When I first reviewed the Speak Asia Online business opportunity back in March, it was hard to escape the fact that, without recruiting, Speak Asia members were only able to make a maximum of $20 a week signing up as a Premium Panelist.

With a joining fee of $220 and interview + test fee of $60, this means that you’re looking at 14 weeks (over 3 months) just to recoup your initial investment in the company.

If we factor in recruitment however, Speak Asia not only pays a recurring weekly commission tied into how many new members you bring in, but also handsomely rewards members for the daily amount of new members recruited.

Recently, at in-house Speak Asia conference ‘GenX Bazaar 2011’, Speak Asia made a public projection on their membership numbers and expected growth. Speak Asia Chief Marketing Officer Vivek Gautam stated that ‘by December, we wants (sic) to take have 10 million panelists on board‘.

Currently Speak Asia claim to have 1.5 million members and as of May 10th, has been in business for one year. With December 2011 just seven months away, Speak Asia have now set themselves up for the monumental task of expanding their current membership by over 650%.

Hard enough to do with a traditional business model, but what about Speak Asia’s massively recruitment dependent compensation plan? [Continue reading…]

As the TVI Express empire appears to be crumbling all around the world, Pyxism are attempting to capitalise on the once popular MLM opportunity.

Claiming that TVI Express is no longer valid in India, Pyxism estimate that there are now ‘three million members worldwide‘ now looking for a travel based MLM opportunity.

Enter Pyxism India, Pyxism’s official entry in the Indian MLM opportunity market.

Even with a compensation plan revamp though, just like the original Pyxism, Pyxism India is still nothing more than recruitment driven MLM partnered with a completely irrelevant product. [Continue reading…]

Despite the slow rebound of western economies, the price of gas to fill up your car is on the rise. Some people say it’s because of peak oil, some say it’s because of greedy profit seeking oil companies… whatever the reason – general consensus is we’re going to continue to pay ever increasing prices for gas.

Utilising this as a marketing tool, new MLM startup Gas and Cash are offering their members a $50 gas card as a reward for participating in their company.

This covers the ‘gas’ component of Gas & Cash… but what about the cash? Today we’re going to find out in my review of the Gas & Cash business opportunity. [Continue reading…]

Just under a month ago now I wrote about Wealth Masters International rewarding Norwegian distributor Per Gunnar Hoem, despite WMI being officially banned in Norway.

In the discussion that followed, it was reasoned that seeing as the ban wasn’t applied retrospectively for the month of March, Hoem’s promoting of WMI in Norway was justifiable.

In light of this, I turned my anticipation to WMI’s May awards. With Norway now officially out of the picture, I was keen to see who would be the new recipient.

This morning WMI published their May Gold Award winners and whilst I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, this month’s winners does raise some interesting questions… [Continue reading…]

Coffee, it’s one of the most widely recognisable and consumed beverages in the world and as a commodity, green coffee beans are also up there as far as trade goes.

Virtually everybody on the planet knows what coffee is and it’s a product that transcends cultural, economic and geographical boundaries worldwide.To say there’s an existing market for coffee today is an understatement.

Global coffee consumption is second only to water.

That said, on the surface it’s seem like coffee would be the perfect product to combine with a solid MLM business plan and that’s exactly what new MLM startup ‘Javita’ hope to do. [Continue reading…]

The Javita compensation plan revolves around a unilevel organisation.

The Javita unilevel organisation creates a new leg underneath you for each member that you personally recruit into the Javita business opportunity.

Javita’s unilevel compensation plan plays off on a stronger and weaker arm of your business. The strongest leg of your unilevel is weighed up against the rest of your legs (which collectively make the smaller leg during comparison), and these are closely tied into Javita rank advancement. This in turn directly impacts your unilevel percentage payouts.

Business Volume and Organisation Volume

The Javita unilevel compensation plan revolves around the concept of Business Volume (BV) and Organisational Volume (OV).

Business Volume is a value added to the sale of Javita’s products. Roughly, it equates to about 70-80% of the dollar value of Javita’s products.

Organisational Volume is the total amount of BV generated by your unilevel team. This counts all levels deep as well as an infinite amount of levels wide, in other words it covers the BV generated by your entire organisation.

Within the Javita unilevel compensation plan there are nine ways for Javita members to earn commissions and they are as follows; [Continue reading…]

Last week I wrote about the social network Sponsor Hunter. Currently in pre-launch, Sponsor Hunter aims to replicate the Facebook experience with a network dedicated to the social networking niche.

The revenue model for Sponsor Hunter revolves around paid monthly subscriptions for network marketers who wish to list themselves as ‘available sponsors’ on the site.

