idlife-logoIDLife launched in early 2014 and are based in the US state of Texas.

Heading up IDLife management is CEO Logan Stout. In his IDLife corporate bio, Stout credits himself with ‘time in the ministry, business world, pro and college sports‘.

As a 10-time World Series player and coach, a leader of one of the largest companies in the country, and Founder of one of the best and largest baseball organizations in the world, there is no doubt Logan knows how to impact individuals, groups, organizations and companies alike!

logan-stout-ceo-idlifeOn the MLM side of things, Stout (right) cites affiliate membership with Ignite on his LinkedIn profile. Reaching the rank of “Presidential Director”, Stout joined Ignite in April 2005 and left in September of 2013.

Ignite Energy operate in the energy MLM niche and are still around today. In various marketing campaigns for both IDLife and Ignite, Stout is credited as being the number two earner in Ignite when he left.

I wasn’t able to find any information on why Stout left Ignite, however a few months later IDLife went into prelaunch – indicating the launch of IDLife was likely the core reason for his depature.

Prior to Ignite, Stout was an affiliate with Advocare (nutrition and weight loss). Stout joined Advoare in early 2000 and presumably left around the time he signed up with Ignite in 2005.

Read on for a full review of the IDLife MLM business opportunity.

The IDLife Product Line

product-range-idlife

IDLife operate in the health and nutrition MLM niche, and market a range of dietary products.

  • Energy chews ($14.95 for a box of ten) – “a natural, safe complex of nutrients that support increased energy and mental clarity”
  • Sleep Strip ($20.95 for a box of ten) – “bring your body into balance so you can enjoy restful, restorative, deep sleep”
  • Meal Replacement Formula ($94.95 for a tub with 28 servings) –  “non-GMO and free of artificial hormones, lactose, casein, gluten, soy and MSG”
  • Appetite Chew ($14.95 for a box of ten) -“a delicious, low-calorie snack that contain a natural citrus extract that helps dull your appetite”
  • ID Nutrition – advertised as “vitamin packets” but no retail pricing is provided (vitmains are determined after customer/affiliate takes a survey to determine what supplements are prescribed)

Note that IDLife’s products are also available as a “kit”, which combines various products in their range. IDLife’s product kits come in various flavours and contain a tub of meal replacement formula, energy powder and appetite chews.

IDLife’s various kits retail for $219.97.

The IDLife Compensation Plan

The IDLife compensation plan primarily revolves around getting people to take the ID Nutrition survey, and then committing to a monthly spend based on the supplements that are prescribed.

Additionally, IDLife’s branded products are also generate direct retail commissions, with a residual monthly commission paid out via a unilevel compensation structure.

Retail Commissions

IDLife affiliates earn a 30% commission (the difference between the wholesale and retail” cost, on the sale of all IDLife products to retail customers.

Fast Start Bonus

IDLife’s Fast Start Bonus rewards affiliates for acquiring customers within their first 30 days of joining the company. Qualifying customers must sign up for a monthly autoship order.

No specific minimum monthly autoship order is cited, however in a compensation plan video Logan Stout cites $100 as being “the average”.

  • if an IDLife affiliate signs up one customer, they earn $100
  • if an IDLife affiliate signs up three customers, their first monthly autoship order is free

An additional $200 can be earnt if an affiliate signs up a further six customers within 60 days of joining the company.

The IDLife compensation plan doesn’t explicitly mention this, but I believe, based on comments by Stout’s comments in the IDLIfe compensation plan video, that these customers have to be retail (non-affiliates).

Recruitment Commissions

If an IDLife affiliate recruits a new affiliate, who spends $399 on an associate package or spends $200 on products and generates $300 in retail sales volume, they earn a $100 commission.

business-builder-recruitment-bonus-idlife-compensation-plan

This commission is paid out per new affiliate recruited, limited only by how many affiliates are recruited.

Unilevel Commissions

Residual commissions in IDLife are paid out using a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team. All personally recruited affiliates are placed on level one of the unilevel team:

unilevel-commission-structure

If any of these recruited level one affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level two of the unilevel team. If any level two affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level three and so on and so forth.

IDLife cap the maximum payable levels at ten, with commissions paid out as a percentage of the sales volume generated by recruited affiliates in the unilevel team as follows:

  • levels 1 to 3 – 5%
  • levels 4 to 6 – 4%
  • levels 7 and 8 – 3%
  • level 9 – 2%
  • level 10 – 1%

Note that an IDLife affiliate has to qualify to get paid on all ten unilevel levels. This is tracked via IDLife affiliate membership ranks:

