Autoship is a must!
Retail stores such as Walmart make their money from the small, regular purchases of their shoppers. Banks make a ton of money by charging you regular, hardly noticeable monthly fees. Utility companies, insurance companies, telecommunications companies all charge you by the month for their services. In fact, a business that relies on the custom of just one client is in a very risky situation.
Network marketing works exactly the same way, it is just a different form of distribution. In MLM, your money is not made from one hot shot who’s able to sell massive volumes of product. Your money is made by the regular, small efforts of your group of people.
MLM companies that sell consumable products such as nutritionals and personal care products have an advantage over MLM companies that sell other types of products. People will buy these products over and over again to replenish their supply.
A lot people have the wrong attitude when it comes to autoship. They are in network marketing to make money, not to spend money. And don’t like the idea of having to buy stuff on a monthly basis.
“Oh, do I have buy stuff every month?” they cry.
Well, how else are you going to make walk away residual income?
Most network marketing companies now have a monthly personal volume requirement for you to qualify for bonuses. That means if you don’t purchase a required amount of their stuff in the period of a month, you won’t receive any income from the efforts of your downline. The bonuses will “roll up” to your upline distributor who has reached those requirements.
To some, it sounds like extortion but it is in fact a very fair thing for the company to do, providing that the volume requirements are reasonable. This is a way of rewarding distributors who are active, rather than catering to those who just have a position and are expecting a downline to be built under them.
If a prospect has an objection to purchasing the company’s items on a monthly basis, perhaps that prospect shouldn’t be in your business. What’s the use of just sponsoring somebody? They have to be purchasing product for you to make a commission. A legal network marketing company cannot pay you for recruiting somebody. If it does, then it’s an illegal pyramid scheme.
If a person you sponsor will not go on autoship, this will duplicate down that line of sponsorship. The people he or she sponsors won’t go onto autoship either.
On the otherhand, a person who commits themselves to a reasonable monthly autoship program is generally someone who will also commit to building the business. And if you promote a culture of autoship within your organisation, your monthly residual income will steadily grow as your organisation grows.
Autoship programs should be reasonable. Nobody wants to buy excess product that they can’t use or sell. Nobody wants to stockpile product for the sake of qualifying for bonuses. In companies that have reasonable volume requirements, you should be able to consume most of your monthly autoship amount.
Unfortunately, there are companies that do have excessive autoship requirements that are out of reach for most part-time network marketers. Consider this carefully when choosing a network marketing company to build your future with.
To your MLM success,
Wayne Wu
P.S. I would love your input! If you have an opinion that would contribute to this discussion, please leave me a comment below.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Great article. Keep up the good work.
Hey Teri,
Thanks for visiting and thanks for the kind words.
Wayne.
This is the best article because it not only gives us a chance to build a massive organization but if each of your teammates share with their family members their life changing products and they had great results with them, then they will tell their friends what your product did for them and you will get orders from their friends. A referral business is the best!!
Lawrence Bergfeld
Lawrence Bergfeld´s last [type] ..Why Is No A Bad Thing In Network Marketing Today
It is great to have autoship for you and your teammates because then each of you can sample out to others and when the product gave them results they can tell their friends about it and those referrals will then order from you. Imagine it happening to 90% of your group. In the end with all those relationships, you will get the big paycheck on the beach.
Lawrence Bergfeld
Lawrence Bergfeld´s last [type] ..Why Is No A Bad Thing In Network Marketing Today
Great article. Just shared it on FB. It helps people to better understand the concept of ‘autoship’. Thanks!
Gina Koinski´s last [type] ..Be A Page Turner
awesome article, very clear and easy to understand about autoship in mlm
Tristan Richards´s last [type] ..Benefits Of Using A MLM System Like My Lead System Pro To Build Your Business Online
Hi Wayne
I agree 100% about no Autoship, no Income. I have been working with a company called Visalus that has a disappearing Autoship. It Also has a Car Program which I attained in 40 days. As a seasoned networker that has been in the industry for over 25 years, finding Visalus has put the icing on my Cake. Simplicity of sharing the program makes this opportunity the easiest and most lucrative one that I have ever come across. I just ask contacts to listen to a 4 minute pre-recorded call 5077263700.Press #2 when prompted. Then I give them a 23 minute video that is critical to the simplicity. The information garnered in these 2 steps saves a lot of time of us trying to be the message. We are messengers sending our contacts to the message. http://www.overview.visalus.com. Keeping it simple has never been easier.
