I'm five months unemployed now, and since I graduated last 2008, I have only had nine months worth of work experience. I've been getting a bit desperate and open to most kinds of jobs, despite having graduated with a business degree from one of the top schools here. I've been provided with a couple of offers to essentially sell products and find people who also want to sell those products; i.e. acting as dealer w/ commissions from sub-dealerships I can bring in is the way I understand the business model works.
Now my questions are: Have you had experience being approached and offered these products by people you know?
How do you feel about your friends doing this, if you have any who are in this line of work?
If someone you know or you yourself work in this field, what have been your experiences with the people and company/ies that have handled you? Has it been a positive experience for you as a person and as a career option?
Finally: Do you think investing a month's equivalent worth of salary (for a white-collar worker; around 300+ dollars here in our country) to start out in the job as your "capital" too much of a risk, or is it justifiable (as this is naturally a business)
Anyone who says otherwise is an idiot who fell for it or someone trying to con you. The dudes are always the same: They make tons of money, but you never seem to see that in their clothes, home or lifestyle. Not to mention that any reputable company isn't going to require that you invest in them to work.
Pyramid schemes are annoying as fuck. Typically, it's a very long-term investment for any kind of pay-off, and I can tell you that my respect dwindles immediately for any "friend" who tries to sell me on this shit. Granted, I've never had a close friend do it, but an old room-mate tried, as well as the brother of a friend of mine, who I thought I was starting to get along very well with. Then I realize they just want to sell their shit to me -- which is absolutely not worth it usually, by the by.
This book is one of the definitive takedowns of this kind of business. I highly recommend it. The author was an Amway distributor, and a very successful one, for several years before deciding to quit. He must have lost a court case recently because his book used to be far more accessible. Get it while you can.
As for more personal experience, the owner of a music school where I used to work lost her business largely as a result of putting too much time and money into her Quixtar business, which has never been profitable for her, and not enough into her music school, that could easily have been quite profitable.
The only thing you are likely to gain by this sort of "job" is the ability to approach people you don't know and try to sell them things, which could be a useful skill in the future. Still, there are far better ways to learn that. Instead of (in all probability) spending a great deal of money in MLM, you could do street canvasing for a non-profit and learn many of the same skills while actually getting paid.
If it's a Pyramid scheme, don't do it. It's not going to be worth it, 99.99% of the time you will lose out, it'll be worst if you got your friends/family involved selling under you.
I think this video might also be of interest to you. It's from Penn and Teller's Bullshit series and it's about multi level marketing. The video contains nudity at the very beginning so NSFW (they always randomly throw in nudity for some reason, don't be surprised because I warned you). Vid is in spoiler + Show Spoiler +
Actually, the answer I'll give to how "successful" you can be is...it depends.
If you get in on something new, close to the ground floor, you can make a shitpile of cash off of it, IF you put in some serious time & effort. I have a very good friend who has a sex-toy multi-level-marketing business and she makes more than I do in a year. Now, she does in-home parties almost every night, and has a pile of people under her in the pyramid, and part of the reason she's successful is she has focused more on selling product than getting new pleebs under her.
On the other side, I have a friend who got into Amway thinking it would make him rich. He spent a pile of energy on recruting pleebs, hardly ever sold a fucking product, and of course failed fucking spectacularly with it....I think he lost his house in the process.
Personally, if the idea/company is all but brand new & they have good quality product you can focus on, you can make money, but be prepared to invest probably more time than a full-time job would be to make a solid go at it. Its pure grunt sales work, and is not a fucking pleasant way to make money...I've worked in my life as commissioned sales, and it sucks balls in my opinion.
And unless the $300 is buying sample product, tell them to go fuck themselves. Its one thing to have display product, and I obviously would expect having to pay for that...but if the $300 is a "membership" so you can even sell their overpriced shit, its generally a fucking ripoff & you'll be expected to make your money selling memberships, not product, which gets deeply into Pyramid territory.
samalie raises a good point. Some of these schemes are more focused on a specific product. I believe there is a famous knife company that works this way. In general, the more the company focuses on selling an actual product as opposed to recruiting more members, the more legitimate they are.
The two options I'm looking at right now both have me buying some of their product to demonstrate/sell to other people as the opt-in for them. I've checked out the corporate profiles over the Internet and both companies have shown themselves to be legit; as they sell specific niche products. I could name-drop them if you want; but I'm not yet going to commit in any way to them (and yes, I know how to stall and shrug off these guys if and when I want to).
On August 18 2010 01:22 HCastorp wrote: samalie raises a good point. Some of these schemes are more focused on a specific product. I believe there is a famous knife company that works this way. In general, the more the company focuses on selling an actual product as opposed to recruiting more members, the more legitimate they are.
Yeah, that's a scam. Jesus christ people, common sense and five minutes of searching on the internet is all that you should need to realize this.
On August 18 2010 01:50 Ciryandor wrote: The two options I'm looking at right now both have me buying some of their product to demonstrate/sell to other people as the opt-in for them. I've checked out the corporate profiles over the Internet and both companies have shown themselves to be legit; as they sell specific niche products. I could name-drop them if you want; but I'm not yet going to commit in any way to them (and yes, I know how to stall and shrug off these guys if and when I want to).
If you're just going to ignore every halfway intelligent poster that came in here telling you that these things are always scams, what's the point of the thread??
This book is one of the definitive takedowns of this kind of business. I highly recommend it. The author was an Amway distributor, and a very successful one, for several years before deciding to quit. He must have lost a court case recently because his book used to be far more accessible. Get it while you can.
