyramid and never was, roughly half its customers are ordinary software buyers, and the affiliate side of it pays most people nothing.
One caution that belongs at the top rather than buried. The terms that protect an affiliate - a 19-day recovery window on a failed card, 60 days of protection before customers are reassigned, a $1 payout threshold - are published on the compensation page and written into the current Affiliate Agreement, last updated 18 August 2026, which states that it replaces any prior agreement. What they do not change is the reassignment itself: after 60 inactive days your customers and any eligible unpaid commissions go to the next active affiliate in the upline, and they do not come back.
Where $160/month goes
Full stack: Let's Goal $10 + Funnel Builder $25 + Premium $125
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Let's Goal App Goal-setting and morning-routine app, 7 free family accounts, and the cheapest door to the HBA Emailer. It makes you commission-eligible: the compensation page lists it as a core subscription alongside Funnel Builder and Premium. You still earn only on products you own. |
$10 /mo |
$8/mo |
| HBA Emailer Autoresponder and broadcast tool, included with any product subscription, with 300 non-expiring send credits. Further credits run about $15 per 15,000 sends - metered on sends rather than on list size, which is the reverse of most of the market. Not listed on the company’s products page at all. [Credit pricing from the member back office - no public company page states it] |
$0 bundled |
— |
| HBA Funnel Builder The real software, and the one most people buy first. One of three core subscriptions that open the commission gate. Priced openly on the site, which not everything here is. |
$25 /mo |
$20/mo |
| HBA Premium Not a video library. Traffic and conversions vaults, up to 11 live masterminds a week with both founders, and the "Magic Content Creator" AI writing tool, all documented on the company’s own Premium page. The company’s products page names the fuller AI production stack - Traffic Maestro, Smart Post, PromptWrite AI, Email Alchemist and Van Go AI Image Studio - and says "AI generations are not unlimited." Opens the commission gate. The $125 price is not stated on the Premium page, which sells a $1 trial. |
$125 /mo |
$100/mo |
| Financial Literacy Academy Publicly priced: $1,000 one-time at checkout, or three payments of $400, so the installment route costs $1,200 for the same product. Note that FLA does not appear in the compensation page's core-product commission table at all - the $400–$800 figure survives only on a legacy sales page. [Prices verified at the live checkout 7 September 2026; commission figure from a legacy page and NOT confirmed in current official materials] |
$1,000 one-time |
$400–$800 |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Idaho. Registered agent and principal on the Idaho filing since 2016. Former #1 producer in a nutritional MLM (ONE24 - went out of business 2014, which he disclosed himself on his own blog). Runs Hutchings Marketing LLC since 2009.
13-year military veteran, ex-mortgage loan officer, and previously a licensed agent with a large listed insurance-marketing organization.
Registered address
147 N 200 E, Blackfoot, ID 83221
Principal address on the Idaho Secretary of State record, and also the registered agent’s address. The 165 W Pacific St, Unit 393 address the company prints on its own contact page is the registered mailing address - a separate box number. Both are on file with the state.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
OK
The Home Business Academy, LLC, Idaho entity 507921. Paul Hutchings and Mike Hobbs, both named and public.
|
| Where is it incorporated? |
OK
Idaho. Active-Existing, filed 8 June 2016, perpetual, registered agent Paul Hutchings. Verified on the Secretary of State record.
|
| Regulatory action, ever? |
OK
None found. FTC, SEC, state AG, DSSRC, class actions - all searched, all empty.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
OK
Yes, and a good one. Average $519 and median $0 for the twelve months to 31 August 2026, activity segments, real dates, gross-of-cost stated plainly.
|
| What does the median affiliate earn? |
RED
$0 over twelve months. Among those who actively promoted, also $0. Break-even is two customers - and 72.8% did not make one sale.
|
| Do I own the list? |
WATCH
You own your funnel and your email list. The company owns the customer billing relationship - and can sever your claim to it.
