Thank you all for your comments! I attempted to write the article as impartially as possible, and as forgivingly towards MLMs too. I do actually belive that if done right, if the product is right, etc etc - it fundmentally works.
I won't respond to everybody's comments and points, many of which are valid, and some which could be clarified.
The point I would like to make is in regards Duff's comment on sales territories, and how the lack thereof in the MLM industry leads to market saturation.
There are many conventional organizations that don't enforce territory requirements - for example in the financial planning industry. It is a career based on personal relationships as well as sales (similar to MLMs), and personal networks almost always go beyond sales territory borders. And because of this, it works. The success of the financial planner depends on their personal & professional network, sales skills, and professional skills.
The same could be argued for an MLM distributor too.
Thanks all, and keep the comments coming! I would love to hear from somebody who has had a good MLM experience.....is there anybody out there? (smiles)
Perhaps it would pay off in the long run to learn some of these skills on your own, while still going on to college and getting a masters degree in Something Spectacular, while still being able to plunge out your own toilet, or being able to change the oil in your car for the price of the bottle of oil and about 10 minutes, and so on and so forth in that manner.
BitTorrent FTW! Sites like thepiratebay.org are hosted outside the United States and are legal in their home countries. You can download their music, movies and TV shows with a program called BitTorrent (I'm sure there are others, this is simply the one I use). Files are spread out, bit by bit, over many different computers and servers, so that no one user illegally shares any files with anyone. And it's completely free.
While trades don't have to worry about outsourcing, there is immigration... I've heard that some trades have been virtually destroyed because of illegal immigrants driving the wages below that of a legal unskilled laborer.
Any job that doesn't have a barrier to entry- will likely have a surplus of labor. So, even if everyone needs plumbing it may not be that lucrative if everyone can easily become a plumber.
I was amazed at how much a home appraisal cost- $350 and the appraiser was at the house for less than an hour. I talked with the appraiser and mentioned that I must be in the wrong business- said there was a fair amount of really dull time at the office preparing the report, and there is an apprenticeship. Still, even if it took 8 hrs total times that is still a very healthy salary. However, I suspect he isn't in business for himself so he probably gets paid a small fraction of the total. I suspect that the real returns come if you own the appraisal business!
Let me recommend MP3Sparks (formerly AllofMP3). It's a site that the RIAA really hates: it operates in Russia and is legal by Russian law; the RIAA claims it's not legal...I don't want to get into the whole issue, so let's call it 'quasi-legal'.
I've used their service for a couple years, and I love it. It's not perfect, but it's the cheapest alternative for DRM-free music that's legal (I don't like stealing my music).
A much better and cheaper alternative is yahoo music or equivalent. I listen to music all the time and I love it. Almost no commercials (15 second one every 5 or 10 songs. I can skip songs rate songs etc and best part is it's all free.
How true it is, the only people who make money in MLMs are the people who sell books CDs seminars etc. My mother in law has been involved in one and spends far than she makes on books and tapes etc. Her walls are lined with stuff she bought but never got around to giving away. Secondly it is almost impossible to recruit people. No one has the interest or the time.
What the real killer is her son in law who was the first person in still makes more money than her even thought he stopped doing the business years ago. He happened to be the second person in the region to sign on and managed to get enough people below him who still buy the vitamins.
I am a physical therapist and recently had the electrician out as well. I was astounded by the $250 fee for roughly 60 minutes of work. I talked it over with my lovely wife and we came to the conclusion that there are so many other forms of compensation for a professional that others (that might make more money) might not receive.
At the end of my day, I can look in the mirror and feel that I helped people today. No amount of money can take the place of being able to serve another member of our community.
Yeah, yeah I know you can't pay all the bills with good feelings....but life is short and I would rather feel good than feel rich.
Yes, this is the best part.. Often times I wonder, did I do the right thing by going into "Big Business" and more often than not I realize that being part of the "Tech Borg" is not where I need or want to be.. a trade (plumber/electrician) would provide a fair bit more latitude than by Business Mgmt degree to pursue this on an individual basis.. Many a day I look up to tradesman..
