SpinDing Review: $30 – $1890 cycler positions
There is no information on the SpinDing website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The SpinDing website domain (“spinding.com”) was registered on the 22nd of September 2013, naming a “Peter Nelson” as the owner. A PO Box address in the British Virgin Islands (a known tax-haven) is also provided.
Who Peter Nelson is and what his relationship to SpinDing entails is not clear. Spinding affiliates name Paul Nash as the company owner in their marketing material. Nash (right) also signs his name on emails sent out to Spinding affiliates and voices official Spinding marketing videos.
Paul Nash was a 20% part-owner of the failed revenue-sharing scheme, Go Fun Rewards. He’s officially credited as a “software architect” through his company Opus Solutions.
Nash was named as a defendant in a lawsuit filed by Go Fun Rewards’ former president, Randal Williams. Williams took particular offense to an email Nash sent William’s wife, claiming Williams was frequently suicidal and stealing from the company.
The case is ongoing.
Wary of the baggage being a part-owner in a Ponzi scheme carries, Nash sent out an email to Spinding affiliates addressing his MLM past (January 12th):
It’s true I was involved in GoFun. I was the key technical partner, responsible for building and operating the systems aspect of the business.
The owners were eAdgear Inc, a predominantly Chinese run operation that was based in CA and Hong Kong.
It’s a shame that I was involved with these guys… they made a unilateral decision one day to shut down US operations and take the business offshore, and I was left picking up the pieces both financially and with my relationships.
Besides taking a modest salary for my programming efforts (which provided a mechanism for me getting health insurance) and a bonus in the second month, I never made any money at all from this, and they never even called me to tell me I was fired and that my insurance was cancelled. No return calls since.
This in itself is astounding because my wife was on chemo, and they left me high and dry.
By my count they took over $16 million offshore and failed to pay commissions, me or other employees. A freaking nightmare to say the least.
The reason I started this company on my own was because I am sick of getting screwed by partners and bad business deals in the MLM space.
I’m a pretty accomplished entrepreneur in my own right, and I don’t need or want a front man any more to take the credit in the good times and point fingers in the bad. I can handle both on my own.
I am very very surprised at the amazing reaction we are getting. While this is good, it’s also going to be even more challenging for the management and operations of this business.
I can tell you though that I’m going to work my tail off to make this successful. It’s my name this time.
Cheers
Paul Nash
SpinDing LLC
Nash would appear not to regret his involvement in a Ponzi scheme that would have inevitably collapsed and ripped off its investors, but rather that eAdGear ran off back to Hong Kong and didn’t pay him.
Read on for a full review of the Spinding MLM business opportunity.
The Spinding Product Line
Spinding’s product appears to be a free mobile phone app that provides users with 1 free token a day.
This token can be used to win a random free prize. Alternatively if ten tokens are accumulated the user can choose from any prize currently offered. Additional tokens can also be purchased.
In order to redeem a prize, users of the app “show a barcode” at participating merchants.
I wasn’t able to find any concrete information on what prizes will be available, with the Spinding marketing material only stating that an ‘amazing range of products and services (are) expected‘.
Prizes are going to be provided by merchants, mostly local merchants.
How this app translates over into revenue and retail activity for Spinding was not immediately clear in the marketing material I went through.
The Spinding Compensation Plan
The Spinding compensation plan revolves around affiliates signing up and then buying six positions.
These positions are considered levels, costing $30, $60, $120, $240, $480 and $960 ($1890 altogether).
If an affiliate wishes to buy in at a level higher than $30, they must purchase the levels below it too. Eg. Buying in at the $240 level requires buying in at athe $120, $60 and $30 levels too.
Note that if an affiliate wishes to earn at any of the six levels, they themselves need to buy in at that level.
Each payment level operates as a straight line queue. An affiliate purchases their position in the queue and when four subsequent paid positions have been sold, they earn a commission.
