Independent based MLM businesses have been around for decades. Many ignorant attorney generals have bad mouthed MLM as chain letters or pyramids or both. For would be sign ups who have bought this opinion, it now makes it almost impossible for us average intelligence folks to build a downline because our prime time target market fellow human beings just do not believe us anymore. There are many reasons for this.
The young generations of workers, just out of school, are poisoned by the many cases of flat out dishonesty by networker marketers of these MLMs. They pick up on the wild claim hype of making fortunes in no time at all with virtually no mental or physical work. They claim fabulous cures of almost all maladies by various health and nutrition products that come out via MLMs. Common sense tells them to stay out of it.
Some savvy health and nutrition companies pick up these items, one by one, as the MLMs go broke and start selling them directly to the public at very low prices. So the MLMs are having a benefit in the health and nutrition areas and some others besides. Unfortunately the financial benefit goes to the sharp retailers per above. Unfortunately, some of the health and nutrition products do have fabulous benefits that make MDs an endangered species in many areas but, the truth of these good items virtually always gets exaggerated and few people end up believing them to have any benefits at all.
Another invention, the laundry ball, was marketed well by a company that went broke and now, years later, an energy company has taken this neat idea and improved it and sells the new and improved laundry ball with no exaggerated claims and makes a nice profit on them. A legal discount package MLM is still successful. You can make it with this one but you need lots of money, talent and time and a very serious work ethic to make it with them. If you have all of these you can do it. If you lack any of them you do not have a chance.
The government has attacked this legitimate company with frivolous claims that the company has overcome. Even the great Amway was attacked by the government but they also won and still exist. I have been in no less than three MLM companies myself that had large amounts of money in the bank and they all declared bankruptcy and kept the money in the bank for themselves. This was legal by the way. I spent thousands of hours training studying and working these business opportunities, all for nought. Affiliate programs on the internet have sucked away MLM talent by the tens of thousands.
Ebay has sucked away more thousands of opportunity seekers with their auction business. The creative buying and selling real estate industry has sucked away many thousands of opportunity seekers also. Many small niche businesses on and off the internet have sucked away more of the entrepreneur talent.
So guess what? There is no more talent to recruit into MLM opportunities. The only way an MLM can make it nowadays is if they have extremely unique and beneficial products that no one can touch. Sorry, my friends, there are many great copycats out there. Mainland Communist China will copy anything they can get their hands on that works and they could care less about our laws or other international laws. Do you understand? The market for MLM is gone unless you have super products.
If someone does have legitimate super products they can be found selling them on, you guessed it, the internet. In fact, it's probably safe to say that virtually all MLM business is, or at least certainly can be, home based. That's often the beauty of the MLM industry and the primary intrigue for those who join an MLM as a distributor.
Some products marketed on the internet have been filled up in just weeks or months. No more sales or recruiting people were needed. The first home based MLM business was Nutralite, which is now a subsidiary of Amway. Nutralite, founded in 1949 by Jay VanAndel and Rich DeVos, was the start of network marketing and the start of the food supplement and vitamin sales industry. In 1959, after long standing internal wrangling between the manufacturing subsidiary and the marketing folks, VanAndel and DeVos decided to create a whole new company as a resolution.
This was how Amway, the first national home based MLM business, was formed. Amway bought the Nutralite product and firm in 1969 and has long retained its title as the largest MLM business in the world, home based or otherwise. Most of the new business now comes from overseas.
Viewing the Amway success, other home based MLM business ventures soon cropped up, including those not so reputable. A scam called the Ponzi scheme, actually developed back in the 1920's, was redesigned to look like an MLM but designed to deliver profit to only the designers and the con artists running the scam. This home based MLM business look alike came to be known as a pyramid scheme. The US government now runs the biggest Ponzi scheme ever called Social Security. We put money in for the future and our congressmen and senators take it out, or more appropriately steal it from you, for various social programs so they will get reelected. Amazingly, one year during the Clinton presidential administration they claimed they balanced the federal budget.
The truth was they clearly stole hundreds of millions of dollars from your future. How many elected men and women in either party have the emotional courage to charge them with that? Unfortunately none at this time. The basic difference between a legitimate home based MLM business - one that can and does actually reward every hardworking distributor with commissions on the products they sell - and a pyramid scheme is that there is a product that does pay profit to the seller.
A pyramid scheme is solely about rewarding those at the top of the pyramid heap. In a pyramid scheme, which, by the way, is illegal, the scammers lure others to join what they present as a legitimate home based MLM business by telling them of hefty profits quickly and ask that the victim and would be distributor, send payment for the products to sell. In a true home based MLM business there is also typically an upfront cost for a sample box of products to start selling but those products are legitimate for sale products. In a pyramid scheme, what the would be entrepreneur gets for her or his payment, is the information on how to present other would be distributors with the lure of quick dollars, take their money and send them the very same instructions on luring others. There is no product in a pyramid scheme.
. In truth, this is how it has always worked with a high percentage of MLM companies. The very talented few prospered and all the others lost money and time. All businesses and the government itself are set up in basic pyramid stuctures. If you can face reality, the beauty of MLM is over.
Home businesses will continue to show up, but you are working or reviving a dead horse if you think you can make it in MLM. Many of the great MLM leaders of the past now make good money selling you how to do MLM while they have completely left the industry themselves. I hope that clearly tells you something. There is no product in a pyramid scheme. There is no profit in MLM for you, as I hope you now see, if you read the above.
James M. Lowe writes original articles about home business opportunities.
