bonofa-logo

Bonofa appears to have gone into prelaunch earlier this year. The company website does feature an “about us” page, however it is nothing more than a marketing pitch page for the Bonofa income opportunity.

An address provided in the Bonofa “General Terms and Conditions of Business” indicates that the company is based out of Liechtenstein in Europe.

Martin-Bohm-ceo-bonofa-cube7

Further research via Google reveals a page that, as far as I can see, is not linked to internally on the Bonofa website, but exists nonetheless on the Bonofa domain, naming a “Martin Bohm” (right) as CEO of the company.

Bonofa appears to be Bohm’s first MLM venture, with his corporate bio stating

Martin Böhm has wide-ranging sales experience to depend on:

In 2002 he became sales representative of a large German financial services company at the age of 24. In 2005 he became a financial specialist, making the best use of his experiences he had gained over the last previous years, resulting in a rapid rise within the company.

However, this was not enough for ambitious Martin Böhm. His vision was greater… He immediately recognized the rapidly growing opportunities obtainable by the World Wide Web and began to test his own ideas in the area of Online Trading and Marketing.

In 2009 he set up his very first import and trading business for commodities, focusing on the growing markets in Asia. Through his excellent contacts worldwide, especially in Asia and the US, he has since successfully built up a thriving international network of partners.

Based on all this, the next step for Martin Böhm is therefore clear: to create a digital interconnected network of new and existing contacts in order to form a global web-based network of partners.

Since 2011, he has begun to turn his visions into reality. With the founding of BONOFA AG, Martin Böhm can once again put all his energy and strategic experience into building one of the most powerful international partnership networks worldwide.

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

The Bonofa Product Line

Bonofa are basing their business around a social network they’re calling Cube7 (note that Cube7 and Bonofa are used interchangeably to refer to the business).

Cube7 launched on July 7th and is viewable over at cube7.com. Visitors to the site are unable to do anything other than sign up, read the terms of use and privacy policy (both in German).

As described on the Bonofa website,

How you communicate with your friends, is completly (sic) up to you: For example instead of writing regular text messages, try our Video-Chat or Video-Call.

Or invite friends and family from different continents to a Video-Conference – BONOFA AG makes it possible by combining all forms of digital communication on a single Online-Platform.

Of course you can expand and manage your private network at any time: Meet new people that share your interests or the same taste in brands and products – and invite them to your Business-Network.

Not only will you expand your digital circle of friends, you also benefit directly from our Bonus-System in cash with the shopping habbits (sic) of your contacts.

Available on the social network (at least in the marketing I’ve seen for it) are music, movies, shopping, games and apps.

The Bonofa Compensation Plan

The Bonofa compensation plan pays out affiliates primarily on the recruitment of new affiliates and the payment of ongoing monthly membership fees. The company also shares a percentage of the revenue generated by its Cube7 social network.

Unilevel Commissions

Bonofa pay out residual monthly commissions via a unilevel compensation structure. A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of the structure, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1).

unilevel-commission-structure

If any of these level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team. If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretically unlimited number of levels.

Bonofa pay a flat percentage of the sales volume (newly recruited affiliate package purchases) generated each month by the total amount of affiliates in their downline.

The percentage paid out is determined by an affiliates membership rank, paid out as follows:

  • Team Leader (generate 2500 EUR a month in volume) – 2%
  • Bronze (generate 10,000 EUR a month in volume) – 3%
  • Silver (generate 30,000 EUR a month in volume)  – 4%
  • Gold (generate 60,000 EUR a month in volume) – 5%
  • Diamond (generate 120,000 EUR a month in volume and have either 12 Bronze unilevel legs or 4 Silver unilevel legs) – 8%
  • 1 Star Diamond (have at least 1 Diamond unilevel leg) – 10%
  • 2 Star Diamond (have at least 2 Diamond unilevel legs) – 12%
  • 3 Star Diamond (have at least 3 Diamond unilevel legs) – 14%
  • 4 Star Diamond (have at least 4 Diamond unilevel legs) – 16%
  • 5 Star Diamond (have at least 5 Diamond unilevel legs) – 17%
  • Royal Diamond (have at least one 3 Star unilevel leg) – 18%
  • Crown Diamond (have at least one 5 Star unilevel leg) – 19%

Note that I believe the volume requirements are team based (volume generated by an affiliates entire unilevel team), as opposed to being strictly personal volume.

Fast Start Bonus

In order to qualify for the Bonofa Fast Start Bonus an affiliate must have personally recruited at least three affiliates of their own.