- $30 queue = $1 cycle commission
- $60 queue = $2
- $120 queue = $4
- $240 queue = $8
- $480 queue = $16
- $960 queue = $32
Note that once cycled, the position is re-entered into the bottom of the queue. This re-entered position does not count as a paid position.
Each position can cycle up to ten times a day.
Matching Bonus
Spinding pay out a 50% matching bonus on all cycle commissions earnt by personally recruited affiliates.
Referral Commissions
A 20% referral commissions is paid out on all positions bought by personally recruited affiliates.
Joining Spinding
Affiliate membership to Spinding is free, however affiliates will need to purchase compensation plan positions if they wish to generate commissions.
This effectively pegs the cost of Spinding affiliate membership between $30 and $1890.
Conclusion
Far be it from me to point out the obvious, but there’s a gargantuan disconnect between what Spinding sell you in their official marketing material (a game app) versus their actual compensation plan.
The app doesn’t make much sense, with Spinding relying on merchants to give away inventory.
Some random “spins” their daily code, gets a product, walks into the store, flashes barcode, gets product and is never heard from again.
It makes little sense for a merchant to participate.
On the revenue side of things I really can’t see them charging merchants to participate on top of already giving away inventory. Users of the app aren’t paying anything so that leaves us with the affiliates.
And what a regulatory compliance mess that is.
I did note some mention of commissions being generated by people using the app, but with no revenue outside of affiliates buying money game positions, how that works is a mystery.
What isn’t a mystery is Spinding sell positions in cycler queues, and then paying out a fixed ROI ($1 – $32, up to ten times a day) once enough new positions have been purchased.
As I understand it Spinding are currently not accepting funds from affiliates, but are baiting them with fear of loss marketing by projecting what they could earn when Spinding launches. This is calculated based on the assumption that everyone who joins Spinding after then ponies up money come launch.
All six cycle queues require affiliates to continue to purchase new positions with cash. Typically in cycler schemes there is a flurry of initial activity and then they die off.
This is because those who initially bought positions decide to start cashing out, leaving those who invested in positions after them high and dry.
Subsequent recruitment injects some new funds into the scheme, but it’s typically nowhere near enough to offset the clogging up of the queues with cycled “unpaid” positions waiting to cycle.
As this queue gets longer and longer the incentive to join at the bottom and inject real funds via position purchasing decreases exponentially.
With Spinding Paul Nash seems to have graduated from Ponzi school straight into pyramid scheme university. Given he was the programmer for GoFunRewards (think Paul Burks sitting in a room deciding Zeek Rewards’ daily ROI each day), he knew full well what was going on there.
No doubt he knows full well what he’s launching with Spinding too. Maybe his wife’s medical bills have begun piling up. Maybe Randal William’s lawsuit is costing a fortune in legal fees. Or maybe Nash just doesn’t give a crap, so long as he gets a cut of your money.
Who knows…
While Spinding use affiliate funds to keep the money game side of the business going, the app side looks a bit glim.
Back in December 2013 Spinding put up a crowdsourcing project on IndieGogo. The company sought $160,000 towards development of the Spinding app, ranging from $10 (helper) to $9997 (Archangel).
The campaign closed on January 12th 2014 and raised a grand total of… $27.
How much app development does $27 buy you these days?
It appears to be a legitimate listing by Paul Nash and some other members of Spinding corporate.
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/spinding
As a long time business owner, I was introduced to this spin to win coupon concept and was interested, why, simple, in a recession you have to attract new business and providing an incentive through a smart phone spin to win app makes sense to me.
I have used free incentives for years and it has been an effective strategy, as it has for millions of businesses, just look at McDonald’s scratch off game winning free fries, soda or two for one offer. Does it work, yes, they wouldn’t do it every year if it didn’t work effectively.
