Asantae Compensation Plan Review v2.0

BehindMLM first reviewed Asantae back in January of 2013.

Back then there was a major information dearth on the Asantae website, which led to a review that was less than complete compared to what we normally publish.

Since then Asantae have picked up their game, with the company now providing detailed compensation plan material on their website.

Today we go through this new compensation plan material, along with an updated conclusion of the Asantae MLM business opportunity.

Commission Qualification

In order to qualify for commissions, all Asantae affiliates must maintain a minimum 100 PV a month.

PV stands for “Personal Volume” and is sales volume generated by an affiliate’s own purchases and sales to retail customers.

Asantae Affiliate Ranks

There are fourteen ranks within the Asantae compensation plan.

Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:

• Affiliate – recruit and maintain one commission qualified affiliate
• Executive – recruit and maintain two commission qualified affiliates (one on either side of your binary team)
• E500 – remain commission qualified and generate at least 500 BV in weaker binary team volume a week
• E1000 – remain commission qualified and generate at least 1000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week
• Bronze – remain commission qualified and generate at least 2000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week
• Silver – remain commission qualified, maintain at least one E500 qualified personally recruited affiliate and generate at least 3000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week
• Gold – remain commission qualified, maintain at least two E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates and generate at least 5000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week
• Ruby – remain commission qualified, maintain at least three E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates and generate at least 10,000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week for two consecutive weeks
• Emerald – remain commission qualified, maintain at least three E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates, generate at least 15,000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week for two consecutive weeks and have a total weekly downline sales volume of 20,000 BV
• Diamond – remain commission qualified, maintain at least three E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates, generate at least 20,000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week for three consecutive weeks and have a total weekly downline sales volume of 40,000 BV
• Blue Diamond – remain commission qualified, maintain at least three E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates, generate at least 25,000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week for four consecutive weeks and have a total weekly downline sales volume of 60,000 BV
• Black Diamond – remain commission qualified, maintain at least three E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates, generate at least 25,000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week for four consecutive weeks and have a total weekly downline sales volume of 75,000 BV for four consecutive weeks
• Ambassador – remain commission qualified, maintain at least three E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates, generate at least 25,000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week for four consecutive weeks and have a total weekly downline sales volume of 100,000 BV for four consecutive weeks
• Royal Ambassador – remain commission qualified, maintain at least three E500 qualified personally recruited affiliates, generate at least 25,000 BV in weaker binary team volume a week for four consecutive weeks and have a total weekly downline sales volume of 150,000 BV for four consecutive weeks

Note that for total weekly downline sales volume requirements

• up to 50% of the required total can be counted from any one unilevel leg for Emerald to Black Diamonds and
• up to 40% of the required total can be counted from any one unilevel leg for Ambassador and Royal Ambassadors

Retail Commissions

A 10% retail commission is payable on all Asantae product orders by preferred retail customers (non-affiliates).

A preferred customer is a customer who, in exchange for a discount, agrees to place a regular autoship order.

Whether or not Asantae pay retail commissions on regular customer orders is unclear.

At the time of publication, the Asantae compensation plan documentation suggests that true retail commissions are unavailable:

Retail selling is the foundation of your business and allows you to earn immediate income by purchasing Asantae products at wholesale prices and selling them to your customers at the retail price of your choice.

What Asantae affiliates do or don’t do with products they have purchased is irrelevant. From the company’s perspective these are affiliate purchases, which are not true retail sales (money flowing into Asantae is sourced only from affiliates).

Residual Commissions (binary)

Primary residual commissions in Asantae are paid out via a binary compensation structure.

A binary compensation structure places an affiliate a the top of a binary team, split into two sides (left and right):

Positions in the binary team are created by splitting each position into another two positions each, with positions filled via direct and indirect affiliate recruitment.

Sales volume is tracked across both binary teams, with Asantae affiliates paid 10% of the volume generated by the weaker team each week (min 500 BV).

Whatever volume is paid out on the weaker side is matched on the stronger side, with this volume flushed.

Additional volume on the stronger binary side is retained, with the volume matching and flushing process repeated at the end of each week.

Note that an affiliate’s own volume in excess of 200 PV is added to payable volume on the weaker binary side.

Also note that binary commissions are capped company-wide at $10,000 a week per affiliate earning center.

Residual Commissions (unilevel)

Secondary residual commissions in Asantae are paid out via a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.

Asantae cap payable unilevel levels at four, with a 5% commission paid out on sales volume generated within these five four levels.

Note that fourth level unilevel commission qualification requires an Asantae affiliate to

• recruit and maintain two commission qualified affiliates
• have a total downline weekly sales volume of 1000 GV and
• personally generate or purchase 200 PV a week

Gold Generation Bonus

The Gold Generation Bonus is a generational bonus that pays a 2% bonus commission on up to four generations of Gold ranked affiliates.

The bonus uses the same unilevel compensation structure layout as unilevel residual commissions, with a generation corresponding to a level within the unilevel team.

How many Gold generations an Asantae affiliate can earn on is determined by their affiliate rank as follows:

• Gold – 2 generations
• Ruby – 3 generations
• Diamond – 4 generations

First Order Bonus

When an Asantae affiliate recruits a new affiliate, they are paid a 5% bonus on the recruited affiliate’s first order.