|
| Can they fire me and keep my residuals? |
RED
Termination for cause forfeits any unpaid commissions. A declined card does not do it at once: after a 19-day recovery window and 60 inactive days, your customers are reassigned upline.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
CONCERN
A miner play with a merchant's paperwork. The product is real; the demonstrated market for it is other promoters.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Cover your own $25 Funnel Builder | 2 Funnel Builder customers $20/mo each |
| Cover the $160 full stack | 2 full-stack customers $128/mo each |
| Beat the median affiliate | 1 sale of anything the median is $0 |
| Replace a $4,000/mo job | 32 full-stack customers, retained at zero churn |
Read this twice
Two customers covers your cost. That is a genuinely low hurdle and it deserves to be said plainly - the arithmetic here is not the obstacle. The obstacle is measured, by the company, in its own disclosure: over twelve months 72.8% of affiliates who had already paid in did not make a single sale, and the median affiliate - including the half who actively promoted - earned nothing at all.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
80% of $160/mo. Assumes each customer takes the full Let's Goal + Funnel Builder + Premium stack. Your own subscription cost of $160/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
You cannot replicate a community, and the AI production tooling is a real bundle rather than a rebadged course. Priced honestly, this stack is closer than the category norm - the gap is at the top and the bottom, not in the middle.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| HBA Funnel Builder - $25/mo | Carrd Pro / systeme.io free tier | $0–19/mo |
| HBA Emailer - bundled, ~$1/1,000 sends | Kit free tier, or Amazon SES a la carte | $0–15/mo |
| Let's Goal App - $10/mo | Notion, Sunsama, or a legal pad | $0–12/mo |
| HBA Premium - $125/mo, AI production stack + 11 live sessions/wk | Video/AI editor + repurposer + multi-platform scheduler + keyword tool + thumbnail tool + an LLM subscription + a paid community | $135–$201/mo across 5–7 vendors |
| Financial Literacy Academy - $1,000 | Three library books and a spreadsheet | $0 |
| Total as sold $1,920/yr + $1,000 |
Total, built yourself $1,800–$2,700/yr if you actually run the production stack |
Price-to-value
This is the finding that moved on re-examination, and it moved in the company’s favor. Assembled separately, the capabilities Premium bundles cost more than Premium does - the honest comparison is a pile of five to seven subscriptions, not one course. Two caveats do the work. It only prices well if you actually use the production tools; if you do not, you are paying $125 for a library. And the Financial Literacy Academy at $1,000 fails the same test the rest of the catalog passes. [Replacement pricing is a category estimate from vendor list prices in August 2026, not a like-for-like audit]
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Part-timer
10 hrs/wk, no ads, warm market
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 35% | −$180 |
| 6 mo | 45% | −$120 |
| 1 yr | 50% | +$140 |
| 3 yr | 45% | +$900 |
| 5 yr | 42% | +$1,600 |
Full-timer
40 hrs/wk, $1,000/mo ads, from zero
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 8% | −$2,900 |
| 6 mo | 15% | −$4,800 |
| 1 yr | 25% | −$5,200 |
| 3 yr | 38% | +$4,000 |
| 5 yr | 42% | +$18,000 |
Established operator
~25,000 engaged list, working funnel
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 70% | +$4,800 |
| 6 mo | 74% | +$11,500 |
| 1 yr | 72% | +$21,000 |
| 3 yr | 62% | +$44,000 |
| 5 yr | 58% | +$61,000 |
Methodology note. MODELED from comp-plan mechanics and category base rates. These curves describe people who keep working the business; they are not a distribution of all affiliates, and the company’s own disclosure is the better guide to that. Its hard anchors: a $0 median across all active affiliates over twelve months, a $0 median even among the 49.8% who actively promoted, and a $214 median among the 27.2% who made at least one sale. Churn and retention are still unpublished.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151The median affiliate earns nothing, and the company says so
272.8% of paying affiliates made no sale at all
3Even the median seller barely clears the subscription
4A lapsed account loses its customers after 60 days, for good
5No earnings figure on the pages where people buy
6Calling HBA a "scam" in a review still costs an affiliate their commissions
7The company can order any affiliate material taken down
