PlanNet Marketing, Inc.
A genuinely low $19.95 entry, a real 90-day refund and an income disclosure that publishes its own zero-earner rate - attached to a compensation plan whose eight commission lines pay $0.00 on any travel actually booked.
Every dollar this company pays is triggered by somebody enrolling or by somebody’s monthly subscription continuing - and the travel-agent affiliation it sells is bought from, serviced by and refundable only through a different company entirely.
Can you actually make money with PlanNet Marketing?
No. Not on this compensation plan. In a company whose entire public identity is travel, no travel booking triggers a single dollar of it - all eight commission lines fire when somebody enrolls or keeps paying a subscription. The travel commission is paid by a different company entirely, out of supplier money, outside this plan.
The company publishes its own zero-earner rate, and that is worth saying out loud because plenty of operators bury it: 78.94% of representatives earned no commission or override at all on the 2024 income disclosure. Some 92.50% sit at the base Rep rank, where average annual earnings are $40.27. The disclosure names $239.40 of annual fees against that.
The cost it does not name is the bigger half. To qualify for most of the plan you also buy the travel-agent product from the other company at $179.95 plus $39.95 a month, which puts realistic year one at $918.70 and every year after at $718.80. That is roughly three and a half times the cost basis the disclosure shows. And your own $19.95 a month buys you nothing in the plan, because no commission line is triggered by it.
The genuinely good parts are real and short. Entry is $19.95, the lowest in the graded set. Nothing has to be stocked, nothing is shipped to you and no autoship exists. The refund is 90 days on initial fees and 30 days rolling on the monthly ones, with a written right to cancel at any time for any reason. Eleven years in, no regulator and no self-regulatory body has brought a case against this company.
then $19.95 a month to PlanNet - but the plan is built so that an active participant also buys the travel-agent product at $179.95 plus $39.95 a month from the other company, taking realistic year one to $918.70
- A commission line that pays when a customer books travel. Right now eight of eight fire on an enrollment or on a subscription rebill, which means the plan rewards the one activity the company is not named after.
- A rank ladder that counts something other than heads. Every rung - 100, 300, 500, 1,500, 4,000 Active ITAs - is qualified by headcount, and not one dollar of travel volume appears anywhere in the qualification tables.
- An income disclosure that counts the travel-side fees. It reports $239.40 and omits the roughly $659 a year the same participant pays the other entity for the product the plan requires them to hold.
- The withdrawal of an unhedged public guarantee. A marketing page states that a ONE-STAR Director's monthly income from all sources will be at least $1,000, with no qualifier and no typicality statement anywhere near it.
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 - no court, regulator or self-regulatory body has found PlanNet Marketing, Inc. to be a pyramid scheme, and no such finding exists anywhere. No FTC enforcement action, no FTC warning letter, no state Attorney General action, no consent order, no assurance of voluntary compliance, no class action, no DSSRC case and no TINA.org entry naming this company was surfaced in eleven years of operation. Two honest qualifications belong with that. First, the search was an open-web search: CourtListener is robots-disallowed to the tooling used and PACER was not accessed, so this is "not surfaced by open-web search," not "docket-searched and clear." Second, Policies §9.3 imposes confidential single-arbitrator AAA arbitration in Atlanta with a blanket class, representative and private-attorney-general waiver, so the absence of class actions is partly an artifact of the contract rather than evidence of an absence of grievance. The heavy legal file in this report belongs to a prior venture of a former officer - YTB International, Inc. - and is not PlanNet’s. It must not be read as PlanNet’s.
Confidence: Medium-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 Georgia marketing company, incorporated 15 July 2015, that sells two things: its own $19.95-a-month Independent Representative license, and - as a commissioned marketer for a separate Florida host agency - that agency’s home-based travel-agent business at $179.95 plus $39.95 a month. It books no travel, holds no client funds, issues no travel documents and holds no seller-of-travel registration. Its own trademark filings describe the service as "Multi-level marketing services." A company that writes that on a federal filing is not hiding what it is.
Three things about this are genuinely better than the category and belong first. The product behind the product is real: the affiliated host travel agency is a long-established host founded in the early 1990s with a reported 90,000-plus advisors, real supplier relationships, its own registrations and real commission processing - a buyer receives an affiliation that actually functions, which is materially better than a discount club or a voucher book. The entry price is at the bottom of the graded universe, with no kit, no inventory, no autoship and no stock loading, and the refund terms are better than the statutory floor: 90 days on initial fees, 30 days rolling on monthly fees, cancel at any time for any reason. And the company publishes an income disclosure annually, in English and Spanish, that reports its own zero-earner rate - 78.94% - and requires representatives to present it any time the plan is discussed at all.
Then the plan. Eight commission lines, and every one of them fires on somebody enrolling or on somebody’s subscription continuing: $50 for personally selling a travel-agent business, $25 to the sponsor of the Rep who sold it, $4 a month on each of nine matrix levels for as long as a downline agent keeps paying, a 10% Gold Builder matrix match, a $10 Gold Builder bonus, up to $50 in Director sales bonus, $500 to $100,000 a month in Director bonuses on headcount, and a $1,000 monthly income guarantee at ONE-STAR. The rank ladder is qualified in Active ITAs - 100, 300, 500, 1,500, 4,000 and up - and not in dollars of travel. One rank, Gold Builder PLUS, is defined as "A Rep who has nine (9) or more Active ITAs who are also Reps," which is a named reward for the case where the customers are the recruits. If a participant books a hundred holidays and enrols nobody, this plan pays them $0.00. That is the finding, and it is the report.