Each month these network marketers pay Sponsor Hunter $25 and each month Sponsor Hunter will list them as available sponsors for any business opportunities they are in listed on the site.

It goes without saying that any social network’s success or failure lies solely with its ability to attract members to the network and retain them.

As Sponsor Hunter is a relatively new startup, that’s where Golden Money Gate comes in. [Continue reading…]

Ever since the meteoric rise of Facebook, network marketers have sought to capitalise on the what is essentially the biggest online network on the planet.

Whilst some try to integrate themselves with Facebook itself and us it as a tool to gain exposure and build their networks, others still seek to replicate the Facebook experience.

One such attempt is the newly pre-launched social network, ‘Sponsor Hunter’.

Sponsor Hunter seeks to centralise the MLM industry by placing itself as the go-to site for information-seeking prospective leads looking into MLM businesses. [Continue reading…]

With the South African Department of Trade and South Africa Reserve Bank both conducting continuing criminal investigations, TVI Express is South Africa is all but dead.

With arrests already made over the promotion of TVI Express in South Africa, those participating in the scheme risk fines and arrest themselves.

Despite the regulatory crackdown and arrests however, supporters of TVI Express still exist in South Africa. This was clearly evidenced when recently arrested TVI Express promoters Irwin and Glenda Shirindzi were given hugs and support from TVI Express members once released on bail.

Not withstanding one South African female member of TVI Express, who wished to remain anonymous for obvious reasons, stated that ‘nothing will stop us from going ahead and investing in TVI Express’.

In my last article about TVI Express in South Africa and the subsequent arrests, I reflected on this stubbornness by TVI South Africa members to accept that TVI is indeed a pyramid scheme.

In the face of such criticism and regulatory crackdown, one can only wonder exactly what it will take to shut down TVI Express in South Africa. And furthermore, just how mindlessly brainwashed are TVI’s supporters there?

At the time I placed my criticisms squarely on the supporters of TVI, rather than the company itself.

If the latest press release from TVI Express is anything to go by however, turns out I might have been a tad too hasty in my judgement. [Continue reading…]

Back in 2007, Seth Fraser (photo above) launched the company Freebie Force. The concept of Freebie Force was simple, pay a monthly fee, get access to free stuff and receive a commission for each new person you recruited to the business.

Three years later there wasn’t anyone left to sign up to Freebie Force and the company failed. In a desperate attempt to save what business he had left, Fraser went on to sell the Freebie Force memberlist (with the usual membership fee waivered, Freebie Force members were given no choice), to LiveSmart 360.

Here’s the cheesy exchange between LiveSmart 360 founder Mark McCool and Seth Fraser announcing the deal;

Update 22nd June 2011 – I’ve noticed that either Mark McCool or Seth Fraser have removed the original videos that were available at the time of publication of this article.

As such I’ve removed the Youtube links that were included when I first published this article. Basically all you’re missing are two embrassing exchanges between Seth Fraser and Mark McCool. Considering they were pretty bad, I guess I can understand why they removed them from the internet. /end update.

In the video Fraser mentions that FreebieForce has a memberlist of 117,000 members, but that number is misleading. In this next video he states that the memberlist number includes those that either signed up to Freebie Force, or simply entered their email address to take a free tour.

The ratio of non-actual members to real members is obviously unknown. Regardless, to gauge the success rate of the Freebie Force / LiveSmart 360 merger, at the time of publication the first video has a viewcount of 301 and the second just 241.

Keep in mind that these videos were no doubt circulated to the entire email list of 117,000 Freebie Force ‘members’ as they appear to be videos Fraser would’ve used on a capture page.

Regardless, seven months later the Freebie Force and LiveSmart 360 partnership seems to have ultimately failed (the second MLM failure for Seth Fraser), and he’s attempting to relaunch the freebie MLM business model with his new company, That Free Thing.

From what I can gather, the initial membership structure of Freebie Force was slightly complex, but then over time became quite simplified. The last known compensation plan I was able to see detailed a basic 5 by 7 matrix paying a commission of $1 a month per member you directly recruit.

Given that a 5 by 7 matrix holds 97,655 positions, the idea is that if you recruited 97,655 people to Freebie Force, you’d be making $97,655 a month in membership commissions.

Obviously with a requirement for a constant influx of new members and no product to sell, Freebie Force ultimately failed. Today I’m going to compare it to That Free Thing.

With the same founder, same freebie business concept and a similar compensation plan, are we looking at That Free Thing also collapsing in a few years or will Seth Fraser avoid the mistakes he made with Freebie Force this time round? [Continue reading…]