8Two different Premium trials, and neither page mentions the other
9You must buy every product you want to earn on
10The installment route costs $200 more for the same product
11The two most expensive products carry no price on the pages that sell them
1272-hour refund window, and friction on the way out
13The payout terms were reconciled only in August 2026
14You must own what you sell, and the agreement tells you to buy because you want it
15Almost every review you will find is written by an affiliate
Green flags
101The income disclosure publishes a median beside the average
2It is actually a single-tier affiliate program
3Ten years, zero regulatory actions, and a verified registration
4The affiliate account itself is free
5The funnel builder and the emailer are honestly priced
6Premium is a production stack, not a video library
7BehindMLM has never covered it
8Real names, real faces, real accountability
9No autoship, no inventory, no volume requirement, no rank ladder
10Weekly payouts with a $1 minimum
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Retention figures in the earnings disclosure: how long affiliates stay active and how many who make a sale are still selling a year later.
- Restoring a lapsed affiliate’s customers when the affiliate reactivates, instead of reassigning them upline for good after 60 inactive days.
- Public prices for the Financial Literacy Academy and HBA Premium on the company’s own products page; today the $1,000 Financial Literacy Academy price appears only at checkout.
Downward
- Any FTC, state AG or DSSRC action on income claims.
- Withdrawal of the median, a retreat to averages-only disclosure, or evidence that the funnel builder's customer base is effectively 100% affiliates with no independent software demand.
- Introduction of any second tier, override, or pass-up beyond the existing 60-day reassignment of a lapsed affiliate’s customers.
Grade is B-. A playbook is defensible here - so here is the playbook, and here is the better version of it.
If you promote HBA, promote the software. Not the opportunity. On this report’s own replacement pricing, Premium at $125 a month costs less than the five to seven separate subscriptions it bundles ($135 to $201 a month), provided the buyer actually uses the production tools, and the $25 Funnel Builder is the cheapest way in. Software is advertisable on Google and Meta, and a core subscription is a qualification gate anyway - the comp plan will not pay you a cent without an active one, and Funnel Builder is one of three. Selling the tools to people who will use them produces the same downstream revenue as selling income to people who need it, and it does not put your name next to an earnings claim the company’s own median contradicts.
And understand what the real trade is, because the company has just published the numbers that define it. Half the field - 49.8% - actively promoted, meaning they put at least five unique visitors in front of an offer. Just 27.2% made a single sale. The gap between those two figures is the whole business: people who did the work, paid the subscription, drove the traffic, and converted nothing. Their median earning is $0, and it is $0 precisely because traffic without conversion is what the training produces at scale.
That gap is the opportunity, and it is a merchant’s opportunity rather than a miner’s. The affiliates are the market. The leads are the product. You keep your list, your domains, your rankings and your billing, and none of it is exposed to a compensation plan the company can amend at its sole discretion, or to a reassignment rule that moves your customers upline after 60 inactive days.
Sell the $25 tool, not the $125 dream
Software is advertisable. Opportunity is not. Same customer, same downstream revenue, none of the 16 CFR 255 exposure - and none of the awkwardness of promoting an income offer whose published median is $0.
Serve the half who promote and the quarter who convert
The company publishes the size of its own problem: 49.8% actively promote, 27.2% make a sale. The people in between have proven they will do the work and have proven the training does not close it. A $97 to $297/mo lead or conversion subscription is cheap against a $10 to $160 monthly subscription already being paid for a median of nothing.
Build the retention layer the company does not sell
The reassignment rule - your whole book moves upline after 60 inactive days - is sitting in plain sight on the compensation page. A card-on-file monitor plus a churn dashboard is a $47/mo product that sells itself to anyone who has actually read it.
