speak-asia-online-logoOffering financial incentives for online surveys is nothing new. Marketing statistics are often invaluable to the companys soliciting them but there’s always been the challenge of getting accurate responses, or sometimes any response at all.

Gone are the days you could simply just walk up to randoms and expect them to set aside precious minutes of their day to provide you with valuable marketing information.

These days you need to offer some kind of incentive, usually in the form of some type of compensation.

Speak Asia Online appears to based in Singapore with a heavy establishment in India and has combined the process of survey taking with a binary MLM compensation plan.

Obviously in the business of getting their members to undertake surveys, there’s no products to sell but Speak Asia does encourage it’s members to go out and recruit other members via financial commissions.

I was a bit hesitant to write about Speak Asia initially as in my opinion it’s not really a MLM company, but they do utilise an MLM binary compensation plan and can be marketed just as any other MLM company.

In the end I thought I’d publish my thoughts on Speak Asia from a business perspective.

Speak Asia Online’s Products

As I mentioned earlier, Speak Asia offer their members surveys to complete in return for participating in their compensation plan. For this reason there are no products to sell at either a wholesale or retail level.

Instead, if you are going to market Speak Asia you’re going to solely have to do so on the platform of the company offering rewards for recruitment.

The more people you refer to the company who do surveys, the larger your commission check at the end of the month.

Joining Speak Asia Online

Joining Speak Asia Online is a bit different to joining a standard MLM company. Before you can join you need to register interest by mailing a copy of ‘your income statement from any of the global top 20 online survey companies showing an annual income of $1000 or more’.

I’m not entirely sure what happens if you don’t work for one fo the global top 20 online survey companies… or who they even are, but I think all Speak Asia Online care about is that you make more than $1000 a year in your current job.

After verification (I’ve got absolutely no idea how Speak Asia verify an emailed income statement), Speak Asia then get back to you with a verification code with you can then use to register with the company.

Once you’ve registered, you then need to pass a ‘test on English language, comprehension and general knowledge‘ and will be given a ‘personal interview‘.

The tests and interviews are conducted in person and currently Speak Asia only has test centres in Mumbai, India and somewhere in Singapore. Oh and sitting the test will also set you back $60.

Presumably all this rigmarole is so that Speak Asia has some control over their pool of survey takers so that they can attempt to ensure that all requested demographics are made available to their clients.

What this means for you however is that the selection process is not guaranteed. Even if you pass the test and personal interview, Speak Asia reserve the right not to select you to join the company.

Oh, and I’m guessing that $60 is non-refundable too.

If however you are selected to join Speak Asia, the company offers two entry points for those wishing to participate as a panelist and gain commissions via their compensation plan.

A Standard Panelist

Joining Speak Asia Online as a Standard Panelist allows you to generate a maximum of 7 reward points every week.

Joining Speak Asia as a Standard Panelist will cost you $120 and comes with a 26 issue subscription to ‘Online Surveys Today E-bulletin’.

Note that after 26 issues have been delivered, you will again have to pay the subscription fee.

A Premium Panelist

Joining as a Premium Panelist increases the amount of weekly reward points you can generate up to 20.

Joining Speak Asia as a Premium Panelist will cost you $220 and comes with a 52 issue subscription to ‘Online Surveys Today E-bulletin’.

Note that after 52 issues have been delivered, you will again have to pay the subscription fee.

If you’re wondering what the ‘Online Surveys Today E-bulletin’ is, as far as I can tell it’s a weekly mail out that includes basic training to ensure that your completed surveys are accepted by Speak Asia’s clients.

Dunno how hard it is to fill in a survey or if it’s a reflection of the people signing up as panelists for Speak Asia, but I’d have thought filling out surveys is pretty straight forward.

At the end of the day, Standard Panelists are up for $240 annually while Premium Panelists come in at $220. Obviously the incentive here is to sign up as a Premium Panelists to generate more reward points weekly.

The Speak Asia Online Compensation Plan

The Speak Asia compensation plan offers panelists four ways to generate an income and revolves around ‘reward points’.

Reward points are generated when panelists complete weekly surveys and tasks for Speak Asia and also when panelists are successful in recruiting other panelists to the company.

Reward points are attributed to individual panelists and within Speak Asia’s compensation plan, have a dollar value of 1 reward point = $1 USD.

Here are the four components to Speak Asia’s compensation plan;

Residual Commission

Speak Asia Online’s residual commissions reward members directly each time they successfully recruit panelists to the company. As long as these panelists remain active within the company, you gain reward points each week.

