MLM = morons losing money

[mrnoodle]

Originally Posted by Guyute

(Quixtar talking points)

The problem is that the product is not the real point of the business. The point of the business is to get people to buy training materials at 400% markup, and then get those people to initiate others into the cult. Filling a basketball arena with 5,000 people and selling them motivational booklets is how scamway makes money. The lower-tier activity of selling overpriced laundry detergent through the mail only exists to give the scam a veneer of respectability.

Update: Nate and his wife went to the Mystery Meeting and emerged unharmed. This particular salesman was from his church, and apparently he really poured on the "blessing God through MLM" shtick. They couldn't get him out of the house fast enough.

[hot_pastrami]

Originally Posted by Guyute

Whether you pay a buck a pill, or a buck a box, you pay a buck for whatever you think is worth that buck. So if thousands of people worldwide buy products from MLM's, at what point is the assertion that they don't work become a glaring fallicy?

You're missing part of the point here... nobody is saying that MLMs don't sell anything, or even that they don't sell a lot. The point is that MLMs make their money by A) Selling "starter kits" to suckers, and B) Aforementioned suckers alienating their friends and family by strenuously and unapologetically peddling WAY overpriced stuff to them. Amway has sold lots of product of varying quality, but much of it was sales to the sellers' friends and family who were too polite to say No.

Obviously some MLMs DO work... they just work in an unethical way that takes advantage of people who are too nice or too trusting.

Originally Posted by Guyute

So this drivel about upline reaming downline is just another case of the "outside" world distorting facts to denegrate something they themselves co-operate in every day.

Your "parallel" isn't. The owner of a body shop makes more money than his/her workers because he/she made the initial investment, and took the risk that came with it. My manager makes more money than me because he demonstrated good management skills and a strong sense of responsiblity, and was promoted. He is paid more because his skills are more valuable to the company than mine, because he can increase the productivity of may other people by doing his job well. He will be fired or demoted if he is discovered to be a fraud. But some managers make less money then those who work for them, if the more valuable skills are possessed by the workers.

Some managers are slimy bastards who manipulate people for their own gain, but they are the exception, and the system tries to squeeze them out. But MLMs encourage that sort of behavior. Will an MLM replace a financially successful individual if he/she isn't very supportive of their "downline?"

To be like an MLM, the body shop owner would have to require employees to pay an overinflated fee for their starter materials, offer a wage of exactly $0, require the employee to find their own customers, and expect them to work for nothing but a very small commission.

If ever again I'm approached by a friend or family trying to sell me MLM products, I'll whip out a $20 and tell them "If you're so desperate for cash that you'll stoop to trying to sell me overpriced junk, just ask for the cash and save us both a lot of effort."

[lookout123]

while catching up on this thread i just had the realization that my wife is involved in what many would consider to be an MLM.

She is a distributor for Juice Plus. It has an organizational structure that would qualify it to be MLM, but there are no start up costs. These are basically vitamins (although classified as a whole food) that my wife put the family on. her sisters and various others started using the products at her recommendation and loved them. my wife realized that if she signed on as a distributor and sold only to the people who were already taking the product she makes an extra $250/month, give or take. there were no start up costs, no pressure to sign up new distributors, but there is incentive. her sister in illinois decided to sign on as a distributor. my wife gets paid for everyone her sister sells to.

intellectually i know this is MLM, but i haven't seen any of the negative elements of the classic schemes, so i'm ok with this. the lady who got her into this makes $60-70K/year just selling the product and wants my wife to do the same. we definitely won't go that route, because A) her business does better than that, B) my wife doesn't want to be a professional salesperson. so, now i am torn. should i feel slimy because i have MLM in my own family, or is this one ok? i need help people. can i show my face in public?

[mrnoodle]

yeah. my sister does something with vitamins and with Mary Kay. it's multi-level, but it's product-centric. and you don't have people trying to sell you get-rich-quick kits

[hot_pastrami]

Originally Posted by lookout123

while catching up on this thread i just had the realization that my wife is involved in what many would consider to be an MLM.

Products which are valued by the buyer, no start-up costs, and no pressure to sign on other distributors? That doesn't sound extremely evil. No doubt a chunk of the company's money is made by sellers who leverage guilt or insecurity against their friends and family, but that happens outside of MLMs, too... just to a lesser extent.

When I think of MLMs, I think of when I was in Junior High, and the school allowed this company to come in every year and recruit young students to sell magazine subscriptions. If we sold so many subscriptions, we got semi-worthless prize X, and if the whole school sold a very large number of subscriptions, the school received moderately valuable prize Y. So naturally kids went home and convinced their parents, older siblings, extended family, and friends of the family to subscribe to magazines they neither wanted nor needed. I never got involved myself, but talk about exploiting the innocent and unsuspecting. Yuck. That's the philosophy many MLMs follow, and it's rotten.

[BigV]

Originally Posted by lookout123

while catching up on this thread i just had the realization that my wife is involved in what many would consider to be an MLM.

She is a distributor for Juice Plus. It has an organizational structure that would qualify it to be MLM, but there are no start up costs. These are basically vitamins (although classified as a whole food) that my wife put the family on. her sisters and various others started using the products at her recommendation and loved them. my wife realized that if she signed on as a distributor and sold only to the people who were already taking the product she makes an extra $250/month, give or take. there were no start up costs, no pressure to sign up new distributors, but there is incentive. her sister in illinois decided to sign on as a distributor. my wife gets paid for everyone her sister sells to.

intellectually i know this is MLM, but i haven't seen any of the negative elements of the classic schemes, so i'm ok with this. the lady who got her into this makes $60-70K/year just selling the product and wants my wife to do the same. we definitely won't go that route, because A) her business does better than that, B) my wife doesn't want to be a professional salesperson. so, now i am torn. should i feel slimy because i have MLM in my own family, or is this one ok? i need help people. can i show my face in public?