And the money moves between two companies in a way the disclosure does not follow. PlanNet collects $19.95 a month and pays no commission out of it. Everything it pays out is triggered by a fee paid to the other company: up to $135 of the $179.95 initial fee and up to $36 a month of the $39.95 subscription - around 75% and around 90% respectively of fees PlanNet never receives. All of it must therefore be funded by a marketing agreement between the two entities that neither publishes, whose term and termination rights nobody outside can read. The income disclosure names $239.40 of annual cost, which is PlanNet’s half; it omits the roughly $659 a year the same participant pays the other entity in order to qualify for most of the plan. Realistic year one is $918.70. That is the two-entity structure doing its damage in the one place it does most.
Where a first-year outlay of $918.70 goes
The realistic active case - PlanNet Rep plus the travel-agent product the plan requires in practice. Of the whole $918.70, up to $135 plus twelve months of up to $36 - $567.00, or about 62% - is capable of being paid back into the network as commission. The residual funds two companies’ operations, a booking platform and their margins. Figures from the company’s own published prices and its published commission schedule.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| PlanNet Independent Representative license PlanNet’s only own-account revenue, and no commission line in the plan is triggered by it. $239.40 a year to stay enrolled. Policies §2.4: "An IR must renew their IR status monthly by remaining current on their monthly administrative fee $19.95." |
$19.95 one-time, then $19.95/month |
$0.00 |
| The travel-agent business ("ITA") - the other company’s product Sold and serviced by the affiliated host travel agency, refundable under its 30-day policy rather than PlanNet’s 90-day one. Not formally required to be a Rep, but matrix qualification needs 2 Active ITAs and every builder rank is defined by Active ITA count. |
$179.95 one-time, then $39.95/month |
$50.00 direct |
| 50% Sponsor Match on that sale Paid to the sponsor of the Rep who made the sale. This is the pure recruitment line: it pays for having recruited a Rep, and the plan states there is no limit to the number that may be earned. |
— per sale |
$25.00 |
| Matrix override Up to $36.00 of every $39.95 monthly fee, across a 3x9 forced matrix of 29,523 theoretical positions. Requires a minimum of 2 Active ITAs to qualify at all. Whether the matrix compresses or retains breakage is not stated in the plan document retrieved. |
— monthly |
$4.00 per level, 9 levels |
| Gold Builder Bonus and 10% matrix match Requires Gold Builder - nine or more Active ITAs. The $10 is paid on every downline ITA sale "down to the next Gold Builder"; the 10% is a match on each personally sponsored Rep’s matrix earnings. |
— per sale / monthly |
$10.00 + 10% |
| Director Sales Bonus On every ITA sale anywhere in a Director’s downline, ONE-STAR through FIVE-STAR. Together with the lines above, up to $135 of a $179.95 fee PlanNet never receives. |
— per sale |
up to $50.00 |
| Director monthly bonus Qualified purely on Active ITA headcount: 100 for ONE-STAR, 300, 500, 1,500, 4,000 and above. The company’s current page describes ONE- through FIVE-STAR; the income disclosure names a SIX-STAR; the tiers above that come from a third-party tabulation of the plan. |
— monthly |
$500 – $100,000 |
| Travel actually booked by an agent Travel commission is paid by the affiliated host travel agency out of supplier commission, entirely outside PlanNet’s plan. The company’s own product page puts it plainly: "The platform handles bookings and pays commissions." The platform is not PlanNet. |
varies per booking |
$0.00 from PlanNet |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
No regulatory action, litigated judgment, consent order, cease-and-desist or allegation of any kind against Bradley personally was surfaced in this research, and that should be said first. What is established is a track record. The company’s own About Us page credits him with "top ranking positions in the network marketing industry" and with being "numbered among millionaire earners for the past 15 years" - and names no prior employer at all. Third-party reporting places him as Vice President of Marketing at Paycation Travel, a travel MLM launched in 2014 that operated as a marketing front for a licensed travel agency, structurally the same two-entity design PlanNet uses; the MLM watchdog blog BehindMLM describes Paycation as a "since-collapsed pyramid scheme," which is a watchdog characterisation and not a regulatory or judicial finding. He is also reported to have promoted Pro Travel Network before that. For a founder whose entire claimed credential is network-marketing success, naming none of those companies in his own biography is a disclosure choice.
The heaviest fact in the ownership file, and it needs careful stage-labeling. Cauthen was President and Chief Operating Officer of YTB International, Inc. from 2004 to 2009, President and COO of YTB Marketing from 2009 to 2010, and was appointed President, Chief Executive Officer and Director effective 31 May 2012. In August 2008 the California Attorney General sued YTB for $25 million alleging operation of an illegal pyramid scheme; the AG’s investigation reported that of roughly 200,000 agents about 125,000 earned nothing and 37,000 earned less than $39 in 2007. That matter settled on 14 May 2009 for $1 million - a negotiated resolution of a state AG civil action, not a litigated finding of fact. A parallel Illinois action settled in May 2011 for $150,000 in restitution with no admission of guilt. In 2007 a major cruise line terminated its business with YTB, describing it as a "card mill" - a private commercial decision by a supplier, not a regulatory or judicial act. YTB International filed for Chapter 11 on 1 March 2013, nine months into Cauthen’s tenure as CEO. A Chapter 11 filing is not a finding of wrongdoing, and no action was brought against Cauthen personally in either state matter on any record retrieved. What is established is that he was in the senior operating leadership of that company throughout its regulatory difficulties and its membership collapse, and was its chief executive when it entered bankruptcy protection.