When did we get so alienated from our most basic needs and replace simple things that fortify us with things that come from a lab kitchen in a cardboard box shipped to our supermarket from thousands of miles away? It is so important to eat real food for many different reasons; sustainability, bonding with your family/community, disease prevention, cost, etc. I bought a box of Kashi bars to carry with me when I travel and they were almost $5/bar! I can make two servings of phad thai at home for that much! Gardening and eating fresh produce satisfies your senses as well as your appetite. The beef industry not only feeds their cattle corn, but some of them have their cattle be cannibals...otherwise, we wouldn't have any mad cow disease....sick thought. I agree that people should cook and share their meals....that way they are sharing an experience and being satisfied emotionally in the process. Thanks!
I upgraded from a Nikon D70 to a Nikon D300 DSLR and was disappointed the batteries I got with the D70 wouldn't work with the D300, then learned there was a recall on the D70 batteries and the new exchange from Nikon would work with the D300 and the D70.
Filling out the 'warranty registration' cards that come with pretty much every product sure help with the companies being able to find you in a timely manner too. Like when our Xbox cord was recalled they called to say we'd like to send you a new one, let's confirm your address.
My cousin is a mechanic. He was never going to be college material in the first place, but he's really amazing at fixing things. He works for a car dealership and makes a perfectly comfortable living with good benefits... very similar in fact to how well I do with a Master's degree. He did go to school for a few years to get some advanced certifications that enhance his marketability, but that's not unusual in the trades (either vocational ed or an apprenticeship).
To be honest, some of us are cut out to succeed well in the kind of fields that require a higher education and some people are not. Our current society pushes that young adults go to college at all costs and that's not the best decision for all of them. Pursuing a career in the trades with dedication and enthusiasm can be just as viable of a financial option. And as long as you can actually fix something, you won't be pulling latte's at Starbucks anytime soon.
As an aside on the medical degree: I have a friend who's an M.D. and his wife has an advanced nursing degree... they did a purely financial analysis of pay vs. cost and concluded that her degree was the better value overall.
Glad to see more origami enthusiasts out there! The fabric origami can be a little tricky and can get sticky, but the results are pretty impressive. Fabric stiffener is a lot like Elmer's glue and holds the pieces together really well.
I wouldn't go rushing off to become a real estate agent just yet. With the real estate downturn, many of them are now not making enough sales to live on.
MLM's don't sell products, they sell greed. They sell false promises to innocent people who unfortunately get taken in by the hype, since they don't know enough about business, markets, or powerful personal and group psychological techniques of manipulation.
You are not "CEO of your own distribution network"--you are a commission-based salesperson in an over-saturated market, relying on the liquidation of your social capital (i.e. pissing off your friends and family) to make any money at all...and 99.5% of people in MLM's lose money, as has been shown again and again in numerous studies.
Due to the structure of the organization, MLM's cannot even in theory be profitable. The only profit made is from turning what would be called "customers" into what is reframed as "distributors" and then taking the money from the 99.5% that lose money in the organization and giving it to the 0.5% at the top (the people who started the whole gig in the first place).
Legitimate businesses assign salespeople to large geographic territories because they recognize the reality of a limited market for their product. Often there are 1 or 2 salespeople for an area of 50,000 people or more! MLMs emphasize the "unlimited market potential"--which is of course, impossible--and then create a structure in which there may be 100's, if not 1000's of sales reps ("distributors") walking around in an area where there should be 1 or 2.
So in order to deal with the obvious market saturation, MLMs encourage their sales reps to sell to their friends and family--in other words, to liquidate their social capital to make a buck, to manipulate the people they love by bowling over their objections with misplaced enthusiasm (greed + brainwashing). And instead of just selling them the product, they sell them the greed--they try to turn them also into the borg, the converted, the sales rep in a crowded market. The whole structure demands that they sell others in this way, even though there is no market left for the product they are selling...except by creating a market by liquidating friendships and family relationships, and converting them to cash, creating customers by convincing them they can have something they can't, which inevitably leads to a crash of trust.
I've seen 4 or 5 MLMs come and go in Boulder, CO in the past 6 years alone. Nobody gets seriously financially hurt--at most each "distributor" loses only a couple hundred bucks a month, most only $50 or so. But the lost trust in our capitalist society, and the lost trust between friends and family is horrifying.
Please help root out this nasty cultural meme, this capitalist virus by getting some real education on MLMs and their destructive nature.
This computer worker can think of several benefits to Aunt Margie's favorite grandson's chosen profession:
1. Don't have to worry about getting outsourced--people aren't going to send their plumbing to India!
2. Great potential for self-employment--once you've established a solid reputation, go solo! You should have a good base clientele who'll be happy to pay you less than your old firm charged--and you'll get all of the fee.
