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Welcome, one and all, to my review of Ascira.
If you’re reading this review, chances are you’re considering joining Ascira as a way to earn a bit of scratch on the side. If that’s the case, then good for you—it never hurts to get your side hustle on. That is, unless you put your money towards a venture or activity that’s bound to lead to adverse effects.
With this in mind, I’d like to show you how legitimate or not Ascira is as a company and ultimately give you my verdict on whether Asicra is a scam.
What Is Ascira?
- Name: Ascira
- Founder: John “Johny the Greek” Sachtouras
- Website: ascira.com
- Cost: Starting from $199
- Rating: 1/10
Ascira is a relatively new entrant in the MLM sphere. The company is involved in both education and smart traveling. It’s not the only MLM company in these niches, and the company has some pretty established competition ahead of it.
Ascira was founded by Mr. John “Johny the Greek” Sachtouras, a Greek-American who became a millionaire through his MLM ventures. In early-2020, he decided to create Ascira but since then has stuck in pre-launch.
The company’s development is divided into three phases. In Phase 1, which takes place in 2020, the company will create a Global Marketing Team. In Phase 2, Ascira will create a social platform dubbed Ascira Social set to release in 2021. In Phase 3, Ascira hopes to connect over a billion people and offer an ecommerce platform in 2023.
What Does Ascira Offer?
Ascira lists two “products” on the corporate website: Ascira Academy and Ascira Smart Travel, both of which are in the beta-phase.
Ascira Academy
Ascira Academy is essentially a teaching platform with live streamers. The company plans on getting experts to lead their online classes and provide in-depth knowledge of what it takes to become successful.
After clicking the Get Started button, I came across a number of introduction videos by some pretty notable figures in MLM and brand marketing, including Cindie Wang and Darin Kidd.
Ascira Travel
Ascira Travel is a travel platform that offers special rates on flights, cruises, car rentals, and hotel reservations. Members can enjoy profits and additional discounts by inviting their friends to this travel platform.
The Get Started button redirected me to the Sign Up page without providing any insight as to what sort of discounts I would receive.
What Does It Cost to Join Ascira?
Ascira offers three different pre-paid promotional packages—Associates, Pro, and Founder’s Club—ranging between $199 and $4,999. Each package offers different benefits, with the more lucrative and longer-lasting perks going to Founder’s Club registrees.
A couple notable benefits of joining Ascira, according to the website, are one to three marketing centers, digital business kits, and a virtual management system.
I have no idea what these mean and what they offer, but Ascira also throws a $99 monthly subscription fee on top of everything else.
To join, you either need to be a retail customer or an Independent Marketing Associate (IMA).
How Do You Make Money with Ascira?
If you know even the slightest bit about MLM and pyramid schemes, then Ascira’s compensation plan isn’t anything new. Ascira offers no tangible products or services, so the only way you can make money through the system is by recruiting new members.
There are nine ways to make money with Ascira, which you can read below.
· Retail Bonus
For every new person you recruit, you’re entitled to 20% of the package they purchase.
· Direct Sponsor Bonus
IMAs receive a 15% bonus from selling Ascira’s product packages.
· Personal Team Bonus
After an IMA has reached a qualifying leadership rank, he or she can receive a bonus of up to 35% from all personals sales equal or lower in value to the package they initially purchased.
· Placement Sales Volume Bonus
Up to 35% of the money generated by product package sales and subscriptions are divided amongst the IMAs where the percentage of your cut depends on your personal monthly sales volume.
· Monthly Subscription Bonus
Same as the above but specifically for monthly subscriptions.
· Matching Bonus
Matching bonuses are 50% of the total sales value generated by an IMA’s personal sales organization to the third level.
· Rank Advancement Bonus
A complex set of calculations where the most active affiliates can earn between $250 and $1 million based on how many people they enrolled and the value of sold packages.
· Lifestyle Bonus
A bonus of between $300 and $10,000 every month to the top sellers and recruiters.
· Global Diamond Bonus – 10%
A 3% cut is taken off all of the sales within a 90-day window, which is distributed to each qualifying member based on their rank. Only Diamonds and up can qualify for this global bonus.
If any of this doesn’t make sense, I offer you my most insincere apology. MLM companies are known to toss utter gibberish in their compensation plans, along with percentages and high figures, to confuse prospective buyers and investors.
