What happened to MLM's?

Yes!

This is very familiar!!

I wish MLMs would be made illegal. There’s been a few petitions about it in the past.

@Steeleydan JP was at death’s door last time I looked (in the UK at least). I know a big recruiter for JP, he carries out his JP activities in Europe, recruiting via fear mongering about MMR principally but also other vaccinations and evidence-based healthcare. In the UK he has an Osteopathy practice and hides his MLM recruiting and very dodgy health advice. Anyone with any sense knows those vegetable dust capsules are absolute rubbish! Hopefully JP is going tits up outside the UK too.

Juice plus has gone quite too!!!

@Steeleydan you’re right, FLP’s products are very expensive and completely uncompetitive - it’s almost as if the product exists for a purpose other than to be sold to genuine customers isn’t it?! The people in Forever Living are generally their own best customers. Forever Living has recently found itself in the dock in the US over claims that the c.90% signed up who make no money are simply there for the discount when it’s clear they are actually trying to make a living out of the opportunity - these are the people paying the price (in more ways than one). If you were to ask Forever Living how much of their revenue comes from sales to people who are outside the pyramid they either can’t or won’t tell you (people have tried).

Of course they will say, ‘but our Aloe Vera is special’ and cite all sorts of dodgy Hun science about its properties. It’s all bollocks. Now they’ve had to shut down their MLM business in the USA because they risk a $40k fine per false claim, they’ve stepped up their recruitment everywhere else, telling all the same lies they can’t tell in the US anymore. I fear they could hook in more people but the prices may hopefully put some off.

I always think stuff like forever living is so over priced because there are so many people having a cut out of it, eg aloe vera is so cheap in Holland and Barrett! Forever is a fortune

Ah, I wondered where all the identical "Become a self-employed travel consultant!" ads were coming from on LinkedIn...

I guess people can just go online and buy whatever they want these days rather than having to listen to a whole load of chatter from Sarah who tries to push them to buy more stuff, and also by ordering online you conveniently just get things delivered to your house rather than having to catch up in person once your goods have arrived. The middle man isn’t necessary.

As an aside, not MLM related but I haven’t seen anyone selling wax melts on FB for a good while. Hopefully they’ve also died a death.

Back in the day a mum at my DC's primary m 'launched' her Stella and Dot 'career' with lots of random whatsapp groups and #bossbabe nonsense. Two years later she moved on to Forever Living, and she is now.... wait for it.... a travel consultant. Evangelical about them all and, honestly, she could tick every box on the Bot Bingo Card.

I used to actually feel sorry for her when our DC were small at the local school fairs. We'd all be there pitching in on tea and cakes, the toy stall, face painting or whatever, and she'd be unpacking boxes and boxes of Forever Living products and arranging them with bowls of pot pourri and fairy lights, pasting on a smile and having to try and 'hard sell' to people who just wanted a crack at the tombola and a hot dog. She'd sell precisely none and then have to carefully pack it all away again. She must have spent a FORTUNE on her stock don't think for a moment she recouped even half.

Some MLMs have a minimum sales target or you have to pay full price for the starter kit. Usbourne books used to be like that.
But others you can just buy the starter kit and thats all. Like @ThatCyanCat says your upline still makes money on that sale.

Kangen Water. There is a some poor Bot trying to recruit more Bots to their Kangen Water empire who has taken out a lease on a local shop and bought a vinyl Kangen Water banner. I've not seen anyone go in or out of the shop in the five months it's been there

It's known as kitnapping and the uplines would still get their cut from the sale. So even if you never sold it on or recruited anyone else, they've still made money from you. Not as much as if you had sold more products or recruited more people who in turn had to fork out to sign up, but they've made something from it.

Can I ask a question from previous MLM sellers...

I used to always see "starter kits" for say Body Shop or Neil's Yard. The kit would cost eg £100 but there was an RRP of £200. This was a genuine RRP.

So what would stop me from just buying the £100 kit just for me with no intention of selling? How would my upstream (is that the right word?) stop this if I ignored their pestering telling me to sell stuff?

What's MLM please?

Is FM still going ? It was very popular a couple of years ago!

#girlcheeseboss #livingmybeststiltonlife

Slipping in to discuss Cheese MLM scheme.

Remember huns that people COULD buy it at the supermarket but we want to sell direct to the consumer as it is fresh and has a short shelf life ALA Tropic.

Although actually the product is kind of irrelevant as it’s all about the recruitment anyway hun.

Lots of Tropic that I see! (I know they don't see it the same way internally as not the same focus on recruiting or something).

And Utility Warehouse. A family friend recently started this and keeps spamming social media pages. I was previously ambushed at a chat with someone that I had assumed would be a two way conversation following a networking event (had expressed an interest in finding out more about what I do as self employed.......was clearly not interested at all!). It became a big pitch where she was trying to go through my household bills in detail, completely unexpectedly and surprised I didn't have full info about the ones my husband looks after.

I have definitely felt the usual MLM behaviours from most people I've met that are reps from these two. I know some of the companies have switched track now due to bad press and struggling to sell their overpriced products. But I unfortunately can't see the business model disappearing completely while there is a high cost of living and people desperate to try and earn more money.

@G5000 amazing opportunity! As a founding member all you need to do is have a first tier of recruiting and recruit five customers Level One Cheddar Ambassadors, then if they recruit 5 victims entrepreneurs each and then those 25 each recruit five each and so on, you’re only going to need another c. 13 rounds of recruiting and you will have recruited the world’s entire population! What could possibly go wrong with this simple duplication method?!

Each one of those dynamic entrepreneurs just needs to buy a Cheesy Starter Kit for £199 (contains £7,777 worth of cheese) and then each one of them is on their way to a six figure cheese based income (provided they put in a cheese order every day and pay for cheese based trainings about how to recruit more people). Every time they put in a cheese order you get paid even if they can’t sell it and it ends up in landfill! You will end up a Pule Cheese Diamond Level Ambassador with an Eleventy-billion pound fortune and a white Range Rover with a personalised plate!

You may encounter some haters along the way who tell you you’re part of a pyramid scheme. Ignore these small minded people who have failed at network marketing and are simply envious. You will encounter people who make excuses not to become entrepreneurs and be able to spend more time with their children. These people are BAD parents and destined for a horrible half life of a regular salary, paid holidays and sick leave, pensions etc. Remind them that every organisational chart is pointy at the top so that means Marks and Spencer is a pyramid scheme because they have a pointy organisational chart. Remind them that it’s all about cheese and you are not part of a pyramid scheme because every time you recruit someone and continue to take their money on a regular basis you are handing over cheese and pyramid schemes have no cheese based products. Lots of losers like economists, the Federal Trade Commission, consumer groups etc don’t really know what a pyramid scheme is!

It’s not an MLM pyramid scheme, it’s social cheese selling.

Oooh you could sell special branded cheese fridges and cool bags to bring to party’s. Different colour bag depending on your level

Yes hun! Let's do it. Of course our first needs to be tasting curating all the cheese a carefully selected ummm... selection.

well, here's an opportunity, let's set up a cheese MLM. We would be first tier, so that 0.2% or so who will actually make money, hun!

This is true. Just as well i haven't invested yet!

I'd eat my own stock so would never make money regardless of the company structure.

Pyramid scheme are illegal. However mlm companies claim they aren’t pyramid schemes they just direct sell. They get round the rules on a technicality