Uneeqlee Review: Text message advertising
Uneeqlee launched in August of 2013 and as per the company’s website domain registration, is based out of Colorado in the US.
Heading up Uneeqlee on the management side of things is CEO and Founder, Seth Fraser (right).
Fraser’s past MLM ventures include the “free stuff” themed MLM opportunities Freebie Force and That Free Thing.
Freebie Force launched back in 2007, offering affiliates access to free stuff deals for a monthly fee and paying them per new affiliate recruited.
By 2010, Freebie Force had collapsed with Fraser selling the affiliate member list to LiveSmart 360 and eventually moving on seven months after the merger.
Convinced that the free stuff MLM business model could still work, Fraser returned with That Free Thing in early 2011.
Again the “affiliates paying a monthly membership fee for free stuff and getting paid for recruitment” business model was used and once again the company eventually went bust.
Affiliate membership went into decline shortly after launch, peaking at a 25% reduction between August and November of 2011.
Today That Free Thing still exists but no longer charges for membership. The site is plastered in advertising and appears to have dropped the concept as an MLM income opportunity altogether.
I’m unaware of any additional projects Fraser has been involved in since That Free Thing, noting that in a Uneeqlee marketing video Fraser states the idea behind company has ‘been in development for two and a half years‘.
Read on for a full review of the Uneeqlee MLM business opportunity.
The Uneeqlee Product Line
Uneeqlee has no retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market and sell affiliate membership to the company itself.
Bundled with affiliate membership are text message advertising credits, which can be used to send out text messages to opt-in recipients.
- Basic Pack ($19.95 a month) – 100 text messages a month
- Bonus Pack ($59.95 a month) – 1000 text messages a month
- Premier Pack ($199.95 a month) – 4000 text messages a month
The Uneeqlee Compensation Plan
The Uneeqlee compensation plan revolves around the recruitment of new affiliates, paying out those that recruited them both upfront and residually via a 3×10 matrix.
Uneeqlee Affiliate Membership Ranks
There are five affiliate membership ranks within the Uneeqlee compensation plan and, along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:
- Emerald – personally recruit 5 affiliates or sign up as a Basic Pack affiliate ($59.95 a month)
- Gold – personally recruit 10 affiliates or sign up as a Premier Pack affiliate ($199.95 a month)
- Platinum – personally recruit 25 affiliates and have a total downline of 400 affiliates
- Diamond – personally recruit 50 affiliates, at least three of which are Platinum ranked
- Crown Diamond – personally recruit 50 affiliates, at least three of which are Diamond ranked
Fast Start Bonus
Uneeqlee’s Fast Start Bonus pays affiliates on the recruitment of new Uneeqlee affiliates, paid out down ten levels of recruitment.
How many levels and how much of a commission an affiliate is paid out is dependent on their own affiliate membership rank:
- Level 1 (all affiliates) – $8 on the recruitment of a Basic Pack affiliate, $20 for a Bonus Pack affiliate and$60 for a Premier Pack affiliate
- Level 2 (all affiliates) – $1 on the recruitment of a Basic Pack affiliate, $2.50 for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $7.50 for a Premier Pack affiliate
- Level 3 (Emerald and higher ranked affiliates) – 60 cents on the recruitment of a Basic Pack affiliate, $1.50 for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $4.50 for a Premier Pack affiliate
- Level 4 (Emerald and higher ranked affiliates) – 40 cents on the recruitment of a Basic Pack affiliate, $1 for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $5 for a Premier Pack affiliate
- Levels 5 and 6 (Gold and higher ranked affiliates) – 20 cents on the recruitment of a Basic Pack affiliate, 50 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $1.50 for a Premier Pack affiliate
- Levels 7 and 8 (Platinum and higher ranked affiliates) – 20 cents on the recruitment of a Basic Pack affiliate, 50 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $1.50 for a Premier Pack affiliate
- Levels 9 and 10 (Diamond and higher ranked affiliates) – 20 cents on the recruitment of a Basic Pack affiliate, 50 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $1.50 for a Premier Pack affiliate
Note that the Fast Start Bonus is only paid out on the first month of affiliate membership fees.
Ongoing Recruitment Commissions
After the first month, Uneeqlee continue to pay out a recruitment commission on the recruitment of Bonus Pack and Premier Pack affiliates.
