Multilevel warning

Everyday people join MLMs (“multi-level marketing” or “network marketing”). However, you are likely to lose both time and money. Getting a job that allows you to create your own schedule sounds awesome, however the danger of MLM companies must be told.

MLMs are pyramid schemes.

They are deceitful because the only way to make any money is to sign up more and more people under you. This may ruin your social relationships and make you unpopular with your friends and family members.

Here is how they work; you sign up and pay the buy-in fee to receive your startup kit, and then you start posting on everyone’s social media about your new business.

You meet up with family and friends and you push them into buying expensive stuff they don’t really need. You then try to recruit them to join your team.

The real winners are the persons who started the business and the very first people recruited. This top of the pyramid is also where the success stories come from.

As with all MLMs, the real money to be made isn’t in selling their products but in recruiting more people to join your team so you can get your commission. Is deceit what you are really selling?

Among the most vulnerable to these pyramid schemes are people in smaller towns, provinces, and stay-at-home moms.

Growth is unlikely in a small town, because once everyone you know starts selling it, no one can make any money. You’ve created your own competition.

According to Wikipedia “MLMs very rarely emphasize the extreme likelihood of failure, or the extreme likelihood of financial loss, from participation in MLM. MLMs are also seldom honest about the fact that any real success of the few individuals at the top of the MLM participant pyramid is in fact dependent on the continued financial loss and failure of all other participants below them in the MLM pyramid.”

If someone can buy it cheaper downtown, or at Shopee, is it a real business?

Richard Baker