Own the honest review
Page one is affiliates on one side and competing-offer marketers on the other. There is no credible neutral voice on this company, and the company has just handed that voice its best material by publishing a $0 median. That gap is worth more than the commission.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- HBA Earnings Disclosure Statement, 1 September 2025 to 31 August 2026 - average $519.42, median $0, 2,890 distinct paying customers of whom 46.8% have no affiliate participation; among the 1,537 active affiliates, segments at 49.8% actively promoting (median $0) and 27.2% having made at least one sale (median $214); method for both average and median published, "Active Affiliate" defined
Client-rendered and recalculated from purchase records rather than a static PDF, so it cannot be read without JavaScript and the figures move. Read in a rendered browser 7 September 2026, and again live on 8 September 2026 direct from the disclosure API the page renders from (methodology version customer-mix-2026-08-16-v2). This is the customer split that keeps the retail-sales cap off this grade. Full breakdown for the period: 1,537 active affiliates, 1,128 of them (73.4%) earning $0; $798,351.50 paid out in total. All active affiliates: 100%, $519.42 average, $0 median. Actively promoted (5+ unique visitors): 49.8%, $1,007.84 average, $0 median. Made at least 1 sale: 27.2%, $1,909.93 average, $214 median. Referred 30+ members: 4.0%, $9,885.82 average, $3,350.50 median. Top 10% of earners: 2.7%, $15,412.09 average, $8,500 median. Highest single earner $86,254.63. Defines an Active Affiliate as a customer who has accepted the affiliate terms and made at least one qualifying product purchase within the period, and states the figures recalculate automatically from company records.
Not established by this document: Gives no denominator for total affiliate headcount ever enrolled (only the 1,537 currently active), so a lifetime affiliate count cannot be derived. The segments are not stated to be nested, so the exact proportion who promoted and then failed to sell cannot be computed from them alone. No churn, retention or earnings-band distribution beyond the five stated segments is given.
- HBA Affiliate Agreement of 22 September 2022 (REPLACED by the agreement last updated 18 August 2026), which stated that an inactive account "will lose credit for all customers you've referred and immediately forfeit all future commissions", not restored on reactivation; $20 minimum, Tipalti, and eligibility limited to Funnel Builder or Premium. Also: Section 19 forfeits all commissions for a review calling the product a "scam," "fraud," "bogus," "fake" or "sucks"; Section 27 requires prior written approval for all advertisements and websites, "deemed denied" absent it; Section 34 makes disparaging comments a material breach; Section 15 prohibits buying to qualify; Section 3 requires an active paying customer; Idaho governing law with Bingham County arbitration and a class-action waiver
Historical. The 18 August 2026 agreement on thehba.app states that it replaces any prior agreement; this URL returns HTTP 404 (checked 2 November 2026); the archived capture of 25 October 2023 carries the full text. While it governed, it contradicted the compensation page on forfeiture, payout threshold, payment processor and which subscriptions confer eligibility - the live compensation plan states an $8 minimum, Bitcoin and iPayout/Global eWallet against this agreement's $20 minimum, PayPal/ACH/check and Tipalti. Its footer also carries "Average affiliates can expect to earn $328", against $519 in the live disclosure. Section 28 codes a returning customer back to the original referring affiliate within 90 days. Read in full 7 September 2026 and again 16 August 2026.
Not established by this document: Does not state product prices, and does not reference the current earnings disclosure - Section 12 still points readers to income.thehba.net.
- HBA Terms of Service - 72-hour money-back guarantee on a genuinely new subscription only; renewals, rebills, reactivations and trials expressly excluded; no pro-rated refunds; Idaho jurisdiction and binding arbitration
States "Last updated: July 20, 2026". Note the collision with the $1 seven-day Premium trial, which section 19.3 excludes from the guarantee while the checkout page displays a "3-Day Money-Back Guarantee". Read 7 September 2026. On the main domain, /terms-of-service and /income open the members-area app instead of the document each one names, and /terms and /refund-policy return HTTP 404 (checked 2 November 2026).
- FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities, October 2021 - list of recipients
Searched in full 7 September 2026: "Home Business Academy", "Hutchings" and "Hobbs" each return zero matches among the 1,100-plus recipients. A documented absence rather than an unsearched one, and it counts in the company's favor.
- The Home Business Academy Compensation Plan - 80% on qualified core-product sales, single tier with no pass-ups, points, volume or quota; eligibility on any one core subscription; $1 payout threshold; weekly Thursday payout via i-Payout on a 5-day hold; 19-day payment recovery, 60-day inactive protection, then reassignment upline (company's own page, re-read 7 September 2026)
thehomebusinessacademy.com - /products, /compensation-plan, /faq, /affiliate-agreement, /about-us, /contact, /hba-premium, /allinone
Not established by this document: Two primary-record checks came back empty and should be reported as gaps rather than filled. (1) No Idaho Secretary of State entity record for The Home Business Academy, LLC could be retrieved at a citable URL: Idaho's SOSBiz search (sosbiz.idaho.gov) is a JavaScript application that serves no server-rendered result page, and the entity does not appear in OpenCorporates, OpenCorpData, BizProfile or Bizapedia mirrors. The entity number, formation date, registered agent and standing therefore remain unverified. (2) No USPTO trademark application or registration in the name of The Home Business Academy, LLC, Paul Hutchings or Mike Hobbs was found on a full-text search of Justia Trademarks, despite the company's use of the TM symbol on "The Home Business Academy" and "Principle Centered Leadership" - so the marks appear to be unregistered common-law claims, but the negative result has no citable document.
- The Home Business Academy Refund Policy - 3-day (72-hour) refund window from purchase or monthly re-bill, no refunds on discounted trial memberships, no pro-rata on cancellation (company's own page; this URL returns HTTP 404, archived capture of 30 March 2022)
This URL returns HTTP 404 (checked 2 November 2026). The current refund terms are in the Terms of Service on thehba.app, which exclude renewals and rebills from the guarantee.
- The Home Business Academy Terms, Cancellation & Refund Policy (company's own page; this URL returns HTTP 404, archived capture of 28 February 2026)
- The Home Business Academy Products page - four products: Let's Goal ($10/mo), HBA Funnel Builder ($25/mo), HBA Premium, Financial Literacy Academy, each paying 80% residual (company's own marketing page)
- The Home Business Academy FAQ - minimum $25/month HBA Funnel Builder subscription required to qualify for commissions; three conditions for commission qualification; Friday payout on sales matured 7 days (company's own page)
- The Home Business Academy Contact page - legal entity "The Home Business Academy, LLC" and the 165 W Pacific St, Unit 393, Blackfoot, Idaho 83221 address (company's own page)
- The Home Business Academy About Us - founders Mike Hobbs and Paul Hutchings, "Freedom Through Principle Centered Leadership" (company's own marketing page)
- HBA Premium sales page - documents the traffic and conversions vaults, up to 11 live masterminds weekly, the daily Grow Rich mastermind and the "Magic Content Creator" AI writing tool; sells a $1 seven-day trial; carries the FTC disclaimer "Typical affiliates earn no income. This is not a get-rich-quick program. No sales = no income" and a "$7 million+" lifetime commissions figure (company's own marketing page)
Re-read live on 8 September 2026. The $346 average and the "over 6 Million" commissions figure recorded on 16 August 2026 are both gone; no average-earnings figure appears anywhere on the page, and the commissions figure is now "$7 million+" lifetime. The page still runs "Potentially Make $100 For Every $1 Trial You Give Away" above a stack of ascribed "value" prices totaling over $1,500.
