eSelfie Review: MLM social media platform “on steroids”?
eSelfie fails to provide ownership or executive information on its website.
eSelfie’s website domain (“eselfie.co.za”), was registered in January 2021. The private registration was last updated on December 18th, 2022.
Tying in with eSelfie’s South African domain is a provided corporate address in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Update 13th Janaury 2023 – Corporate records from South Africa’s Companies and Intellectual Properties Commission reveal Edward Carney Thwaits is a director of eSelfie (click to enlarge):
eSelfie was incorporate in South Africa in February 2022.
Beyond this corporate record, confirming Thwaits is in South Africa, I wasn’t able to pull up any further information. /end update
As always, if an MLM company is not openly upfront about who is running or owns it, think long and hard about joining and/or handing over any money.
eSelfie’s Products
eSelfie has no retailable products or services. Instead the company offers free access to a social media platform is claims is “on steroids”.
eSelfie not only provides the “latest greatest” but also a patented product with all the bells and whistles that the market wants and needs!
eSelfie Compensation Plan
eSelfie’s compensation plan pays on recruitment of affiliates.
Recruitment commission rates are determined by how much an eSelfie affiliate has paid in fees:
- Silver tier affiliates (R499 annually) – 5% recruitment commission rate
- Gold tier affiliates (R999 annually) – 7.5% recruitment commission rate
- Platinum tier affiliates (R1999 annually) – 10% recruitment commission rate
- Executive tier affiliates (R50,000 one-time) – 10% recruitment commission rate
- Royal tier membership (R1,000,000 one-time) – 10% recruitment commission rate
Residual Commissions
Executive and Royalty tier eSelfie affiliates earn a residual commission on company-wide recruitment and advertising revenue.
- 20% of eSelfie’s company wide affiliate fees are placed into a pool and shared with Executive tier affiliates
- 10% of eSelfie’s advertising revenue is placed into a pool and shared with Royal tier affiliates
Social Network Use
eSelfie affiliates earn a commission per action on its social network personally recruited affiliates do. This includes posting, sharing posts, like posts and sending text messages.
- Silver tier affiliates earn R0.01 per action done
- Gold tier affiliates earn R0.05 per action done
- Platinum and higher tier affiliates earn R0.10 per action done
Text Message Spam Bonus
eSelfie rewards the affiliate who sends the most text messages each month with an R10,000 bonus.
Joining eSelfie
eSelfie affiliate membership costs between R499 to R1999 annually:
- Silver – R499 a year
- Gold – R999 a year
- Platinum – R1999 a year
- Executive – R50,000 one-time
- Royal – R1,000,000 one-time
The more an eSelfie spends on affiliate membership fees, the higher their income potential.
eSelfie Conclusion
MLM social networks are nothing new. Inevitably they wind up being full of affiliates participating in the MLM opportunity, before quietly fizzling out.
eSelfie is an entire social media platform that is on steroids to say the least, with multiple apps “all in one”.
Part of eSelfie’s marketing schtick is a digital business cards (presented as a “selfie”), which provides insight into eSelfie’s social network.
eSelfie has taken the old fashioned printed business card and applied state-of-the-art technology to change the way people exchange their contact information, this together with the multiplying power of sharing, that the likes of Facebook has clearly shown the world, is the only way to go in terms of building communities, that share similar interests and linking them together, so that they can enjoy information sharing with each other all the time.
It’s now going to be called the eSelfie way, no longer will somebody say “send me your contact info”, but will rather say ”Send me your eSelfie!”
Examples of digital business cards are supposed to be available through the “top executive corporate cards” link on eSelfie’s website.
If we click through on any of the cards however, we’re redirected to this page on Bubble:
As per their website, Bubble
lets you create interactive, multi-user apps for desktop and mobile web browsers and includes all the tools you need to build a site like Facebook or Airbnb.
If I didn’t know any better, eSelfie used or planned to use Bubble to create a FaceBook clone. And probably all the other stuff they claim will be attached to their social media platform.
There’s nothing wrong with this in principle, but it intrinsically ties eSelfie as a company to Bubble.
If that business relationship isn’t intact, as currently doesn’t appear to be, then eSelfie’s business cards and social network aren’t available.
This guts the MLM opportunity. Which doesn’t really matter, because eSelfie is a pyramid scheme hiding behind a (non-existent?) social media platform.
You sign up, pay your eSelfie affiliate fee and get paid through direct and indirect recruitment. R50,000 and R1,000,000 comes to $2959 and $59,184 respectively.