Team Development Bonus Pool

The Team Development Bonus is a pool made up of 2% of Asantae’s company-wide sales volume.

A new Asantae affiliate has twelve weeks to qualify for shares and earn in the Team Development Bonus Pool.

New Asantae affiliates earn shares in the pool by qualifying as follows:

1. generate at least 200 PV a month and recruiting at least two new affiliates within a week (the recruited affiliates must sign up to Asantae with at least a 200 BV product order, with a total combined BV of 250 (at least one affiliate has to purchase more than 200 BV))
2. recruit three new affiliates within a week who each sign up with a 200 BV minimum order or
3. have a personally recruited affiliate qualify at the Executive rank

Each time the above qualification criteria is met, one share in the Team Development Bonus Pool is awarded.

If a new affiliates qualifies as a Director within their twelve week’s participation in the Team Development Bonus Pool, they retain participation qualification in the pool.

Affiliates who do not qualify as a Director within twelve weeks forfeit all future Team Development Bonus Pool shares and earnings.

Rank Achievement Bonus

When Asantae affiliate qualify at the Silver or higher ranks, the following Rank Achievement Bonuses are paid out:

• Silver – an iPad, with an additional $500 paid out if Silver rank is maintained for two weeks in a row
• Gold (held for 2 consecutive weeks) – one ounce of gold
• Ruby (held for 2 consecutive weeks) – $1500 bonus
• Emerald (held for two consecutive weeks)- $2000 bonus
• Diamond (held for three consecutive weeks) – a ” custom, commemorative, personally delivered Asantae surfboard” and qualification to ‘attend our annual all-expense paid trip‘
• Blue Diamond – “$7500 down-payment toward the purchase/lease of a new Porsche” and $1200 monthly allowance (Diamond ongoing qualification) or $1700 (Blue Diamond or higher ongoing qualification)
• Black Diamond – “trips and status symbols and serious cash. Details to come…”
• Ambassador – “trips and status symbols and serious cash. Details to come…”
• Royal Ambassador – “trips and status symbols and serious cash. Details to come…”

Note that the above information was sourced from a document available on the Asantae website.

The document appears to be dated late 2014, with there being no updated information published regarding the Black Diamond and above bonuses since.

Additional Earning Centers

Additional Earning Centers allow Asantae affiliates to double-up on sales volume generated by their binary team.

Additional Earning Centers are placed above existing affiliate binary position(s), with a maximum of two Additional Earn Centers available.

The first Additional Earning Center is created when an affiliate qualifies at the Black Diamond Rank, and the third when they qualify at the Ambassador rank.

Note that each Additional Earning Center is subject to the $10,000 weekly binary earnings cap ($10,000 per Additional Earning Center).

Joining Asantae

Affiliate membership with Asantae is $45.

According to the Asantae website, this fee is waived if a new affiliate places a 200 BV or more order when they sign up.

Conclusion

That Asantae are now providing complete compensation plan information on their website is great to see. Unfortunately however it is still the case that no information about the company’s history or its executive management is provided.

Retail pricing of Asantae products is also not provided.

The end result is a rather bland corporate website that is pretty stale by today’s standards.

As far as the compensation plan goes, on the surface it’s pretty well-balanced. A hybrid binary/unilevel model is used, which rewards an affiliate residually through two different team structures.

In my initial Asantae review I did raise some concern about autoship recruitment, which is still possible under Asantae’s updated plan.

With there being no retail sales volume requirements for commission qualification, it’s possible for an Asantae affiliate to self-qualify themselves for commissions via autoship, and then focus on recruiting other affiliates who do the same.

Whether or not this is happening company-wide however is unclear.

As a prospective Asantae affiliate I’d check with your potential upline as to what their weekly retail sales volume is. Then compare this to their overall weekly binary volume.

A more straight-forward approach would be to just ask if they’re qualified for commissions via retail sales or their own monthly autoship.

What with their being no online shopping portal or retail pricing available on the Asantae website, I have to seriously question the retail focus within the company.

The focus of any Asantae distributor is to generate sales volume through developing retails sales and Preferred Customers in addition to assisting your downline sales organization generate sales.

Spiels like the above, taken from the Asantae compensation plan material, are all very well. But if there’s a lack of support from within the plan itself and by nature the Asantae website, then it might as well be pseudo-compliance.

Certainly the Team Development Bonus at least would appear to direct a new affiliate’s attention to hitting 200 PV and recruiting other affiliates who do the same (presumably via autoship given the imposed time constraints).

This naturally comes at the expense of taking time to develop a retail customer-base.

One final note I’ll end on is the status of commission payments and Asantae’s overall business activity.

In February this year we had an Asantae affiliate leave a comment on our review, suggesting that the company was having commission payment problems:

Sounds good…if they actually paid out. It’s almost March and I am still waiting on thousands of dollars owed to me since October of 2014.

Whether or not those commission payments have been caught up on yet is unclear.

Alexa statistics on the Asantae website meanwhile sit at a rank of 7.9 million, suggesting overall Asantae business activity might be in decline. That said, the company’s Facebook page does appear to be moderately active (latest post at the time of publication was 13 hours ago).

If any current Asantae affiliates can clarify the status of commission payouts in the comments below, that’d be greatly appreciated.

 

Update 14th January 2016 – Asantae is no more, with Ariix announcing they have acquired the company a few days ago.