This commission is available down ten levels of recruitment (in addition to the matrix commissions below), with how many levels of recruitment an affiliate being paid out on determined by their affiliate membership rank:
- All affiliates – $12 for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $52 for a Premier Pack affiliate on level 1 (personal recruits), $1.50 for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $6.50 for a Premier Pack affiliate on level 2
- Emerald – as above plus 90 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $3.90 for a Premier Pack affiliate on level 3 and 60 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $2.60 for a Premier Pack affiliate on level 4
- Gold – as above plus 30 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $1.30 for a Premier Pack affiliate on levels 5 and 6
- Platinum – as above plus 30 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $1.30 for a Premier Pack affiliate on levels 7 and 8
- Diamond – as above plus 30 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $1.30 for a Premier Pack affiliate on level 9
- Crown Diamond – as above plus 30 cents for a Bonus Pack affiliate and $1.30 for a Premier Pack affiliate on level 10
Matrix Residual Commissions
Residual commissions are paid out of an affiliate’s paid membership fees starting from the second month of membership.
Uneeqlee use a 3×10 matrix, which places an affiliate at the top of the matrix with three positions directly under them (level 1). In turn, these three positions branch out into another three positions (level 2) and so on and so forth down a total of 10 levels.
Positions are filled in the matrix either via direct recruitment or the recruiting efforts of an affiliate’s up and downlines.
For each position filled in an affiliate’s matrix, they are paid a monthly commission. This commission is paid out as a percentage of the monthly affiliate membership fees paid, with how much of a percentage paid out determined by which matrix level the position filled is on.
How many matrix levels a Uneeqlee affiliate is paid out on is in turn determined by their own affiliate membership rank:
- Level 1 (all affiliates) – 20 cents per affiliate (3 positions, 60 cents total)
- Level 2 (all affiliates) – 40 cents per affiliate (9 positions, $3.60 total)
- Level 3 (all affiliates) – 40 cents per affiliate (27 positions, $10.80 total)
- Level 4 (all affiliates) – 60 cents per affiliate (80 positions, $48.60 total)
- Level 5 (all affiliates) – 60 cents per affiliate (243 positions, $145.80 total)
- Level 6 (all affiliates) – $1 per affiliate (729 positions, $729 total)
- Level 7 (Gold or higher ranked affiliates) – $1 per affiliate (2187 positions, $2187 total)
- Level 8 (Gold or higher ranked affiliates) – $1.20 per affiliate (6561 positions, $7873.20 total)
- Level 9 (Platinum or higher ranked affiliates) – 80 cents per affiliate (19,683 positions, $15,746.60 total)
- Level 10 (Diamond or higher ranked affiliates) – 80 cents per affiliate (59,049 positions, $47,239.20 total)
The total monthly income achievable with a completely filled matrix (88,572 recruited affiliates) is $73,984.20.
Matrix Matching Bonus
Uneeqlee offer affiliates a matching bonus on the monthly matrix earnings of their personally recruited affiliates and their downlines, payable down 10 levels of recruitment.
- All affiliates – 40% on level 1, 15% on level 2
- Emerald – 40% on level 1, 15% on level 2, 10% on level 3 and 5% on level 4
- Gold – 40% on level 1, 15% on level 2, 10% on level 3, 5% on levels 4 and 5 and 3% on level 6
- Platinum – 40% on level 1, 15% on level 2, 10% on level 3, 5% on levels 4 and 5, 3% on levels 6 and 7 and 1% on level 8
- Diamond – 40% on level 1, 15% on level 2, 10% on level 3, 5% on levels 4 and 5, 3% on levels 6 and 7, 2% on level 8 and 1% on level 9
- Crown Diamond – 40% on level 1, 15% on level 2, 10% on level 3, 5% on levels 4 and 5, 3% on levels 6 and 7, 2% on level 8 and 1% on levels 9 and 10
Joining Uneeqlee
Affiliate membership to Uneeqlee is available in one of three options:
- Basic Pack – $19.95 a month
- Bonus Pack – $59.95 a month
- Premier Pack – $199.95 a month
Conclusion
With no retail offering to end-users, all revenue being sourced by affiliates and paid out of monthly affiliate membership fees, Uneeqlee effectively operates as a recruitment driven pyramid scheme.
