MyVideoTalk appears to be based out of California in the US and is a division of “Team Effort International”, which was launched in October 2002 by MyVideoTalk founders Mel and Amie Gill (photo right).

According to their corporate bios, the Gills

entered the Direct Selling Industry in 1989 experiencing huge success with stellar business growth in Australia, Thailand, Japan, and Canada.

There’s little to no information about the specifics of Mel and Amie Gill’s involvement in MLM prior to 2002, however I did see Amie Gill’s name pop up on a Herbalife flyer as a “top sponsor” (recruiter) for January 2000, so it’s a possibility that Herbalife was the company the Gill’s were involved in prior to launching Team Effort International.

As to how long MyVideoTalk has been around for, there seems to be a bit of confusion surrounding this. I’ve commonly seen MyVideoTalk affiliates substitute MyVideoTalk for Team Effort International and claim the company launched in 2002,

MyVideoTalk was founded in 2002 by an enterprise called Team Effort International.

however this doesn’t appear to be the case.

The earliest references I’ve seen of MyVideoTalk date back to 2004 (although marketing didn’t seem to really kick off until 2005), so this appears to be the year MyVideoTalk was branded and launched as a standalone MLM opportunity.

The company itself states the following on their official website:

Based in Northern California, just outside of the San Francisco Bay Area, MyVideoTalk is a thriving division founded in April 2004 .

To throw some confusion on the matter though, there’s then a series of “prelaunch” and “soft launch” talk that starts in early to mid 2010, indicating that the company might have relaunched itself around that time.

None of this is clarified or explained on the MyVideoTalk website however so I’m not 100% sure on the specifics other than the information provided above. Thus I’m not sure if the MyVideoTalk MLM business opportunity available today is the same as that launched back in 2004 or whether or not the company has significantly changed over time.

If I do get clarification on the matter at a later date I’ll update the above information accordingly. In any case, read on for a full review of the MyVideoTalk MLM business opportunity as it stands today in late 2012.

The MyVideoTalk Product Line

MyVideoTalk operate in the technology communication niche of the MLM industry and offer video streaming subscription plans at both a retail and affiliate level.

MyVideoTalk’s video streaming services include brandable ‘live video streaming broadcasts and meetings, customizable email video messages and on-demand video web channels‘.

MyVideoTalk customer plans range from $14.95 a month to $349.90 upfront and $49.90 a month spanning 6 price points in total. Basic differences between MyVideoTalk’s subscription prices are allocated bandwidth, video storage space, length of video recordings allowed and live broadcast attendees permitted.

The MyVideoTalk Compensation Plan

The MyVideoTalk compensation plan offers affiliates retail commissions, residual commissions that are mostly recruitment based and several monthly and weekly bonuses.

Recruitment Commissions

MyVideoTalk pay out $100 on the recruitment of a new MyVideoTalk associate.

Retail Commissions

MyVideoTalk offer up a 20% retail commission on the first month’s service subscription paid by a retail customer and 10% per month thereafter.

Weekly Affiliate Binary Commissions

Using a binary compensation structure, upon recruiting at least two new affiliates MyVideoTalk affiliates are paid out weekly on their own recruiting efforts and that of their downline.

A binary compensation structure places an affiliate at the top with two legs branching out from under them. These two legs form the beginning of a left and right binary team.

In turn, those first two legs branch out into another two legs and so on and so forth:

Weekly binary commissions in MyVideoTalk are paid out on the recruitment of new MyVideoTalk affiliates who purchase a “Total Video Solutions Pak” when they join the company ($349.90 upfront and $49.90 a month thereafter).

Commissions are paid out using a 4:2 ratio, meaning that each week affiliates are paid out on the number of 4:2 ratios of new affiliates who purchase a Total Video Solutions Pak when joining MyVideoTalk, or those that are paying their monthly membership fee.

For each 4:2 ratio matched each week, MyVideoTalk pay out a $150 commission, capped at $35,000 a week.

Monthly Sales Binary Commissions

Using a similar binary compensation structure as outlined above, MyVideoTalk’s monthly sales commissions extend beyond sale of subscriptions to affiliates to also include retail customers and those of an affiliate’s downline.