3. Socializing and bartering with other tradesmen--you'll get to know who the good workers from the bums after working with them on jobsites, and you might be able to trade some jobs with them when you're building or renovating your own place.
4. Demand--not everyone I know needs a web app or database designed and implemented, but everyone I know uses plumbing on a daily basis.
This white-collar worker never looks down on anyone doing a blue-collar job. Many a day I envy them!
I love this post. I learned origami on exchange in Japan, and I swear I met my husband after I folded my 1,000th crane :)
I am going to try the fabric origami this weekend. My library has a book on it, and I have tons of quilt scraps. Fabric folded boxes would be great (and frugal) Christmas presents.
No, wait, perhaps a ditzy real estate agent who doesn't give a crap that she's driving all over the road and braking for no apparent reason.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't even joke about suggesting to your kids that a college education isn't worth it. This is what my parents did to me. I have zero interest in plumbing or household electricity, real estate, appraisals or any kind of sales. I wish my parents had nagged me to go to college. It's so much harder at 40.
Remember that old saying "If you think getting a college education is expensive..." blah blah.
Although I see your point, not all the degree-less have what it takes to become dodgy contractors and real estate sheisters (or even high-quality professionals).
We have a rule in our house for homemade bread. The first day we eat the bread fresh, the second day we have toast, the third day it gets turned into breadcrumbs or into croutons for my salad. It works out well, but rarely do we ever make it to the third day. Who can resist that yummy homemade bread :)
Yeah, I"m gonna disagree with the bird-feeding advice. Birds need to find real bird food, not be allowed to become dependent on human hand outs. It's bad for their well-being, and bad for people that don't like to get pooped on to boot!
Maybe if you don't live in a major urban area this doesn't compute the same way, but there are laws against it in NYC for a reason...
Thank you all for your comments! I attempted to write the article as impartially as possible, and as forgivingly towards MLMs too. I do actually belive that if done right, if the product is right, etc etc - it fundmentally works.
I won't respond to everybody's comments and points, many of which are valid, and some which could be clarified.
The point I would like to make is in regards Duff's comment on sales territories, and how the lack thereof in the MLM industry leads to market saturation.
There are many conventional organizations that don't enforce territory requirements - for example in the financial planning industry. It is a career based on personal relationships as well as sales (similar to MLMs), and personal networks almost always go beyond sales territory borders. And because of this, it works. The success of the financial planner depends on their personal & professional network, sales skills, and professional skills.
The same could be argued for an MLM distributor too.
Thanks all, and keep the comments coming! I would love to hear from somebody who has had a good MLM experience.....is there anybody out there? (smiles)
Perhaps it would pay off in the long run to learn some of these skills on your own, while still going on to college and getting a masters degree in Something Spectacular, while still being able to plunge out your own toilet, or being able to change the oil in your car for the price of the bottle of oil and about 10 minutes, and so on and so forth in that manner.
BitTorrent FTW! Sites like thepiratebay.org are hosted outside the United States and are legal in their home countries. You can download their music, movies and TV shows with a program called BitTorrent (I'm sure there are others, this is simply the one I use). Files are spread out, bit by bit, over many different computers and servers, so that no one user illegally shares any files with anyone. And it's completely free.
While trades don't have to worry about outsourcing, there is immigration... I've heard that some trades have been virtually destroyed because of illegal immigrants driving the wages below that of a legal unskilled laborer.
Any job that doesn't have a barrier to entry- will likely have a surplus of labor. So, even if everyone needs plumbing it may not be that lucrative if everyone can easily become a plumber.
I was amazed at how much a home appraisal cost- $350 and the appraiser was at the house for less than an hour. I talked with the appraiser and mentioned that I must be in the wrong business- said there was a fair amount of really dull time at the office preparing the report, and there is an apprenticeship. Still, even if it took 8 hrs total times that is still a very healthy salary. However, I suspect he isn't in business for himself so he probably gets paid a small fraction of the total. I suspect that the real returns come if you own the appraisal business!
-Rick
Let me recommend MP3Sparks (formerly AllofMP3). It's a site that the RIAA really hates: it operates in Russia and is legal by Russian law; the RIAA claims it's not legal...I don't want to get into the whole issue, so let's call it 'quasi-legal'.
