[radreality]

Originally Posted by SAMG

I Came Home One Day To Find Out That My Fiance Had Purchased A Herbalife Kit. Yes Herbalife, Im Sure Most Of You Have Heard Of Them. They Charged Her $179.00 For This Damn Kit. After I Did My Yelling And Complaining, I Told Her To Make It Work, And See What She Could Do With It. Well In Some Free Time I Decided To Read The Books, Contact The Lady She Was Dealing With And Ask Her Some Questions. In Which, Her Answers Confirmed Why I Hate Mlm.....

Herbalife First Make A Hefty Commission Just Off You Buying The Startup Program........

They have to make a commission off of the startup kit, because if they were to make a commission off of registering someone, then that would be illegal.

Come on people. DO YOUR LEGAL RESEARCH. Find out what is legal and illegal and why the companies do what they do. Things will make a lot more sense to you then.

I personally don't like MLM, but I'm not going to sit back and let people continue to make unjust opinions about completely legitimate business practices. MLM’s just get a bad rep because they put power in the hands of people who don’t know how to properly handle it and they screw it up. You aren’t going to put a low employee as CFO of a company, right? In MLM average people get put in positions where they have to start making choices without the proper training and knowledge; of course things aren’t going to work out for a lot of them and of course they aren’t going to blame themselves.

______________________________
Robert Falk
Business Developer / Investor
Self Help & Success Forum

[David C Skul]

MLM is not really entrepreneurship is however a good way for people to make money if they are relatively good sales people. I would never engage in MLM because you have ultimately have no control over what you are selling and most MLM programs are about selling the MLM program and not a product or service. One of the rare good ones I would say is Amway. Yes... Amway, they were very successful and very honest. Most of the others are pyramid or ponzie schemes. Beware and be careful.

[Ian]

Yeah I started talking to a member here, about proper business knowledge and the like, they tried to get me interested in some MLM scheme, and I smelt a rat from the start...they were WAY too pushy for my liking, now i've read this i've made my final decision, NO. I'm going to go it alone thank you very much.

Ian

[burythestar3]

I just started my first MLM business, and honestly its going great. I think it is an unbelieveable opportunity to work on the side and make some extra cash until you get to the point to solely depend on it. I just recently started and am already making money. I am enjoying myself too, and thats whats most important. If any other network marketers are around, or anyone else wants to talk email me at :

burythestar3@comcast.net

Dan

[hypnotikk]

Amway, they were very successful and very honest. Most of the others are pyramid or ponzie schemes. Beware and be careful

I think you have it backwards. Amway was well known for their bait & switch and back door tactics. Invite you to dinner and then slip in the biz when you don't expect it, and heavily push the purchase of training materials.

Of course there are scammy companies out there, but they come and go, just like traditional businesses. Enron anyone? Since we're a smaller industry, we get scrutinized when you hear of a MLM company rip people off. The sale of legitimate products is what distinguishes multi-level operations from pyramids.

When people say a company's a pyramid, they're just repeating something they heard some ignorant, broke person say.

You know how real estate works right? Most ALL say yes....Ok, then You understand that there are Brokers and Agents Right? Ok, So, You understand that when a Broker closes a house he makes a Good Profit right? Ok, then you also understand when a Agent makes a sale the Agents gets a nice Cut of the pie and the Broker gets his portion as well...Right?

btw, the corporate world is the real pyramid scheme, you know where 1 president oversees 4 Vp's, who oversee 15 exec managers who oversee 50 middle managers, who oversee 300 frontline workers?

I challenge anyone to show me a successful business model that does not take the organizational form of a pyramid. The organization is not the issue, but, like so many things in life, people get fixated on the wrong thing, in this case the organization.

Please note that franchising was once considered a scam.

Our business will survive a healthy skepticism. Make sure whatever NWM/MLM you're involved with is at least registered with the DSA.

But my purpose is not to educate people about pyramid schemes. My
purpose is to share my product/service/opportunity to see if they
will be able to benefit from what I offer.

Carry on.

[jackace]

MLM is all about sales and not much else. Selling the products and then selling the business to recruit others. If the parent company focuses on good products it could be a good opportunity, but honestly I have sat through many of the common MLM presentations, and none of them provide a very good product. The majority of their presentation is about how much money you are going to make and not what products you will be selling. Then they ask you for a payment of $100-$500 today to get started.

