I probably have to thank MLM for getting me into affiliate marketing/internet marketing. I joined an MLM because I was interested in selling the products. Of course the MLM people looked at me like I was crazy.. " No no no. You want to auto ship $200 of toilet paper to your house every month and then get 3 other people to do the same and have them get 3 people and draw some diagrams and have some home presentations and..."
Eventually I found some MLMs with products I really liked and wanted to market, but the products were often an afterthought at best. Always seemed like there was more money in tools/systems. I know one MLM with a guy who was going through 6 figures monthly in product gift certificates ( you could select autoship on a product or just have a certain gift certificate every month) that were never used. So the company got paid for orders it didn't have to fulfill and the commissions got paid, and so on. Then the guy was basically selling memberships/downlines under the guise of a form of co-op marketing (like when you split the cost and proceeds from a magazine ad or card deck mailing), but all he was doing was picking names of cheap mailing lists ( another way to make money off MLM offline was buying postcards/mailers/lists in bulk and then sell in smaller quantities to downline, not to mention recruiting tape duplication) and "signing them up" and charging for the advertising. IIRC if you wanted to be on his "team" you would be on a product autoship and then also automatically pay him $500 a month for 5 new "members." Then it was your ( not mine, but the suckers on his team) responsibility to "follow up" and convince that recruit to become active/qualified in an MLM they probably never heard of.
I eventual got into marketing telecom services because there were a lot of people trying to recruit me into those MLMs- I'm sure everyone is aware of at least 2-3 well-known ones. The thing was, if these product offerings were so great and revolutionary, why couldn't I just sell them? Why did I have to have gay meetings and recruit people? And really, I wanted to sell the shit on a website. Why couldn't I just have someone order it online? Why was/is ( a friend was in a well known MLM recently and this aspect was particulary laughable to me) the actual product hidden? Well the fact was I could sell those services online, just not through those assholes.
So I figured out how to make web sites and sell shit online. And those companies would pay me for the sales. I wouldn't have to pay THEM ( wtf?) for permission to make them money. I made sites, people click and buy. I get paid. Fuck MLM.
Guys I know doing Amway/Quixtar, ACN, Excel, and whatever the fuck else mostly never did anything. They are working at Best Buy, hotels, selling used cars, and selling bootlegs out of their car trunks. There was usually a story of the "big local guy" who was "retiring young" because of the Amway shit. Usually it was someone who didn't exist , owned a big legit business, sold drugs, was retiring young because he joined the military at age 18 and put in 20 years or some other union/statist job with low retirement age, a stay at home dad with a doctor/lawyer for a wife or otherwise didn't need to "work" or some other lifestyle completely unrelated to the MLM business. I never heard of anyone who actually accomplished something because of Amway.
If you want to sell anything like utilities.. there are so many (legit) affiliate programs out there that pay real commissions upfront and/or residual. There is no point to the MLM part. Most of the MLM utility/telecom offerings I have seen are very poor and terrible values- but thats probably because the product is secondary to the pay to recruit BS.
Eventually I found some MLMs with products I really liked and wanted to market, but the products were often an afterthought at best. Always seemed like there was more money in tools/systems. I know one MLM with a guy who was going through 6 figures monthly in product gift certificates ( you could select autoship on a product or just have a certain gift certificate every month) that were never used. So the company got paid for orders it didn't have to fulfill and the commissions got paid, and so on. Then the guy was basically selling memberships/downlines under the guise of a form of co-op marketing (like when you split the cost and proceeds from a magazine ad or card deck mailing), but all he was doing was picking names of cheap mailing lists ( another way to make money off MLM offline was buying postcards/mailers/lists in bulk and then sell in smaller quantities to downline, not to mention recruiting tape duplication) and "signing them up" and charging for the advertising. IIRC if you wanted to be on his "team" you would be on a product autoship and then also automatically pay him $500 a month for 5 new "members." Then it was your ( not mine, but the suckers on his team) responsibility to "follow up" and convince that recruit to become active/qualified in an MLM they probably never heard of.
I eventual got into marketing telecom services because there were a lot of people trying to recruit me into those MLMs- I'm sure everyone is aware of at least 2-3 well-known ones. The thing was, if these product offerings were so great and revolutionary, why couldn't I just sell them? Why did I have to have gay meetings and recruit people? And really, I wanted to sell the shit on a website. Why couldn't I just have someone order it online? Why was/is ( a friend was in a well known MLM recently and this aspect was particulary laughable to me) the actual product hidden? Well the fact was I could sell those services online, just not through those assholes.
So I figured out how to make web sites and sell shit online. And those companies would pay me for the sales. I wouldn't have to pay THEM ( wtf?) for permission to make them money. I made sites, people click and buy. I get paid. Fuck MLM.
Guys I know doing Amway/Quixtar, ACN, Excel, and whatever the fuck else mostly never did anything. They are working at Best Buy, hotels, selling used cars, and selling bootlegs out of their car trunks. There was usually a story of the "big local guy" who was "retiring young" because of the Amway shit. Usually it was someone who didn't exist , owned a big legit business, sold drugs, was retiring young because he joined the military at age 18 and put in 20 years or some other union/statist job with low retirement age, a stay at home dad with a doctor/lawyer for a wife or otherwise didn't need to "work" or some other lifestyle completely unrelated to the MLM business. I never heard of anyone who actually accomplished something because of Amway.
If you want to sell anything like utilities.. there are so many (legit) affiliate programs out there that pay real commissions upfront and/or residual. There is no point to the MLM part. Most of the MLM utility/telecom offerings I have seen are very poor and terrible values- but thats probably because the product is secondary to the pay to recruit BS.