Affiliates join the company at one of the three available levels, and then are directly paid on their personal recruitment efforts and that of their up and downlines.
The more affiliates recruited, the higher a Uneeqlee affiliate’s monthly commission.
Some of the recruitment can be bypassed via “pay to play”, however ultimately company-wide recruitment is required in order for affiliate’s matrices to fill up and generate monthly commissions.
The text messaging side of the business can be completely ignored with affiliates able to solely focus on the recruitment of new affiliates. And given that this is what Uneeqlee affiliates are actually paid to do, it seems likely that recruitment will be the core focus of the business as a whole.
All in all Uneeqlee shapes up to be a repeat performance of Seth Fraser’s last two ventures, only this time instead of “free stuff offers” he’s paired a recruitment driven compensation plan with text message marketing.
Once the recruitment of new affiliates slows or stops, those at the bottom of the recruitment chain stop paying their monthly fees. This in turn means those above them stop earning and then they too stop paying their fees.
Over time this works its way up the chain of recruitment until eventually the scheme collapses (everyone stops paying their affiliate membership fees).
Seth Fraser is actually a skilled sales man, if we ignore the fact that people want to throw stones at him when they analyse what they actually have “bought” into. 🙂
His “special skill” is to use people’s own ideas about something, and raise their expectations about the potential outcome they will get as a result of a purchase or by joining something.
He makes them BELIEVE the outcome will be much better than it really will be, e.g. that matching bonus will make a huge amount. But people are clearly willing to believe in ideas like that.
His compensation plans are typically organized “upside down”, so EVERYONE except people near the top will mostly earn peanuts, but the bottom line will look very nice (bottom line = what you can earn if you have thousands of people recruited into a downline).
Among the positive things is the “Friday is PAYDAY!” enthusiasm = he’s trying to raise people’s expectations in a positive way (but the reality is typically disappointing). And that statement pretty much sums it up, “the reality is usually disappointing”.
This time he has a higher joining fee and higher recruitment commissions, making it become more “pyramidisch” than the free stuff ideas he had.
That comment was mostly about That Free Thing and Freebie Force, and about presentation skills (the way to present something, to make it sound positive and attractive to a “target audience”, to make them want to buy it themselves or accept it as a “valuable solution”).
You can actually MAKE people become more interested than they really are for a short period of time, make them feel excited about an idea, make them want to buy into something. But the method is artificial and the effects are temporarily, and people will correct themselves in the opposite direction after some time.
That Free Thing (in Norway) had growth for a short period of time (2-3 months), followed by recruitment stop initiated by the recruiters themselves, followed by member flee when people lost more and more interest.
TFT was primarily marketed to network marketers / income opportunity seekers in that market. They will lose interest rather quickly if the paycheck doesn’t reflect their expectations.
And then they will start to check WHY it doesn’t match their own expectations, and then they will get the feeling of have being “cheated”. And then they will correct themselves in the opposite direction, becoming negative rather than positive to the whole idea.
They have typically used self motivation, e.g. about how many they have recruited and how many they have in downline. But the self motivation will drop far below zero when the paycheck doesn’t reflect the efforts.
And then they want to throw stones at the organizer, but it will usually end up with recruitment stop and member flee.
Note:
That Free Thing was about $25 signup fee / $10 monthly fee ($30 for 3 months), 3×8 matrix without any extra costs for upgrading to other levels (you didn’t have to PAY anything other than your $10 monthly fee to get access to all 8 levels).
$10 per month per member will logically NOT generate much revenue or much commission, and neither will the $25 signup fee do (it generated $10 to the recruiter = if you personally recruit 100 people you will earn $1,000).
Where people felt cheated were in the residual income matrix, level 3-6 (those levels only paid peanuts, level 7 and 8 paid OK). They also felt cheated by their own expectations to the matching bonus, 40% of peanuts will be peanuts even if you have 100 personally recruited people in downline.
Seems to be based on the same ideas. I’m not able to identify what the text messages are about, but I doubt there is a real retail market for it. It sounds like “spam your network and make friends”.
This is a plain pyramid scheme rather than a real business idea.
Hi there,
Look at the service. This is a mobile marketing platform in the new mobile device service era. 80% of data ussage last year was over mobile platforms cellphone/ tablet/ smart phone etc… It allows companies and independent reps to reach an otherwise unreachable market share for their product or service.
