Tellus Mall Review: E-commerce & matrix recruitment

Tellus Mall went into prelaunch in early 2015. No corporate address is provided on the company’s website, however the Tellus Mall website domain was registered with an address in New Brunswick, Canada.

A promo on the Tellus Mall website advises visitors that the company “partners with Spinding and Social Zing”:

Spinding went into prelaunch in early 2014 and initially saw affiliates invest between $30 to $1890 on the expectation of an advertised $10 to $320 daily ROI.

Not surprisingly, the launch of Spinding in March was delayed due to compliance issues.

The scheme did eventually launch, however the matrix cycler queues stalled shortly after launch. This prompted the addition of a matrix to Spinding’s compensation plan.

The app Spinding was supposed to be based on was still MIA as of July 2014.

SocialZing on the other hand launched in mid 2014 and pay affiliates $100 per new recruit.

Both SocialZing and Spinding operated in the marketing MLM niche, with both in one way or another relying on affiliate recruitment to sustain themselves.

Regarding their partnership with Tellus Mall, unfortunately the explicit nature of the partnership is not clarified on the Tellus Mall website.

A “meet the Tellus team” page features on the Tellus Mall website, with Anthony Leiva cited as a co-owner of the company.

No other co-owners are mentioned on the Tellus Mall website, leaving a question mark over the involvement of Paul Nash and Scott Brodkorb (owners of Spinding and CEO of SocialZing respectively).

Anthony Leiva and Julie Curley (owner of the Tellus Mall website and listed as the “Principal” of the company), appear to have been working together for some time.

Marketing a company he was involved in at the time, in 2008 Leiva (right) wrote

Hello All,

I am a very Lucky person. My mentor and good friend is Julie Curley.

I have a background in VOIP technologies. Julie showed me this new company she runs as the Director of Operations and Support that I currently work for, Biz Calling Cards.

I am one of the top producers and have a big sales organization.

The pair again teamed up to run something called Ads2TXT in 2010. In September of 2011 Leiva joined Stiforp, a matrix-based opportunity that paid affiliates to recruit.

A few months later in November of 2011, Leiva went on to join and invest in Zeek Rewards.

Zeek Rewards was an $850 million Ponzi scheme shut down by the SEC in 2012. Whether or not Julie Curley joined him in the opportunity is unclear.

Post Zeek Leiva got involved in The Legends Network, which once again paid him to recruit new affiliates.

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

The Tellus Mall Product Line

Tellus Mall have no retailable products or services themselves, however they do stock third-party products in a Tellus Mall branded e-commerce platform.

The only items Tellus Mall themselves offer for sale are affiliate memberships, costing between $99 and $999.

The Tellus Mall Compensation Plan

Note that at the time of publication, Tellus Mall do not provide the public with a copy of their compensation plan on their website.

As such I’ve pieced together the following analysis from various affiliate presentations, using the most recently available information I could source.

Note that a number of dated Tellus Mall compensation plan presentations appear on the internet, which I’ve for the most part ignored.

Retail Commissions

Retail commissions are offered on the sale of third-party products through Tellus Mall’s e-commerce platform.

These commissions are advertised as being up to 25%, depending of course on which product is being purchased.

Recruitment Commissions

Tellus Mall pay a 50% commission (rounded up) on the membership fees paid by a newly recruited affiliate.

How much in terms of dollar amounts is paid out is as such determined by how much is spent when a new affiliate joins Tellus Mall:

• Deluxe ($99) – $50
• Premium ($199) – $100
• Ultimate ($499) – $250
• Ultra Professional ($999) – $500

Note that these figures appear to have changed sometime in early March, with previous amounts paid being significantly lower than the above amounts.

This I believe is explained by the 50% amount being referred to as a promotion, however how long the promotion extends for is unclear.

Matrix Commissions

Tellus Mall pay residual monthly commissions via a 2×15 matrix.

A 2×15 matrix places an affiliate at the top of the matrix, with two positions directly under them (level 1):

These two level 1 positions branch out into another two positions each, making up the second level of the matrix.

