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Multi Level Marketing Schemes

I'm alarmed at how many of our dollars are now going to MLM products. My wife buys shakeology powder from one of her friends, will occasionally buy Rodan & Fields stuff, has essential oils all over the GD house and now buys some sort of kid friendly cleaning products from some MLM marketing company I don't know the name of. and that's just the stuff I know about. I can only imagine how much more expensive this stuff is when compared to the larger corporate products out there that gets the same jobs done. If this is anything like the groceries she chooses to buy it has to cost at least 2-3x more than generic / non-organic products on the market. I don't have any proof but I have to imagine some of this is because she doesn't want to cancel / stop buying / say no to some of her friends. Send help.
 
Most people do realize that and that’s why they call them pyramid schemes

I think you add a lot to this board my friend but you know my nickname for you is Captain Obvious, right? So many of your posts read this way

Yes, they are pyramid schemes.

I would beg to differ in one area. The reason that people in the upper levels make money is that there are enough people sucked in at the bottom who believe and put lots of effort into selling product. They may make 4 or low 5 figures in income. But they work hard at selling product. They don't seem to figure out that recruiting people will generate more income than product sales. These naive or gullible people are the ones who really do the work selling product that makes the whole enterprise work. There are a lot more people who stay at the bottom of the pyramid and just crank out low five figures of income than there are people who recruit people and end up pulling in 6 figues of income.

Meanwhile, the person who recruited them is busy adding more people and putting relatively little effort into moving product directly.

This situation is pretty obvious to smart people like the majority on here. It isn't so obvious to many others. The bulk of people posting on here are probably in the top10% of the U.S. population in intellectual capacity and education.
 
Yes, they are pyramid schemes.

I would beg to differ in one area. The reason that people in the upper levels make money is that there are enough people sucked in at the bottom who believe and put lots of effort into selling product. They may make 4 or low 5 figures in income. But they work hard at selling product. They don't seem to figure out that recruiting people will generate more income than product sales. These naive or gullible people are the ones who really do the work selling product that makes the whole enterprise work. There are a lot more people who stay at the bottom of the pyramid and just crank out low five figures of income than there are people who recruit people and end up pulling in 6 figues of income.

Meanwhile, the person who recruited them is busy adding more people and putting relatively little effort into moving product directly.

This situation is pretty obvious to smart people like the majority on here. It isn't so obvious to many others. The bulk of people posting on here are probably in the top10% of the U.S. population in intellectual capacity and education.

Whale shiiiiitttt
 
Sadly based on what we’ve observed recently from the general population being in the top 10% of intellectual capacity in this country doesn’t really mean that much.
 
Yes, they are pyramid schemes.

I would beg to differ in one area. The reason that people in the upper levels make money is that there are enough people sucked in at the bottom who believe and put lots of effort into selling product. They may make 4 or low 5 figures in income. But they work hard at selling product. They don't seem to figure out that recruiting people will generate more income than product sales. These naive or gullible people are the ones who really do the work selling product that makes the whole enterprise work. There are a lot more people who stay at the bottom of the pyramid and just crank out low five figures of income than there are people who recruit people and end up pulling in 6 figues of income.

Meanwhile, the person who recruited them is busy adding more people and putting relatively little effort into moving product directly.

This situation is pretty obvious to smart people like the majority on here. It isn't so obvious to many others. The bulk of people posting on here are probably in the top10% of the U.S. population in intellectual capacity and education.

No. It’s even worse than that. The bottom of the pyramid is full of people who are losing money because they can never sell enough to get back their initial investment.
 
We have some pampered chef stuff wife bought several years back from a friend’s mom who sells it. No problem at the time, the few things we own have been pretty good I guess but we have a mixing bowl set with these rubber or silicone lids to seal the bowls and lately the lid stopped sealing. Friend heard this and said wow that shouldn’t be happening that was like an $80 set, you should contact [mom] to get that settled.

First thought: wait holy shit this set of mixing bowls cost $80?
Second thought: knowing this I don’t think I’d like to reopen that communication to get new exciting deals offered. I’ll cut my losses and deal with the bad lid

The only other mlm type stuff I can remember were some of those leggings with the loud patterns (lularoe I guess) that I think were really cheap but correspondingly seem to be instant fall apart pieces of shit.

My mom has a couple cutco serrated knives that seem pretty good for serrated knives. Doubt I’d get a straight edge knife from cutco though.
 
I'm alarmed at how many of our dollars are now going to MLM products. My wife buys shakeology powder from one of her friends, will occasionally buy Rodan & Fields stuff, has essential oils all over the GD house and now buys some sort of kid friendly cleaning products from some MLM marketing company I don't know the name of. and that's just the stuff I know about. I can only imagine how much more expensive this stuff is when compared to the larger corporate products out there that gets the same jobs done. If this is anything like the groceries she chooses to buy it has to cost at least 2-3x more than generic / non-organic products on the market. I don't have any proof but I have to imagine some of this is because she doesn't want to cancel / stop buying / say no to some of her friends. Send help.

willing to bet this is melaleuca. "Solumel will change your life! or at least your cleaning life, which is all the time now... amirite?" Go away, sales pitch friend.

Sorry your wife is trapped. 100% you guys are just flushing money down the toilet (kind of literally, depending how/where she uses the cleaning products).
 
My mom was an Avon lady for like 20 years. I don't know that she ever made a dime but I don't think she lost money either. It was mainly a way to stay active and keep up with her friends/customers after she retired from teaching school. She recently decided that she no longer wanted to drive all over her rural county doing deliveries so she retired and gave her customer list to her main/only downline distributor person. My wife and sister-in-law felt obligated to buy stuff from her but it was never obnoxious. The funniest part about it was that mom would always fall in love with the LED holiday decorations Avon sells so for any given holiday she has four or five corny light up angels or witches or santas or what have you.
 
We switched all our cleaning products with Melaleuca stuff 3 months ago, I haven't noticed a difference
 
Wife did ThirtyOne for a while, got a lot of free bags, they’re really good quality and we still use them all the time. Not really a way to make money though.
 
There was a short segment about Multilevel Marketing on tonight’s United Shades of America on the gig economy.

It showed this table from what little research there is on how much people actually make from MLMs.

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