MLM Business Models & Legal

A while ago, I received an email from my mentor. He was telling a story about how one day, he found an entire downline genealogy of an existing MLM company for sale on the internet.

He knew the owners of the company, so he called them up and said “Hey! What’s going on? My gosh, your company is doing good, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Company is doing great. But we couldn’t afford to buy the software, so we leased it. And part of the lease deal is, the software company owns the database.”

The software company decided it needed more money, so it sold the entire database to 10 third party MLM lead companies for $10,000 each, pocketing a nice $100,000 off the backs of the hard work of the distributors.

Can you imagine that? [click to continue…]

{ 18 comments }

Long term residual income is the big promise of MLM. It can’t achieved if you have to build it over and over again. It can only be achieved if you are in a company that will be here for the long haul.

There is a saying that goes “Lies, damn lies, and statistics”… I don’t know if this is true but I have heard that 90% of new network marketing companies will not last two years, and 90% of those remaining will not last for four years.

That’s a 99% failure rate for new network marketing companies in the first 4 years!

The recent iLearningGlobal termination of its MLM pay plan is a classic example. It did not last 2 years as a network marketing company, and it was one of the biggest companies in recent history to fail in such a short period of time.

Still think joining a ground floor opportunity is a good idea?… [click to continue…]

{ 5 comments }

Recently I received an email from a visitor to my blog. He asked me about my opinion on his company, especially its compensation plan. I sent him some training material provided by Mentoring For Free that allowed him to do his own assessments of his company.

Here is part of his letter to me after he had gone through the training materials and saw for himself what he was in for…

Hi Wayne,

Thank you so much for your assistance. What an eye opener! Here I am wondering if the company has a good compensation plan when I should have been more concerned with how the company could discard me. Although I believe in the product, and the need for the product, I no longer believe in the company. Especially with clause X on page 2 of their “Terms and Conditions” policy, that’s about as straight forward and simple an “out clause” as you can get.

The information you are providing should be mandatory for anyone considering investing their time and money into any MLM offering. Hopefully as your word grows it will become increasingly difficult for crappy companies to con people into joining them. The public (myself definitely included) are way to trusting, or (like me) looking at the wrong thing. As you covered with your first recorded call, if the foundation is sand – my house will always be in trouble.

[click to continue…]

{ 5 comments }

Autoship is a must!

Autoship is a must!

Whether you like it or not, you can’t have long term residual income, which is the big promise of MLM, without an autoship program. Long term residual income starts with autoship.The reason why autoship programs are so important is very simple. See, the vast majority of businesses make money from the small purchases of many customers.

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. [click to continue…]

{ 12 comments }

On a recent training call, one of my mentors spoke of a gentleman whose business keeps falling apart. He builds it up, then it falls away. He builds it up, then it falls away. He was baffled as to why this was happening. The company had a great product, and he a great marketing and training system that allowed him to work with targeted prospects.

He couldn’t understand why the people who had dreams of become of being financially free would quit the business. So he picked up the phone and asked each of his former distributors about why they quit. The number one answer he got from his people was, the product is too expensive.

Hardly anybody in his downline could sell the product to end consumers, or break even on their own autoship orders. It’s pretty hard to retain people when they’re not making money. Understanding what the problem was, he expressed his concerns about the price of the product to the company. [click to continue…]

{ 1 comment }

Is it better to be a distributor for a publicly traded MLM company? Some people intuitively think so. Some companies like to spin the fact that they are a public company in their favour, touting their advantages over a privately held company. What’s the truth?

The truth is, being publicly traded does not mean anything if you don’t know how to assess a company. It’s is not a selling point. Your prospects don’t really care. The number one thing that prospects care about is who gave the presentation.

The bottomline is, if you want long term success, you first need to learn how to choose wisely. You need to not get caught up in the hype and see an opportunity for what it is. Once you are able distinguish between a good and a bad network marketing company, you need to choose one company and marry that company. [click to continue…]

{ 2 comments }