Not established by this document: Does not state Premium's $125 monthly price anywhere; it sells the $1 trial and quotes a "$497 Per Month Value" instead. The AI production tooling members describe - Traffic Maestro, Smart Post, Van Gogh, Email Alchemist - is not named on this or any other public company page; only "Magic Content Creator" is. The 306,941 meals figure here conflicts with the 424,655 days of meals on the member dashboard.
- HBA Affiliate Agreement (thehba.app) - the current public affiliate contract: 38 plain-language sections, an "Earnings Disclosure and FTC Compliance" section pointing affiliates to thehba.app/income, a mandated word-for-word earnings disclaimer, and an explicit prohibition on promising specific amounts or calling the opportunity "easy, passive, or effortless" (company’s own legal page)
Read live on 8 September 2026. States the program is single-tier - "You earn commissions on your direct referrals only... not a multi-level payout" - and that it "isn’t a franchise, a business opportunity, or a partnership." Requires affiliate-relationship disclosure per the FTC Endorsement Guides (16 C.F.R. Part 255, revised July 2023), requires the disclaimer on affiliates’ own pages, and forbids using "results not typical" as a substitute. Also requires affiliates to disclose any law-enforcement investigation into their marketing practices. Commission-eligibility requires one active core subscription (Let’s Goal, Funnel Builder or Premium); core products pay 80% of gross; refunded sales claw the commission back.
- HBA All-In-One sales page - "Typical affiliates earn no income… No sales = no income" required legal disclaimer, with no average-affiliate figure as of 8 September 2026 (company's own marketing page)
- The Home Business Academy Delivery Policy - repeats the legal entity name and the Blackfoot, Idaho address (company's own page; this URL returns HTTP 404 and has no archived capture)
Checked 2 November 2026. The same legal entity and Blackfoot, Idaho address are on the Contact page.
- The Home Business Academy 2025 Income Disclosure Statement - $1,889,789.98 total commissions paid, $328.89 average annual gross revenue per affiliate, $301,341.20 highest and $0.00 lowest paid affiliate (company-served copy on HBA's own hbafunnelbuilder.com affiliate-replicated site)
HBA 2025 Income Disclosure Statement (retrieved via hbafunnelbuilder.com affiliate mirror; income.thehba.net renders empty to crawlers)
Not established by this document: The company's canonical income-disclosure endpoints could not be read directly: thehomebusinessacademy.com/earnings returns HTTP 404 (checked 2 November 2026), and income.thehba.net and thehba.app/income both fail to render to crawlers. The retrieved copy is the same document served by HBA's own funnel-builder platform on an affiliate-replicated subdomain, and it carries the internal inconsistency the report relies on - it is headed "2025 Income Disclosure Statement (April 31, 2024 - April 31, 2025)" while the $328.89 average is expressly attributed to "May 31 2022 to May 31 2023 statistical data," and the same page's boilerplate says "over 5 Million dollars" where the current marketing pages say over 6 million. No archived copy of income.thehba.net was retrievable (web.archive.org requests were refused in this pass), so the claim that the live earnings page still serves 2022 data rests on this copy alone.