  • Director – recruit at least one affiliate, generate at least $100 in personal sales and $100 in total downline sales
  • Area Director – recruit at least two affiliates, generate at least $150 in personal sales and $600 in total downline sales
  • Regional Director – recruit at least two affiliates, generate at least $200 in personal sales and $1200 in total downline sales
  • Managing Director – recruit at least three affiliates, generate at least $250 in personal sales and $2500 in total downline sales
  • Senior Director – recruit at least four affiliates, generate at least $300 in personal sales and $5000 in total downline sales
  • Executive Director – recruit at least five affiliates, generate at least $350 in personal sales and $12,500 in total downline sales
  • National Director – recruit at least five affiliates, have two Senior Directors in your downline, generate at least $400 in personal sales and $25,000 in total downline sales
  • Vice-Presidential Director – recruit at least six affiliates, have two Executive Directors in your downline, generate at least $450 in personal sales and $50,000 in total downline sales
  • Presidential Director – recruit at least eight affiliates, have two National Directors in your downline, generate at least $500 in personal sales and $100,000 in total downline sales
  • National Presidential Director – recruit at least ten affiliates, have three National Directors in your downline, generate at least $500 in personal sales and $200,000 in total downline sales
  • International Presidential Director – recruit at least twelve affiliates, have three National Directors and one Presidential Director in two separate recruitment legs, generate at least $500 in personal sales and $500,000 in total downline sales
  • Global Presidential Director – recruit at least twelve affiliates, have three National Directors and two Presidential Directors in three separate recruitment legs, generate at least $500 in personal sales and $1,000,000 in total downline sales

Qualifying at a higher IDLife affiliate membership rank unlocks more payable unilevel levels:

  • Director – level 1
  • Area Director – levels 1 and 2
  • Regional Director – levels 1 to 3
  • Managing Director – levels 1 to 4
  • Senior Director – levels 1 to 5
  • Executive Director – levels 1 to 6
  • National Director – levels 1 to 7
  • Vice-Presidential Director – levels 1 to 8
  • Presidential Director – levels 1 to 9
  • National Presidential Director or higher – levels 1 to 10

Unilevel Matching Bonus

A Matching Bonus is available on unilevel commissions paid down four Regional Director generations.

A generation is defined as all the affiliates between the affiliate qualifying for the match, and the first Regional Director in any given recruitment leg.

Recruitment legs are independent of eachother, with all affiliates falling between the affiliate qualifying for the bonus and this first Regional Director counting as the first generation.

The second generation is defined as all the affiliates in any given recruitment leg found after the first Regional Director and the second Regional Director in that leg.

Note that if no second Regional Director is found, the second generation extends out to the end of the recruitment leg.

Starting at the Regional Director affiliate level, IDLife’s unilevel Matching Bonus is paid out as follows:

  • Regional Director – 20% on the first generation
  • Managing Director – 20% on the first generation and 10% on the second
  • Senior Director -20% on the first generation, 10% on the second and 5% on the third
  • Executive Director – 20% on the first generation, 10% on the second and 5% on the third and fourth
  • National Director – 20% on the first generation, 10% on the second and third and 5% on the fourth
  • Vice-Presidential Director or higher – 20% on the first generation and 10% on the third to fourth

Note that an additional matching bonus percentage is also paid out on any Executive Director or higher ranked affiliates, as per the defined Regional Director generations above.

How many generations this additional bonus is paid out on, along with what percentage is paid out, is determined by an IDLife affiliate’s own membership rank:

  • Executive Director – 2% on the first generation
  • National Director – 2% on the first generation and 3% on the second
  • Vice-Presidential Director – 2% on the first generation and 3% on the second and third
  • Presidential Director – 2% on the first generation, 3% on the second and third and 4% on the fourth
  • National Presidential Director – 2% on the first generation, 3% on the second and 4% on the third and fourth
  • International Presidential Director or higher – 2% on the first generation, 3% on the second, 4% on the fourth and 5% on the fifth

Rank Advancement Bonus

When an IDLife affiliate qualifies at certain ranks (see qualification criteria above), the company pays them out a one-time bonus:

  • Executive Director – $750
  • National Director – $1250
  • Vice-Presidential Director – $2500
  • Presidential Director – $5000
  • National Presidential Director – $10,000
  • International Presidential Director – $20,000
  • Global Presidential Director – $40,000

Global Pool Bonus

The IDLife Global Pool consists of 2% of company-wide wholesale sales volume.

The pool is then split between the National Director to International Presidential Director and above ranks, with each rank allocated a percentage share in the pool:

  • National Director – 34%
  • Vice-Presidential Director – 26%
  • Presidential Director – 18%
  • National Presidential Director – 12%
  • International Presidential Director or higher – 10%

Shares in each pool are allocated evenly among all qualified affiliates at any given rank. Note that as affiliates qualify for higher ranks, they retain shares in the lower ranked pools they’ve already qualified for.

Car Bonus

IDLife affiliates at the National Director or higher rank earn a monthly car bonus:

  • National Director – $500
  • Vice-Presidential Director – $600
  • Presidential Director – $750
  • National Presidential Director – $1000
  • International Presidential Director – $1500
  • Global Presidential Director – $2000

The type of car an IDLife affiliate can put the payment towards is somewhat flexible, however all cars must be pre-approved by IDLife corporate.

Joining IDLife

Basic affiliate membership with IDLife is $99.