Whereas the weekly affiliate binary commissions are paid using a 4:2 ratio, MyVideoTalk’s monthly sales binary commissions are geared around points, with each affiliate or customer product subscription generating 1 point a month.

At the end of a month, an affiliates left and right binary team’s generated points (including an affiliate’s personal retail customers, recruited affiliates and recruited affiliates and customers of their recruited affiliates), with commissions paid out using a 3:6 point ratio.

That is, your team with more points is matched up against your weaker team, with every 6 sales on your stronger team matched to 3 sales on your weaker team.

Eg. Your stronger binary team has generated 18 points and your weaker team just 6 points. At the end of the month your stronger team would be matched against your weaker team generating 3 matches (18 divided by 6).

For each of these monthly matches generated, MyVideoTalk pay out $25 in commissions, capped at $150,000 a month.

Weekly Binary Commissions Check Match

Despite being called a “Global Rewards Check Match Bonus”, as far as I can tell this bonus functions as a bonus on the recruitment commissions earnt by an affiliate via the weekly recruitment based binary commissions paid out.

According to MyVideoTalk qualification for the Global Rewards Check Match Bonus is generating at least one commission under the weekly affiliate binary commissions component of the compensation plan.

Upon achieving this, MyVideoTalk affiliates then receive a $50 bonus on each $100 paid out (bringing the total payout to $150 per 4:2 matched affiliates in the binary).

Sales Office Bonus

If an affiliate and their downline combined manage to generate 50 new subscriptions a week for four consecutive weeks (either new affiliates or retail customers), MyVideoTalk pay out $2,500 towards a security deposit on office space, as well $700 a month towards rent.

The company also states it will send out “corporate officers” once a month to conduct “private training” at the rented office.

Presidents Weekly Club Bonuses

Upon earning a fixed amount of money via commissions each week, MyVideoTalk reward qualifying affiliates with a series of Presidents Weekly Club Bonuses.

  • Presidents Club – generate $1000 in earnings in any given week and be rewarded with a $1000 cash bonus
  • 1 Star – generate $2500 in earnings in any given week and be rewarded with $2500 cash bonus
  • 2 Star – generate $5000 in earnings in any given week and be rewarded with “a trip to the Grand Wailea Resort in Muai, Hawaii”
  • 5 Star – generate $10,000 in earnings in any given week and be rewarded with “a trip on the Oasis of the Sea”
  • 10 Star – generate $25,000 in earnings in any given week and be rewarded with a $25,000 cash bonus

Qualifying earnings in the Presidents Weekly Club Bonuses can only consist of a maximum of 50% from either affiliate purchase commissions or retail customer purchase commissions.

Car Bonus

MyVideotTalk’s Car Bonus is paid out based on commissions generated via the Monthly Sales Binary Commissions component of their compensation plan.

  • generate 150 points in your binary monthly commissions (split 2/3rds (100 points) and 1/3rd (50 points)) and earn $600 a month towards a car lease
  • generate 300 points in your binary monthly commissions (again split 1/3 and 2/3rds) and earn $1200 a month towards a car lease

Note that affiliates must qualify for three consecutive months before being elgiible for bonus payouts. Eligible cars for the lease bonus must be either ‘a new or pre-owned BMW or Mercedes Benz with a black or white exterior‘ and affiliates must have a minimum of 2 active retail customers to qualify.

Joining MyVideoTalk

Membership to MyVideoTalk is the cost of product subscription, with two plans offered to new affiliates:

  • Basic Video Solutions Pak – $199.90 and $49.90 a month thereafter
  • Total Video Solutions Pak – $349.90 and $49.90 a month thereafter

Note that these are the top two tiered products making up MyVideoTalk’s retail offerings, with their seemingly being no distinction between the two varieties of the same product offered, other than participation in MyVideoTalk’s income opportunity and attached compensation plan.

Conclusion

With a solid retail offering available to customers, it’s disappointing to see MyVideoTalk make no distinction between its affiliates and retail customers.

Forcing affiliates to purchase the same top two tiered products offered to retail customers (at the exact same price), the only distinction between the same products offered to retail customers and MyVideoTalk affiliates appears to be participation in the attached income opportunity.