I've used their service for a couple years, and I love it. It's not perfect, but it's the cheapest alternative for DRM-free music that's legal (I don't like stealing my music).
Can you share your recipe for non newtonian fluid?
A much better and cheaper alternative is yahoo music or equivalent. I listen to music all the time and I love it. Almost no commercials (15 second one every 5 or 10 songs. I can skip songs rate songs etc and best part is it's all free.
I pirate music.
I pirate movies.
I pirate software.
I also drive over the speed limit and remove those mattress tags...
But scanning a photo of myself? Oh... noes, that's bad.... Shame!
How true it is, the only people who make money in MLMs are the people who sell books CDs seminars etc. My mother in law has been involved in one and spends far than she makes on books and tapes etc. Her walls are lined with stuff she bought but never got around to giving away. Secondly it is almost impossible to recruit people. No one has the interest or the time.
What the real killer is her son in law who was the first person in still makes more money than her even thought he stopped doing the business years ago. He happened to be the second person in the region to sign on and managed to get enough people below him who still buy the vitamins.
I second the advice avoid MLMs at all cost.
I am a physical therapist and recently had the electrician out as well. I was astounded by the $250 fee for roughly 60 minutes of work. I talked it over with my lovely wife and we came to the conclusion that there are so many other forms of compensation for a professional that others (that might make more money) might not receive.
At the end of my day, I can look in the mirror and feel that I helped people today. No amount of money can take the place of being able to serve another member of our community.
Yeah, yeah I know you can't pay all the bills with good feelings....but life is short and I would rather feel good than feel rich.
Yes, this is the best part.. Often times I wonder, did I do the right thing by going into "Big Business" and more often than not I realize that being part of the "Tech Borg" is not where I need or want to be.. a trade (plumber/electrician) would provide a fair bit more latitude than by Business Mgmt degree to pursue this on an individual basis.. Many a day I look up to tradesman..
When did we get so alienated from our most basic needs and replace simple things that fortify us with things that come from a lab kitchen in a cardboard box shipped to our supermarket from thousands of miles away? It is so important to eat real food for many different reasons; sustainability, bonding with your family/community, disease prevention, cost, etc. I bought a box of Kashi bars to carry with me when I travel and they were almost $5/bar! I can make two servings of phad thai at home for that much! Gardening and eating fresh produce satisfies your senses as well as your appetite. The beef industry not only feeds their cattle corn, but some of them have their cattle be cannibals...otherwise, we wouldn't have any mad cow disease....sick thought. I agree that people should cook and share their meals....that way they are sharing an experience and being satisfied emotionally in the process. Thanks!
I upgraded from a Nikon D70 to a Nikon D300 DSLR and was disappointed the batteries I got with the D70 wouldn't work with the D300, then learned there was a recall on the D70 batteries and the new exchange from Nikon would work with the D300 and the D70.
Filling out the 'warranty registration' cards that come with pretty much every product sure help with the companies being able to find you in a timely manner too. Like when our Xbox cord was recalled they called to say we'd like to send you a new one, let's confirm your address.
My roomba charger cable broke too... also looking for recall. :)
My cousin is a mechanic. He was never going to be college material in the first place, but he's really amazing at fixing things. He works for a car dealership and makes a perfectly comfortable living with good benefits... very similar in fact to how well I do with a Master's degree. He did go to school for a few years to get some advanced certifications that enhance his marketability, but that's not unusual in the trades (either vocational ed or an apprenticeship).
To be honest, some of us are cut out to succeed well in the kind of fields that require a higher education and some people are not. Our current society pushes that young adults go to college at all costs and that's not the best decision for all of them. Pursuing a career in the trades with dedication and enthusiasm can be just as viable of a financial option. And as long as you can actually fix something, you won't be pulling latte's at Starbucks anytime soon.
As an aside on the medical degree: I have a friend who's an M.D. and his wife has an advanced nursing degree... they did a purely financial analysis of pay vs. cost and concluded that her degree was the better value overall.
Glad to see more origami enthusiasts out there! The fabric origami can be a little tricky and can get sticky, but the results are pretty impressive. Fabric stiffener is a lot like Elmer's glue and holds the pieces together really well.
I wouldn't go rushing off to become a real estate agent just yet. With the real estate downturn, many of them are now not making enough sales to live on.