What I Like About Ascira (Pros)
So, from what I’ve gathered from Ascira’s corporate website and from watching videos of some of the most notable figures, here’s what I absolutely love about Ascira.
N-O-T-H-I-N-G!
What I Dislike About Ascira (Cons)
And here are some of the warning flags I have identified.
Leaders with Despicable Reputations
The head honcho, Mr. Johny the Greek was affiliated with Futurenet, a 2018 pyramid scheme masquerading as a social media platform.
He, along with Happy Hartmann, Gerti Navisotschnig, and Steve Martin (not the actor) were all working behind the scenes of Futurenet. Cindie Wang, one of the company’s keynote speakers and teachers of how to become successful in business, is a notorious MLM-pyramid-scheme queen.
These are just a few names of the people who openly and willingly plastered their names on the Ascira website. There are several other figures who aren’t as popular as this bunch, but if they’re hanging out with the same MLM-pyramid crowd, I can only assume the worst.
Expensive
Do you remember when you were first hired, and in order to keep your job, you had to pay an upfront fee to your employer? And then a subscription fee? And a renewal fee to retain your employee badge for the next twelve months? Neither do I.
Apart from being forced to pay fee after fee, the prices of their products are astronomically high. Plus, the company doesn’t even explain what they’re teaching and what sort of discount travel packages you can get! Sure, 70% off of plane tickets sounds good, unless your only option is to meet the Korowai Tribe of Papua New Guinea (they’re cannibals, by the way).
Only way to make money is by recruiting
I said it before, and I’ll say it again. Ascira does not offer any tangible product, and the “services” they offer are vague at best.
Since Ascira isn’t manufacturing anything for you to sell, the only way you and the top leaders can make money is by finding new sucke—eh, team members—to pay the registration fee and recruit other members.
The money from the bottom trickles upward to feed the greedy cats running the business behind closed doors, whereas the regular Joes and Janes are left to do the grunt work. Worst of all, you’re doing the majority of the work (building a team of “sellers”) in hopes of receiving a tiny piece of the pie in the forms of bonuses and rewards.
And to make matters even worse (what comes after worst?) is that your commissions, bonuses, rewards, whatever, are negligible compared to your sales.
Possible Pyramid Scheme
Now, to be fair in my assessment, I’m not going to make straightforward claims like ASCIRA IS A PYRAMID SCHEME without knowing all of the details. I’d like to know everything about the company before I dish out $199 as a starter, but the company doesn’t spoon-feed me what I need to know.
This is a common tactic in pyramid scheme nonsense—if you ask any members about where the money comes from or even how the bonuses are calculated, you’ll receive the same response over and over. “Don’t worry about it! Just work hard and you can drive a Porsche just like (insert name of founder and members of the management team here).”
The fact of the matter is that MLM companies in the education and travel niches aren’t unique. They’ve been around for quite some time, with many of them barely staying afloat due to their cookie-cutter business model.
Verdict: Tread with Caution
After evaluating all the information I could gather from researching online and listening to literally hours of the same nonsensical speech over and over, it’s downright impossible to determine whether Ascira is a legitimate MLM company or not.
It’s too early to tell, and with their website perpetually in the pre-launch phase (since March), there’s no way to determine how far the company is in reaching Phase 1 of their plans for the future.
As long as it remains in pre-launch, the only way to make money is by recruiting new members. So basically, for the time being, Ascira is nothing but a Ponzi scheme, through and through.
Just like FM World, it is potentially a pyramid scam if it stays on with the current business model.
So, with all my heart, I would advise those who wish to jump aboard the Ascira train to tread with caution. Education and travel MLM companies aren’t new, and they’re up against some pretty fierce competitors.
If your goal is to earn a bit of money on the side, I highly recommend you try your hand at affiliate marketing. You can earn quite a sum of money by promoting other people’s and company’s products on your own website, and for every sale you helped create, you can earn a cut of the profits. Imagine that; working from behind your computer to promote real-life products with real-life value to real-life customers and making real-life money for your efforts.
Besides, it DOESN’T cost anything to get started on this highly recommended affiliate marketing academy (which helped me generate passive income online.).
Hey, it’s Kenny here. I’m a single dad, freelance writer, an affiliate marketer. I have been making a living online since 2016, after quitting a 10-years engineering profession. When I’m not on the laptop, I’ll be in the kitchen experimenting with new cuisines.