Have You Been Successful With MLM?

[RabbitsRock]

I have quite a few FB friends who sell or have sold things like Scentsy online but don’t know many people that have made any serious money from a business like that. My only attempt was Forever Living & I did ok to start with as the products, although quite expensive, are very good (still use the aloe vera gelly today). It was difficult to carry on though because ime, you hit a brick wall. The lady who recruited me has done amazingly well, with several foreign trips & I believe she got a car. The selling part became tricky for me because some of the stuff lasted ages so nobody wanted to buy any more in the short term & I didn’t have the personality to bring others onboard.

As you know, it requures hassling your friends and family for products they don't need.

The lady who recruited me has done amazingly well, with several foreign trips & I believe she got a car
How do you actually know either are related to the mlm?

Its just a big pyramid scheme isnt it? Watched a few good documentaries about the evils of MLMs.
Think only a v small minority make any money of it and you hit the nail on the head they have the personality to get others on board. Your talking top tier confidence, could sell sand in the Sahara, absolutely ruthless people with zero values or fucks given about screwing other people over. No thanks

It's a pyramid scheme. The only people who do well are the founders.

The other people claiming to do well from it are either

• wealthy separately (eg rich spouse/family money)
• faking their wealth (often getting into substantial debt to do so)

They have to claim to be doing well in order to recruit more people

Nobody has

I know because we became friends & I saw proof of all the holidays/conference trips she & her husband went on. She used to be a nurse so had lots of friends in the health industry which helped her to find recruits. The car arrived once she’d moved abroad so I’m not sure if that was from her profits.

But how do you know who paid for these?
my very quick research says the attendees pay to attend the conferences and they lease the car on their own name.

the hun leases the car in her name and MK cuts a check for the car note monthly as long as she hits a certain sales quota. If sales dip and she doesn’t meet the quota, she’s on the hook for the payment.

There’s a great YouTuber Hannah Alonzo who talks about the perils of MLMs.

You have to get into an MLM early in order to make money and most of the money from products is derived from the MLM sellers themselves, buying them in order to meet sales targets. It’s a vicious cycle. Getting a proper job and rising the ranks through hard work would be MUCH more lucrative.

This blog about MLM is quite interesting

https://ellebeaublog.com/poonique/

Listen to the podcast ‘the dream’ it explains all about them.

pyramid schemes.

A lot of the conferences are paid for by the attendees who are encouraged to “fake it til you make it”, because the money is not made from selling the product, but from recruiting people who buy a sales starter pack, and then “fake it till you make it” spending their own money on products.

There are some people who are good at recruiting others and so do make money from it, they have a wide network of people who are willing to sign up to this. They are the sort of people who are regularly meeting other people via the job /lifestyle they already have so are always meeting new people to recruit. But it’s the recruitment not anything else that drives the income.

So OP, do you have a wide source of contacts who you are willing to sign up to selling these products, convincing them they’ll make a fortune, knowing they probably won’t? Is that you? If not, you aren’t likely to make a lot of money, don’t put your own cash into it.

It's all smoke and mirrors. Look at the financial disclosure documents - 99.99% of them are not making/losing money.

Or to put it another way, about 10 years ago, loads of women I know via jobs I used to have who were Facebook friends, all started doing these various MLM “girl boss” schemes. All were apparently doing very well, the white Land Rover seemed to appear in several posts for different women. With in 5 years none of them were still doing it or driving expensive cars. If it was that profitable as they claimed, why do they all quit?

I worked with someone whose wife did do well, because she was one of the first people to get in with that make up one everyone did. She was top of the tree in our region.
Any money she made was taken off the poor women she then recruited though. I imagine her earnings have fallen off a cliff now.

There is a very long thread on MLM over in money matters. Maybe take a look. A lot of the scams associated with MLM have been unveiled over the years, particularly the Forever Living group. The thread is titled Botwatch 89, yes there are 89 full threads on this subject. Some contributors are ex MLM who have been scammed others know or have known friends and family involved. One early member ended his marriage over it, in desperation he turned to Mumsnet for support.

If mlms work, why are people selling stock cheap on facebook, still shilling hard, but still claim uc?

I know of a woman who was spending thousands buying her own products, and then giving the impression that she was wealthy from hitting X amount in sales.
It’s a fool’s game.

The cars are leased on finance plans and the cost of the finance plan is deducted from their earnings. They aren't being given a car, they are just paying to lease one. The trips abroad are smoke and mirrors - they get flights paid and bulk bookings in hotels but all other expenses are for them to pay and they only get a few days paid which are taken up with terrible conferences pushing the MLM. If they want to do any sightseeing they have to pay to extent their accommodation and flights at their own expense.

I played the MLMs at their own game, bought the Neal's Yard consultant starter kit which was £300 worth of stuff for £95 shoved it all on ebay and made back my stake + about £100 plus kept a few products for myself.

You're probably not supposed to, but once I bought the products I reckoned they were mine to do what I liked with and I'm.not breaking any laws.

Neal's yard are one of the few mlm companies with decent products that have resale value.

99% of people lose money in mlms

https://www.ftc.gov/sites/default/files/documents/public_comments/trade-regulation-rule-disclosure-requirements-and-prohibitions-concerning-business-opportunities-ftc.r511993-00008%C2%A0/00008-57281.pdf

the fact you couldn’t make it work is absolutely nothing to do with your personality - you were set up to fail from the very moment you joined.

I’ve got a few friends who seem to have done quite well on Utility Warehouse. But even on their free holidays (which I think genuinely are on that one), everyone had to travel on the same dates so it was basically a UW convention.

IMO Juice Plus are utterly shameless with the wild health claims they make.