Trivita Review: Well balanced health & nutrition

Trivita launched in 1999 are based in the US state of Arizona. The company operates in the nutrition and weight loss MLM niche.

Heading up Trivita is CEO and Founder, Michael Ellison. According to Ellison’s Trivita executive bio,

Mr. Ellison has over thirty years of experience leading his own businesses including: Ellison Media Company; Global Duplication & Fulfillment; and Ellison Research.

Through Ellison Media Company, he helped many recognized non-profit organizations grow their outreach in the United States, Africa, Latin America, Australia, Canada and Europe.

Michael Ellison has carried over this same innovative and entrepreneurial spirit into the founding of Trivita in 1999 after going through his own personal health crisis at the age of 50.

He joined with a successful developer of four independent direct sales businesses, Barry Borthistle, to create Trivita Inc., a company dedicated to the mission of helping people fight the war on disease by focusing on physical, emotional and spiritual health.

I wasn’t able to find any record of involvement in an MLM company by Ellison (right) prior to 1999, indicating that Trivita was his first stint on the executive management side of the industry.

As for the Ellison Media Company, it appears to be a religious orientated marketing group. Founded in 1977 by Ellison, the company credits itself for much of Trivita’s success.

Founded by Michael Ellison in 1971, Ellison Media Company quickly grew into a national presence in the Christian media industry.

Ellison Media Company was responsible for developing the front-end direct response strategy, which included placement of long-form television and radio infomercial programming, DR print, and Web-based direct marketing response marketing. As a result of Ellison Media Company’s direct response strategies, TriVita

-Acquired over 2,000,000 customers via radio, television, Web and print

-Sold 11 million units of its flagship product

-Ranked in the top 20 frequently aired television infomercials by “Response” magazine

-Expanded its DR activities internationally

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

The Trivita Product Line

Trivita market a diverse range of products targeting health, nutrition and weight loss.

There are far too many products in the Trivita range to list here individually, but price wise you’re looking at a range of $10 for a bottle of their “Clean & Green multi-purpose cleaner” to $265 for the “Lluvia Complete Skin Care System”.

Note that the skin-care system is on the extreme upper-end of the price range, with most products listed on the Trivita website being priced at under $100.

The Trivita Compensation Plan

The Trivita compensation plan primarily revolves around the generation of sales volume by affiliate and retail customer sales, with commissions paid to affiliates via a 60 day order bonus and unilevel.

Affiliate Membership Ranks

There are ten affiliate membership ranks within the Trivita compensation plan and, along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:

• Affiliate – monthly minimum 20 PV order
• 1 Star Affiliate – monthly minimum 40 PV order and the recruitment of at least one affiliate
• 2 Star Affiliate – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 2,500 GV min unilevel volume and the recruitment of at least two affiliates
• 3 Star Affiliate – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 5,000 GV min unilevel volume and the recruitment of at least three affiliates
• 4 Star Affiliate – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 10,000 GV min unilevel volume and the recruitment of at least three affiliates
• Director – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 25,000 GV min unilevel volume (no more than 50% from any one leg) and the recruitment of at least three affiliates
• 1 Star Director – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 50,000 GV min unilevel volume (no more than 50% from any one leg) and the recruitment of at least three affiliates (one of which must be a Director)
• 2 Star Director – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 75,000 GV min unilevel volume (no more than 50% from any one leg) and the recruitment of at least three affiliates (two of which must be Directors)
• 3 Star Director – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 100,000 GV min unilevel volume (no more than 50% from any one leg) and the recruitment of at least three affiliates (three of which must be Directors)
• Presidential Director – monthly minimum 100 PV order, 250,000 GV min unilevel volume (no more than 50% from any one leg) and the recruitment of at least three affiliates (three of which must be Directors)

Income Accelerator Weekly Bonus

Trivita’s Income Accelerator Weekly Bonus pays out when newly recruited customers or affiliates make products orders in their first 60 days of joining.

How much an affiliate earns depends on their affiliate membership rank, with a base 30% commission paid out to the affiliate who recruited the customer/affiliate.

Their upline then gets 15% and then the upline’s upline gets 10%. From here additional percentages are paid out, with an affiliate paid the percentages as a bonus depending on their affiliate membership rank:

• Director – 5%
• 1 Star Director – 3%
• 2 Star Director – 3%
• 3 Star Director – 2%
• Presidential Director – 2%

Note that the above rank bonuses stack, and if the recruiting affiliate and their first two tiers of upline do not claim the entire rank bonus, Trivita continue to search up the upline until a ranked affiliate is found. The search ends when a Presidential Director is found and the entire bonus has been paid out.

Also note that if the recruiting affiliate is of the Director or higher rank, than the  upline commissions are paid out to that affiliate, up to and including their affiliate membership rank bonus.

Eg. if a 2-Star Director recruits a customer or affiliate who makes a qualifying product purchase, they earn 30% (recruiting affiliate) + 15% (1st upline) + 10% (2nd upline) + 5% (Director bonus) + 3% (1 Star Director bonus) + 3% (2 Star Director bonus), for a total of 66% of the total 70% available.

