subject: Multi-Level Marketing - The Attraction, the Frustrations and Why After 7 Years, Enough was Enough! [print this page] Multi-Level Marketing - The Attraction, the Frustrations and Why After 7 Years, Enough was Enough!
If you are looking for a way to start earning money from home, then you will no doubt be doing your research on the internet. You will come across many different systems and business models, including multi-level marketing. Or you may already be in multi-level marketing and already feeling frustrated! Find out about some of the frustrations to bear in miind before you choose your home business model and why after 7 years of struggle, we decided that enough was enough?
What was the attraction of this business called MLM?
For most people, the attraction of Multi-level Marketing is the idea of running your own business from home, with very little start up cost and the promise in the long term of high residual incomes by introducing other people to the business. It definitely got me excited when I first came across it 8 years ago. The added appeal for me was that I could start it part-time around my job to begin with. The whole idea became even more exciting when I attended my first meeting where there were over 400 excited, positive people in one room. Testimonial after testimonial crossed the stage, giving me absolute confidence in the products. "These are going to be easy to sell!" I thought. Then followed the income testimonials! And that's how they get you! I was so excited at the prospect of earning even yearly what some of these people were saying they were earning in a month, that I was hooked. And what if I could do it without even having to work in the future. If I work hard enough now, I'll be earning enough in a few years time in residual income to be able to take as much time off as I like and the money will still come rolling in.
The Money Will Come Rolling In, Won't It?
I was very naive in those early days of my MLM career - well, naive at first, then just in denial I think!! I didn't think the figures through, but then with all the excitement and testimonials you are exposed to, I doubt many people really do. Or rather those that do, just don't get started - they are perhaps the wise ones! Don't get me wrong, my sponsor went through plans with me and ran through the figures during my mentor calls but the penny never really dropped. I'm talking about the sheer numbers of people you have to introduce in order to earn the high residual incomes you hear the top earners making. For instance, we recently started in our own internet marketing business and are affiliated now to a system that promotes the GPT model (Get Paid Today). The GPT model promotes top tier products and typically pays approximately $1000 commission on 1 sale. In order for us to earn $1000 in our MLM business, we would have to find (and keep) 30-35 customers per month! A bit of a difference in workload! I work entirely on the internet now whereas my MLM business saw me doing 1000's of flyers each week, group meetings, one-to-one consultations, script after script over the phone with leads - just to get a $100 sale ($40) profit. All that work for $1000 which I am supposed to then spend on advertising the recruitment side of the business to build my residual income.
So What About the Residuals?
The level of residual income wasn't much better than the retail profits. In order to earn another $1000 in residual income, I would need another 200 x $100 sales in my organisation. You might be thinking, well, that's only about 6-7 distributors duplicating me - finding and keeping 30-35 customers. But the reality is, that very few distributors do consistenly find and keep 30-35 customers so you need far more than 6-7 distributors to make up the deficit. And without going into all the statistics, just take it from me, that you need to talk to an awful lot of prospects to find the ones who sign up and sign up a lot of distributors to find the ones who will actually do anything!! And don't forget the amount of time you have to spend (waste) with a new distributor training them only for many of them to drop out shortly afterwards!! So in short, you have to recruit 100's if not 1000's of distributors to earn the level of residual income that will allow you to sit back and do nothing while it rolls in!
Enough is Enough
So instead of working through those figures right from the start, we soldiered on, doing everything we were taught. We tried every "new" lead generation method that came along hoping this would be the one that would change it all for us. We remained in denial of just how long it was really going to take us, inspite of all the signs that were there that said, "It's not that easy!!". The so-called leaders and high earners that "left the business". Friends who we knew were consistent and hard working that were struggling. Even our sponsor dropped out despite the fact that a few months previously she had claimed earnings of 6-8k per month. But it was easy to remain hopeful as with each monthly meeting there would be another new success story and we would leave the meeting with a new attitude, fresh hope and promising to work harder and smarter. Funny the effect that loud music and lots of positive, happy people and friends can have on you! Don't get me wrong - we did love those meetings and loved the social side of the business, but the more our income decreased and the more money we kept spending on advertising, the more we felt like fakes sat at the front of the room as so called leaders!! And that's probably what finally did it for us! Fooling everyone else was bad enough, but we finally realised we just couldn't go on fooling ourselves! After 7 years struggling, we finally called it a day.
If you can relate to our experience, take a look at our website here to find out more about the more lucrative alternative that we chose when we said goodbye to MLM for good!
