By Chris Emejuru, 2508052

I was surprised to see this announcement when I logged into the SFI home page after 6am on August 1.

Surprised, as there was no previous indication that I was aware of that this would happen. I was like, so soon? So the FDM that was touted as the new “flagship product” had failed to generate enough profits after a few months?

I went through my usual routine for the first day of a month, with a couple of exceptions. No more means of entering for the Daily Grand drawing. Nor was there the link for rating SFI and my personal advisor for the prior month.

I renewed my rank with a slight difference. Instead of the FDM subscriptions of Basic, Premium and Premium+, costing $2.99, $5.99, $8.99, there were now “standalone” ZCredit packs of 50 (Bronze), 100 (Silver) and 200 (Gold), costing $2.99, $5.99, $9.99. The FDM subscription page still came up when I clicked the rank upgrade link, but on clicking the Premium+ option, I got taken to the TripleClicks product page for the 200 ZCredit Gold pack. At Rewardical.com, the top rank also costs more at 5,000 Rewardicals for Gold, as against 4,495 Rewardicals for Premium+. Mr Carson explained later at the Forum though that these ZCredit packs were simply for those that wish to play games, so are not membership ranks per se.

I could still play my usual games. But no SFI badges were displayed on the home page (though they appeared days later, with my 3 rank badges showing funny figures). No more SFI Badge Quest, so the 2,000 Rewardicals I was awarded on August 1 for retaining SFI Grand Master rank in Badge Quest would not be awarded again. No more Daily Grand entries means the 10 to 50 Rewardicals I usually won daily won’t be forthcoming anymore.

The change comes with one noted reduction in value: Premium+ members used to get 4 Rewardicals per ZCredit spent. Now it has been reduced to 3 Rewardicals. Probably this is because there are now 200 Rewardicals in the equivalent Gold package instead of 150, that would fetch 600 Rewardicals in prizes just like before.

Few days after the development, it seemed to me it was not a complete merger in the right sense of the word. This is because GreatLife did not acquire ownership of SFI domains like TripleClicks.com, Rewardical.com or even sfimg.com itself. Plus SFI’s digital currencies like ZCredit, TCurrency and Rewardical will most likely not be usable at GreatLife. A real merger would have meant doing the same things under a different management or ownership, but that was not the case; SFI’s handling of affiliates simply came to an abrupt end instead.

Although claiming to be too old at 64 years to continue managing SFI affiliates, SFI President Gery Carson did say that Eager Zebra Games (TripleClicks.com) and Rewardical.com would still be managed by him. So what exactly did he mean by “merger?”

It boiled down to sending affiliates over to GreatLife. “Instead of promoting SFI, fun.money, or other SFI-related product, you’ll be marketing GreatLife products and websites,” according to Gery Carson. Each person’s SFI and marketing links will automatically go to their GreatLife account. SFI affiliates were advised to join GreatLife by August 8 to avoid forfeiting their downlines, paying for the initial monthly membership (costing $49) with Rewardicals. Initially it was 19,000 Rewardicals but on August 4, I saw this had moved up to 26,000 Rewardicals (for those residing outside the US). After the first month though, each person would of course need to re-qualify their GreatLife membership by paying $20 each month.

Heralded with the claim, “We’re taking SFI to the next level!” in November 2024, SFI’s owner began quitting affiliate business, wanting to move everyone to be under their account at another company called Wealthy Affiliate. Commissions payment by SFI ended same month. When the plan did not go as intended, because it turned out that Wealthy Affiliate prohibited members living in some countries, GreatLife was brought in as another option some weeks later. Their own shortcomings included being too expensive, $49 paid in advance the first month, $20 other months, no free membership like with SFI at the time.

My post on the Q & A thread at the SFI Forum

For those that did not move to Wealthy Affiliate or GreatLife, SFI introduced Fun.Money or FDM earlier this year, with its 4-in-1 offerings of Eager Zebra Games, ECommergy, Elevation Mall and SFI. Now with the demise of FDM, Gery Carson’s response to a question at the SFI Forum was “ECommergy and Elevation Mall are planned to continue under GreatLife's management, but some of the finer details are still being worked out.” He also noted that GreatLife does not allow members from some countries.

Will anyone that did not join GreatLife few months ago have a compelling reason to do so now? Time will tell.

At the Q & A Forum thread created to discuss the change, responses were plenty and varied. As expected, there were lots of questions. Some people were understanding and appreciated Gery Carson for what he’d accomplished with SFI over the years. Some asked after their Bit Bank funds, their Rewardicals, their SFI badges, how to play the games via GreatLife, about ECommergy. (Lucky for me I had cashed out my Bit Bank funds already, so no extra steps for me there.) Some reported problems, like not seeing the option to purchase the GreatLife membership using Rewardicals, or the option being there but not working. Gery Carson noted that GreatLife had a list of countries they shipped to, and Egypt and Nigeria might not be on the list; some said Nigeria was on their list. Some people that had GreatLife accounts mistakenly purchased the suggested “VIP membership” with Rewardicals, and Gery eventually told one of those that the Rewardicals would be refunded but they should put up a support ticket.

Someone in the UK made a bitter post accusing Gery of greediness and not considering others in constantly changing things, as he was now going to lose all he’d invested in SFI. But it appeared the post might have been deactivated as I only saw it being quoted in another’s response. Another said the merger was a hurried decision, but Gery explained they’d been planning it for months and had considered several things. It was then that I realized that the new ZCredit packs—although presented as replacing FDM membership ranks—were not membership ranks at all, just allowed people to play games with their ZCredits.