The BBB profile, reflecting an earlier snapshot, still lists Cauthen as President and CFO. The company’s current About Us page lists Vancil as President and Roundtree as CFO and does not list Cauthen at all. No announcement, press release or filing recording that change was retrieved - the single most reputationally loaded executive in the company’s history left the masthead with no public statement, and a reader comparing a 2023 write-up to the 2026 site will find a different leadership team and no explanation. Vancil is described by the company as having "20+ years in sales, marketing, and network marketing travel experience," which indicates a third travel-MLM veteran, but the specific prior companies could not be established: his professional profile is robots-disallowed to the tooling used and no employer is named anywhere in the company’s own materials.
No ownership overlap between PlanNet Marketing, Inc. and the affiliated host travel agency was found: different states, different founders about 23 years apart, no shared officer or director on any roster retrieved, no parent-subsidiary relationship in any public filing. That negative is itself unverified - neither state publishes shareholder registers for private corporations, neither company is an SEC filer, and a silent minority interest in either direction would not appear in anything searched. The relationship that is established is commercial: PlanNet pays up to $135 of commission on a $179.95 fee it never receives, and up to $36 a month of a $39.95 fee it never receives, out of a marketing agreement neither party publishes. And the dependency runs one way. Policies §11: "If an IR is terminated by or ineligible to work with our travel partner, the IR will be immediately terminated from PlanNet Marketing." There is no reciprocal clause anywhere in the document.
Registered address
Atlanta, Georgia, USA
A private Georgia corporation with no filed accounts, no audited figures and no revenue disclosure of any kind. The leading direct-selling data aggregator publishes a placeholder of $1.00 for every year from 2020 to 2025, which means it has no data at all - no revenue figure for this company is verifiable and none is used in this report. The Georgia Secretary of State corporate record could not be retrieved through the tooling used (the eCorp search is a JavaScript-gated application and direct requests were refused at the egress proxy), so the control number and registered agent are unestablished; the Georgia domicile and the incorporation date are corroborated by the BBB profile and by the governing-law clause in the Policies. The second entity in this structure - the affiliated host travel agency that actually sells and services the travel-agent product - is a separate Florida company with no demonstrated ownership overlap, and PlanNet says so itself: its own compliance bulletin tells representatives the two businesses have "COMPLETELY SEPARATE RULES for our completely separate companies" and routes questions to two different mailboxes. Neither company files accounts. The contract that moves money from the Florida company to the Georgia company - the only possible source of funding for PlanNet’s entire commission schedule - is published by neither.
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? |
WATCH
PlanNet Marketing, Inc., a private Georgia corporation incorporated 15 July 2015, founded and led by Donald Bradley. No filed accounts, no audited figures, no revenue disclosure. The travel product is sold by a separate Florida company with no demonstrated ownership overlap.
|
| What does it really cost? |
CONCERN
$19.95 to join and $19.95 a month to PlanNet - $259.35 in year one. But matrix qualification, every builder rank and the commission-qualification rule effectively require the travel product too, at $179.95 plus $39.95 a month. Realistic year one $918.70; thereafter $718.80.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes, annually, in English and Spanish, with a mandatory presentation rule. It reports 92.50% of representatives at the base rank averaging $40.27 and 78.94% earning no commission at all. It publishes averages and no median, and names only PlanNet’s $239.40 of cost.
|
| Does the plan pay anything on travel? |
RED
No. Eight of eight commission lines trigger on enrollment or on subscription persistence. Travel commission is paid by the affiliated host travel agency, out of supplier commission, entirely outside PlanNet’s plan.
|
| Regulatory action against the company, ever? |
OK
None found in eleven years - no FTC action, no state Attorney General action, no class action located, no self-regulatory case. Note the search limits: federal dockets were not searched, and the contract imposes a class-action waiver.
|
| Who funds the commissions? |
RED
Not PlanNet, out of its own margin. It pays up to $135 of a $179.95 fee and up to $36 a month of a $39.95 fee that it never receives. All of it must come from an inter-company marketing agreement neither party publishes.
|
| Can you get your money back? |
OK
From PlanNet, yes: 90 days on initial fees, 30 days rolling on monthly fees, cancel any time for any reason. The travel side runs a separate 30-day clock on the larger sum. App fees and event fees are non-refundable.
|
| Merchant play or miner play? |
RED
Miner, without qualification. There is no retail customer category, no customer price, no retail volume rule and no commissionable volume at all - only subscription events. Every rank is qualified by headcount.