For each Standard Panelist you refer, you gain 1 reward point a week.

For each Premium Panelist you refer, you gain 3 reward points a week.

Direct Commission

Direct commissions are paid out to Speak Asia members as follows;

10 reward points for each Standard Panelist you refer and 20 reward points for each Premium Panelist you refer.

Note that this is a once off commission and is not recurring.

Team Bonus 1

Speak Asia’s Team Bonus 1 operates on the basis of referral points.

For each Standard Panelist you recruit (and each Standard Panelist they in turn recruit and so on and so forth), you gain 100 referral points.

For each Premium Panelist you recruit (and each Premium Panelist they in turn recruit and so on and so forth), you gain 200 referral points.

This is also where the binary component of the compensation plan comes into play. A binary plan has two ‘arms’ and as you recruit more panelists to the company they are placed underneath you on either arm (the arm with less panelists is favoured to balance things out).

Taking referral points into consideration then, each side has its own referral point tally.

For example, if you have 3 directly recruited Standard Panelists on your left arm, and 5 on your right arm, this generates 300 referral points on your left and 500 on your right.

Team Bonus 1 is paid out when these referral points match up by factors of 200. This is called a ‘pair’

With 300 points on your left and 500 on your right, you have one pair with 100 points left over on your left and 300 on your right.

For each pair that you generate, you receive 20 reward points ($20 USD).

Team Bonus 1 is paid out daily but does have a daily cap of 20 pairs able to be generated. 20 pairs generates 400 reward points which means the daily payout cap of Team Bonus 1 is $400.

Note however that to reach this cap you and your binary team would have to be recruiting 80 Standard Panelists, 40 Premium Panelists or a combination of the two per day.

At the end of each day only the stronger arm (the one with more leftover points) is carried over. The other weaker arm is reset to 0 referral points daily. This does reduce somewhat the amount of recruits you need to bring to the company to reach the Team Bonus 1 cap, but you still need to build referral points on your weaker arm daily from 0.

This effectively limits your Team Bonus 1 to however many new recruits you can bring to Speak Asia daily.

Note that in recruiting new panelists to Speak Asia, this includes the qualification process and depends on whether or not your recruits are successful in their applications to join Speak Asia. Merely referring people to the company is not enough.

Team Bonus 2

Team Bonus 2 is an additional reward point payout based again on the direct amount of referral points you and your binary team generate daily.

You are awarded a ‘match point’ for each referral point that ‘matches up’ on both arms of your binary team.

Team Bonus 2 operates on a payout table and depending on which level of the table your generated referral points falls on, this determines your daily payout in reward points.

The table is as follows;

Level 1: 400 match points (400/400) = 40 reward points ($40 USD)

Level 2: 800 match points (800/800) = 80 reward points ($80 USD)

Level 3: 1600 match points (1600/1600) = 160 reward points ($160 (USD)

Level 4: 3200 match points (3200/3200) = 320 reward points ($320 USD)

Level 5: 6400 match points (6400/6400) = 640 reward points ($640 USD)

Level 6: 12800 match points (12800/12800) = 1280 reward points ($1280 USD)

Level 7: 25600 match points (25600/25600) = 2560 reward points ($2560 USD)

Level 8: 51200 match points (51200/51200) = 5120 reward points ($5120 USD)

At level one you and your binary team would need to be recruiting 8 Standard Panelists a day (or 4 Premium Panelists) whilst at level eight, the requirement is 1024 Standard Panelists a day (or 512 Premium Panelists).

Conclusion

As you can see there’s a incredibly heavy reliability on Speak Asia Online panelists to get out there and recruit others if they ever want to make any decent money from the compensation plan.

Ignoring the recruitment driven residual income, a Standard Panelist is only capable of making $7 a week and a Premium Panelist $20.

Thus it’s safe to say that recruitment is going to be the primary source of income for those wishing to generate an income with Speak Asia.

Looking at some of those daily astronomical recruitment numbers required to  generate a decent income, I think it’s safe to put Speak Asia Online, purely as a business opportunity, into the pyramid scheme basket.

Simply put the daily numbers required for multiple people to generate a decent income would mean Speak Asia would be growing at an astronomical rate. And keep in mind that’s all for just one person to generate an income.

Each and every panelist within Speak Asia needs to personally meet daily recruiting requirements to really starts generating a decent stream of revenue.

Oh, and did I mention your market is rather limited to those who can attend the tests and personal interview in only either Mumbai in India or Singapore?

Probably best to stay away from this one folks…