Many years ago, in my early 20s, I was the lodger of a bloke who did Amway. I never really understood what he did all day.
He had a big poster of an Escort Cosworth on the kitchen wall (it was the 1990s) "for motivation" but I never saw him sell any of the Amway gear. Instead, he used to get people round to the house to convince them to sign up as Amway salespeople. He used to ask me to pretend to be a visiting friend, rather than a lodger, so that the people he was suckering in would think that he was super successful (and presumably not dependent on my £50 a week rent).
I never participated in any of his sales pitches, and I felt quite uneasy because the people he was recruiting obviously didn't have much money and seemed quite naive. He used to tell them things like, "the only limit is your imagination" and bollix like that. I used to feel like saying, "Run! I think it's a scam!".
My landlord was quite keen to sell Amway stuff to me (he never tried recruiting me to flog the stuff because I was training as a chartered accountant so I think that even he could see that was a better option than sodding Amway). He was constantly telling me that Amway skincare and make up was better than Clinique etc. (which I didn't use anyway) and trying to get me to order mega expensive Amway make up sets. I don't know how I wriggled out of it, because I was less assertive then, but I managed to avoid investing!
He used to go mad when I brought non-Amway cleaning products into the house. He was in the cult, all right. I haven't read the Amway links yet but I'm looking forward to finding out how it worked.
I was also reminded of a girl I'd talked to at a friend's party a few years earlier, who told me about a 'marketing opportunity' that would 'allow her to retire before she was 30'. "As if!", I thought. I bet that was bloody Amway as well.