what do you all think of MLM?

is this business model sustainable? i heard a lot, mostly negative about MLM, for instance Amway selling health products but it has been around for 30 over years. i find it very smart way of doing business but most of the sales people spoil the show. i am thinking of joining, what you think?

need genuine advice from uncles, aunties, sisters and brothers here :o

Find that MLM salespeople are like brainwashed. A pity.

ya, i went to attend one of their talk, it is like the make you "feel good" factor. I have always been skeptical about MLM until i met this sales lady, i thought of joining her...:o

singham said:

is this business model sustainable? i heard a lot, mostly negative about MLM, for instance Amway selling health products but it has been around for 30 over years. i find it very smart way of doing business but most of the sales people spoil the show. i am thinking of joining, what you think?

need genuine advice from uncles, aunties, sisters and brothers here :o

Click to expand...

MLM is one of the biggest con jobs around. Avoid it at all cost.

why do u say so..? is it because of sunshine empire?

Thick Face Black Heart said:

MLM is one of the biggest con jobs around. Avoid it at all cost.

Click to expand...

MLM doesn't work, except for the people at the top 2 or 3 tiers. Even they have to bail out at the right moment to safeguard their prior earnings. That's because the MLM's ever-expanding pyramidal base is like a driverless train with no feedback from the market and no inbuilt set points and is programmed to go way past the supply-demand equilibrium before imploding.

What's Wrong With Multi-Level Marketing?

singham said:

ya, i went to attend one of their talk, it is like the make you "feel good" factor. I have always been skeptical about MLM until i met this sales lady, i thought of joining her...:o

Click to expand...

hi there


1. tambi, me no uncle hoh
2. just go ahead & poke the gal mah.
3. btw, enter with your eyes open to both holes:p

MLMs do not sell products inasmuch they sell you hopes and dreams (catch phrases such as 'financial independence', 'own your own business', 'work flexible hours from home' etc.) The exaggerated promises hook undiscerning people into their network.

It is a predatory business model that taints relationships between friends and family members. Even if there's a guaranteed path to become a top upline, I refuse to participate because of moral reasons.

I generally have an innate distrust of sales people: door-to-door, telemarketers, SLS ah bengs, megachurch preachers, charity tv shows etc. If someone is doing a hard sell, chances are that salesperson is conniving to screw you over.

singham said:

why do u say so..? is it because of sunshine empire?

Click to expand...

Sunshine empire, Amway, SkyQuest, they are all the same. The basic idea is that you earn money by recruitment. To make the scheme appear authentic, there is also a product attached to it, which you may have to purchase in order to join the scheme.

The company makes money whenever you or your down-lines purchase the product or pay an enrollment fee. Even if there is no upfront enrollment fee or product purchase, you can be very sure that the company will force you to part with your money at some point in order to continue the scheme.

What the company does is then send a portion of the profits to the top of the pyramid, and then let that fraction of the profits slowly trickle down the chain. If you're not one of the top few who joined the pyramid early in the game, good luck waiting for the cash to trickle down to you. Most people will never be able to make back from the pyramid what they forked out in enrollment fees or product purchases.

The whole scheme is nothing more than the company forcing you to purchase something from them, and then rewarding the pyramid with a fraction of the revenue as a form of commission.

The catch in MLM is that it is easy to fool yourself into thinking it is a great opportunity, but when you go out to do your own recruitment, you'll find it far harder to fool others.

A very common MLM sales tactic is to tell the new recruit that all he needs to do is to recruit 2 new people every month, and he will do well.

However, if that were possible, simple math will tell us that the company will swell to the size of the entire human race within a couple of years.

Run.

Fast

MLM biz model is simply selling very cheap products at very high prices so that the upstream can have substantial amount of comms to collect.

It is doom to fail because the number of 'relatives' ' friends' aka suckers that you can recruit are not limitless.

MLMs are simply pesky disruptors in anybody's life you can't get rid of.

If I am PM of Singapore I would ban MLM in Singapore.

Let the population focus on more important issues.

Watch this:

[video=youtube;LgcZyhfU0FA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgcZyhfU0FA[/video]

it starts like this

"Yo brother...long time no see leh...got some lobang for you...free to watch presentation...?"

Me not expert but isn't insurance also like MLM?

Narong Wongwan said:

Me not expert but isn't insurance also like MLM?

Click to expand...

At least for term insurance, there is a benefit to your family in case you die early. For MLM, it is a one way road to losing money, friends, self-esteem as fast as possible.

Aka 'pyramid' selling -by recruitment and supplemented by forced purchase of products (move like cement stock). As rest here also imply, only benefit those 'on top' of hierarchy, riding on the minions below. My neighbor lady is one shining successful example. Even has weekly motivation meet ups with the suckers at her home. Tried to enlist me to buy silly (purportedly healthy) vitamin fruit gel sachets and other dodgy stuff.

Rather have the old economy of seeing REAL products which you need for your daily life

Mlm always got some breakthrough products during different era. Totally useless and expensive.
Amway probably lasted longer because they got household products but I find too expensive without value.

Scent lamps
Magnetic mattresses
Kitosan pills
Time share holidays?

DEDEER said:

It is doom to fail because the number of 'relatives' ' friends' aka suckers that you can recruit are not limitless.

Click to expand...

IN an MLM system, profits from downline are channelled upline, and every downliner hopes to eventually become an upliner by recruiting ever more tiers beneath him. But it is doomed to fail because:

1. MLM works exponentially downline: 1 gets 10, 10 get 100, 100 get 1,000, etc.

By the time you get to the 8th tier, you've exceeded the total number of people in Singapore cumulatively (sum of geometric series). By the 11th tier, you've exceeded the entire world's population. There's just no one left to recruit!

2. There are no built-in checks and balances. A company manufacturing goods for sale will start reducing production once demand vis-a-vis supply drops and sales figures start declining. An MLM pyramid is blind: it doesn't know when to stop because every downliner recruits more downliners blindly. It is a driverless train with no brakes, no engineer, no crossing lights!

That's why all MLM systems are programmed to implode. It's mathematical logic. It's only the upliners near the top of the pyramid, the early birds, who get to make money and abscond when the base starts to collapse.