iwowwe-logoI’m not entirely sure why, but in what looks like an effort to expand the previous plan, iWowWe announced changes to its compensation plan last Monday which will come into effect starting October 1st, 2011.

Changes to the existing compensation plan include

  • new joining options for new members
  • the introduction of membership ranks
  • a new infinity override bonus
  • changes to the retail commissions structure
  • expansion of the existing 3×7 matrix to a 3×9 model with possible additional legs
  • changes to the matching bonus

Today we’re going to take a detailed look at the changes iWowWe have announced, along with a comparison (where applicable) to the old compensation plan equivalent being replaced and/or updated.

New membership options

Replacing the old single membership option available to those wishing to join iWowWe ($69.95 to join and $19.95 a month thereafter for video conferencing), iWowWe have announced two new entry options;

  • Basic Package – The Basic Package costs new members $75 upfront with a $20 a month subscription fee for video conferencing (100 user max). The Basic Package allows users to send up to 500 video emails a day with up to 50 recipients per email sent.
  • Premium Package – The Premium Package costs nw members $195 upfront with a $20 a month subscription fee for video conferencing (100 user max). The Premium Package allows users to send up to 10,000 video emails a day with up to 1,000 recipients per email sent. The Premium Package also includes iWowWe’s ‘Advanced Internet Marketing’ and one ‘custom signature trailer’.

Membership Ranks

New in the October compensation plan changes are the introduction of
membership ranks. Whereas previously iWowWe members just had to concentrate on filling their matrix, with membership ranks they also have to work to expand and help their downline.

The newly introduced iWowWe membership ranks are as follows;

  • Affiliate – The entry level membership position a new member of iWowWe receives upon joining the company.
  • Director – To reach Director, you must personally sponsor three affiliates who purchase either the Basic or Premium Package, or sell it themselves.
  • Senior Director – To reach Senior Director, you must personally sponsor at least six affiliates who have purchased either the Basic or Premium Package.
  • Executive Director – To reach Executive Director, you must personally sponsor at least nine affiliates who have purchases either the Basic or Premium Package.
  • Executive Director II – To reach Executive Director II, three of your personally sponsored affiliates must reach the rank of Executive Director.
  • Executive Director III – To reach Executive Director III, six of your personally sponsored affiliates must reach the rank of Executive Director.
  • Field Vice President – To reach Field Vice President, nine of your personally sponsored affiliates must reach the rank of Executive Director and you must have a minimum of 1000 active affiliates in your matrix.
  • Senior Field Vice President – To reach Senior Field Vice President, three of your personally sponsored affiliates must reach the rank of Field Vice President.
  • Executive Field Vice President – To reach Executive Field Vice President, six of your personally sponsored affiliates must reach the rank of Field Vice President.
  • Global Field Chairman – To reach Global Field Chairman, nine of your personally sponsored affiliates must reach the rank of Global Field Chairman.

Changes to Retail Commissions

Under the old iWowWe compensation plan, affiliates were awarded a flatrate 20% commission on product sales and a 10% commission on recurring subscription fees (video conferencing).

Under the new compensation plan these retail commissions have been halved to 10% on product sales and 5% on subscription fees.

To make up for this reduction, a ‘Product Sales Bonus’ has been introduced which pays out a flatrate commission of $25 for each sale of the Basic Package, and $50 for each sale of a Premium Package.

The Product Sales Bonus also pays an upline commission of $1 for a Basic Package and $9 for a Premium Package on 7 levels.

The upline commission is dependent on membership rank and pays your upline searching for the first qualified Executive Director, who is paid $1 or $9 depending on which Package was sold. Then the system searches for the next qualified Executive Director II, who is paid the same.

This continues on all the way up to the first Global Field Chairman to be found in the upline who then also receives either a $1 or $9 payout. These qualified members are first come first served in the upline lineage and do not need to be personally enrolled by the member making the initial sale to qualify for the commission.

Matrix Changes

Under the old compensation plan, iWowWe utilised a 3×7 matrix. In the October changes this has been increased to a 3×9 system which incorporates 29,517 members (26238 members more than the old 3×7 matrix).