|
What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Rep only, no travel-agent product, one year | 5 ITA sales a year $239.40 of annual fees at $50 per personal sale - 4.79 sales, one every ten weeks, sustained forever |
| Rep plus own travel-agent product, year one | 18.4 ITA sales $918.70 of first-year cost against $50 per personal sale, with no matrix income at all |
| Same, with a full first matrix level | 15.5 ITA sales three level-one Active ITAs pay 3 x $4 = $12/month = $144/year, which is 60% of the PlanNet fee and 20% of the combined cost |
| Gold Builder - nine or more Active ITAs | nine personal enrollments 9 x $50 = $450 once, plus 9 x $4 x 12 = $432 of matrix - $882 against $918.70, still $36.70 short in year one |
Read this twice
The arithmetic here is unusually clean because the plan pays flat dollar amounts against subscription events rather than percentages of a commissionable volume, so a participant can compute exactly what each event pays. What they cannot compute is what they will be paid, because the matrix mechanic that decides it is not published. The costs are published on both sides and are not in dispute: $19.95 to enrol with PlanNet and $19.95 a month thereafter, which the company’s own income disclosure states as "between $19.95 and $239.40 per year just to stay enrolled"; and $179.95 plus $39.95 a month to the affiliated host travel agency for the product that matrix qualification, every builder rank and the commission-qualification rule in Policies §8.1 all effectively require. That is $918.70 in year one and $718.80 in every year after. Against it, the 2024 income disclosure reports that 92.50% of representatives sit at the base Rep rank with average annual earnings of $40.27, and that 78.94% earned no commission or override at all. On PlanNet’s fees alone the base-rank average participant is about $199 down for the year; on the realistic basis they are about $679 down. Two things are worth stating fairly on the other side. The $19.95 is not a chain-letter payment - PlanNet pays no commission out of its own subscription revenue, so that fee genuinely buys back office, tracking, payment processing and a replicated site. And the travel-agent product is real: a person who books travel through it can be paid supplier commission by the affiliated host travel agency, which is income the PlanNet plan neither pays nor counts, and which is excluded from every figure above because no advisor split is published on PlanNet’s side of the wall. The Gold Builder line is the one to sit with. A participant who personally enrols nine paying travel agents - a level of production almost nobody in the disclosure achieved - approximately breaks even in year one, before a single event ticket, flight or advertisement.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
The unit here is a subscriber, not a traveler, because the plan pays nothing whatever on travel: the company’s own compensation document contains eight payment lines and every one of them is triggered by an enrollment or by a subscription still being paid, with $0.00 payable on any holiday actually booked. Four dollars a month per active subscriber, through a three-wide nine-level matrix, is the only recurring line in the plan and it is what this slider models. The one-time $50 direct commission, the $25 sponsor match and the $10 upline bonus are excluded because they are paid for signing somebody up rather than for selling anything, and putting them on a commission slider would model recruitment as though it were sales. The cost line is $59.90 a month, being the $19.95 representative fee plus the $39.95 monthly the plan is built around a participant also paying to the separate travel company; realistic year one is $918.70. For calibration, use the company’s own 2024 income disclosure rather than this slider: 78.94% of representatives earned nothing at all, and the 92.50% at base rank averaged $40.27 for the year. Your own subscription cost of $59.9/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
What the same capability costs on the open market, at real 2026 prices. The capability being bought here is twofold: a host-agency affiliation that lets a person book travel and be paid commission, and - for the household end - the ability to book travel well. The first is available from named host agencies with published economics and no recruitment layer. The second is available for nothing. The affiliated host travel agency’s own advisor commission split is not published on PlanNet’s side of the wall, so the one number that would let a buyer compare the two offers directly is missing from the comparison, and that gap is the company’s to close.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| PlanNet Rep license - $19.95 plus $19.95/month, $259.35 in year one | No marketing layer at all - nothing about being a travel advisor requires one | $0 |
| The travel-agent product - $179.95 plus $39.95/month, $659.35 in year one | Fora Travel, a named host agency not graded on this site: flat annual fee, 70/30 advisor split rising to 80/20 at $300k of annual sales and 90/10 at $2m | $299/yr |
| Entry-level industry credential - not included in either fee | The Travel Institute TAP test | $95 |
| Professional certification - not included | The Travel Institute CTA (Certified Travel Associate) | $450-$550 |
| Cruise-specific credentials - not included | CLIA ACC, MCC, ECC or TAE credentials | $59-$219 each |
| Trade accreditation - not included | ASTA Verified Travel Advisor | $399 member |
| Agent-rate hotel access as a household benefit | Google Flights or Kayak metasearch, full-market fare comparison and price tracking | $0 |
| Packaged cruise, hotel and car through the platform | Costco Travel on an existing membership, with member rebates | $0 extra |
| Fare deals presented as a membership benefit | Going, the flight-deal alert service, free tier | $0 |
| Someone accountable when the trip breaks | A traditional retail travel agent, licensed and bonded | $0-$100 planning fee |
| A resale price floor - Policies §4.5 forbids advertising below "the highest company published price" | Setting your own prices and your own service fees | $0 |
| Total as sold $918.70 in year one, $718.80 a year thereafter |
Total, built yourself $394 in year one - the TAP test plus a full year of Fora Travel |
Price-to-value
A person can take the entry-level industry proficiency test at $95, join Fora Travel at $299 a year and be a credentialed, hosted, commission-earning travel advisor for $394 in year one - about 43% of the $918.70 an active participant pays here, with a published commission split, a named host with published economics and no recruitment obligation of any kind. And the comparison understates the gap in one important way: enrollment through PlanNet is optional. A person who simply wants to be a home-based travel agent can buy the $179.95 product from the affiliated host travel agency directly and never pay PlanNet the $19.95 a month at all. The only reason to pay PlanNet is to participate in the recruitment plan. For the household that just wants cheaper holidays, the answer is cheaper still: metasearch, an existing warehouse-club membership and a free fare-alert service cost nothing, and the travel-side "profit guarantee" - a refund of the difference if year-one earnings and savings do not exceed fees, subject to unstated conditions - is the seller’s own acknowledgement that most buyers will not clear the bar.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Product-first joiner
buys the travel-agent product for the household discount, enrols nobody or almost nobody
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 2% | −$380 |
| 6 mo | 3% | −$620 |
| 1 yr | 4% | −$920 |
| 3 yr | 4% | −$2,360 |
| 5 yr | 4% | −$3,790 |
Part-time builder
10 hrs/wk, sells the travel-agent product to friends and family, reaches Bronze or Silver
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 6% | −$300 |
| 6 mo | 9% | −$480 |
| 1 yr | 12% | −$451 |
| 3 yr | 14% | −$1,300 |
| 5 yr | 15% | −$2,100 |
Full-time recruiter
30+ hrs/wk, building toward Gold Builder and the Director ladder
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 3% | −$900 |
| 6 mo | 6% | −$1,400 |
| 1 yr | 9% | −$2,200 |
| 3 yr | 11% | −$5,600 |
| 5 yr | 12% | −$8,800 |
Methodology note. These are modeled outcome ranges, not claims, not company figures and not predictions about any individual. ANCHORED to published numbers: the $19.95 enrollment and $19.95 monthly fee; the $179.95 and $39.95 charged by the affiliated host travel agency; the $918.70 first-year and $718.80 steady-state cost basis; the $50 Direct Sales Commission, the $25 Sponsor Match, the $4-per-level matrix across nine levels, the two-Active-ITA matrix qualification, the nine-Active-ITA Gold Builder threshold and the 100-Active-ITA ONE-STAR requirement; and to the 2024 income disclosure as read at second hand - 92.50% of representatives at the base rank averaging $40.27, 78.94% earning no commission or override at all, and a low figure of $0 in every rank. MODELED by us: the cohort definitions, which the company does not segment; the share of each cohort in cumulative profit at each horizon; the retention assumptions inside the matrix; and every expense beyond the two subscription streams, because neither company publishes an expense figure. EXCLUDED deliberately: any supplier commission a participant earns on travel they actually book. That income is real, it is paid by the affiliated host travel agency out of supplier commission, and it has nothing to do with PlanNet’s plan - but no advisor split is published on PlanNet’s side of the wall, so putting a number on it would be invention. A participant who genuinely sells travel sits better than these medians, and the honest way to say so is that the part of this business that can make money is the part PlanNet does not pay for.