Courious on your thoughts.
Bill Watling
4169965372
While I would agree that long term residual in most Network Marketing companies is a must, it is because of Autoship that very few distributors will stick around past the 3rd month anyway.
Let’s run through a real world scenario in most MLM business opportunities today. Month 1 Joe joins XYZ company that promotes Mojo Juice. Now since Joe’s sponsor Super Diamond Dave is a “Leader” Joe does what his sponsor did and bought the Executive package, 4 cases of Mojo Juice so Joe could qualify for all commissions.
Now as with any traditional product based MLM, Joe is encouraged to get on autoship right away so he is never out of Mojo juice.
Let’s fast forward, its now month 2, and Jo’s monthly autoship for $150.00 is about to be charged to his credit card again, but wait he still has 3 cases from his executive package and he can’t even give it a way.
Month 3 Joe sponsors 1 person and makes a fast start bonus of $75.00, but wait he has spent well over $1000 and is no where close to breaking even.
Scenarios like this happen every day in MLM, Autoship is the number 1 killer of a downline. Now in the scenario above we used a tangible product, but what about those cell phone MLM’s or “Leadership book of the month clubs” your still paying for a monthly autoship regardless.
So while I agree about autoship in mlm being longterm residual, fact is hardly anyone gets there because of autoship.
Brian Davis´s last [type] ..Autoship in the MLM Industry
It is fantastic reading from an experience MLM professional…i take you as my mentor…..autoship is necessary, that is why there should be proper business evaluation before joining any product network marketing company, analysis their autoship system, what makes the monthly volume, if it entails more product that will force one to start selling or looking for way to dispose them..it is not the best option, but if it is a company that has alot of products to make choices….and with less product volume, i think it will be a better choice. I have personally experience alot and have learnt alot from my Network marketing experience, thanks Wayne Wu for this article
Hi there,
I don’t know that I side with you on this one. Our company has NO required autoship. We do have an optional leadership development program with a subscription, it has a monthly fee, but is not required or mandatory (do I want someone in my program that isn’t in this program? No of course not, but this is because we get PAID, and have a comp plan attached, and get the BEST training, a sequential duplicateable system that teaches you from the ground up, BUT we get something for it. You can make thousands and tens of thousands in the front end of our program with no autoship. Learn why autoship is killing network marketing http://www.noautoship.com/ezcash. I think it’s just a line of bull they’ve been feeding us, sorry, have worked multiple MLM’s, and Melaleuca for instance was the first company to require an autoship, yet they flatly refuse to call themselves an MLM or Network Marketing company. I have been a customer since 2003, have recieved a commission check every month since then, ONLY because I purchase my required 35 product points, and I only do THAT because I like their products. Anyway just had to give you my 2cents worth. The company has a proven product, groceries, THAT’s where OUR long term residual income comes from. Not a product you have to talk people into trying something new, often outside of their budget, and when money is tight, what’s the first thing they cut, that expensive product that’s building up in their garage.
Lisa Blanton
What you’re really saying is that product needs to be purchased on a regular basis in order to receive regular commissions and overrides – that much is obvious. The problem is that most new distributors ‘peak’ the day they sign up and don’t do a whole lot thereafter. Then they become susceptible to NBT (Next Best Thing) syndrome and when autoship time comes around they cancel. The biggest problem is that most MLM products are just simply overpriced and unless the customer is getting stellar results and doesn’t need to be making money they cannot afford an expensive autoship combined with all the other marketing and promotional expenses involved in starting a new venture. When brand new he/she is not a strong enough salesperson to ‘convince’ other people to duplicate what he/she did. If the product is great and not overpriced he/she will want to re-order of his own volition and be encouraged to share it with others . Autoship should be an option and not a strong-arm tactic to insure re-orders.
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