Chances are you’re told that you can drink wine and make money by joining Traveling Vineyard, but what is Traveling Vineyard about? if you land on my site to find the answer, you’ve come to the right place.
In my Traveling Vineyard review, I’ll walk you through the below topics to make you understand the whole thing:
- What Is Traveling Vineyard About?
- How to Make Money with Traveling Vineyard?
- The Compensation Plan
- Pros & Cons
- Can You Make Money Selling Traveling Vineyard?
- Is Traveling Vineyard A Pyramid Scheme?
- Is Traveling Vineyard A Scam?
Before we start exploring this business opportunity, I like to tell you something first. I am not referring you to join Traveling Vineyard as a wine guide(this is how they call distributor), so you won’t see me pitching.
This review is only my approach to examine whether it is good or it works for me. Without further ado, let’s get started.
Disclaimer: As the owner of Smileaffiliatesuccess.com, I have tracked down special deals for products, tools, and services mentioned herein. When you click my affiliate links on this page to make a purchase, I may get a small commission, and you will definitely get a great bargain. This is a win-win advantage for both of us.
What Is Traveling Vineyard About?
-Summary of Traveling Vineyard-
Product Name: Traveling Vineyard
Founders: Rick Libby in 2001
Product Type: A Wine MLM(Multi-Level Marketing)
Price: $59 to $179 business kit + $15.95/monthly
Recommend: No
Traveling Vineyard is a wine MLM company that sells wines and accessories, and they also provide a business plan for people to make money with. It’s been in the industry for more than 20 years with satisfied customers and distributors.
Rick Libby found it in 2001 after he joined a Pampered Chef event and applied the technique to wine products, so Traveling Vineyard was born. However, is this a good opportunity that you can work from home and be your own boss? Let me share more details right below, so you can get more information to make up your mind.
Inside Traveling Vineyard
There are mainly two things we’ll discuss today, one is the wines, and the other is the business plan. Let’s talk about wines first.
Product Lines
Traveling Vineyard wines fall into the below categories:
- Red: Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, etc
- White: Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, etc
- Sweet & Fizzy: Red Wine Blend, Sangria, Sweet Rosé, and Sweet Red.
- Semi Sweet: Muscat, Riesling, and White Blend
- Accessories: Wine chiller, arctic pole, stainless steel cubes, and tasting set
- Success Kit: Digital Success Kit, Essential Success Kit, and Success Kit
For each wine, they provide much information on each page, including the ingredients, where it’s made from, how it tastes like, and why they love it. They also use a system called Sommology to inspire people about food and wine pairing, along with the science behind it.
Other wine MLMs I’ve reviewed are Scout and Cellar, OneHope Wine, and Boisset Collection. They are all selling wines and providing a business plan to make money. You can check each of them to pick up the one that suits you the best.
How To Make Money With Traveling Vineyard?
There are two ways to make money with any MLM business, and Traveling Vineyard is no exception.
- Selling products to make commissions.
- Recruiting people to become your downlines to hit group sales target for extra bonuses and incentives
You don’t actually make money by recruiting people but make money by the sales they make, and they sell. This is the difference between calling it a pyramid scheme or an MLM business.
Getting Started
To start with Traveling Vineyard as a wine guide, you can purchase one of the business kits from the below three options:
- Digital Success Kit $59
- Essential Success Kit $99
- Complete Success Kit $179

Besides, you’ll also get your personal website to run your business. For Wine Guides with a digital success kit, it’s free for the first month, after which there is a $15.95 monthly fee.
For the other two kits, you get them for free for the first three months, after that, you need to pay a $15.95 monthly fee. Now, we are able to calculate the total cost.
- Success Kit $59-$179
- Your Personal Website $15.95*9-11 months=$143.55-$175.45
The best case is you spend $234.45, while the worse case is $322.55. This is before you spend money on additional training, travel, gas, food, or miscellaneous expenses, so the total cost will be much more than my calculation here.
The Compensation Plan
Here we come to the most complicated part of the review. Most MLMs have the same problem, and each of them likes to create their own terms and fancy acronyms to make people see loads of ways to make money. But don’t worry today; I’ve made things easier for you.
Here are the first five ways to make money with Traveling Vineyard:
- Personal Marketing Fees: Earn 15% commissions depending on your monthly sales
- Personal Bonus: Earn 5-20% commissions once you have 400PV or above in a month
- Management Bonus: Earn 1-5% when you are One Star Leader with $250 PV in a month or $500 PV in two consecutive months.
- Fast Start Bonus: Earn $10-$40 when your downline Wine Guides have $750PV in the first two months
- Early Promotion Bonus: Earn $50-$100 when you are promoted to Three Star Leader or above within your first four months
Feel sleepy now? You can check the detailed compensation plan on this page or the below YouTube video. Or, you can just sell as many wines and recruit more people to become your downlines & teach them to do the same. You’ll start making great money.
How Much Do You Need to Sell to Stay Active?
They don’t have any sales minimums to maintain your status as a Wine Guide, but you do need to pay $15.95 for your website fee every month to remain active.
Ugly Truth About Traveling Vineyard
TOP#1 Low Income Potential
Traveling Vineyard does provide income disclosure, the most current one I found online is the 2017 version, and I guess the numbers didn’t change too much these years. There are interesting numbers to look at:

- Wine Guides made $350 annual in 2017, which is around 72.42% of all paid Wine Guides.
- The rest 27.56% made around $980-$27,463 in 2017.
- Only 0.13% of WGs made decent money in 2017.
I don’t know about it, but 0.13% seems less to me. This is not even to deduct the expenses you spend on your business, so It’s not a “work from home and be your own boss” opportunity for me. I suggest you become a customer if you love drinking, instead of a wine guide.
TOP#2 No Direct Wine Delivery in Some States
Traveling Vineyard’s business opportunity is currently available in 38 states, while the rest 15 states are not available.
Every state has its own rules about wine delivery. Most states do allow the wine to be shipped to your front door, while the below states marked in red don’t.