You might also try
http://www.falseprofits.com/
MLM's don't sell products, they sell greed. They sell false promises to innocent people who unfortunately get taken in by the hype, since they don't know enough about business, markets, or powerful personal and group psychological techniques of manipulation.
You are not "CEO of your own distribution network"--you are a commission-based salesperson in an over-saturated market, relying on the liquidation of your social capital (i.e. pissing off your friends and family) to make any money at all...and 99.5% of people in MLM's lose money, as has been shown again and again in numerous studies.
Due to the structure of the organization, MLM's cannot even in theory be profitable. The only profit made is from turning what would be called "customers" into what is reframed as "distributors" and then taking the money from the 99.5% that lose money in the organization and giving it to the 0.5% at the top (the people who started the whole gig in the first place).
Legitimate businesses assign salespeople to large geographic territories because they recognize the reality of a limited market for their product. Often there are 1 or 2 salespeople for an area of 50,000 people or more! MLMs emphasize the "unlimited market potential"--which is of course, impossible--and then create a structure in which there may be 100's, if not 1000's of sales reps ("distributors") walking around in an area where there should be 1 or 2.
So in order to deal with the obvious market saturation, MLMs encourage their sales reps to sell to their friends and family--in other words, to liquidate their social capital to make a buck, to manipulate the people they love by bowling over their objections with misplaced enthusiasm (greed + brainwashing). And instead of just selling them the product, they sell them the greed--they try to turn them also into the borg, the converted, the sales rep in a crowded market. The whole structure demands that they sell others in this way, even though there is no market left for the product they are selling...except by creating a market by liquidating friendships and family relationships, and converting them to cash, creating customers by convincing them they can have something they can't, which inevitably leads to a crash of trust.
I've seen 4 or 5 MLMs come and go in Boulder, CO in the past 6 years alone. Nobody gets seriously financially hurt--at most each "distributor" loses only a couple hundred bucks a month, most only $50 or so. But the lost trust in our capitalist society, and the lost trust between friends and family is horrifying.
Please help root out this nasty cultural meme, this capitalist virus by getting some real education on MLMs and their destructive nature.
Here are some critical perspectives on MLM's:
http://www.vandruff.com/mlm.html
http://www.merchantsofdeception.com/
http://www.mlmsurvivor.com
This computer worker can think of several benefits to Aunt Margie's favorite grandson's chosen profession:
1. Don't have to worry about getting outsourced--people aren't going to send their plumbing to India!
2. Great potential for self-employment--once you've established a solid reputation, go solo! You should have a good base clientele who'll be happy to pay you less than your old firm charged--and you'll get all of the fee.
3. Socializing and bartering with other tradesmen--you'll get to know who the good workers from the bums after working with them on jobsites, and you might be able to trade some jobs with them when you're building or renovating your own place.
4. Demand--not everyone I know needs a web app or database designed and implemented, but everyone I know uses plumbing on a daily basis.
This white-collar worker never looks down on anyone doing a blue-collar job. Many a day I envy them!
I love this post. I learned origami on exchange in Japan, and I swear I met my husband after I folded my 1,000th crane :)
I am going to try the fabric origami this weekend. My library has a book on it, and I have tons of quilt scraps. Fabric folded boxes would be great (and frugal) Christmas presents.
Thanks Xin!
No, wait, perhaps a ditzy real estate agent who doesn't give a crap that she's driving all over the road and braking for no apparent reason.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't even joke about suggesting to your kids that a college education isn't worth it. This is what my parents did to me. I have zero interest in plumbing or household electricity, real estate, appraisals or any kind of sales. I wish my parents had nagged me to go to college. It's so much harder at 40.
Remember that old saying "If you think getting a college education is expensive..." blah blah.
Although I see your point, not all the degree-less have what it takes to become dodgy contractors and real estate sheisters (or even high-quality professionals).
We have a rule in our house for homemade bread. The first day we eat the bread fresh, the second day we have toast, the third day it gets turned into breadcrumbs or into croutons for my salad. It works out well, but rarely do we ever make it to the third day. Who can resist that yummy homemade bread :)
Yeah, I"m gonna disagree with the bird-feeding advice. Birds need to find real bird food, not be allowed to become dependent on human hand outs. It's bad for their well-being, and bad for people that don't like to get pooped on to boot!
Maybe if you don't live in a major urban area this doesn't compute the same way, but there are laws against it in NYC for a reason...
I second the bread crumbs idea!!!