The level 2 positions branch out into another two positions each to make up the third level, and so on and so forth down a total of fifteen levels.

Commissions appear to be percentage-based, paying out a percentage of the monthly fees each Tellus Mall affiliate is charged.

• levels 1 to 3 – 3.5%
• levels 4 and 5 – 2.8%
• levels 6 and 7 – 2.1%
• levels 8 to 10 – 1.4%
• levels 11 to 15 – not specified

Note that regular Tellus Mall affiliates are only qualified to earn on the first ten levels of the matrix.

The other five levels appear to be unlocked as per separate recruitment criteria.

Also note that Tellus Mall affiliates only appear able to earn at whatever level they themselves bought in at.

Eg. If an affiliate bought in Ultimate level, they can only earn up to the Ultimate level. Any affiliates at the Ultra Professional level are paid out according to the amount paid on Ultimate level affiliates.

Affiliates in the matrix who bought in at the lower levels are paid out as normal.

Matching Bonus

Tellus Mall affiliates can earn a Matching Bonus on the matrix earnings of their personally recruited affiliates.

How much of a Matching Bonus is paid out depends on how many affiliates they recruit:

• recruit 2 affiliates = 25% match
• recruit 4 affiliates = 50% match
• recruit 8 or more affiliates = 100% match

Infinity Bonus

I saw an Infinity Bonus mentioned in several Tellus Mall affiliate presentations, however I was unable to find any specific details on what is offered.

Presumably however, the Infinity Bonus offers Tellus Mall affiliates a way to earn beyond the first fifteen levels of their matrix.

Joining Tellus Mall

Affiliate membership with Tellus Mall costs between $99 and $999.

• Deluxe – $99 and then $29 a month
• Premium – $199 and then $49 a month
• Ultimate – $499 and then $99 a month
• Ultra Professional – $999 and then $199 a month

Conclusion

A lack of transparency seems to be a recurring theme throughout Tellus Mall, starting with basic information about the company structure, its owners and following through to the compensation plan.

With an official launch just around the corner, that the Tellus Mall compensation plan is not immediately available on their website is a major red flag.

From what I have been able to piece together though, the e-commerce platform is largely irrelevant with affiliate recruitment instead being the core focus of the business opportunity.

In effect, Tellus Mall’s e-commerce platform is what Spinding’s app and SocialZing’s marketing tools were to their respective recruitment-driven income opportunities.

Commissions paid out via the e-commerce platform are single-level, and have nothing to do with Tellus Mall’s MLM business opportunity.

Said opportunity relies on an affiliate signing up, paying a fee and then recruiting others who do the same.

Of note is that there’s a distinct “pay to play” element within Tellus Mall’s opportunity, which is openly advertised by the company:

This I believe is evident in the matrix commissions, with only Ultra Professional affiliates able to maximize their matrix commissions.

Otherwise it’s pretty much just recruit, recruit, recruit.

Recruitment increases a Tellus Mall’s Matching Bonus, as well as directly increasing their immediate recruitment income and monthly residual commissions via the matrix.

Retail commissions via the e-commerce platform can (and likely will be) completely ignored.

If you look at the history behind the management of Tellus Mall and the companies they’re partnering with, none of this should come as a revelation to you. All we’re seeing here is the continuance of recruitment attached to any number of gimmicks, be it marketing, app-based or e-commerce (the Tellus Mall website has a menu titled “services”, in which insurance and travel are mentioned).

Fortunately for an indication as to how Tellus Mall is going to play out, one need only look at the history of the companies Tellus Mall seeks to emulate.

As with all recruitment-driven opportunities, once recruitment dies down so too will the matrix commissions for those at the bottom of the company-wide matrix.

When they stop getting paid they’ll stop paying their monthly fees, which means those above them stop getting paid.

Eventually this effect trickles up far along the Tellus Mall affiliate genealogy, at which point an irreversible collapse is triggered.

Kaboom.