Mainston Review: $600 four-tier recruitment scheme
There is no information on the Mainston website indicating who owns or runs the business.
The Mainston website domain was registered on the 15th of January 2015. Mainston Limited is cited as the domain owner, with an address in Cheshire, UK also provided.
Further research reveals the address provided belongs to IncWise Limited, who offer company formation in the UK for £5 GBP.
As such, it would appear Mainston exist in the UK in name only.
As always, if a 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.
The Mainston Product Line
Mainston doesn’t have any retailable products or services, with affiliates only able to market affiliate membership to the company itself.
The Mainston Compensation Plan
The Mainston compensation plan sees affiliates sign up for paid membership and then recruit others who do the same.
Commissions in Mainston are paid out using a four-level deep 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):
In turn, if any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates of their own, 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.
How many levels a Mainston affiliate is paid out on is determined by how much they spent when they joined the company:
- Ruby – 12% on level 1 and 6% on level 2
- Sapphire – 15% on level 1, 7.5% on level 2 and 3.75% on level 3
- Emerald – 20% on level 1, 10% on level 2, 5% on level 3 and 2.5% on level 4
Update 18th July 2017 – Mainston’s unilevel commission rates have changed and are currently:
- Ruby – 15% on level 1 and 10% on level 2
- Sapphire – 25% on level 1, 15% on level 2 and 10% on level 3
- Emerald – 35% on level 1, 20% on level 2, 15% on level 3 and 10% on level 4
/end update
Joining Mainston
Affiliate membership costs of Mainston are not provided on the website.
However it is possible to calculate the cost of Emerald, the most expensive membership Mainston offer.
The Mainston website FAQ states that free affiliates qualify to earn a 10% commission on level 1. It then goes on to state:
Imagine you have 20 people upgrading to the emerald package, in that case you will get $1200 commission as a free member.
$1200 divided by 20 is $60. Given that this must be 10% of the cost of Emerald membership, a bit of math reveals that the cost of Emerald affiliate membership is therefore $600.
Ruby and Sapphire membership are presumably less than this, with the Mainston FAQ suggesting that these are tri-monthly paid memberships:
and that will be on recurring basis, every 3 months again and again.
The primary difference between Mainston’s paid memberships is income potential through the company’s compensation plan.
Conclusion
With no retail activity taking place, Mainston offer up a relatively straight-forward four-tier recruitment scheme.
Affiliates buy in for up to $600 and then proceed to recruit new affiliates into the scheme, getting paid when they too pay money for their affiliate membership.
Mainston refer to these fees as investments, claiming no invesment is required to earn in the company:
Can I earn money without an investment?
Yes, absolutely. Mainston is free to join, you don’t need to make an investment in order to earn money.
That much is true, however free affiliates only earn on one level (not MLM), so I’ve mostly ignored the option in this review.
Meanwhile the fact that Mainston refer to their affiliate memberships as investments pretty much tells you they’re not really interested in even the thinnest of pseudo-compliance.
As with all recruitment-driven schemes, once affiliate recruitment slows down so too will the commission payouts in Mainston.
When this happens, those at the bottom will stop paying their fees every three months, meaning those above them stop getting paid.
As this effect trickles up far enough along the Mainston affiliate genealogy, eventually a company-wide collapse is triggered.
At that point anyone who has not recouped their affiliate membership fees loses out.
Update 16th July 2019 – Fabrice Kerherve has rebooted Mainston as an MLM cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme.
I am really satisfied with this program, it is a great opportunity. Indeed there are points you mentioned I admit you are right, they could add their address somewhere on their page.
At the end I make money without investing, my wife got their Ruby membership free of charge, as Mainston offers “Enjoy Exclusive Benefits For Free” which you missed to mention in your review and products will be added as well with public launch.
Last but not least with their biggest membership package they offer “White-label webinars” which you did not mention about, as well.
This is a great tool and indication Mainston cares about their members.
(Ozedit: attempt to take discussion offsite removed)
Best, John
And where do you think this money comes from?
You’re stealing funds from those who join after you.
And the “free of charge” membership is a prelaunch thing, subject to you recruiting over a hundred paid affiliates (the people you stole money from).
Neither of which have anything to do with Mainston being a recruitment-driven pyramid scheme. Not mentioning irrelevant things is kind of the deal with BehindMLM reviews.
But the Free members perform tasks that benefit others or allow compensation so isnt that par legitimate???
My question is what are those tasks??
What free members do or don’t do doesn’t negate the rest of the compensation plan, which pays affiliates to recruit new affiliates.
Main is a scam guys, they said us they will launch in 24hrs but still they didnt launch.
Hope nobody invested on this to upgrade membership. I had big hopes but its just a fools hope now.
Stay Safe guys dont trust “lauching” websites.