Whenever I see a lack of distinction between retail customers and affiliates in a MLM company (including a token distinction, as appears to be the case with MyVideoTalk), a red flag goes up pending further analysis of the business model to ascertain whether or not the opportunity and compensation plan are affiliate recruitment focused or retail customer sales focused.

And before anyone jumps on my use of the phrase “token distinction”, when a customer on the top subscription is paying the same as an affiliate on the top subscription, that’s pretty much as token a distinction as you can get.

Should that retail customer wish to become an affiliate, what changes for them other than participation in the compensation plan?

Nothing.

With that in mind, further analysis does strongly indicate that MyVideoTalk sadly appears to be a recruitment based opportunity.

Compensation plan wise, the fast start bonus is a direct recruitment bonus. You sign up a new affiliate, they pay MyVideoTalk either $199.90 or $349.90 and you earn $100.

The Weekly Binary commissions and check match bonus only use affiliate purchases (both new and existing) so they clearly rely on recruitment of affiliates. The monthly binary commissions offered also include affiliate purchases, meaning that if an affiliate only focused on recruitment of new affiliates they’d still qualify for monthly commissions.

50% of the Presidents Weekly Club Bonuses must be retail commissions, but I see this bonus as completely optional and not part of the core commissions on offer (those being the retail, monthly and weekly binary commissions).

I’d even go so far to suggest that the retail commissions (20% first month and 10% thereafter) are most likely functionally dwarfed by the earnings achieved by simply recruiting affiliates into the top two price tiered product offerings.

Much easier to sell $199.90 and $349.90 video communication packages when you tell people there’s an income opportunity attached no?

And as for the office space commission, that’s obviously affiliate recruitment based as I can’t see any practical reason retail customers would need be trained sales wise by MyVideoTalk corporate.

To be fair, it is entirely possible to earn retail commissions within MyVideoTalk, despite the fact you’d be locking yourself out of weekly commissions, monthly matched commissions, the Presidents Club Weekly Bonuses.

Given the possibility of a strong focus on new affiliate recruitment and qualifying for commissions in two out of three of the offered core commissions though, further analysis into how MyVideoTalk functions internally and how they market the opportunity is needed.

And for that, we turn to the official “Getting Started Guide” for affiliates published by MyVideoTalk:

Welcome to MyVideoTalk. The purpose of this Guide is to help you launch your business quickly and effectively.

We encourage you to set your goal to become an Executive. In order to do this, you need to personally sponsor two new independent representatives and help them to do the same.

Your MVT business is built on a simple formula of duplication. As soon as you accomplish the task getting a new distributor, you can turn around and teach that person how to do the same thing you just did.

If you can reach Executive in your first week or two, you will be able to tell people you did that, and encourage them to do the same thing. Once you‟ve accomplished it, you can teach it!

It will create tremendous momentum, which fuels more growth and bigger paychecks. There is nothing like quick success to breed more success.

With no mention of retail sales and an obvious attribution to a MyVideoTalk affiliate’s business being built on the recruitment of new affiliates and “teaching” them to do the same, this is a strong indication that functionally, retail most likely is an insignificant component of most MyVideoTalk affiliate’s commissions.

That said, despite everything written above if you are looking at joining MyVideoTalk as an affiliate, it’s still worth doing your own research into whether or not the business revolves around affiliate recruitment of retail sales.

Your first starting point would be how you were approached (join as an affiliate or customer?) and then an analysis of whether or not your potential upline has more personally recruited affiliates or retail customers (not participating in the compensation plan).

This can then be further extended by an analysis of a potential upline’s binary team and the make up of affiliate/retail “points” generated in their monthly commission payouts.

Note that any potential upline not willing to share this information with you is most likely hiding the fact that their business is mostly affiliate stacked. Personally I’d then be extremely weary of going forward on that point alone.

All in all the potential for a retail sales orientated MLM business opportunity does exist within MyVideoTalk however I feel it’s strongly let down by the structure of the compensation plan and the marketing materials from MyVideoTalk themselves.

Whether or not that’s a reflection of the value in the products themselves is debatable but as an affiliate looking to join a MLM company, if the bulk of your commissions are generated on the recruitment of affiliates and forced internal sales, then you’re pretty much looking at a pyramid scheme.

And as far as MyVideoTalk goes, establishing whether or not that’s the case is most likely going to be (and should be) your primary concern. Good luck!