Like Philippines with nothing but a brick phone a company can send short code text promotions to their customers who Text fishfry to 00000. + Mobile website + Fancy QR code + email system.
If you had an idea about marketing or running a traditional business, and its uses you’d be jumping at this service. If you get a client like a business 40% of $199 =$79 a month! x40 clients = $3,160 a month.
As a broker before that’s the best comp plan for sales commission I’ve ever seen…. minus your sour grapes.
PS look at corporate history. After Seth got bought out of TFT his former partners tanked the company. As a Researcher by former trade you need to check your facts!
There’s nothing wrong with the service. Look at the compensation plan.
Oh right, it only tanked after Fraser left? Please.
With the recruitment driven compensation plan it was utilising TFT was doomed from the beginning.
In my market, there’s already several others offering similar services for free or at low cost, without a pyramid scheme attached to it. But it’s normally not used in marketing, due to some reservation lists against telemarketing, and restrictions in the Marketing Act.
Using a method like that will bring more trouble than results in my market, so I don’t really see any use of it (other than spamming my friends).
What type of merchants will like to spam their own customers? That sounds more like a desperate internet marketer trying to spam his leads?
To make it work in my market, you will need a system where people actually are ASKING for that type of marketing first. You will need to COMBINE it with a system where people are signing up for specific offers, and where they can opt out of it whenever they want.
I have looked at That Free Thing, in the Norwegian market. It collapsed rather quickly. The positive parts of it were covered in the “skilled sales man” lines.
That Free Thing had the problem that it was too little money involved for the group of people it was marketed to initially. It only paid out peanuts in residual income, and it wasn’t attractive to the general audience because of too few free offers for that local market (e.g. free access to Disneyland for teachers in Florida doesn’t exactly meet the needs in that particular market).
It collapsed when it reached 1,500 people total, after 3 months. Most people considered it to be a waste of time. People had paid for 3 months when they joined, so it started to collapse rather immediately when they had to pay for the next 3 months.
You can of course add your own version here, if you have other types of information.
I can’t argue about that. Pyramid schemes usually ARE more attractive than real business models. But they are normally very short lived too, and you will often lose most of your downline.
Pyramid schemes are based on the “Bigger Fool Theory” = “New suckers are born every minute, so you will always find someone willing to join”. It will clearly be attractive for some people, probably one of the best income opportunities they can be expected to find.
Hiya,
Text jege elske till to Mnorway for weekly specials on tap Fridays!
1 Statement about broker was only on personal sales not a mlm premise. Did you read the statement?
2 Look at reports on upcoming Mobile Marketing concepts. Like what mobile moxie offers. etc. I haven’t seen one mobile service as all inclusive as this. and as good price breaks even just text messaging alone.
3 text message/ SMS marketing is about maintaining customer engagement. There are strict FCC regs on anything for phone usage and internationally. Look at legislations like the one that penalized those ring tones, and gift card promos.
4 after your rant about mlm’s I examined their whole comp plan not just the personal sales comp for 40%. Looks like much of the profits are sent to the reps. Probably why it’ll take off so much. Cool branding idea I wish I’d thought of it.
5 Google’s mobile world, shows Mobile device usage growing exponentially. Old school internet reduced over 10% last year. People are more likely to read a 1 sentence text than read any email in any given day in any given country.
Ironically Norway has massive mobile web and web 2.0 usage.
I’d think to just use this service in part of a marketing service for a marketing business. Plus offering business loyalty bonuses for referring others is nothing new. Look at Banks, Phone companies, Deutsche bahn, Lufthansa, HSBC, Norway cruise lines, etc……….
If you can buy as many key words as you want then you can use this for any businesses a marketer would serve. Since there is a white labeling option to personalize the platform for customers this can be completely customizable for any company.
Good luck.
None of them are MLM companies, and are thus irrelevant.
Sounds like this is going to be another “but we have a product so ignore the recruitment commissions!” type company.
I didn’t make any comments about it. My comment was about the idea of using SMS actively in marketing and about negative side effects. “What type of merchant?” was a rethorical question about who will use a method like that, not a personal question about your own business methods.