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
151Not one commission line pays for a sale to a non-participant
2The plan pays $0.00 on any travel actually booked
3Every rank is qualified by headcount, not by sales
4There is a named rank for the case where your customers are your recruits
5An unhedged public earnings guarantee
6The income disclosure omits more than half the cost
778.94% of representatives earned no commission or override at all
8Averages, and no median
9The contract that funds the entire commission plan is undisclosed
10A one-way termination trigger held by a third party
11Total downline forfeiture, plus a 12-month re-entry ban
12Commissions are clawed back from the upline when a recruit refunds
13Confidential arbitration in Atlanta with a blanket class waiver
14A resale price floor
15Twenty-plus pages of Policies with no word about seller-of-travel obligations
Green flags
91The product behind the product is real and it functions
2Zero securities exposure
3A published annual income disclosure that reports its own zero-earner rate
4Mandatory disclosure presentation, with six enumerated claim categories
5A genuinely low entry price with no inventory of any kind
6A 90-day refund on initial fees and 30 days rolling on monthly fees
7No commission is paid out of PlanNet’s own subscription revenue
8A clean regulatory record for the company itself, in eleven years
9It says what it is, and it says the two companies are separate
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Any commission line at all that pays on travel actually booked, however small. A retail-travel override even at 1% would be the first non-recruitment dollar in the plan and would move comp further than anything else the company could do - and a genuine retail customer category, with a customer price and a customer commission, would move product with it.
- Publication of the marketing agreement with the affiliated host travel agency, or even the per-agent allowance, its term and its termination rights, together with a stated matrix compression or breakage rule. Those two disclosures would convert the company’s economics from opaque to legible and would move payout and terms materially.
- A median in the income disclosure, a combined cost basis that includes the travel-side fees, a stated definition of "active," removal or full qualification of the $1,000 ONE-STAR guarantee with an on-page disclosure link, and explicit seller-of-travel guidance in the Policies naming the states that register the activity.
Downward
- Any FTC, state Attorney General or self-regulatory proceeding naming PlanNet Marketing itself - none exists today, and its absence is doing real work in the grade.
- Evidence that a material share of "Active ITAs" are also Reps. The plan’s own Gold Builder PLUS rank implies the company tracks precisely this figure; if it is high, comp falls further and the retail defense disappears entirely.
- A reduction or withdrawal of the undisclosed per-agent allowance from the affiliated host travel agency, which would make the plan unfundable; or any supplier terminating that agency as a "card mill," the fate a prior venture of a former officer met in 2007.
Grade is D-, composite 3.665. A real host-agency affiliation, a real 90-day refund and a published zero-earner rate - attached to a plan that pays nothing whatever on travel.
Start with what is real, because it is more than the category usually offers. The affiliation behind the offer is a long-established host agency with roughly 90,000 advisors, genuine supplier relationships and a working commission back office; a buyer gets something that functions in the real economy. Entry to PlanNet costs $19.95 and $19.95 a month, with no kit, no inventory and no autoship. Initial fees carry a 90-day money-back guarantee and monthly fees a rolling 30-day one, cancellation is available at any time for any reason, and there is a 60-day grace period that preserves the downline. The company publishes an income disclosure every year in two languages, reports its own zero-earner rate of 78.94%, prints a low figure of $0 in every rank, and requires representatives to present the document any time the plan is discussed at all. It pays no commission out of its own subscription revenue. And in eleven years there has been no FTC action, no state Attorney General action, no class action located and no self-regulatory case against it.
Then the plan, which is where this ends up at D-. The watchlist filed this as a "recruiting arm attached to a host travel agency" whose "two-entity structure obscures economics." That is confirmed, and it is sharper than filed: the plan pays nothing whatever on travel. Eight of eight commission lines fire on enrollment or on subscription persistence - $50 for selling a travel-agent business, $25 to the sponsor of the Rep who sold it, $4 a month across nine matrix levels, a 10% Gold Builder match, a $10 Gold Builder bonus, up to $50 in Director sales bonus, $500 to $100,000 a month for holding headcount, and a $1,000 guarantee at ONE-STAR. One rank is defined as nine or more Active ITAs "who are also Reps." Director qualification is 100 people, not a dollar of travel. Book a hundred holidays and enrol nobody and this plan pays $0.00. The correction to the premise is that the structure does not so much obscure the economics as relocate them - and once relocated the arithmetic is visible and looks worse: up to $36 of every $39.95 monthly fee is payable into a 3x9 matrix, and the company pays up to $135 of a $179.95 fee it never receives, out of an inter-company agreement neither party publishes.