- HBA Income Disclaimer page - the canonical company URL the site's own footers link to as the earnings disclosure (this URL returns HTTP 404; the archived capture of 21 March 2025 carries the 2023 Income Disclosure Statement, May 2022 to May 2023, $328.89 average)
- "The Home Business Academy Scam or Legit? The 80% Commission Model That Raises Serious Questions!" - Danny de Hek, including HBA's founders' right-of-reply statement claiming over $7 million in all-time commissions paid
dehek.com - "The Home Business Academy: Scam or Legit? The 80% Commission Model" (March 2026), founders given right of reply
- "Home Business Academy Review: 12 Things To Know (Is It Legit?)" - eBiz Facts, overall rating 2.7/5, flagging the 3-day money-back guarantee and that most affiliates do not turn a profit
ebizfacts.com - Home Business Academy Review, rated 2.7/5
- The Home Business Academy profile on SoTellUs - 4.4 average across 407 reviews; the page states in its own footer that it is "powered by SoTellUs," a paid review-solicitation service sold to the reviewed business, so the rating is vendor-controlled and not an independent sample
SoTellUs - 4.4/5 across 407 reviews (vendor-controlled collection platform; discount heavily)
- Business Search record for HOME BUSINESS ACADEMY, LLC (THE), entity 507921 - Limited Liability Company (D), Active-Existing, filed 8 June 2016, perpetual duration, registered agent Paul Hutchings (noncommercial 0114189), principal address 147 N 200 E Blackfoot ID 83221, mailing address 165 W Pacific St #393 Blackfoot ID 83221-6614, annual report due 30 June 2027
Resolves the entity number, formation date, registered agent and standing that the July 2026 pass recorded as unverified, and separates the principal address from the mailing address the company prints on its contact page.
Not established by this document: SOSBiz is a JavaScript application that serves no per-entity URL, so this citation points at the search interface rather than at a permanent record page; the entity is reached by searching the name. No document was purchased, so the filing history behind the "View History" control is not part of this record.
- The Home Business Academy member dashboard - "$7,422,384 in total commissions paid" and 424,655 days of meals funded through the company’s Feed My Starving Children partnership (company’s own member portal)
Cumulative all-time figures displayed to logged-in members, read 16 August 2026. The "over 5 Million dollars" figure it superseded is no longer printed on the public compensation page; as of 8 September 2026 the Premium page states "$7 million+" and the compensation page carries no commission total at all.
Not established by this document: Login-gated, so it cannot be independently verified by a reader and carries no archival copy. The figure is cumulative since inception and is not attributable to any stated period, so it cannot be used to derive an affiliate count or a period payout.
What we could not get
- Total affiliate count - not derivable. The disclosure publishes a customer denominator (2,890) but not an affiliate one, and its three activity segments are not stated to be nested
- Churn and retention - HBA declines to publish a figure and says why: "HBA does not publish a single retention percentage because the number changes dramatically depending on the timeframe and who is counted." That is a fair objection and it is also an absence
- Whether the 46.8% retail split is audited. It is the company's own figure, computed from its own purchase records and labeled "VERIFIED FROM PURCHASE RECORDS" by the company itself. No third party has checked it, and the absence of a cap on this report rests on it
- Whether the 19-day recovery and 60-day protection rules, in both the compensation page and the Affiliate Agreement last updated 18 August 2026, operate as written for affiliates who signed the 2022 agreement. The current agreement says it replaces any prior agreement; no affiliate’s account of it has been checked
- Whether the $7,469,608 lifetime commission figure served by the company's own API is audited, and whether it is gross or net of clawbacks and chargebacks. The widget presenting it as a "VERIFIED COMMISSION RECORD" rendered $0.00 when read on 7 September 2026
- Federal court dockets - not checked directly, because CourtListener served a human-verification challenge that was not bypassed. The clean litigation finding rests on web search and is weaker than the regulatory finding, which is documentary
- Whether any testimonial on the reviews page was solicited or incentivized. Nothing on the page states either way, and one of them reports $80,000 in cumulative commissions
- The AI production stack members describe inside Premium - Traffic Maestro, Smart Post, Van Go, Email Alchemist - is named on the company's own products page, but no output, credit allowance or limit is published beyond "AI generations are not unlimited". Separately, whether Freedom Launchpad ($27) remains purchasable is unclear - it is absent from the products page and from the current FAQ, which names four products only
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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Home Business Academy - frequently asked
QIs the Home Business Academy an MLM?
QHow much do Home Business Academy affiliates actually earn?
QWhat percentage of HBA affiliates make a sale?
QWhat does it cost to join the Home Business Academy?
QWhat is the biggest risk in the HBA compensation plan?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Home Business Academy’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
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Corrections
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