*Twentytwentyhindsight
Yes, as others have said, thank you for putting it out there- it is much appreciated.
You say you 'earned' £600/month, but that to do so 'cost' you £450/month.
Therefore, in the best of times, you were making £150/month.
Can you give an idea of where this money came from/went- i.e. how much of the income came from your margins on personal sales, how much from your cut on downlines' activities; also, what did the £450 costs comprise- transport, postage, 'trainings', samples, coffee meetings, purchases for personal use (being a product of the product/your own best customer)...?*
My margins on sales were extremely low of not non-existent! I'd usually sell products very close to the wholesale price and absorb the costs of postage myself so was practically paying to sell! I once bought a C9 and gave it away as a prize, hoping that would generate word of mouth sales - it didn't.
A customer once wanted a refund on a c9, I had to refund her money and then head office sent me a replacement product. In the business presentation opportunity script, it was a selling point that 'we' offered a 100% company backed money back guarantee. It was only as customers asked for refunds that we would learn that head office only gave replacement products so we would have to try and sell those to recoup our losses. This meant if we actually sold it, we wouldn't benefit from it boosting our sales that month as it wasn't a new purchase. I think I sold about 10 c9s in total and I even sold these at less than wholesale just to make the sale. The logic was that it would count towards my monthly personal 4 'Case Credits' (approx. £990 sales or 600 wholesale) that I had to turn over to qualify for my teams sales bonus, or that I would be closer to promotion that would give me a bigger bonus %. That is where any incoming money came from, never sales. At first we would earn £29 for each new team member who signed up to us, this rose to around £60 and would count as 2 full Case Credits. So the goal was to recruit 2 people as that would be the quickest way to turn over 4cc. However of the mandatory 4cc, 1cc still had to come from sales so we couldn't just be a recruiting business. When I needed a promotion, I worked out that it was cheaper to 'buy' 2cc by recruiting a fake person for £200 than buying £300 wholesale product...!
It was a vicious cycle of trying to hit the CC at any cost in order to receive the team bonus and hit promotion for an even bigger team bonus payment.
also, what did the £450 costs comprise- transport, postage, 'trainings', samples, coffee meetings, purchases for personal use (being a product of the product/your own best customer)...
Postage, I always absorbed by doing bigger orders, which in reality meant ordering more. Postage was £7-£9 depending on the order. Minimum order was £50. I'd usually find I had an order for £20 of product, making me about £3 with my tiny profit margin as I sold at less than rrp. I'd then have to try and generate more sales whilst fending off people asking how long their order would be before finally just spending the extra required money on products for myself/samples and covering postage.
Gosh I'd forgotten how dire it was!
Transport - deliveries to customers I didn't even factor in or record. I once did a delivery 50 miles away. I didn't keep track of fuel to trainings and wouldn't always have people to car share with.