The participant numbers close it. On the 2024 disclosure - read at second hand, because the document is robots-blocked at origin and archive access was refused, and that limitation is published in full below - 92.50% of representatives sit at the base rank with average annual earnings of $40.27, and 78.94% earned nothing at all. The disclosure names $239.40 of cost and omits roughly $659 a year paid to the other entity, so realistic year one is $918.70 against a published cost basis about a third that size. A person can take the entry-level industry test at $95, join Fora Travel at $299 a year and be a credentialed, hosted advisor for $394 with a published commission split and no recruitment layer. And the term that should decide it for anyone weighing the downline as an asset is Policies §11: lose eligibility with the travel partner and the PlanNet business terminates immediately, taking the organization with it. A third party the representative cannot arbitrate against holds the switch, and nothing in the document runs the other way.
If you want to be a travel agent, buy the travel agency and skip the marketing company
Enrollment through PlanNet is optional - the host agency takes agents directly. A person who wants the affiliation can pay its $179.95 and $39.95 a month and never pay the $19.95 a month at all. The only thing the $19.95 buys is a position in the recruitment plan, and the recruitment plan is the part of this file that grades badly. Before doing even that, price it against a named host with published economics: Fora Travel at $299 a year, flat, with a 70/30 split rising to 80/20 at $300,000 of annual sales.
Ask for the one document that decides whether the plan is fundable
PlanNet pays up to $135 of a $179.95 fee and up to $36 a month of a $39.95 fee that it never collects. Every dollar of that must come from the affiliated host travel agency under a marketing agreement neither company publishes. Ask your sponsor what the per-agent allowance is, how long the agreement runs and on what notice it can be terminated. Nobody in the field will be able to tell you, and that is the answer: the plan you are being recruited into is funded by a contract you are not allowed to read.
Do the $40.27-against-$918.70 sum before you enrol
Both halves are the company’s own material. The base rank, where 92.50% of representatives sit, averages $40.27 a year, and 78.94% of representatives earn nothing at all. The realistic cost of an active position is $918.70 in year one and $718.80 thereafter. Write down the specific reason you expect not to be the typical case, and be honest about whether it is a plan or a hope. Then read Policies §11 and §10.1 together and decide whether an asset a third party can extinguish is one you want to spend five years building.
If travel is genuinely the interest, sell travel
The credential path is public and cheap: the entry-level proficiency test at $95, cruise-line credentials from $59, a professional certification for a few hundred dollars, and a named host at $299 a year that pays a published split on every booking. That route pays on holidays sold rather than on people enrolled, requires no downline, has no rank ladder, no re-entry ban and no clause letting anyone else close your business. It also lets you advertise your own prices, which Policies §4.5 does not.
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.
- PlanNet Marketing Statement of Policies and Procedures (PDF) - effective 1 September 2015, revised 24 April 2025; served directly by the company
PlanNet Marketing Statement of Policies and Procedures, retrieved in full from a verbatim third-party mirror because the company’s own /Portals/ path is robots-disallowed - §2.4 monthly renewal, §3 mandatory income-disclosure presentation and the six claim categories, §4.2 prior-approval regime, §4.3 trademark restriction, §4.4 online and social rules, §4.5 price floor, §5.3.1 and §5.4 cross-sponsoring, §5.8 contractor status, §8.1 commission qualification, §8.5 refunds and clawback, §9.3 and §9.4 arbitration, class waiver and governing law, §10.1 cancellation and downline forfeiture, §10.2 grace period, §11 automatic termination on loss of eligibility with the travel partner
Not established by this document: The report reads this document from a third-party mirror; the company's own /Portals/ copy is in fact retrievable and is cited here instead, which is the primary source. Section numbering in the retrieved 2025 revision (e.g. §5.12 Succession) does not map one-to-one onto every section number quoted in the report.
- PlanNet Marketing Downloads hub - Policies and Procedures, Comp Plan, IR Agreement, Privacy Policy and Income Disclosure Statement with revision dates
- PlanNet Marketing Compensation Plan (PDF) - $50 Direct Sales Commission, $25 (50%) Sponsor Match, $10 Gold Builder Bonus, $4 monthly matrix payout through nine levels on the $39.95 fee, the ONE-STAR $1,000 guarantee, Founder Director and the Presidential Ring thresholds
PlanNet Marketing Compensation Plan document, same mirror - the $50 Direct Sales Commission, $25 Sponsor Match, $4-per-level 3x9 matrix and its two-Active-ITA qualification, Gold Builder and Gold Builder PLUS definitions, Director qualification, Founder Director, Presidential Ring thresholds and the ONE-STAR $1,000 guarantee
- PlanNet Marketing Compensation Plan for the U.S. - web edition, with the Gold Builder and Director qualification definitions and the Director Monthly Bonus chart
- PlanNet Marketing About Us - corporate management team (Don Bradley, Founder/Chairman/CEO; Duane Vancil, President; LeAnn Troeckler, COO; Amanda Restivo, VP Compliance) and the two-opportunity description
PlanNet Marketing company website, 2026 - About Us (officer roster, founder biography), the opportunity page, the compensation-plan page ($179.95 and $39.95 pricing, weekly payouts, ONE-STAR through FIVE-STAR Director sales bonus, the $1,000 guarantee), the product page (travel-side 30-day money-back, profit and best-price guarantees) and the income-disclosure landing page
Not established by this document: The product page carrying the travel-side 30-day money-back, profit and best-price guarantees timed out on retrieval and is not cited; those guarantees are the host travel agency's terms in any case, and that company is separately graded on this site.
