A method of compensating a plurality of participants, includes hierarchically representing, in a database communicatively associated with a computer, a multi-level real estate team, the team being based upon sponsoring of members in the team; collecting a membership fee from each member of the team, the membership fee being independent of a real estate transaction; placing the collected fees into a revenue pool; determining by the computer, via interrogation against the database, a respective team bonus for respective team members based at least in part on the hierarchy between the team members; and distributing, based at least in part on the computer determination, the respective team bonuses from the revenue pool to respective team members.