SocialZing Review: Zing Pro Plus social media marketing suite

SocialZing operate in the lead generation MLM niche, with the company’s website claiming the opportunity launched back in 2011:

SocialZing was formed in 2011 when its founders recognized the synergy between social media, prospecting and conversion solutions. Initial technology solutions were soon launched and demand for such began to swell.

Since then, SocialZing has grown to become a leading provider of integrated technology solutions focused on helping agents and organizations invite, present, and convert contacts into new customers.

Whether they were operating under a different name I’m not sure, but the current SocialZing website domain (“socialzing.me”) was only registered in September of 2013.

Listed as CEO and Co-founder of SocialZing on the company website is Scott Brodkorb (right).

According to Brodkorb’s SocialZing corporate bio,

Scott discovered the power of Network Marketing 23 years ago when he became a distributor for a large Telecommunications Company. Scott has built several large organizations in his networking career while working as a Corporate Executive at a Fortune 100 company.

The only MLM history I was able to dish up was Brodkorb advertising something called “Home Business 2.0” as an affiliate a few years back.

Home Business 2.0 looks to be a $100 to $300 upfront plus $9.95 a month, with affiliates paid 50% of the fees charged affiliates they recruit (1-up compensation plan).

This was before SocialZing. Whether or not Brodkorp was involved in any other opportunities prior to SocialZing is unclear.

In any event, things with Home Business 2.0 didn’t seem to work out and so Brodkorp went on to launch SocialZing.

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

The SocialZing Product Line

SocialZing offer a range of social media related services, all branded through their “zing” name.

• SocialZing – “a unique social media management system that helps you post, track, and manage all of your social profiles from one location”
• Zingu – “SocialZing University is the premier online training program for social media marketing!”
• PageZing – “quickly create unlimited Facebook Page’s using PageZing automated Facebook Page creator”
• CaptureZing – “create your very own web-based, lead capture pages”
• MeetingZing – “get together anytime, anywhere, and with anyone for online or face-to-face meetings”
• TrackingZing – “track and manage leads as they come into the system”
• TextZing – “Textzing allows you to send important downline and customer communication using the fastest growing communication channel worldwide, text messaging”
• VideoZing – “With VideoZing you can send a video email and your recipients will be able to watch it”

SocialZing’s service suite isn’t offered individually, but instead comes as a “Zing Pro Plus” $199 retail bundle  with a $99 a month ongoing subscription.

The SocialZing Compensation Plan

The SocialZing compensation plan offers affiliates single-level retail commissions, with residuals paid out through a binary compensation structure.

Affiliates are also paid out directly on the recruitment of new affiliates via a perpetual 1-up compensation model, with additional performance based bonuses on offer.

Retail Commissions

A SocialZing affiliate earns $25 for each Zing Pro Plus service they sell to retail customers. 33% of the monthly fee charged retail customers (60 BV) is also placed in an affiliates binary.

Recruitment Commissions

Zing Pro Plus use a perpetual 1-up compensation structure to pay out recruitment commissions to their affiliates.

A 1-up compensation structure sees every odd recruited affiliate (1st, 3rd etc.) pay out a commission, while every even-numbered recruited affiliate (2nd, 4th etc.) is “passed up” to an affiliate’s direct upline.

I turn, when an affiliate’s recruits recruit new affiliates, they too must pass up every even-numbered affiliate they recruit to the affiliate who recruited them.

Commissions on affiliate recruitment are $100 per affiliate recruited.

Odd-number recruits pay out $100 to the affiliate who recruited them, with the $100 from even-numbered recruits being passed up to an affiliate’s immediate upline.

Note that a 50% matching bonus is available on the pass-up commissions earnt by personally recruited affiliates (pass-up commissions they receive from their recruited downline).

SocialZing Affiliate Membership Ranks

There are sixteen affiliate membership ranks in the Social Zing compensation plan. Along with their respective qualification requirements, they are as follows:

• Bronze – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least one binary cycle a month
• Silver – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least five binary cycles a month
• Gold – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least ten binary cycles a month
• Ruby – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least twenty binary cycles a month
• Sapphire – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least fifty binary cycles a month
• Emerald – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least seventy-five binary cycles a month
• Diamond – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least one hundred binary cycles a month
• Double Diamond – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least one hundred and fifty binary cycles a month
• Blue Diamond – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least two hundred binary cycles a month
• Black Diamond – recruit and maintain at least two monthly-fee paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary) and maintain at least two hundred and fifty binary cycles a month
• Executive – recruit and maintain at least two Emerald or higher ranked fee-paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary), and maintain at least three hundred binary cycles a month
• Presidential – recruit and maintain at least two Diamond or higher ranked fee-paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary), and maintain at least five hundred binary cycles a month
• Presidential Elite – recruit and maintain at least two Blue or higher ranked fee-paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary), and maintain at least seven hundred and fifty binary cycles a month
• Ambassador – recruit and maintain at least two Executive or higher ranked fee-paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary), and maintain at least one thousand five hundred binary cycles a month
• Ambassador Elite – recruit and maintain at least two Presidential or higher ranked fee-paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary), and maintain at least two thousand five hundred binary cycles a month
• Crown Ambassador – recruit and maintain at least two Ambassador or higher ranked fee-paying affiliates (one on either side of the binary), and maintain at least five thousand binary cycles a month

Rank Advancement Bonus

SocialZing pay affiliate a Rank Advancement Bonus the first time they qualify at the Silver affiliate rank or higher:

• Silver – $100
• Gold – $200
• Ruby – $500
• Sapphire – $700
• Emerald – $1000
• Diamond – $1500
• Double Diamond – $2000
• Blue Diamond – $4000
• Black Diamond – $5000
• Executive – $10,000
• Presidential – $25,000
• Presidential Elite – $50,000
• Ambassador – $100,000
• Ambassador Elite – $300,000
• Crown Ambassador – $500,000

Note that the Ambassador Elite and Crown Ambassador bonuses are paid out over two years (monthly installment).

