Donald LaPlume registered the Asirvia.net domain on December 10, 2016, listing a Vermont address. He, along with co-founders Don Smith and Kevin Marino, previously operated Saivian, a program that offered daily returns based on new affiliate recruitment. Saivian's business model, which required a $125 monthly subscription for affiliates, faced scrutiny for its reliance on continuous member acquisition to generate income.
Saivian, launched in late 2015, presented itself as a cash-back membership program. Its core compensation structure, however, depended on affiliates paying $125 every 28 days. These affiliates could earn a daily return on investment of up to $3000, directly tied to their success in recruiting new Saivian members. This recruitment-driven model, where income largely derives from new participant fees rather than genuine retail product sales, often resembles a pyramid scheme under regulatory definitions. After roughly a year of operation, Saivian's growth appears to have stalled significantly, a common outcome for such schemes when new recruitment inevitably slows. This decline prompted LaPlume, Smith, and Marino to transition from Saivian, subsequently launching Asirvia in late 2016.
At its inception, the Asirvia website provided minimal public details, primarily functioning as an email capture page. The company positions itself as a provider of "true solutions for real life" through a collection of third-party services. These services are offered either individually or bundled into subscription packages. The value proposition of these third-party offerings, distinct from the recruitment incentives, forms a crucial part of the business model's legitimacy.
Asirvia's individual service line includes a Tax Minimizer Pro for $39 a month, Money Mastery at $20, and a Mobile Savings App priced at $24 monthly. Other options are Home Tech Support 24/7 Unlimited for $29, ID Theft Premium Protection at $25, and Credit Monitoring Ultimate for $29 per month. Customers can also subscribe to Online Data Backup Pro for $19, Total Family Internet Protection Pro for $19, and TeleHealth MD 24/7 Unlimited for $34. Roadside Assistance Xtra costs $19 monthly, and Multimedia Group Messaging Pro is $24. These services, while potentially useful, compete in crowded markets where similar offerings are often available from established providers, sometimes at lower costs or with more comprehensive features. The question remains whether Asirvia adds unique value beyond simply aggregating these services.
Asirvia structures these aggregated services into two primary subscription bundles for its retail customers and affiliates. The Basic Package, priced at $99 per month, grants access to any six of the listed services, along with an RX Pharmacy Savings Card. A more extensive option, the True Solutions Package, costs $169 monthly. This package includes all eleven individual services, an additional offering called "Live Life U," and the RX Pharmacy Savings Card. The pricing strategy encourages larger package subscriptions, which also influence affiliate compensation.
The Asirvia compensation plan is designed to incentivize affiliates through two main avenues: direct sales of service subscription packages to retail customers and, critically, the recruitment of new affiliates who also subscribe. This dual emphasis on product sales and new member acquisition is a defining characteristic of multi-level marketing structures. The financial rewards for recruitment often overshadow the profit margins from direct retail sales, shifting the focus towards expanding the affiliate network.
For initial sales, Asirvia affiliates receive a $25 commission when they sell a Basic Package. Sales of the True Solutions Package generate a higher first-month commission of $50. Individual service subscriptions yield a 25% commission on the initial fee paid by the customer. These upfront commissions aim to provide immediate returns for new affiliates, encouraging initial sales efforts.
Residual subscription commissions are paid out through a unilevel compensation structure, a common MLM framework. In this model, an affiliate sits at the top of their team. Every person they personally recruit is placed directly on their Level 1. If those Level 1 affiliates recruit others, those new members form Level 2 for the original affiliate, and so on. Asirvia caps these residual commissions at five levels deep. For example, a Basic Package subscription pays a $2.50 residual commission up the unilevel chain. This structure places significant financial reliance on an affiliate's ability to continuously recruit new members and ensure their downline also recruits and maintains active subscriptions. The challenge lies in sustaining recruitment across multiple levels, a factor that frequently leads to high attrition rates and difficulties for later entrants to achieve profitability. The model's sustainability often hinges on whether the bulk of revenue comes from genuine retail sales to non-participating customers or from fees paid by affiliates themselves.
The operational similarities between Asirvia's compensation model and the prior Saivian scheme, particularly the emphasis on affiliate recruitment for recurring income, raise questions about compliance with anti-pyramid scheme regulations. Regulatory bodies like the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) scrutinize MLM companies to ensure that compensation is primarily derived from the sale of goods or services to bona fide retail customers, rather than from the recruitment of new participants. The history of the founders' previous venture, which "stalled," serves as a precedent for the potential outcomes of models heavily reliant on ongoing recruitment.