Get Paid Today - MLM is Dead

Marcello asked:


I assess businesses for a living and look mostly at real estate. When I have been presented a deal and determined it was a poor investment, people generally do not get emotional or upset calling me names and telling me I am negative. This is the same in most business ventures.

But in MLM, you can express your opinion of it being a poor business choice and you get MLMers jumping all over you as though you insulted their family?

Is this because people get in to MLM emotionally instead of intellectually (on the hype as oppose to assessing it as a business), or is it because MLM is more cult like that they would like to admit?
plr2win, you have expressed exactly my point. The issue (well one of them) is that you need to depend on your downline for income, and thus at any given time, there are always more people producing less than is needed to provide themselves an income than there are actually earning an income.

You see, in real world business, whether it be sales, admin, management, whatever, the person working that position is always providing enough value to justify their pay. In MLM, the majority is always earning less than would justify incomes because instead of focusing on personal sales first, they focus on recruiting and thus need others in order to make money.

Show me a model where everyone is first made to do enough personal volume to make a good living then allowed to recruit and I will show you a decent MLM…but none like that exist.
plr2win - to further clarify, its not that I am suggesting the model is some unethical system, I am suggesting the presentation of MLM as a means a getting wealthy is a sham. Explain how an exponential matrix can keep supplying revenue streams for someone on your 20th level. You can’t because at that point you would need millions and million of people in your organization. This simply yet another reason that MLM is flawed as a “business opportunity.”
MLM like a McDonald’s franchise…thats Ripe! It would be the same if everyone in your neighborhood set up competing McDonald’s on every corner with no concern for how that competition affect each franchise, and also if the fry guys and cashiers only got paid when they brought their friends and family in to get jobs as well. Gimme a break. MLMers are kidding themselves with these false comparisons.

Paige

Marcello asked:


Being that all MLMers tell you its a business, I am wondering what business principals are used to assess the opportunity from a financial point of view.

For instance, last year I bought an apartment building and my investigation of whether it was a good financial opportunity consisted of looking at the gross and net incomes for the prior 3 years (verifying income and expenses) , looking at the market rents and occupancy rates, and calculating the average sales prices (on a per unit base) over the past 6-12 months within a 1 mile radius. All that information was used in my financial assessment of the deal and to help me decide whether it was worthwhile.

Looking at financial statements is key in buying any business, but I have never heard of this in MLM. Other than statements made at a meeting or from their sponsor, what financial criteria is being used to decide whether the MLM “business opportunity” makes sense financially and is it ever verified?
Mexico4me, so your research was merely looking at a COMPENSATION PLAN! Oh my, how sad.

What exactly did you verify? That the plan would pay a particular compensation percentage? So, you are telling me your upline number’s, someone who is supposedly making money running this MLM business, was of no interest to you?

Yes, you are delusional. Thanks for proving my point!

Krista