What Do YTB and Elvis have in Common?

By Dan Mitchell, MLM Blog Correspondent

This from stltoday.com:

There I was, reading Tim Logan’s excellent story in Sunday’s Post-Dispatch about YTB International when a name from the past jumped out at me:  J. Lloyd Tomer.

Why, just a couple of weeks ago, I’d been regaling my colleagues with a story from my days as a young general assignment reporter, and the time I found this small-town preacher who’d bought Elvis Presley’s airplane. And suddenly, there he was, on the front page of my newspaper. To quote Logan’s story:

YTB was launched in 2001 by three Alton-area veterans of the multilevel marketing industry: J. Lloyd “Coach” Tomer, a former pastor from Benton, Ill., who became a high-level salesman for insurance company A.L. Williams; his son Scott, who’s now YTB’s chief executive; and longtime business partner Kim Sorensen.

YTB (for YourTravelBiz) is based in Wood River. It is a multi-level marketing organization that sells folks a chance to become online travel agents. For $450 up front, and $50 a month thereafter, YTB members sell vacation packages. They also sell other YTB franchises. California Attorney General Jerry Brown says it’s a pyramid scheme, where only the people who get in early are likely to make any money. As Logan reported Sunday:

YTB’s 8,500 agents became 22,000 by the end of 2005. Then nearly 60,000 a year later. At the end of 2007, they had more than 131,000 agents and claimed 303,000 sales reps. Revenue boomed, too, nearly tripling to $141 million last year, when the company earned its first-ever profit. And a major trade publication ranked them the nation’s 26th-biggest travel agency.

“And it’s going to get better and better and better,” Lloyd Tomer said a weekly conference call this month.

Along the way, the Tomers prospered. Scott Tomer and Sorensen each earned $2.3 million in cash, benefits and stock last year, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lloyd Tomer earned $3.5 million. Top salespeople made out well, too: A couple earned more than the top execs last year, and 11 sales directors topped $800,000, according to the company’s publicly available income disclosure statement. Dozens more earned six figures.