How much do people make from the MLM schemes?

[StunnerNotReally]

My facebook suddenly has loads of women doing these.
Body shop and Tropic and the perfume one.

I selll Oriflame and have done for about 5 years. Originally started when I was in a temp job just for a little bit extra and to get discounts on stuff I wanted to buy myself. When I started it was free to join and no kit needed, just stationery like catalogues if you wanted to do door drops and samples
both of which are very cheap. I've now got a small Facebook group of regular customers and still put an order of some description in most months. I don't bother trying to recruit anymore because there are so many people locally who already do Body Shop and the likes whereas very few people have heard of Oriflame. The company changed their model last year and brought in a small joining fee (£19) and gave existing reps the choice to pay or stay as a legacy rep which still gives you a discount but not bonuses or the ability to build a team. I stuck with the old version but have upgraded during CV19 as the new style membership gives you an online shop so customers can order for direct delivery which helps anyone isolating or not wanting me to deliver in person. I'm sure if I really put effort in to selling and recruiting I could make a decent amount but I have a full time career so Oriflame is just a hobby that makes me a bit of extra spending money and lets me buy decent products cheaply. There are not many reps in the UK compared to say Avon and even less up here in Scotland so conferences tend to be held down south and I've never made it to one yet. I do know people upline from me who have gained places on the foreign trips which is amazing but certainly not the norm for most of us. I think with all these things people have to be realistic and not pin all their dreams on making their fortune selling mascara...

They make a bit of money from sales but they make more money by recruiting people. If those people make sales they get a percentage. But those people also have to recruit to make money from the sales of those people and then they also have to recruit. This is why they are pyramid schemes. There are loads of videos on YouTube that explain why they are rubbish. Also an excellent podcast called The Dream.

Sorry don't know what happened to my paragraphs!

@YouokHun

I wonder how many bots who do this as a hobby or for a bit of extra cash have told HMRC about their extra earnings?

2 friends of mine have popped up on FB with one I hadn't heard of before, blossom. I still can't quite figure out what they are selling, I think it's juice, powders and tablets but not 100% sure and there is no way I'm going to message them for more info.

I used to be fascinated by Emma Cooper and her 'lifestyle' fb threads. Her main topic was her 'team meetings' that she could do from home in her pjs. Strange now that that's the norm these days!

I went to an Arbonne party thing about 6 years ago (friend of a friend) and felt sorry for the woman so bought a mascara for like £7. This woman proceeded to harass me on Facebook for the next year until I finally blocked her, then she got my number from another friend and called every few months. She called me last year, five years after the one £7 sale, and I was so incredulous I just said “honestly what are you doing with your life? This is ridiculous.” Never heard from her again. I find the whole thing so creepy and bizarre and it does prey on certain types of women

IMO MLMS prey on women who are vulnerable
In the current situation who have been furloughed,or paid off who will see an MLM as an opportunity
Which it is, that is an opportunity to waste a lot of time and money,and make no money
Vultures

One of my relatives who was right into a make up one a few years ago ,and then got a proper job ,has got back into it in the last few weeks

@morriseysquif

I’m assuming you do Utility Warehouse. Why are the reps always so cagey about what they do?

I own my own business and go to a lot of networking events, so I ask a lot of people what they do. UW reps never just say they do UW - it’s always “I help people to fulfil their dreams through low-cost telecommunications and other utilities” or similar.

I mean, it comes out in the end what they do, and after speaking to a few you know immediately.

Is it part of the script?

Do you mean grief or money? Lots of one and not so much of the other. Also annoy the hell out of your friends.

I know someone who sells Tropic. She posted a lot last year about the fabulous trip to Cambodia. I just can't fathom it. Would she have paid for the trip herself?

Yes @barfotoliv she paid for it herself

An ex colleague started selling the Aloe one, had posts about how she was 'able to give up her 9-5 and actually look after her kids'. Funny, I saw her at old work the other day and she hasn't posted about Aloe for a while......

@user1487194234

IMO MLMS prey on women who are vulnerable In the current situation who have been furloughed,or paid off who will see an MLM as an opportunity Which it is, that is an opportunity to waste a lot of time and money,and make no money Vultures

One of my relatives who was right into a make up one a few years ago ,and then got a proper job ,has got back into it in the last few weeks

Definitely agree it preys on those who are vulnerable. All the women I know who do it are ones who have given up work to stay home with their DC (and none of them are married, so no security that way). It's marketed as this great work-from-home job that you can fit around the kids.

These are people who don't have much money to spare anyway, yet they're tricked into spending God knows how much on start-up kits and merchandise.