The company also markets a $399 “Associate Package”, which included the basic $99 affiliate fee plus “$500 worth of IDLife products”.

Once signed up, an ongoing monthly fee of $19.95 is also applicable.

Conclusion

[3:40] Our actual initial check for gettin those ten customers will be $670. $400 plus $30 times nine people.

Now remember, you also have $500 worth of product that you can consume, give away, sample out, sell – whatever you want to do.

So, you actually have almost a $1200 value on a $399 investment.

-Logan Stout talking about an affiliate’s first check, IDLife compensation plan video

I have no idea why Stout refers to affiliate fees as an “investment” in official IDLife compensation plan videos, but I’ve quoted the above as is (see full clip in the footer).

If one treats IDLife affiliate membership as an investment, the MLM business becomes an exercise in recruiting enough affiliates who pay the $100 a month “average” autoship, who then go on to recruit affiliates who do the same (who go on to etc. etc.), all in the name of everybody looking to recoup their initial affiliate fee “investment”.

If that’s how Stout is indeed running IDLife then that’d sure be a shame.

As I see it the lead in is the supplement survey, which “prescribes” various nutrient supplements based on the answers provided. The questions are of the lifestlye and diet variety you’d expect, also venture into prescription medication, allergies, heridtary conditions and pre-existing medical conditions:

medical-conditions-IDlife-idnutrition-survey

I bolded the text above because it leads to an image on the IDLife website of a doctor holding a stethoscope, next to the following text:

Our team of researchers, nutritionists and scientists (Ozedit: That’s IDLife’s team, not some randoms), can include supplements that can help relieve symptoms of a variety of a medical conditions you might have.

IDLife cover their asses by stating that their online assessment is “based on medical studies and facts”, but is that enough?

Answering the question of whether or not their products are FDA approved, IDLife write

Dietary supplements like ID Nutrition do not require FDA approval.

IDNutrition isn’t exactly a “supplement”, but rather is the name of the survey IDLife use to prescribe their supplements to customers.

And here’s where things get deeply murky. From the IDLife FAQ:

Can’t I get these products at my Grocery/Pharmacy?

No. These products are only available to you through ID Nutrition.

So… IDLife isn’t a pharmacy, but if I fill in a survey that IDLife will prescribe me supplements “that can help relieve symptoms” of medical conditions I might have, using non-FDA approved supplements that I cannot buy anywhere else?

Hmmmmmm…

I’m not the FDA but something about the above just doesn’t sit right with me at all.

Moving onto the compensation plan, all in all, providing there’s significant retail activity going on within the company it didn’t look to shabby. One red-flag I observed was that an affiliate must be at the Director level to qualify for unilevel commissions.

The qualification for the Director rank requires the recruitment of at least one affiliate, meaning that to qualify for MLM commissions, all IDLife affiliates have to recruit someone new into the company.

That alone isn’t so bad (you need to recruit someone to kick off a unilevel team, but the $100 PV requirement was kind of obvious.

Obvious in the sense that it ties into the $100 a month “average” autoship order and is also the amount required for group volume qualification at the same level.

Thus an affiliate’s own autoship is likely to qualify them for commissions wholly at the Director level.

Of course an affiliate’s own purchase isn’t mandatory, but then “being a product of the product” comes into play. Making sales in any MLM company is much, much harder if the affiliate themselves isn’t using the product (“why should I buy anything from you if you yourself aren’t even using it?”).

Pegging Director (MLM commission) qualification at 100 PV encourages an autoship commitment to qualify for MLM commissions. And if this is what is happening within IDLife, at the expense of retail activity, then there’s potential pyramid scheme problems.

One way to ascertain whether or not this is the case would be to inquire with a potential upline as to how many retail customers they have (signed up to autoship or otherwise), versus how many recruited affiliates they have in their downline.

If the majority of their commissions are coming from recruited affiliates, their recruited affiliates, their recruited affiliates and so on, then that’s indicative of what you yourself are going to find yourself doing as an affiliate.

Also not helping is the $100 commission paid out on personally recruited affiliates who purchase a $399 Associate Package.

All in all I can look past the compensation plan issues as the opportunity for retail within IDLife very much exists (assuming of course that the products are priced competitively). The whole psuedo-pharmacy thing on the supplement front though left a bad taste in my mouth.

The way I see it, medical studies or not, once you start prescribing supplements for medical conditions, you alone are responsible if anything goes wrong.

I’m sure there are algorithmic checks within the ID Nutrition software to prevent this from happening, but user-error is just one example of something simple that could easily bring it all undone.

There are over 4,000 algorithms yielding 4,000,000 potential results that are tied to scientific/medical studies. The program takes your answers and relates it to the science in the studies to deliver the recommendations for each person.

The studies provide the basis and support for the recommendations given by the ID Nutrition assessment results.

Is an algorithm driven software a substitute for a doctor and/or nutritionist? That one’s up to you.

 

Update 25th July 2022 – Following Josh Paine’s appointment as CEO, BehindMLM revisited IDLife for an updated review.