Editor’s Note – September 2026
Elite Downline Builder is no longer operating. I shut the project down in October 2023 after several successful years during which it grew to more than 1,500 members.
I decided to close it because I had never completely resolved the payment-processing problems associated with this type of site, and I had also moved on to other projects, particularly the development and promotion of my Get More Sales marketing funnel.
I’ve substantially updated this article to remove outdated promotional material and links while retaining the original account of how Elite Downline Builder developed and the results it achieved, particularly during 2020.
The article below is therefore best read as a historical account of the project, rather than a current review or recommendation.
I’ve just looked back at the sales statistics for Elite Downline Builder for May 2020, and it was the best month the business had experienced since EDB launched in September 2018.
To understand how that happened, it’s worth looking back at how Elite Downline Builder developed.
From Launch to a Sudden Stop
When Elite Downline Builder launched in September 2018, sales came exclusively through PayPal.
There was a nice spike at launch, followed by a regular trickle of upgrades and purchases in the months that followed.
However, I had become concerned about relying on PayPal and, after some hesitation, I decided to remove the PayPal buttons from the site.
The result was immediate.
Sales dried up.
Even so, I continued to believe in what I was trying to achieve with Elite Downline Builder and kept developing the project.
That turned out to be important, because the site was eventually transformed into something rather different from the original version.
The “Top 5” Concept Behind Elite Downline Builder
Elite Downline Builder was based on ideas I had originally developed on my other site, Top5Programs.com.
The basic idea was simple: instead of trying to promote everything, concentrate on a limited number of online programs that worked reasonably well together.
I found that working with five programs provided a useful balance between maintaining a narrow focus and having several different income streams.
The discipline of working with just five programs also forced me to make some difficult decisions about which sites to promote and which to leave out.
This was partly a reaction to something I had seen repeatedly with downline-builder sites.
You join one program and find a whole collection of other programs in its downline builder. Then you look at one of those programs and discover another collection of programs, and so on.
It can drive you crazy!
I wanted to build something more focused, where the programs promoted through the downline builder were limited in number and worked together as part of a reasonably coherent business concept.
That was the original thinking behind Elite Downline Builder.
My Experiments With Crypto Faucets
At around the same time, I was becoming increasingly interested in cryptocurrency.
I had started experimenting with crypto faucets in 2017, including several faucets connected with Coinpot.
The individual rewards were tiny – often just a few satoshi – but I became interested in the idea of accumulating these small amounts over time without putting much of my own money into the process.
This eventually became another part of the Elite Downline Builder story.
By the end of 2019 I was experimenting with ways of combining traffic generation, affiliate marketing and cryptocurrency, and EDB gradually began moving in that direction.
Everything Changed in Early 2020
The beginning of 2020 brought another significant change.
I discovered several crypto-related programs and became increasingly interested in incorporating cryptocurrency into the business model I was developing.
One of the most important developments was my return to ClickTrackProfit.
I had originally joined CTP years earlier and had taken one of its lifetime upgrades. When I discovered that the relaunched version of CTP was now working in the cryptocurrency field, I logged back in to see what was happening.
The fact that the old lifetime upgrades were still being honoured was a pleasant surprise.
CTP became an important part of my online business during 2020 and was also incorporated into the Elite Downline Builder concept.
Fire-Pay Payment Integration
The next major development was the introduction of Fire-Pay.
ClickTrackProfit offered a payment integration system for program owners, supporting several different payment methods, including credit cards and cryptocurrency.
I had Fire-Pay installed on Elite Downline Builder in February 2020.
At first, nothing much happened.
March was still a quiet month.
But I continued improving the site and promoting it, and things began to change in April.
Adding a Crypto Faucet Downline Builder
During March I spent a lot of time working on Elite Downline Builder.
One of the changes was adding a downline builder for the Bitcoin faucets I was using.
This fitted naturally with the direction the site was taking.
The idea was that members could use EDB as a traffic-generation service while also promoting cryptocurrency-related programs and faucets.
It was becoming less of a conventional downline builder and more of an integrated traffic and promotion system built around the kinds of programs I was personally using.
The April 2020 Turnaround
Then, on April 22, something happened.
Elite Downline Builder made its first sale through the new Fire-Pay system.
That was a big confidence boost.
By the end of April, the site had generated:
- 6 sales
- $126 in gross sales
Six sales in nine days was the best result since the early months following the original launch.
So I set myself a very simple target for May:
Beat the April figures.
And that’s exactly what happened.
May 2020: The Best Month So Far
By May 31, the figures were:
- 14 sales
- $401 in gross sales
That was the best month Elite Downline Builder had experienced since its launch in September 2018.
The actual profit was considerably less than the gross sales figure after affiliate commissions and operating costs, but the important thing was that the business had recovered from the period when sales had effectively stopped.
The site was now working as a combination of:
- A traffic-generation service
- A focused downline builder
- A way of promoting the online programs and cryptocurrency projects I was personally working with
For me, that was the interesting part of the experiment.
I had taken a project that had stalled after I removed its original payment method, kept working on it, changed the business model, introduced new payment options and added features that fitted the direction I was taking my online business.
And eventually the sales started coming back.
What Happened Next?
Elite Downline Builder continued operating for several more years after this 2020 article was published.
Over time it grew to more than 1,500 members.
But online businesses evolve, and so do the people running them.
The payment-processing problem never completely went away. More importantly, my own attention gradually moved towards other projects.
By 2023 I was no longer as interested in developing and maintaining EDB as I had been a few years earlier. I had moved on to other areas of online marketing, including the development and promotion of marketing funnels built on the Leadsleap platform.
So in October 2023 I made the decision to shut Elite Downline Builder down.
Looking Back
Elite Downline Builder was never intended to be a huge internet business. It was an experiment built around a fairly simple idea: take a small number of programs, put them together with traffic-generation tools, and create a service that members could use to build their own online businesses.
The project changed considerably over its lifetime.
It started with PayPal payments and a relatively conventional downline-builder concept. It went through a period when sales almost disappeared. It then developed a much stronger cryptocurrency angle, added alternative payment methods and eventually grew into a membership site with more than 1,500 members.
Looking back, one of the more useful lessons was that an online business doesn’t necessarily develop in a straight line.
Sometimes the original idea doesn’t work as expected. Sometimes changing one part of the system – in this case, the payment infrastructure – can make a surprisingly large difference.
And sometimes you simply reach the point where you’ve learned what you wanted to learn and it’s time to move on.
Elite Downline Builder was one of those projects.
It ran for about five years, generated sales, built a substantial membership and gave me a lot of experience in developing and promoting an online business.
It’s no longer operating, but it remains an interesting part of the history of my online business.
David Hurley
#InspiredFocus