- PlanNet Marketing - The Opportunity page
- PlanNet Marketing - Income Disclosure landing page
- PlanNet Marketing Inc. Income Disclosure Statement - current edition (2025): 92.52% at the base Rep rank averaging $38.15, $0.00 low in every rank, 83.96% earning no commission or override, top band averaging $1,088,633.37, and the stated $19.95–$239.40 annual cost basis
PlanNet Marketing 2024 Income Disclosure Statement - 92.50% at the base Rep rank, $40.27 average annual earnings there, 78.94% earning no commission or override, $0 low figure in every rank, a top band averaging $1,023,071.08, and the company’s own stated cost basis of $19.95 to $239.40 a year. Read at second hand: the document is served as an image under a robots-disallowed path and archive retrieval was refused at the session proxy. Corroborated by a travel-trade publication reading an adjacent edition at 79.08% earning nothing, $41.64 average at entry level and 93% at entry level
Not established by this document: The report's figures (92.50% at Rep, $40.27 average, 78.94% earning nothing, top band $1,023,071.08) are the 2024 edition. The company's /Portals/ path is in fact retrievable and now serves the 2025 edition, whose figures differ. The 2024 PDF itself was not recovered, so the report's exact numbers remain second-hand.
- PlanNet Marketing Compliance Corner #69 - the company's own reading of the 2023 Income Disclosure Statement: "the 'average' Rep in 2023 earned $41.64 for the whole year"
- "Travel MLMs: What You Need To Know" - host-agency trade publication quoting the PlanNet IDS at 79.08% earning nothing, $41.64 average at Rep level and 93% of membership at that level
- PlanNet Marketing Compliance Corner - "we have COMPLETELY SEPARATE RULES for our completely separate companies," with the two separate compliance mailboxes named
PlanNet Marketing compliance bulletin, plannetnow.com - "we have COMPLETELY SEPARATE RULES for our completely separate companies," with separate compliance mailboxes for the two businesses
- PlanNet Marketing Compliance Corner - "Two Separate Companies - in Partnership": Reps do not earn travel commissions and Agents do not build teams
- USPTO trademark record, serial 86813930 - PlanNet Marketing, Inc. (filed 9 November 2015)
USPTO trademark owner record, PlanNet Marketing, Inc. - serials 86813930 (9 Nov 2015), 97368847 (18 Apr 2022) and 99790107 (27 Apr 2026), the most recent describing the service as "Multi-level marketing services"
- USPTO trademark record, serial 97368847 - PlanNet Marketing, Inc. (filed 18 April 2022)
- USPTO trademark record, serial 99790107 - PlanNet Marketing, Inc., "Multi-level marketing services" (filed 27 April 2026)
- Better Business Bureau profile - PlanNet Marketing, 260 Peachtree St NW Ste 2200, Atlanta (A+, accredited since 23 May 2019, incorporated 15 July 2015, business start 15 October 2015)
Better Business Bureau profile and complaints file - A+ rating, accredited since 23 May 2019, incorporation 15 July 2015 and business start 15 October 2015, four complaints in three years and one closed in twelve months, including a $4,512 unprocessed trip refund lodged against PlanNet despite PlanNet having no role in travel
- Better Business Bureau complaints file - PlanNet Marketing
- YTB International, Inc. Form 8-K, 5 June 2012 - appointment of Andrew Cauthen as President, CEO and Director effective 31 May 2012, with his prior service as President and COO of YTB 2004–2009 and of YTB Marketing 2009–2010
Travel Agent Central reporting and the public record on YTB International, Inc. - Cauthen as President and COO 2004-2010 and President, CEO and Director effective 31 May 2012; the California Attorney General’s $25m pyramid action of August 2008 settled for $1m on 14 May 2009; the Illinois action settled May 2011 for $150,000 with no admission of guilt; a major cruise line terminating YTB in 2007 as a "card mill"; and the Chapter 11 filing of 1 March 2013
Not established by this document: The Illinois settlement was entered 7 April 2011 and announced 12 April 2011, not May 2011 as the report states. The bankruptcy docket itself (S.D. Ill. case 3:13-bk-30325 and companion cases) is not on CourtListener and PACER was not reachable from this session; the Form 8-K and the company's own release are cited as the primary record of the 1 March 2013 filing.
- "YTB brings back Cauthen to fill CEO post" - Travel Weekly
- "Brown Sues To Topple Online Pyramid Scheme" - California Attorney General press release on the August 2008 YTB pyramid action seeking $15m in penalties and $10m in restitution
- Stipulated Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction, People v. YourTravelBiz.com, Case No. BC395627 (PDF) - the $1,000,000 settlement entered 14 May 2009 without admission of liability
- Final Judgment and Consent Decree between the State of Illinois and YTB International, Inc. et al. - $150,000 civil restitution, no admission of wrongdoing (filed as Exhibit 10.1 to YTB's Form 8-K)
- YTB International, Inc. Form 8-K - Illinois Attorney General consent decree entered by the Champaign County Circuit Court on 7 April 2011
- "RCCL ends relationship with YTB" - Royal Caribbean Cruises terminating YTB Travel Network effective 9 November 2007 as part of its action against firms "in the card-mill business"
- YTB International, Inc. Form 8-K, Item 1.03 - Chapter 11 petition filed 1 March 2013 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Illinois, East St. Louis
- YTB International press release, 1 March 2013 - "Files to Reorganize; Seeks to Emerge on a Sounder Footing", quoting President and CEO Andrew Cauthen
- "Evolution Travel Review: Paycation travel pyramid clone" - BehindMLM
BehindMLM reviews covering the Paycation Travel and Traverus lineage and the statement that travel commissions paid to agents have nothing to do with PlanNet Marketing. The PlanNet review’s URL slug contains the affiliated host travel agency’s name and is therefore withheld under this site’s naming rule; the Evolution Travel review, which carries the Paycation lineage, is public and was used directly
Not established by this document: The BehindMLM review of PlanNet Marketing is deliberately not linked: its URL slug names the affiliated host travel agency, which is separately graded on this site, and the no-cross-reference rule forbids it. The same rule excludes a third-party PDF mirror of an earlier PlanNet income disclosure whose filename carries that company's name.