The Fast Start Bonus pays out on levels 2 to 12 of an affiliate’s unilevel team, paying out a percentage of an affiliate’s first package order as follows:

  • levels 2 and 3 – 5%
  • levels 4 and 5 – 1%
  • levels 6 to 12 – 0.5%

Bonofa Affiliate Membership Fee Commissions

Each Bonofa affiliate must pay a monthly membership fee. Affiliates pay a 29.90 EUR fee when joining the company, however this is advertised as a one-time payment. I was unable to find any subsequent information indicating what the monthly affiliate fee charged by Bonofa is.

That aside, whatever the cost is Bonofa pay affiliates a commission on this membership fee, paid out 5% down six levels of recruitment.

An additional 1% of the affiliate membership fees are set aside and distributed equally amongst VIP affiliates.

Cube7 Profit Share

Bonofa take 80% of the profit generated via the Cube7 social network and pay it back out amongst their affiliates.

The 80% profit is split equally in shares amongst affiliates, with affiliates receiving a percentage of this allocated share, based on how much money they paid for affiliate membership:

  • Basic – 12.5%
  • Premium – 25%
  • Exclusive – 50%
  • VIP – 100%

Joining Bonofa

Basic Affiliate membership to Bonofa is 29.90 EUR.

Affiliates are also able to sign up with the purchase of three package tiers:

  • Premium – 299.90 EUR
  • Exclusive – 949.90 EUR
  • VIP – 2490.90 EUR

Conclusion

Analysis of the Bonofa compensation plan is best done via separation of the Cube7 profit commissions and the Bonofa affiliate fee based commissions.

On the Cube7 side of things the commissions paid out appear legit enough. With affiliates paid out on the sales volume within the Cube7 social network, all commissions are generated via the sale of digital products and services.

Naturally there’d be a stipulation that this volume wasn’t solely generated by affiliate Cube7 members, so value would have to be provided to the end-user.

Despite seeing Cube7 advertised as having launched on July 7th, I’m not really sure if it actually did. The Cube7 website today certainly doesn’t look like it, presenting visitors with nothing more than a signup form.

cube7-website-login-page

By no means an accurate measure of a site’s activity but still useful to get some idea of visitor activity, Cube7 currently has an Alexa rank over 188.000. Tracking the site’s history, after a small blip in early July (presumably on the 7th) activity on the site quickly died out.

I suspect this is largely due to a lack of value provided to end-users. Cube7 doesn’t really provide anything end-users can’t already get elsewhere, so outside of the income opportunity there’s little reason to use the site, let alone convince others to join it.

On the affiliate side of things Bonofa clearly enter pyramid scheme territory with their affiliate package setup and compensation payouts.

Affiliates are not only residually paid each month from other affiliate’s membership fees, but are also directly compensated each time a new affiliate signs up and purchases a package.

The more paid for a package the higher percentage of commissions are available, throwing into question the motive behind an affiliate spending more money on affiliate membership (value of the attached services or simply to buy themselves a higher commission rate).

Something else that caught my attention was the announced plan to take the company public via an IPO in July 2017. In the meantime, the company is offering “dotcom points” which it’s currently allocating based on how much money an affiliate spends when they sign up.

The more money spent on affiliate membership equates to the company issuing more dotcom points.

The .comPoints Concept promises BONOFA Distribution partners an indirect financial share of BONOFAs economic success.

To this purpose, Bonofa.comPoints Holding Company Ltd. Holds 40% of BONOFAs authorised capital. In case of success, meaning after payouts from BONOFA AG to the holding company, owners of .comPoints have a payment claim corresponding to the aquire .comPoints.

These dotcom points don’t appear to have any tangible dollar value, but instead are tied into the planned 2017 IPO, with the idea being the more points an affiliate has the larger the amount of shares that will be issued to them.

This naturally raises questions about unregistered securities as the company is essentially offering shares it doesn’t yet have approval for to sell (they don’t even exist yet).

Add all of this together and I’m seeing an opportunity that is primarily going to be affiliate funded via membership fees, with little to no activity (retail or otherwise) throughout Cube7. This is reflected in the current state of the Cube7 website and lack of activity there despite having launched over a month ago.

Throw in the recruitment driven commissions and this is probably going to be an opportunity that will fizzle out once the initial launch buzz dies out and Bonofa’s affiliates are unable to recruit new affiliates into the scheme.

 

Update 26th April 2024 – Following their arrest in 2016, Bonofa ringleaders have received 6 to 7 year prison sentences in Germany.