Bid With Integrity Review: Monthly affiliate fees

Bid With Integrity first popped up on my radar back in September 2012, when I added it to the BehindMLM MLM penny auction prelaunch list.

At the time details about the Bid With Integrity’s business model were scarce, other than some tidbits about company management and planned affiliate joining options.

Since then Bid With Integrity are yet to officially launch, but the company has made public further details surrounding its compensation plan and greater business model structure.

Read on for a full review of the Bid With Integrity MLM business opportunity.

The Company

Bid With Integrity operate in the penny auction MLM niche and are headquartered in the US state of South Carolina.

Bid With Integrity also claim to have “development/Administrative offices in several cities”, however at the time of publication only Nashville, Tennessee is listed with no further information provided as to the business operations Bid With Integrity have there.

Heading up Bid With Integrity is headed up by CEO and President Shawn Wheeland (photo right).

Looking into Wheeland’s history, he seems to have positioned himself over the last decade at the head of a number of MLM training companies, both at a distributor and corporate level.

Through the 1990s, Shawn developed several multi-million dollar organizations, capping it off with Homebusiness.To, Inc. a company that grossed 2.5 million dollars in only 18 months.

Wheeland’s previous engagements include:

• President of Success Center International (1988)
• CEO of JGO, Inc. (2004)
• CEO of HomeBusiness.to (also known as HomeBusinessGo, 1999)

The Bid With Integrity Product Line

Being penny auction focused Bid With Integrity market and sell bids for the “BidLinkz” penny auction site.

BidLinkz bids are purchaseable in bid packs by retail customers, with the price per bid dependant on which bid pack is being purchased:

• 50 bids – $37.50 (.75 per bid)
• 200 bids – $140 (.70 per bid)
• 625 bids – $425 (.68 per bid)
• 1100 bids – $725 (.66 per bid)

The Bid With Integrity Compensation Plan

The Bid With Integrity compensation plan pays out affiliates on the sale of bid packs to retail customers, as well as on the recruitment of affiliates who pay the company monthly membership fees.

Bid With Integrity Membership Ranks

There are five membership ranks within the Bid With Integrity compensation plan, and along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:

• Representative – no minimum PV a month or monthly membership subscription required
• Qualified Representative – 100 PV a month and monthly membership subscription required
• Qualified Representative 2 – 100 PV a month, monthly membership subscription required and 2 retail customers
• Qualified Representative 3 -100 PV a month, monthly membership subscription required and 4 retail customers
• Ambassador –  100 PV a month, monthly membership subscription required, 12 retail customers and 20 personally recruited Qualified Representative or higher affiliates in your downline

Retail Commission

For some reason retail commission amounts aren’t explicitly mentioned in the Bid With Integrity compensation plan material I cited, however I believe they are set at 20% of the PV a retail bid pack purchase generates (see below in “Matrix Commissions” for retail bid pack PV values).

Matrix Commissions

Residual commissions in Bid With Integrity revolve around a 20×3 (not a typo) matrix.

A 20×3 matrix places an affiliate at the top of the matrix, with 20 affiliate positions directly under them (level 1). In turn, each of these affiliate positions branch out into another 20 positions (level 2) and again for level 3 for a total of 8420 affiliate position in each matrix.

Commissions are paid out as a percentage of “business volume” (BV), with BV generated each time a bid pack is sold to a retail customer, or recruited affiliates pay their monthly membership fees.

BV is generated as follows for retail bid packs:

• 50 bids – 25 BV
• 200 bids – 100 BV
• 625 bids – 300 BV
• 1100 bids – 500 BV

And BV is generated as follows on monthly membership fees, paid by Bid With Integrity affiliates:

• Starter ($25) – 25 BV
• Executive ($100) – 100 BV
• Bronze ($300) – 300 BV
• Silver ($500) – 500 BV

The general idea with the matrix commissions is that 1 BV = $1, with commissions paid out as a percentage of the BV generated by each recruited Bid With Integrity affiliate in your matrix.

How many levels and what percentage of BV an affiliate is paid out on depends on their Bid With Integrity membership rank:

• Representative – 5% on level 1 and 10% on level 2
• Qualified Representative – 20% on level 1
• Qualified Representative 2 – 20% on levels 1 and 2
• Qualified Representative 3 and Ambassador – 20% on levels 1 to 3

Matching Bonus

Bid With Integrity affiliates are paid a Matching Bonus on the matrix earnings of any affiliate they have personally recruited.

The Matching Bonus is paid out as a percentage of personally recruited affiliate’s earnings, with how much of a percentage earned dependant on an affiliate’s membership rank:

• Qualified Representative – 5%
• Qualified Representative 2 – 10%
• Qualified Representative 3 – 15%
• Ambassador – 20%

Mentor Bonus

The Bid With Integrity Bonus is a short-term bonus paid out on the first month earnings of newly recruitment Bid With Integrity affiliates.

The Mentor Bonus is made up of 20% of a new affiliate’s first month commissions, and pays up two levels:

• recruiting affiliate = 20% of the recruited affiliate’s first month commissions
• the recruiting affiliate’s immediate upline = 20% of the recruited affiliate’s first month commissions
• the recruiting affiliate’s immediate upline’s upline = 20% of the recruited affiliate’s first month commissions

Eg. Affiliate F recruits Affiliate G. After the first month of Affiliate G’s Bid With Integrity membership, Affiliate F receives 20% of their earnings, the affiliate that recruited Affiliate F into Bid With Integrity (Affiliate E) also receives 20%, and finally so does the affiliate who recruited  Affiliate E into the company.

Joining Bid With Integrity

Membership to Bid With Integrity is available to affiliates in five options:

• Retail Representative – no cost, only able to earn retail commissions
• Starter – $25
• Executive – $100
• Bronze – $300
• Silver – $500

Conclusion

After months of prelaunch I was quite surprised to go over Bid With Integrity’s compensation plan (the revision I cited was marked “final”) and see it heavily tilted in favour of recruiting affiliates and earning commissions on their monthly membership fees (masked as “bid pack” purchases).

As it stands now, it seems entirely possible to join Bid With Integrity, recruit affiliates and simply earn up to 20% of their monthly membership fees.

To earn up to three levels on the matrix at the Ambassador level you do need to go out and get 20 customers, but this seems to be nothing more than a rudimentary requirement, with no actual tie into the compensation plan, other than simply having the customers themselves.

In the past this had led to people just signing up “email addresses” rather than actual customers, simply to unlock upper levels of MLM penny auction compensation plans.

Retail sales of bid packs are of course an option, but appear to be of little relevance with the percentage of commissions on the sale of retail bid packs omitted from compensation plan material.

The entire focus of Bid With Integrity appears to be signing up to the company on a paid membership, signing up others on monthly paid memberships and earning money on their monthly fees via the 20×3 matrix.

At the end of the day, regardless of whether or not there’s a penny auction attached all this equates to is affiliates paying affiliates via monthly membership fees.

Following the takedown of Zeek Rewards, a $600M MLM penny auction Ponzi scheme, the requirement for retail revenue in an MLM penny auction can no longer be ignored.

With an entire compensation plan geared towards the recruitment of affiliates and continued payment of monthly membership fees, unless I’m missing something Bid With Integrity appear to be wide off the mark in addressing a retail revenue requirement.