- "Paycation Review: Another Traverus MLM reboot?" - BehindMLM, on the Paycation / Traverus lineage
- Fora Travel - advisor joining page and published commission model
Open-market 2026 pricing - Fora Travel’s published joining fees and 70/30 to 90/10 advisor splits; The Travel Institute TAP, CTA and CTC pricing; CLIA and ASTA credential pricing; travel-trade host-agency comparison coverage; Costco Travel and free metasearch and fare-alert services; and the BBB National Programs self-regulatory case index, including the travel-sector monitoring inquiry into JIFU Travel, LLC at Case #205-2025
Not established by this document: The Travel Institute TAP, CTA and CTC fee schedule and the CLIA and ASTA credential prices could not be retrieved from source in this session; no price page for either body surfaced, so no figure is linked.
- DSSRC Case #205-2025 - Monitoring Inquiry, JIFU Travel, LLC (closed 18 March 2025)
- DSSRC case and closure index - BBB National Programs self-regulatory decisions library
What we could not get
- The Income Disclosure Statement in primary form. It demonstrably exists, is current and is public, but every figure in this report is secondary: the PDF and the JPEG the company renders it as both sit under a robots-disallowed path, direct requests to the origin were refused at the session egress proxy, and web.archive.org was refused by the same policy - the availability API confirmed a snapshot exists but the body could not be pulled. Whether the document publishes a median anywhere, how it defines "active," and how it treats people who joined and quit inside the year are all unknown.
- The marketing agreement between PlanNet Marketing and the affiliated host travel agency - the per-agent allowance, its rate, its term, its exclusivity and its termination rights. This is the most consequential single gap in the file: it is the only possible source of funding for the entire commission plan, and neither party publishes it. Nor could any ownership overlap between the two companies be established in either direction; none was found, but neither state publishes shareholder registers for private corporations.
- Whether the matrix applies compression or retains breakage. The plan document retrieved states no rule. This one unstated mechanic swings the realized payout on the $39.95 monthly fee between roughly 10% and roughly 90%, and without it no participant can compute their own expected value.
- PlanNet Marketing, Inc.’s Georgia control number and registered agent. The Georgia Secretary of State eCorp search is a JavaScript-gated application and direct requests were refused at the egress proxy; an attempted document retrieval returned an unrelated entity. The Georgia domicile and the incorporation date are corroborated by other records, but the control number is not established.
- Any revenue figure for PlanNet Marketing. No filed accounts exist, the company is not an SEC filer, and the leading direct-selling aggregator publishes a placeholder of $1.00 for every year from 2020 to 2025 - meaning it has no data. No revenue figure is cited anywhere in this report because none is verifiable.
- Federal dockets. CourtListener is robots-disallowed to the tooling used and PACER was not accessed, so "no class action or private litigation found" is an open-web search result only. A filed but unreported action would not appear. The blanket class-action waiver in Policies §9.3 also means the absence of collective litigation is partly an artifact of the contract.
- Whether the ONE-STAR "$1,000 guarantee" is funded by any mechanism, what conditions attach to it in the full plan document, and whether it has ever been paid as a top-up. Relatedly, the Director ladder above SIX-STAR: the company’s current page describes ONE- through FIVE-STAR, the income disclosure names a SIX-STAR, and the tiers above that come from a third-party tabulation rather than a primary document.
- The circumstances of Andrew Cauthen’s departure from the President and CFO role - date, reason, and whether he retains any board seat or equity - and Duane Vancil’s prior employers, which the company describes only as "20+ years in sales, marketing, and network marketing travel experience." Also unestablished: the affiliated host travel agency’s advisor commission split and whether its onboarding covers state seller-of-travel duties, neither of which could be researched without naming it. Separately, no state seller-of-travel registry could be reached through the tooling used - that is "could not retrieve," and this report asserts nothing about any entity’s registration status in any state.
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
Looking at something else?
Enter any company name or website. If a report exists it opens instantly; if not, we start one.
PlanNet Marketing - frequently asked
QIs PlanNet Marketing a pyramid scheme?
QHow much does PlanNet Marketing actually cost?
QWhat do PlanNet Marketing representatives actually earn?
QDo you have to join through PlanNet Marketing to become a travel agent?
QWhat happens if you quit PlanNet Marketing?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - PlanNet Marketing’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
Tell me if this grade changes
PlanNet Marketing is graded D- as of August 1, 2026. Grades move when the evidence moves - a new income disclosure, a regulatory action, a rewritten compensation plan. Leave your address and you will get one email if this one does.
One email when the grade moves, and nothing else. We will never use your address to promote an income opportunity of any kind, we do not sell, rent or share the list, and it is stored on our own infrastructure rather than with any company graded here. Unsubscribe removes everything.
Corrections
Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from PlanNet Marketing than from a reader.
Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and say in the report that it was corrected and when. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.
This address reaches a person, not a form. We do not require a takedown demand, an NDA or a lawyer to accept a correction, and we do not remove a report because a company disputes its conclusion - only because the underlying facts turn out to be wrong.