Text messages can’t be used for general marketing or mass marketing without causing negative side effects (e.g. complaints). It may be accepted for short periods of time in SOME markets, e.g. markets where people are interested.
That statement will cover your points 3, 4 and 5.
Please post a conclusion or a summary for one of them, rather than telling me to look for reports myself?
There’s no irony in that? It simply reflects the market itself. If your conclusion was something like “Since they’re using cell phones actively, they must be very interested in SMS marketing”, you’re not in contact with the realities.
People living in low cost markets will typically have to pay a higher price for a new cell phone than people living in Norway. That’s how markets work, and cell phones have been rather cheap to buy in the Norwegian market for more than 12 years.
Cell phones were used as a tool to sell the service itself, i.e. to grow the customer base for cell phone service providers. Standard cell phones were sold for NOK 1.00 (less than USD $0.20) in the early 2000’s, with some of the price included in the subscription (typically a 12 month susbscription, with monthly fee covering some of the price).
Expensive cell phones were sold at a very low price, but with a 12 month subscription attached to the deal. People could easily buy cell phones in Norway and sell them for a higher price in e.g. Thailand.
Free SMS have already been used for years for marketing purposes, e.g. to attract users to social network communities (give the service away for free to attract a user base).
You have clearly been attracted to the pyramid scheme part of Uneeqlee, the compensation plan rather than the business idea. The business idea is rather vague, other than the recruitment part.
That Free Thing had the same problem, and people lost interest rather quickly. TFT probably works better WITHOUT the income opportunity attached to it.
I wonder how many people will welcome incoming text advertising when they realize receiving text messages is not free of charges, unless the use has an unlimited plan and ESPECIALLY when and if the spammer uses a premium messaging rate.
SMS is typically free of charge for the ones receiving them, if we’re not talking about some types of paid services, or SMS sent to other countries.
They don’t actually cost much to send (for the service provider). It’s the service itself that is expensive = being connected to a service provider on a monthly basis, and use the infrastructure built up by that service provider (and the agreements they have with other service providers about using their infrastructure).
Additional services, e.g. a huge number of monthly SMS, will be relatively cheap to buy.
SMS in small quantities is a different story. The service providers will typically try to earn as much as they can (in competition with other service providers).
SMS to other countries will involve other service providers, a bill that has to be paid separatedly by the ones receiving the SMS (SMS or other services).
People don’t like spam if they haven’t asked for it themselves, e.g. by signing up for newsletters.
SMS as a communication method have been established for many years in the Norwegian market.
* my dentist is using it as a reminder
* my insurance company is using it for weather warnings
* my utility company is using it for monthly reports
* organizations are using it to inform members
* the Norwegian version of FEMA is using it
* the Postal Service is using it “Your package has arrived”
Among all those “communication purposes”, you will probably also find a few “marketing purposes”, but that will typically be about situations where people have signed up for something voluntarily.
The ones interested in solutions like that will typically NOT be interested in the income opportunity attached to the service (they will prefer to buy the service itself for a fraction of the price, directly from a service provider).
The ones interested in the income opportunity don’t have the same needs for the service. You can trick them to believe that SMS mass marketing is a good idea, but they will very soon discover a different reality.
Some examples from the Norwegian market:
Telenor Business $75 per month (the most expensive of them)
3000 minutes, 3000 SMS, 15 Gb data, multiple users
TalkMore $16.70 (addition)
1000 extra SMS per month (designed for consumers)
Prices can’t be compared directly, because the different service providers have different types of free offers included in the price, e.g. “Free Family and Friends”, “Free calls to other Talkmore subscribers”, “Free internal calls”, “50% discount within the Northern countries”, and so on and so forth.
SMS in huge quantities (to send out in a local market) are generally VERY inexpensive to buy, if you don’t have any income opportunity attached to the service.
I have purchased this uneeqlee product and have had much trouble. I have contacted the support team with no resolution. They have still not made ONE attempt to even acknowledge my requests for help…I asked for my money back and to stop drafting from my account but they keep on taking the money.
I have called the number several times for help but it keeps saying that the line is busy or they are busy to just send an e-mail, but like I said, it has been almost a month and still no reply. VERY dissapointed.
If anyone knows how to stop this from continuing please reply.
Your bank should be able to stop the money going out of the account shouldn’t they?