As to the concept, look at all the scratch off tickets being offered over the years, nothing new, but to put it into a smart phone app is targeting the millennium generation who have their heads buried into a smart phone for hours on end, it is the future of advertising as I see it. And who doesn’t want to win something of value for free, just look at the scratch off lottery ticket sales to see how well this works. We all want it now society is exploding, nobody likes waiting for anything these days. lol
As to critical reviews, sure, everyone gets them, but they do not know all the facts, just the pre-launch stage which is obviously geared towards getting as many to join to learn more, and it is working according to all the people I see joining.
Again, people love freebie positions, and if they see the future of marketing as I do, then they just may see a large percentage who upgrade for the $30. to see what they may be earning. We all know the power of fear of loss, so is this wrong, no, everyone does it in the MLM arena.
As to the former involvement with a failed company which never launched, so Nash lost money, what else is new, many start up deals fail, and with it, a lesson learned. As to ponzi or pyramid, come on, every MLM out there can be called the same, so it comes down to the product, what is the product, the application for one, and millions are being developed and sold over past year, so is it worth it, who knows, it has never been done before like SpinDing is doing it.
We all know how there are millions and millions of smart phones being used, and combined with this popularity, SpinDing could easily become viral as more and more people win free soda, fries or two for one meals with a simple click and spin, so who wouldn’t want to play the game to win something of value like the above.
The sky is the limit as I see it, so don’t just look at the $30. cost of application, look at what merchants will pay to play for the real revenue source for long term growth. Look at success of Groupon and Living Social coupon deals, do they work, yes, why, because everyone is looking for a freebie or discount on what they were already going to purchase anyway. You have to be a business owner to fully understand, and being a MLM hater does not qualify an opinion like was posted here.
So as a business owner and online entrepreneur, I see the potential from both sides unlike the naysayers who only want to point out it could be a ponzi or pyramid deal. I have no idea what the fun deal mentioned was, but I have seen enough pyramids to know all MLM’s can be categorized as such if there is no product or service of value attached.
Will it work as planned, who knows, but for a free to see look, and only $30. to take it for a ride to see how many upgrade, it is a small price to pay compared to many other less attractive opportunities.
In closing, I considered Restaurant.com new merchant sales opportunity, and when you look at this compared to SpinDing, there is little difference. It is all about two for one deals, you go out to restaurant owners and ask them to discount their meals and then coupons are sold to consumers by company for $10. for a $25.00 discount coupon, so is this a pyramid, I enlist other representatives and get an override on their sales, sound familiar?
Everything can easily be classified as a pyramid if you are hell bent on any compensation plan with more than one level of commissions. Time will tell, but posting a review without all the fast is about as worthless as tits on a bull. lol
An MLM prelaunch is not an excuse or justification to run a “cycler” Ponzi scheme. And as a recruitment incentive? Well duh, all cyclers are recruitment based.
This is yet another attempt at excusing the MLM side of the business model. And what’s more is that it’s false. If the entire MLM industry used Ponzi cycler compensation plan models there wouldn’t be an MLM industry.
Well, perhaps if you did some research you’d appreciate how little the Spinding apple has fallen from the “fun deal” Ponzi scheme tree.
Well yeah, except for the whole cycler affiliate-funded Ponzi scheme thing Spinding has got going on. Which, let’s face it – is pretty much the core of the business.
Paul Nash is back again looking to con more people out of their money! He is running a new scam called Tellusmall.
Spinding is a classic pyramid scheme for sure. All it sold was a system that sells itself. You couldn’t earn without buying their system that only sells itself. Classic.
It truly is sad so many people spun lies with this spinner. There was no actual product/service/property being sold, and a purchase was required before someone could sell “nothing”
For all those who don’t think spinding was a pyramid scheme– check out the truth:
A pyramid scheme is any sales device or plan that a person must pay to another person in exchange for the “right” to receive compensation, was is derived primarily from introducing other people into the sales plan rather than from the sale of goods, services, or other property.
Fact: Spinding gave the buyer nothing but ability to refer people into the program.
I spotted this fact immediately and didn’t join. Phew!