My beef with MLM stems from the fact that they take no real risk and almost no expense to sell their products. They push all those risks and expenses on to the people they recruit. Then they basically force you to sell to and recruit family and friends. I tried one of them for a week when they had a free trial of the business to let people see how successful you could be. My "mentors" only focus was for me to sell to and recruit my family. His techniques he wanted me to use were basic guilt trips to get my family to buy the products.

IMO if you sell your product through an MLM structure your product quality is already HIGHLY suspect to me.

[syia]

I hate MLM because.. I hate being the slave that actually making BIG MONEY for the top people in MLM

[silversurfer]

I challenge anyone to show me a successful business model that does not take the organizational form of a pyramid. The organization is not the issue, but, like so many things in life, people get fixated on the wrong thing, in this case the organization.
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you do understand, right, that you misunderstand why pyramid schemes are called pyramid schemes, it's not the organizational structure, like businesses, it's the concept of paying to be part of the plan up to one person. Pyramid-shaped organizations are not the issue, duh!

But if you owned a company and hired everyone who paid you an entry fee and then never paid them a salary, no matter what you called it, no matter what the company did, they'd be called a scam.

But seriously, you don't understand pyramid schemes, so just leave that part alone.

[Dav]

For starters pyramid schemes have been outlawed since the 1960's. Now if anyone is in business you are in business to make money period. The only way you can make money is that you SELL GOODS AND OR SERVICES thus making you a salesperson. Can I ask a question. When was the last time any of you went out and had a good meal or seen a good movie or went on a awesome vacation? What was the first thing you did you went home and told someone about it. In turn that movie,restaurant, or resort makes money because of you. Did you get get anything for it? NO! My point we all network market everyday we just don't get paid for it. True MLM or network marketing companies paid people for something we do every single day. And yes MLM's are true companies and the people that run these companies are true entrepreneur's. We all get 1099's at the end of the year. Is Avon a bad company? A lot of people buy there products (an MLM company) so is Watkins, and Tupperware, etc. All these MLM's nobody seems to have a problem with. Look at any typical company in the world. There is one person at the top and everyone else falls below him/her, thus creating a pyramid picture. Is UPS,FED EX,Target, Walmart are any of these companies pyramids? NO. So I ask you what's wrong with MLM's or Network Marketing. In my opinion nothing.

[ibelieveyoucan.com]

The problem I have with MLM is probably common among many others too. It's that the product that goes along with the opportunity may just be ok, but it's often very hyped up to get people interested in the opportunity, or the opportunity, or comp plan may be good but the product sucks and after a period of time if we were already sold the opportunity and had to get in before someone else beat us in, we later find we don't really like the product, which makes it hard to promote the opportunity.

Today there are sooooo many products out there all competing for attention that I personally find it very hard to find a product that is so unique I WANT to market it. A new and unique type of product would be something I would want to promote in a MLM fashion, and then I could see spending the time to hold meetings and contact people and do the work.

Someone said earlier that if the product is so good it will sell itself. There is something to that. MLM to me has become something where so many people are hyping up either the opportunity and/or the products, and most of us that are not so young and knieve are just tired of being approached about it. We've seen it all, or tried it all and know it's the best conmen and women that succeed at it at the highest levels. Maybe that's a bit harsh. Many good folks are just convinced by the brainwashing of so much positive pitch that goes on, and the will to get ahead in life that they have become great convincers and are able to sponser more people in and convince them to duplicate the same way. Whatever it is there's something phony about it that bothers people, which brings me back to the notion that if you really have a revolutionary product, as long as people are seeing it and trying it, it will sell. If MLM is the vehicle by which it is distributed than so be it. It will be successful and worthwhile, not needing hype because honest word of mouth will sell it.

Always be careful folks because for MLM to be legal there must be a product or service provided in exchange that's tangable. Some opportunities make people a lot of money and the product is basically worthless but its legal because of the product. The legal system can't really discriminate "against products" to stop shady mlm companies unless enough complaints are made..

These are why MLM has the bad stigma attached to it...in my opinion. Now if your lucky enough to find a great gem of an opportunity with an HONESTLY good product that's unique, get in early and promote the heck out of it!

My apologies for bouncing around, was off the cuff and unplanned writing.