To ask for MLM success stories?

[TheLoudGobbyOne]

This is not a TAAT so please don’t report this for that. But its inspired by the ongoing MLM thread where a friend of the OP who is/was a teacher has/is giving it up to work for an MLM scheme.

And I was just wondering: does anyone know anyone who has had success from this? There are countless horror stories and warnings to make it obvious MLMs are more scams than successes but surely they are benefitting some people out there otherwise they would not exist?

I am not asking this because I am questioning joining one or remotely tempted or intrigued by it before anyone asks! Just purely wondered if there is anyone who knows someone who has been successful in these and how much work they put into it

I've got a friend who does Body Shop at home. She's done really well out of it, and makes enough money not to have a "proper" job, and it pays for quite regular weekends away with her kids and DH.
I suppose, as a recognised company that sells quite nice, not overly expensive stuff, it's easier to make money than if you were trying to flog miracle cure pills for £25 a bottle or shit yourself thin coffee (as some of my other friends have tried, and failed dismally at).

I've a friend who has had the worst luck this year. Now to top it off she's recently signed up to sell TS-Life, another friend who has been a great support to her tried to warn her off it but she's just been dismissed as a hater.

I'm signed up as an Arbonne consultant so I can get my 35% discount on products because their make up is the best I've ever used - and I'm a product junkie and have tried everything over the years. I don't recruit because I'm rubbish at it and I only sell to people who ask me to order for them because they also love the products. I do the tax return for an Arbonne AM level and she makes about £1000 per month profit doing it part time. As a result of being involved on the periphery I do know of people making big money but I do think it's possibly decreased over the past couple of years. I've been to a few white Merc presentations.

If I had a pound for every time a mum at school starts up with the “exciting news” spiel. Eye roll, get a proper job, what a load of exploitative nonsense. We all know you’re claiming housing benefit really Lucy, stop lying.

@jagoda

How do they lose money though? A mutual friend is a downseller just so she can get 25% off all the stuff she orders. All she had to do was buy a starter pack (which was all stuff she used anyway) and now when she orders, she gets 25% of it paid back into her bank account..........she doesn't bother selling to anyone else as far as I know.

Not saying other MLMs lead to losses but genuinely don't see how Tropic does. There is no investment aside from buying actual product you can use. I guess if you didn't want to use their stuff it would be a waste but then you probably wouldn't be interested anyway.

She's not a downseller - she's buying the stuff and using it herself.

She's a customer.

@jagoda

She's a customer. She's buying stuff at discount so while she isn't losing money, she isn't making it either. She's literally just doing what someone would do when they walk into a shop and buy stuff in a sale. She therefore isn't an example of someone who has done well from an MLM. Making £0 isn't a marker of success in a business. I know you probably know this and meant this anyway but just to be clear - she isn't making anything. She's just paying slightly less mark up than people who didn't also buy the starter kit.

I know someone who was top 10 uk a few years back.
I'm pretty sure she is nowhere near that now if active at all. She hasn't attended the last couple of rally's.
I started to notice little white lies and fake it type stuff. I'm pretty sure she used family money to buy a holiday home but she passed this off as thanks to her mlm.
Once I saw her dishonesty I saw it everywhere.

I have know someone who does body shop. she buys loads of stuff for stock which she then tries to sell rather than people placing orders with her. She has bookcases in a spare room full of body butter, shower gel and soap. Must be hundreds of £££ worth.
She has a separate Facebook group for selling which has over 100 members but most are like me and do nothing within the group and the only ones who post or buy tickets for her endless raffles are a few family members and their girlfriends.
She always said that she wasn’t interested in recruiting but she now is actively trying to recruit on Facebook. She. Is also making up Christmas hampers with her stock which she is trying to flog along with homemade advent calendars full of stuff she clearly hasn’t been able to sell in her “flash” sales.