Sure, show your face. I show mine. MrsV does the same for some products she is a consumer of, and distributor for, candles, for example. Sounds like you're smart enough to try to reduce your expenses by moving closer to the wholesale side of the equation, we did too. No harm no foul.

The MLMs are just a business model, and as your story clearly illustrates, it is not the business model that is bad, but the way some people use it. Sure there are variations in which one is better or worse, but much more power is in the hands of the people involved. Like your wife, she used her power to invovle herself, and a couple of others in a model that is reasonable and makes sense for her and those around her. The models that are more evil, high startup costs, minimal support, etc, she's avoided.

So, really, it's about the people. Professional salespeople are NOT evil, they perform valuable necessary services all the time, all over the place.

So show your face. And when the un-professional sales fleas descend on you bearing their get-rich-quick plague, show them your face, too. Then show them the door.

[glatt]

When I was a kid, my school did the same thing. I sold a couple subscriptions, and got a little pom-pom ball with two googly eyes glued to it and a couple of felt feet for a base. It must have cost them all of 10 cents. I don't remember what my parents ended up buying from me.

[Happy Monkey]

That's a Weeple. (mislabeled as a Weeble, which is a whole different critter)

[tw]

Many such scams make themselves obvious. If they are promoting the money to be made or growth of their organization, they you know it is a scam. The only thing that matters is the product. Profits without a good product (ie General Motors, AT&T, US Steel, Listerene, the big and therefore unproductive Airlines, the ISS, Carly Fiorina in the HP / Compaq merger stockholder meeting, etc) all mean scam. If they are not providing mankind with a better product, then it is a scam. It's really not difficult to be informed and smart. The minute a stock broker calls about a great stock that is going to make so much money - classic scam artist. Fight him for details on the company's product and get no engineer's attitude. Another classic scam stockbroker. Notice how we are going to fix social security by playing more money games. Scam. Why would Amway, et al be any different?

[BigV]

Originally Posted by tw

Many such scams make themselves obvious. If they are promoting the money to be made or growth of their organization, they you know it is a scam. The only thing that matters is the product. Profits without a good product (ie General Motors, AT&T, US Steel, Listerene, the big and therefore unproductive Airlines, the ISS, Carly Fiorina in the HP / Compaq merger stockholder meeting, etc) all mean scam. If they are not providing mankind with a better product, then it is a scam. It's really not difficult to be informed and smart. The minute a stock broker calls about a great stock that is going to make so much money - classic scam artist. Fight him for details on the company's product and get no engineer's attitude. Another classic scam stockbroker. Notice how we are going to fix social security by playing more money games. Scam. Why would Amway, et al be any different?

Would you please expand on your position with respect to services?

Kid rolls up and knocks on my door, offering to cut my grass. His mower, his labor, etc. He cuts, I pay, bees migrate to neighbor's dandelion farm. No product, but this surely isn't a scam.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

That's a Weeple. (mislabeled as a Weeble, which is a whole different critter)

Damn, 50 cents for one of those! Well, actually, that sounds about right. A dime in 1980 would be about 50 cents today, right? I'm impressed that you knew what I was talking about.

[lookout123]

don't stress it BigV. TW was just looking for any excuse to post so that he could try to pee in my shoes. i am a financial advisor, investment representative, retirement planner, stockbroker, whatever you want to call me. tw doesn't like people who make an honest living providing a valuable service. or he doesn't like me. one or the other, i forget.

tw, since you've brought it up...

how we are going to fix social security by playing more money games.

have you decided to post in a clear and concise manner exactly why individual retirement accounts won't work. if you have i'm sure we could revive one of those threads.

[tw]

Originally Posted by lookout123

don't stress it BigV. TW was just looking for any excuse to post so that he could try to pee in my shoes.

I don't have to pee in any scam stock broker shoes. No, I was not thinking of Lookout123 when I posted. I was thinking of the broker who was pushing International Gaming whatever. And another who proved with dollar inspired charts that Cisco was going to triple in price. Neither could even discuss the company product lines. Classic scam artists. However

You're so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You're so vain
I'll bet you think this song is about you
Don't you? Don't you?

Apparantly Lookout123 saw himself among those other scam stockbrokers. Feeling a little guilty, are we Lookout123? Well lets remind everyone of the question you could not answer. The question that make you insult me in every post:
"When are we going after bin Laden?"

[tw]

Originally Posted by BigV

Would you please expand on your position with respect to services? ..., bees migrate to neighbor's dandelion farm. No product, but this surely isn't a scam.

Bees? What bees? Are you a bee keeper now missing a few thousand employees?

[lookout123]

"When are we going after bin Laden?"

for about the hundredth time - i don't know. or care. if you could just understand - that guy from texas doesn't consult me. in fact, we don't even talk all that much... sure we exchange christmas cards and yeah, i told him that the former top New York cop would be great for homeland security, but other than that, i don't have a lot of contact with George.


there, now i answered one - would you care to try answering any of the questions i've asked you in the past?

edit: and give me a break tw. it's the cellar. i'm the only stockbroker here. you know that when you dis on stockbrokers here it is intended as a dig on me. it's no different than if i consistantly harped on the rigid, uncreative nature of engineers - it would be safe to assume i'm kicking sand at you. or commonly referring to car sales professional as salesdouches... that would refer to LJ. (except that is accurate, so that may be a bad example.)