The payout of the new matrix is a flat 5% commission on your downline with various levels of the matrix being unlocked depending on your membership rank.

An affiliate is able to earn a commission on levels 1-3, a Director on levels 4-6 and senior directors on levels 7-9.

Membership ranks also now have the benefit of granting a member an additional arm on their matrix. These new arms operate under the same rules as the rest of the matrix, meaning that each level is capped at 3 legs per branch.

From Field Vice President up to Executive Field Vice President, members are granted an additional matrix leg at each promotion level.

Upon reaching Global Field Chairman, each new member recruited will start a new matrix arm, meaning the matrix is effectively turned into a unilevel plan that is unlimited legs wide on the first generation and capped to 3 each subsequent generation down to nine levels.

The Matching Bonus

The old Matching Bonus paid out on a member’s first generation only. If a member had recruited 3 new members, they got a 25% match, 5 new members, 50%, 8 new members, 75% and 10, 100%.

The new matching bonus pays out a flat rate 30% and is tied into membership ranks.

A Director makes 30% on their first generation, a Senior Director 30% on their first and second generation (members those they have directly sponsored have sponsored) and an Executive Director 30% on three generations.

Infinity Override

The Infinity Override is designed to take your 3×9 matrix and pay out beyond the original 9 levels.

Designed for members who are with iWowWe for the long haul, upon completing their 29,517 member 3×9 matrix, the payouts continue with the Infinity Override.

Unlocked at the Field Vice President membership rank, the Infinity Override pays out a 2-5% commission on your entire matrix starting at level 10.

The Override runs until a second generation (somebody you’ve personally sponsored who has sponsored another member themselves) Field Vice President is found.

At this point the Override stops but you are continued to be paid out a commission on all members starting on your tenth level up until the placement of the second generation Field Vice President.

The exact commission payouts for the Infinity Override are 2% at the Field Vice President level, 2.25% for Senior Field Vice President, 2.5% Executive Field Vice President and 5% for Global Field Chairman.

Conclusion

With 26,238 more membership positions on the new matrix, it’s obvious that iWowWe are striving to accommodate long-term company growth over the next few years.

Unfortunately rather than focus on retail sales, they appear to want to achieve this through membership.

Whereas in the old compensation plan the Fast Start Bonus (now gone) was the only component that offered a commission on recruitment of new members, the new compensation plan is much more recruitment based.

Starting with the two new joining packages, Basic and Premium, there appears to be no separation of company membership and being able to use the iWowWe services. Thus, when we’re talking retail commissions and product sale bonuses, we’re also inevitably talking membership commissions and recruitment bonuses as there’s no distinction between the two under the new compensation plan (the compulsory monthly subscription to the video conferencing product is a prominent example).

The membership ranks introduce an interesting new component of the compensation plan and integrate well within it, but although they do look like they’re tied into product sales, effectively they are recruitment based and the only way to advance in rank is to recruit yourself and eventually get your downline to as well (they need to recruit to advance themselves, and you need to get them to advance to advance yourself at various membership levels).

Given the membership levels control much of the compensation plan payouts, thus everything is now tied into the recruitment of others.

You can of course treat the membership as retail sales but if you yourself want to advance, starting with the ‘Executive Director II’ rank, you have to get your downline to recruit.

Not advancing in rank beyond Executive Director II effectively limits your commissions to a downline of just 1086 people out of a possible 29,517 total (6th level of the matrix) and anyone you recruit thereafter, you aren’t eligible to receive a residual commission on. So as you can see, recruitment is very much a central focus under the new iWowWe compensation plan.

Given that nothing has changed product offering wise and iWowWe started back in 2007, I’d say those distributors who got in early had most likely reached (or come close to) the previous matrix cap of 3,279 people.

What we appear to be looking at here is a much larger compensation plan to accommodate this, along with a much more stronger focus on recruiting, as evidenced by the bundling of iWowWe’s products along with their affiliate membership, effectively dropping retail sales altogether.

For a more comprehensive look at the complete iWowWe MLM business opportunity, be sure to read BehindMLM’s iWowWe review (now updated with the new October v3.66 compensation plan changes).