The remaining 3 Star Director and Presidential Director bonuses will be paid out to the first rank qualifying affiliates in their upline.

100 PV a month is required for an affiliate to qualify for the Income Accelerator Weekly Bonus.

Unilevel Commissions

Unilevel commissions make up the residual income component of the Trivita compensation plan and kick in after a customer or affiliate’s 60 day joining period.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed under them (level 1). In turn, if any of these level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are then placed on level 2 of the original affiliates unilevel team.

In a unilevel style compensation structure, this process continues down a theoretically infinite number of levels. Trivita however cap commissions down a maximum of seven levels of recruitment.

Commissions are paid based on sales volume generated by an affiliate’s unilevel team, that being volume generated by both recruited affiliates and customers.

In their compensation plan material, Trivita state that they have two unilevel commission rates, which appears to be a differentiation between retail customer volume and affiliate volume.

Retail volume is paid out 21% on level 1 and 4% on levels 2 to 7, whereas affiliate volume is paid out 3% on level 1 and 7% between levels 2 to 7.

How many levels an affiliate can earn in their unilevel is determined by their affiliate membership rank:

• Affiliate – 3 levels
• 1 Star Affiliate – 4 levels
• 2 Star Affiliate – 5 levels
• 3 Star Affiliate – 6 levels
• 4 Star Affiliate and higher – all 7 levels

Unilevel Commission Expansion

From the Director affiliate membership level, Trivita affiliates can earn beyond the initial seven levels of their unilevel team.

This is done via a series of tiers, with a tier being defined by the affiliate membership ranks of a downline.

• Director tier (paid down to the first ranked Director) – 4% (25,000 min GV)
• 1 Star Director tier (paid from the first Director to the first ranked 1 Star Director) – 2% (50,000 min GV)
• 2 Star Director tier (paid down from the 1 Star Director to the first ranked 2 Star Director) – 2% (75,000 min GV)
• 3 Star Director tier (paid down from the 2 Star Director to the first ranked 3 Star Director) – 2% (100,000 min GV)
• Presidential Director tier (paid down from the 3 Star Director through four additional tiers of Presidential Directors) – 1% (100,000 min GV)

Note that each unilevel leg is treated individually for qualification purposes. If no additional tier ranked, that tiered bonus runs down the full length of the unilevel leg until an affiliate in that leg is promoted to the required rank to trigger the end of the tier.

Also note that the abbreviation “GV” above stands for “Group Volume” and refers to an affiliate’s entire downline generated volume each month.

Joining Trivita

Affiliate membership to Trivita is free, however a monthly minimum spend of 20 PV is required in order to qualify for commissions (this monthly cost increases with affiliate membership rank to 100 PV).

Conclusion

Whether it’s a symptom of a spate of overly complex compensation plans I’ve had to wade through recently, I have to note first off that Trivita’s plan was refreshingly simple to understand, well presented and easy to dissect.

Kudos to the company on that and I don’t foresee any problems with affiliates explaining the business model to prospective affiliates.

Getting into the analysis side of things, Trivita have an expansive and obviously retailable product line, with commissions paid out via the compensation primarily through sales volume.

With affiliate membership being free, there’s no direct financial benefit from signing affiliates up.

In particular, the breaking up of customer and affiliate volume in the unilevel was a nice touch (first time I’ve seen it). Paying out on your customers top-heavy percentage wise and reversing that on the affiliate side of things simultaneously encourages retail volume and building of a sales team.

One thing I didn’t particularly like however was the mandatory affiliate spend to qualify for commissions. I would have preferred this to have been a volume quota as opposed to affiliate spend.

Forcing affiliates to buy product to earn commissions always throws into question the motivation behind the purchase. That said, it does indirectly encourage an affiliate try out the products, which will ultimately help on the marketing side of things (product of a product).

On that note, in the affiliate membership ranks it would have also been good to see a retail volume quota built-in. Retail volume is already tracked separately in the unilevel so I don’t imagine this would be too difficult to implement.

The recruitment qualification in the affiliate ranks was also a bit iffy, but I figured a reasonable number considering a unilevel requires it and it caps out at 3. For the volume required in the later levels I think a downline of three is more than conservative.

Furthermore it wholly allows an affiliate to focus on volume over recruitment, giving them more control over the size of their team determined by the volume that team is producing, rather than how many affiliates they need to meet a qualification quota.

In summary, it’s possible to build a team full of affiliates and ignore retail volume, however given the nature of the compensation plan (in particular residual unilevel commissions), it’s not going to be all that profitable.

Trivita have a product line that is marketable to retail customers so ignoring this side of the business is only going to harm an affiliate in the long-term (sustainability will become an issue around the Director affiliate rank with the jump in GV required).

Naturally I’d recommend testing some Trivita’s products as a retail customer before jumping in as an affiliate. With this being the core focus of the business and simply due to the sheer size of the product range, familiarity is going to be a challenge for new affiliates.

Once that is achieved though and if you’re happy with the products and convinced you can successfully market them, I’m not seeing any other issues or red flags that would discourage one from taking the plunge and signing on as a Trivia affiliate.

Good luck!