TOP#3 A Replicated Website
For each success kit, you’ll get a personal website. However, every wine guide who purchases the same kits as yours will get a website that looks like yours.
This is bad for your traffic since search engines don’t like replicate websites and will punish your sites by not listing them on search results. Making no people could find your website easily, let alone they make sales from you.
What I Liked About Traveling Vineyard
TOP#1 Reasonable Prices
Unlike other MLMs that mark up 30-40% of product prices, Traveling Vineyard wines come with reasonable prices.

Comparing to the other brands you could find in your local liquor store, I don’t see a huge price gap. It’s so refreshing in the MLM industry.
TOP#2 No Monthly Minimum
Another good thing about becoming a Traveling Vineyard wine guide is there is no monthly minimum to stay active. What you really need to do is to pay the $15.95 fee each month for your personal website.
TOP#3 The Awesomm App
Do you know you can manage your wine business on the go by the Awesoom app? Yes, this app allows you to do the following:
- Setting up quick select featured products
- A Streamlined check-out process
- Share wine notes and important documents to your leads
- Sign up a new Wine Guide
- Check your rewards

Can You Make Money Selling Traveling Vineyard?
Yes, I am sure you can make money with Traveling Vineyard, especially those extroverts who like to meet different people and talk about the same products over and over again. If you also love drinking, then Traveling Vineyard is a must-go.
Based on the income disclosure, only 0.13% of wine guides make decent money in 2017. I don’t recommend you quit your 9-5 jobs and make this your primary income since it’s far from enough to pay your bills, let alone support your family.
Is Traveling Vineyard A Pyramid Scheme?
Let’s read Wikipedia’s definition of a pyramid scheme. “A pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products.”
Traveling Vineyard offers reasonable wine selections and the business to help people make money, so we cannot call it a pyramid scheme.
Is Traveling Vineyard A Scam?
No, it’s not a scam either. Normally, a scam or a pyramid scheme cannot survive the first year once people complain and report to the authority. Traveling Vineyard operates for two decades so far. If they were a scam, they couldn’t survive this long and keep growing for the next decade.
When it comes to making money online, there are plenty of options on the internet, such as freelancing, dropshipping, GPT sites, drop services, or affiliate marketing. Wanna know my top pick? Read on to find out more!
My Alternative Way to Make Money Online
My alternative way to make money online is through affiliate marketing instead of promoting Traveling Vineyard products in person. Try to imagine you sell Traveling Vineyard products to your friends, family, or anyone you know. Don’t you feel embarrassed or blushed? They might avoid you ever since.
Doing affiliate marketing will save you from that:
- It’s free to start your affiliate marketing business.
- You don’t need to buy physical products and sell them face to face.
- There is no monthly minimum sales quota in affiliate marketing.
- You don’t recruit people to become your downlines to build a team.
- You are not restricted to promote one product. You can promote anything you like!
- Work on your own schedules & you are your OWN BOSS!
You only need to create a website with quality content. So every time people land on your site to read your products reviews or other articles, they will find insight and value. If they like it, they may purchase the products or services via your links. Here come your earning potentials.

The platform I am using currently is Wealthy Affiliate. You will find all the proven-to-work training courses, every Friday night LIVE training courses, one keyword research tool called Jaaxy, 24/7 site support, and the most friendly community.

For more details or top secrets about Wealthy Affiliate, you could check my full WA review or click the below link to start your WA journey.
>>>Try Wealthy Affiliate Before Bed<<<
Wealthy Affiliate Income Proof
Here are some of the most active members from Wealthy Affiliate. Each of them did succeed in generating a sustainable income to replace their 9-5 jobs. You are more than welcome to check their stories HERE.
- I Made Over $1 Million With Affiliate Marketing.
- Can someone make a full-time income promoting WA? You bet they can!
- What Does $1000 Per Day Look Like?$
- 40,000 In One Weekend
- A Very Humbling $12,803.26 Month – August Progress Report
- It’s Getting Better: $500+ in 2 Days
- Newbies Pay Attention! $5,195.20 Affiliate Check for June: Thanks, WA!
- Joined the 10K Per Month Club. January Earnings $13,481.39
- New Record: $1,300+ Per DAY! Affiliate Marketing Works & Rocks!
- Made $7,395 in a WEEK: First Black Friday Results!
I hope you enjoy this review, and you are more than welcome to share ideas or leave your comments below. I will reply as soon as I can, thanks.
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Interesting. There are so many MLMs, but a wine MLM is a little different. I can imagine that it’s hard to get sales since you can buy wine practically everywhere, in any grocery store, corner store, you name it. I also didn’t notice any special wines that would make Traveling Vineyard stand out. It also looks as if only the people high up in the ladder make any money with this, but most salespeople make little, which is normal for any MLM, isn’t it? It’s good that they don’t require a minimum of sales like most other MLMs, that takes away a lot of pressure.
Hi Christine,
Yes, a wine MLM is quite special in the industry. It’s true that people can buy wine almost everywhere these days, making it harder to sell people Travelling Vineyard wines.
You also mentioned a cruel truth about MLM business opportunities, which is that only the top-rank distributors(around 1%) can make money with the commission structure. The 99% fail to make money… It’s the nature of MLM, so I don’t blame Traveling Vineyard on this.
Since the success rate is so low, I don’t really recommend my readers to try MLMs. Instead, I suggest they start a blog and run an affiliate marketing business.
Cheers,
Matt