A family member has started FM perfumes recently. She morphed into a mlm hun overnight, with all the long emoji laden statues multiple times a day and incessantly messaged and invited me to like her page and group until I, as politely as I could manage, smacked it down and told her I’d never be interested... we haven’t spoken since, which seems a shame. Anyway, she posted last night saying that someone who started selling FM crap in the last lockdown has now quit her full time job, has a ‘fully-paid for’ Range Rover and has enough to spare to buy herself and her family a ‘dream family sized character country cottage’. Sure she has, babes.
Now I have a few issues with this. Primarily it’s a fucking lie. Becky or Laura or Faye or Michelle or whoever it is this time (and I’ve seen the ex act same post a couple of times on different profiles just with different names) has done nothing of the sort, and I hate dishonesty, especially when used to trick other women into buying into the ‘business’.
Secondly, how much money would that honestly have taken?! In six months, to have earned that, she’s either selling thousands and thousands of bottles a month (very unlikely in rural England) or the products are vastly overpriced to allow for the commission. So which is it? Which would Hun rather go for?

@KiposWonderbeasts

I did Usborne Books for a while because the local person who did it before had stopped and my kids loved Usborne's stuff. I made next to no money but it did get a lot of free books for my kids, and for their school and nursery.

Then The Book People started selling Usborne collections at a fraction of what we as agents could buy them for, so it seemed kind of pointless and I stopped. And told all my previous clients to use The Book People.

Yes, I live in another country and bought Usbourne books from a lady selling them. The book people were running but the postage costs for ordering from them were huge. When she dropped them of she explained she was doing it for pretty much the same reasons you were, to essentially subsidise ordering books for her own children. She wasnt trying to make money. Then TK Max opened in town and you could buy Usbourne books there so I think she stopped. There certainly doesnt seem to be a hard sell/recruitment drive from Usbourne types so I dont think it is a good example of a typical MLM - although I would definately caution anyone hoping to actually make money out of it against it.

But also, more broadly speaking, the question in the OP is a bit like asking "Does anyone benefit from cults?" In which case the answer is obviously yes, the people runnning them/at the top of the hierarchy are obviously benefitting but that doesnt make them a good thing. (Or temporarily sometimes the people lower down as well, the girl at the end of Midsomer looked kind of happy but not so much the people burned alive.)

The obvious lying annoys me too. Someone I know has joined an MLM and keeps putting up posts about looking for new people to recruit and always claims ‘I’m making way more money than I ever did in my previous 9-5!’ and other MLM sellers from the same brand will all comment on her post going ‘im soo glad I took this business opportunity love all my extra holidays and new car from part-time working!’ So they obviously just all comment on each others posts as part of the illusion.

Anyway said person gets next to no responses or interaction on her selling page, constantly posts with ‘flash sales’ and videos and nobody likes or comments (except the other MLM sellers) and nobody ever asks for anything, she’s constantly doing raffles and never manages to sell the tickets. The lying is atrocious.

I think the posters bring somewhat lofty Saying £200 - £300 a month is pocket money are being hugely dismissive of those like my friend (Avon) , minimum wage, where this low effort sideline is hugely meaningful

I am absolutely sick of all the MLMS on my fb feed and the fake happy posts everyday. Fuck off no one wants your crap!

@Aridane but someone making 200-300 a month is the exception rather than the rule in MLM. Actually it counts as hugely succesful (top 2%) and is likely to involve a huge amount of work/hustle/annoying friends and relatives to achieve (your friend may be the exception to this). The point is most people lose money as well as friends, time and even relationships doing it. This is particularly a problem for people on minimum wage who are explicitly targetted. As you say - 200-300 is a lot to them and losing even "small" sums of money affects them much more than someone with a high income/married to someone with a good income, who can easily write of the money lost. At least with a low paid part time job, what you are told you can earn is what you are likely to earn - you wont go into debt doing it.

The fake happy life posts are ridiculous. If they were that happy all the time they'd pop with happiness. They're happy with this, happy with that blah de blah de happy blah while the rest of us are just getting through each day like normal people.

[quote yetanothernamitynamechange]@Aridane but someone making 200-300 a month is the exception rather than the rule in MLM. Actually it counts as hugely succesful (top 2%) and is likely to involve a huge amount of work/hustle/annoying friends and relatives to achieve (your friend may be the exception to this). The point is most people lose money as well as friends, time and even relationships doing it. This is particularly a problem for people on minimum wage who are explicitly targetted. As you say - 200-300 is a lot to them and losing even "small" sums of money affects them much more than someone with a high income/married to someone with a good income, who can easily write of the money lost. At least with a low paid part time job, what you are told you can earn is what you are likely to earn - you wont go into debt doing it.[/quote]
In which case, then, yes (in response to the OP), I do know an MLM success and point you to my Avon lady friend to whom the £200 - £300 a month low effort sideline she has is hugely meaningful to her.