Residual Binary Commissions

Monthly fees paid by retail customers and recruited affiliates are placed into a binary compensation structure. It is through this structure that monthly residual commissions are paid out.

A binary compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a binary team, with two positions directly under them. These two positions form the beginning of two binary sides, left and right:

These initial two positions branch out into another two positions each, and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels as the binary is filled.

Filled positions in the binary represent recruited affiliates or customers who are paying monthly subscription fees. These can be personally referred or recruited customers or affiliates, or those of an affiliate’s downline.

Sales volume from the monthly fees charges Zing Pro Plus subscribers are paid into the binary at a rate of 70 Business Volume (BV) points a month (60 BV for retail subscribers).

For each 100 BV paired on both sides of the binary (100 BV on the left paired with 100 BV on the right), a $25 commission is paid.

This equates to requiring at least two paying Zing Pro Plus subscribers on both sides of the binary.

Note that binary commission earnings are capped by SocialZing as follows:

• Bronze to Black Diamond – $7500 a week
• Executive to Ambassador – $25,000 a week
• Ambassador Elite and Crown Ambassador – $50,000 a week

Matching Binary Bonus

SocialZing affiliates can earn a matching bonus on the binary volume generated by their personally recruited affiliates and their recruits.

This is paid out as a percentage of the sales volume generated, paying out 10% down two levels of recruitment.

Bonus Pools

Two bonus pools are offered by SocialZing, an Executive Pool and an Ambassador Pool.

To qualify in each pool, a SocialZing affiliate must qualify at the Executive or Ambassador affiliate membership ranks respectively.

The Executive Pool is made up of 1% of company-wide sales volume, the Ambassador pool 3%. Shares in both pools are distributed equally among qualified affiliates, with shares in each pool retained as an affiliate moves up in rank.

ShopZing Commissions

ShopZing is described by SocialZing as follows:

ShopZing Rewards is a premium “Value Added Service” that rewards SocialZing Distributor’s every time they shop at one of over 5000 retailers.

With over 300 million products to choose from, ShopZing Rewards offers the best online shopping experience in today’s Ecommerce environment.

In a nutshell it appears to be a third-party merchant network that SocialZing has affiliated itself with.

The SocialZing compensation plan mentions that affiliates can “earn from all purchases from your ShoppingZing site”, however no specific information is provided.

Joining SocialZing

Affiliate membership to SocialZing is $49. A Zing Pro Plus subscription is also required, bringing the total cost of SocialZing affiliate membership to $248 with an ongoing $99 a month subscription.

Conclusion

The question of legitimacy with SocialZing lies with analysis of it’s bundled services.

Simply put, are retail customers going to cough up $199 + $99 a month for SocialZing’s social media marketing services?

• SocialZing (social media profile manager) – unlikely
• Zingu (social media marketing training) – perhaps, depending on who is providing the training
• PageZing (Facebook page creator) – unlikely, except perhaps for really lazy people
• CaptureZing (capture pages) – given the competition available, unlikely
• MeetingZing (“face to face meetings) – Google Hangouts, Skype etc.
• TrackingZing (lead manager) – perhaps with a lead generator, which Social Zing doesn’t seem to offer outside of capture page creation
• TextZing (SMS advertising) – unlikely given the competition
• VideoZing (video email) – Gmail + YouTube

Convenience is a factor I haven’t taken into consideration, but is that going to justify an initial $1288 annual spend?

If SocialZing affiliates can carve out a retail market, as far as their compensation plan goes there’s no issues.

The plan itself however is geared towards affiliate recruitment. The perpetual 1-up model used to pay out on the initial recruitment of affiliates pays out $100. Retail pays out $25.

Then of course the more affiliates are recruited in a downline, the larger the passup volume is every month. Retail remains static at $25 a pop over one level.

Residuals are naturally going to be higher with affiliate recruitment and Zing Pro Plus subscription, which is fine, but there’s absolutely no incentive to obtain retail customers.

Affiliate rank requirements see affiliates only required to recruit affiliates and hit binary cycle targets, which is easier with a downline then retail customers.

Even the marginally smallest of retail customer requirements at some of the SocialZing affiliate ranks would encourage retail customer acquisition, yet they are absent.

As such it’s my belief that the vast majority of Zing Pro Plus affiliates are simply going to be affiliate commission qualification purchases. SocialZing themselves use YouTube to host their marketing videos, so that’s a possible indication of their own faith in the services offered.

Pay $248 and then $99 a month to participate, recruit affiliates who do the same and ignore retail.

Not only is the above entirely possible within SocialZing, it also drags the scheme into pyramid scheme territory.

Those looking to join the company would do well to enquire as to how many retail monthly subscribers a potential upline has versus recruited affiliates. Anything short of a roughly even 50/50 spread should set off alarm bells.

That said, if it’s swung in favour of retail, all the more power to the affiliates working the opportunity. Given the compensation plan layout though and lack of attention to retail incentive, I’m just not seeing it.