This is a pretty high barrier for entry into an MLM opportunity. In exchange for paying thousands of dollars, eSelfie touts “huge returns”.
eSelfie is truly in a class of its own and our Royal Members can honestly expect huge returns, every month.
This drags eSelfie into securities fraud territory.
Outside of membership fees, eSelfie touts advertising revenue as funding some of its compensation plan.
eSelfie receives R1.00 per user multiplied by a minimum of 10 Advertisers per day.
Typically advertisers aren’t interested in MLM social network because of the low-value members (people are only there because of the MLM opportunity).
No specifics on eSelfie’s advertising revenue claims are provided, but I suppose it doesn’t matter seeing as the social network doesn’t appear to exist anyway.
The last thing we’ll cover is eSelfie purportedly selling its pyramid scheme to “Mula Company” members. This is from an August 2022 eSelfie “flash news update”:
Mula Company is currently in the process of loading their ever increasing data base of eSelfie users, to the tune of 357 000 members.
I believe this is a reference to Hanli Lombard’s Mula* brand of pyramid schemes.
Whatever business arrangement exists between Lombard and eSelfie isn’t disclosed.
As with all MLM pyramid schemes, once affiliate recruitment dries up so too will membership fees.
This will stall recruitment commissions, eventually prompting a collapse.
eSelfie isn’t so much a “Facebook Clone on steroids that pays you to post”, as it is a scam in which the majority of participants will lose money.
Reportedly run by Edward Thwaits:
za.linkedin.com/in/edward-thwaits-a24742243
Profile links up with owning multiple Car Dealerships
Thwaits Motors – with a few branches
b2bhint.com/en/company/za/thwaits-motors-randfontein–B1996037052
Linked to the following Businesses is a Edward Carney Thwaits
Director
ESELFIE
EASY REWARDS CLUB
TAG INCREASE TRADERS
EMICODE
RISK REWARDS
EASY REWARDS INVESTMENTS
Member
BVR SECURITY
Member – Inactive
THWAITS MOTORS (GREENHILLS)
THWAITS MOTORS (RANDFONTEIN)
FOUR REAL ESTATE OASIS
MIRAGE TRANS-CON
ONE REAL ESTATE OASIS
STAND 1019 EDWARDS AVENUE WESTONARIA
RESAM INVESTMENTS
Director – Inactive
MANUREX
TAG INNOVATION TRADERS
TAG IMPROVEMENT TRADERS
TAG INDIVIDUAL TRADERS
TAG INTEREST TRADERS
TAG ITEM TRACKING
MENTOCODE
TAG INNER TERRITORY PROPERTIES
TAG INITIATIVE TRADING
They really have the Fiverr videos down to an art:
youtube.com/@eselfievideos164/videos
As Oz states, MLM social networks are nothing new.
One core problem is that a social network of get rich quick schemers and MLMers leads to a Tsunami of Spam that washes away any genuine “social” content.
Ever want to read a non stop profusion of Prospecting posts or an endless stream of Bizop offers?
No, me either.
Thanks for that. I did have some company records sent in but missed eSelfie on the list. Will update the review with the corporate record.
Given that “Bubble” only requires a $25/month “personal” account to access/enable use of custom domains should definite raises red flags
If they can’t afford to invest even $25/month… why do you think they actually can afford to develop/support anything at all.
Real legitimate business ALL have start-up and/or on-going costs…
TANSTAAFL!
At least they’re honest by referring to their services as “WhatsApp Clone”, “Instagram Clone” etc.
I know South African English is slightly different but you have to be pretty thick not to realise that calling your own products a “clone” is a self-diss.
Basically OnPassive except the white-labeled service is broken rather than never-ending WIP. And less amusing.
Edward Thwaits is a small time con-artist who has made many, many attempts to start a business that relies on MLM. This is verified by all the registrations shown in this post.
All have failed but not before most of them took money from unsuspecting people wanting to make extra money.
The overall losses were small (less than R100 000) so he has not had his name tarnished on the internet.
Edward keeps himself out of the “limelight” but uses the notorious Kevin Cholwich who sometimes calls himself Kevin John to avoid being searched for on Google.
Kevin’s list if victims is legendary and he has extorted hundreds of millions of Rands through numerous ventures. His last big one was Fincapital where R120 000 ($7 000 000) was lost.
Kevin has established a lot of social media profiles to push all his older Google searches to the 2nd page.
He cannot push the local police post registering his arrest away from either the 1st or 2nd post seen though!
saps.gov.za/newsroom/msspeechdetail.php?nid=31675
I know all this because I have been approached by them on many occasions but quickly saw through their BS and did not lose anything.
I will be honest, it was close, because Kevin is a real smooth talker!