(were it not for her, I would have assumed the answer to be ‘no’ other than those at the top of the pyramid)

Unfortunately the only people who make money are the people at the top of the pyramid
To me mlm seems like a series of cults

@popsydoodle4444

I'm an Area Manager for a MLM.

I'm honestly sick to death of rude people telling me I'm being scammed or that I don't make any money or that I must work 24 hours a day etc.

It's pretty awful tbh;I don't criticise other people for their work roles.No doubt they'll be people on here who'll attempt to lay into me.

I left a part time job through Illness;my self confidence took a real battering.I'm better than I was but still have relapses;I'm unfortunately currently going through another.Going back to work isn't an option as I cannot take a day off work if I'm having a bad day.

I'm an woman in her 30's with a customer service background;I knew exactly what I was signing up for with a MLM.I've been successful enough that I work 2-3 hours a day and make as much as I did in my part time job.It's all about time management.

I schedule my Facebook posts on my private group have a power hour where I send/reply to messages and comments/place a once a week order on a certain day and then schedule time to sort that order when it arrives and arrange delivery.I also schedule in zoom meetings/training.

I'm happy;I get on well with colleagues,I've made new friends and have had some great experiences.

You surely must know that in spite of your apparent success, many many many more people experience the opposite I.e. you are the 1%.

You must also surely realise that if only 1% of people are genuinely successful then by definition it's not a successful business model?

It's not rude to state that. You keep 'Hunning' but you must have lived under a rock if you aren't aware of the stats on these businesses?!

In know some who seems to be doing well at it. I haven’t seen her selling the products directly but she does a lot of recruiting selling the run your own business, and pick your kids up from school dream. I also know loads of people she recruited.

I also know her husband is a director of a big household name, so I’m in no doubt that the big house, cars, lovely holidays are not solely funded by body butter.

I know many more people who try it and give up after a a few months because they don’t make any money. Body Shop seems to have done really well out of the pandemic.

@Redcrayons
You've just described someone who is not doing well at all and is totally funded by her husband!

I know two people who did Body Shop, one couldn’t make it work as no one wanted to go to parties apart from her immediate family and a few colleagues would buy stuff occasionally but we lived 30 minutes from our nearest store.

The other was more successful but only because she had her DH going around our large work building effectively working for her and her other job was a weight watcher leader and she canvased sales at the meetings. Oh you lost a pound reward yourself with some body shop goodies etc.

I have friends husband and wife doing Herbalife and they encourage friends to use it to loose weight and become sellers to buy your own products cheaper and then just get a mate to do the same. He now has some fancy title as he has so many sellers under him but he is a spendthrift and the amount of product they use is scary. They have it for breakfast and lunch and shakes and use it to add to deserts. They want to help you to be healthy and loose weight apparently, it’s not about money 🤣

@ginislife

I'm signed up as an Arbonne consultant so I can get my 35% discount on products because their make up is the best I've ever used - and I'm a product junkie and have tried everything over the years. I don't recruit because I'm rubbish at it and I only sell to people who ask me to order for them because they also love the products. I do the tax return for an Arbonne AM level and she makes about £1000 per month profit doing it part time. As a result of being involved on the periphery I do know of people making big money but I do think it's possibly decreased over the past couple of years. I've been to a few white Merc presentations.

I'd be very careful of the Arbonne stuff.

This woman I used to know had a PA job alongside this and has another job too, they seemed to be very much into the recruiting people when she tried to sell it to me.

The Arbonne makeup is the best you've ever used?! I see you've 'drunk the Kool Aid'?! I used a few of the samples (disgusted me because they're in reusable bottles but no way would I say it's the best I've ever used, at all. The Arbonne mascara the person I knew I saw her promoting it on FB - my Lancome shoots it out of the water and so does the Wilko Essence one.

shit yourself thin coffee