MLM are annoying but they're also designed to hit the most vulnerable in society

Sweet FA, it's mortifying when a friend joins up and gets the husband/ mum to like their posts. It must put such a strain on their relationships and self esteem when they finally have to admit that they've been a) scammed and b)a scammer

@Villanemme yes, the bot you mentioned like to show off the “castle” she was living in thanks to Forever Living. It’s not a castle, it’s a folly that was turned into a house - I think it was on Grand Designs. Her brother (another Forever Living bot) tried to suck people in by telling people that FL had enabled his sister to buy a castle. That video has since disappeared. It wasn’t long before someone found the castle advertised on an estate agent’s website. They rang the agent who told them that it was currently rented out as a business letting. Smoke and mirrors. She lives in a more modest house these days.

I know of two MLM /NM hunbots, one with her own travel business and the other with a perfume/make up business. The latter hunbot is quite well known in the SE for her 'businesses'.

Both keep posting about how easy it is to earn thousands of pounds a week, about what a great lifestyle they have, exotic holidays, about 'Amethyst' and 'Gold' levels, about their brand new Range Rovers and Mercedes....yet with no initial outlay and no financial commitment

What is the catch I wonder. Sounds too good to be true

The Body Shop are over-saturated here in The UK, but will begin a huge recruitment drive in America to sign up new consultants there to join UK consultants teams. I don't know if they will shut down US stores and just have online and consultants-but there will be American consultants being recruited by UK consultants. A consultant becomes a manager when they have 7 active consultants on their team, making a certain amount each month. For a manager to be paid more commission the team have to make a monthly sales target set by The Body Shop At Home. The higher the levels of managers go up, the more you see the bigger picture. Lots of area and regional managers now and a very small core group of really high up super duper regional super region mega manager managers who joined at the right time years back. Some are on stupid money.
The regional managers are also using the pandemic as a lure to get more people to sign up-'times are hard, everyone is shopping from home, social distance job, redundancy saviour' sort of stuff. Recruiting is how they make their money. The consultants and low level managers may break even but so many lose money before quitting.
I saw a lot of things I really did not like.
They pray on vulnerable people to join and spout shit about being your own boss but reality is you are anything but. There is a load of pressure from day 1 that they pretend is motivational. I saw it for it what it was and made it work for me but admit I was taken it by it all in first year.
Short answer: you'll piss people off and will probably lose money.

My friend does body shop along side a proper job. I think she make a few hundred a month but it look like a lot of work. On FB daily, ordering stock, posting or driving to deliver it. So if you had the time and masses of effort I guess it works out around £10 ph ish which is ok to fit around kids and a FT job but it's hardly life changing.

A girl on my Facebook (cousin of a friend) has been posting for weeks now about her new way of life and how she has a 10 year plan to be 'financially free'. Hasn't yet advertised any products but keeps posting about how her life is so much better and 'I choose change', 'PM me for more info'. I'm so intrigued but would never ask her about it in case she tries to rope me in!
She'll have to eventually tell us what she's selling but it's so irritating!!!!!

I know someone who did Forever Living for years and was (according to her) absolutely raking it in. She had the white Audi, multiple trips abroad to conferences, regular promotions and was apparently making more money a week than she did per month at her old managerial job.

Out of sheer nosiness, I looked at the names of the award winners from these conferences and her name never appeared on the lists once despite her apparent success. I also saw the Audi for sale on our local selling site when she packed it in. It still had thousands of pounds worth of finance on it.

A hunbot will never reveal her secrets but after having "look at my perfect life" shoved down everyone's throat for years, I'd love to know what she actually made

It just makes me laugh cos a friend on Facebook was standing in for someone doing this (don't know if it was Younique or similar) for a week and put a photo on every day with what was clearly just a script cos it was just the total opposite of now she would normally talk.
It's just so obvious to me

Is ulitiity warehouse the same? I have someone going on about that to me.

@BSintolerant oh gosh yes I'd forgotten the 'castle'! Just had a look on fb and she's still posting stuff but slightly more muted. Tbh I can't believe she's managed to keep upbeat about her lifestyle for so long, must be so wearing!

Thneedville the travel ones are an MLM mostly Inteletravel. I work in the industry (not as an agent), and they are really pissing people off. They are commenting on other genuine agents posts trying to steal business and a lot are even having the brass neck to try to recruit agents who've had genuine businesses for decades. Thsy have an extremely limited number of suppliers that work with them and poor commercial agreements so would rarely be cheaper than booking with a real agent.
They are massively recruiting at the moment saying theres a huge travel boom around the corner. The reality is that agents have been working with no income for months now and are also paying back the commission they have earnt in the last year as everything is being cancelled.