As for more personal experience, the owner of a music school where I used to work lost her business largely as a result of putting too much time and money into her Quixtar business, which has never been profitable for her, and not enough into her music school, that could easily have been quite profitable.
The only thing you are likely to gain by this sort of "job" is the ability to approach people you don't know and try to sell them things, which could be a useful skill in the future. Still, there are far better ways to learn that. Instead of (in all probability) spending a great deal of money in MLM, you could do street canvasing for a non-profit and learn many of the same skills while actually getting paid.
soooo weird I almost got scammed into that shit just yesterday
they are HIIIIIIIIIIIGHLY convincing people let me tell you!
On August 18 2010 01:50 Ciryandor wrote: The two options I'm looking at right now both have me buying some of their product to demonstrate/sell to other people as the opt-in for them. I've checked out the corporate profiles over the Internet and both companies have shown themselves to be legit; as they sell specific niche products. I could name-drop them if you want; but I'm not yet going to commit in any way to them (and yes, I know how to stall and shrug off these guys if and when I want to).
Yeah, links to their websites would be nice.
But as a rule: ANY company that has you buying their product before paying you is a scam. Probably not in the strict definition, but their business model is certainly morally questionable on their part, and you are virtually guaranteed to either lose money or make much less than what is represented to you.
Seriously, even doing temp work or cashiering at Wal-Mart (swallow your pride!) is more stable and better paying than this job. And you can look for jobs that better suit your education in the meantime.
Seriously, I do know the risks. I'd rather be a pure salesperson and just have a commission-based job than anything like this... and thanks for convincing me I should just keep them hanging a bit more; since I SHOULDN'T be that desperate.
I knew I could count on you guys to knock some sense into me. Not having a job for this long despite graduating from the BEST university in our country with a Business degree isn't exactly good for your self-esteem and morale. Shit sucks, but if I can use this travesty of even thinking of stooping to this level to turn myself around and make a good life out of it, I'd owe it partly to you guys.
Also, if you live in the US/Europe, please DON'T be so ticked off when people call you to offer you stuff especially if it's in the name of a major company, lots of people here in Asia earn their living from it. It's best to just say no politely, and ask the company that did it to opt you out of getting offers from them in the future. I still hate jobs like that, either annoying people by selling additional stuff for say Dell, or having to deal with some twelve year old screaming at you because his X Box doesn't work anymore and he wants his Modern Warfare 2 fix RIGHT NOW. It's a really shitty job, but you have to thank yourselves that it's not you as adults who have degrees manning them, but us here in Asia who've got decent degrees but no other options than to either emigrate (to help fill the skill gaps in the West's workforce) or get shit-tier jobs you'd pay people minimum wage to even consider (like encoding financial information or digitizing medical records)
Edit: For the record, I live in the god-forsaken FAILipines. Graduate of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines (best school in this country, period) So it's not exactly a good option to even cashier or gas boy here (they take HIGH SCHOOL graduates for those for chrissakes)
People here are severely uninformed about this issue here, (both on TL and in the general population). This whole industry is actually great in theory. The only problem is that in practice, it can't work because the general population is not open to it. Meaning; the underlying idea is great. The recruit can make infinitely more money than the recruiter while building a network in order to commercialize a product, or an ever expanding line of products or services. Also, it is based on the power of personal relationships to close a sale. Which, again, sounds great, but only in theory for a variety of reasons. An infinite stream of monthly royalties can result from a few years of hard labor, hence the dream life etc.... (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZDGGuPtakc)
The problem with this whole picture is that the industry has an incredibly bad reputation (undeserved in my opinion, at least the original source of this bad reputation is undeserved). Therefore, this bad reputation about "people losing money" is the very cause and the very reason why most people are actually losing money. Imagine friend A trying to recruit friend B based on some otherwise very legitimate business opportunity which happens to have a bad reputation attached to it. Friend B will tell friend A that this business is bullshit because he heard people were losing money with it. Friend B wont join Friend A's business. Friend A will try with friend C, but the result will be the same. Friend A's business will show net sales of Zero dollars and will eventually quit the business with rage inside him. Afterwards, Friend B and C will ask friend A if he made any money with it. "TOLD you SO" is their answer, mocking him. Acquaintance D who had originally successfully recruited friend A will see that his business is collapsing under him since friend A is quitting the business because he couldnt recruit his friends B and C and therefore is bringing in zero money for himself. Friend A is no longer, or never has been, profitable for acquaintance D. Acquaintance D's business is also suffering because Friend E, who had also joined his business some time ago, is also quitting the business since he couldnt recruit his friends F and G since they told him "people were losing money in this business" because they interviewed friend A and his colleagues B and C about their experience.
I used to do this and i didnt make a dime. (i guess you can see why). Out of those who try, 99.7% wont make enough money to justify the time investment. Meaning its a profitable business for 0.3%. Thats 3 out of 1000 reps. Do i get these numbers out of my ass you may ask? No, for a period of about 2 years, i had access to a VP's online reporting tool. These numbers were based on a sample of roughly 20,000 representatives which was the amount of people he had in his network. 60 individuals made money out of 20,000. The dude in question made ~30,000 on a monthly basis at 25 years of age.
Now, for the record. People who claim that;
"If you get in on something new, close to the ground floor, you can make a shitpile of cash off of it, IF you put in some serious time & effort."
or; "The dudes are always the same: They make tons of money, but you never seem to see that in their clothes, home or lifestyle"
don't know what the fuck they're talking about.
Basically, the only way to determine if you will make money with those things are;
1-You need to be an incredible salesman. If you're just an amazing salesman, don't do it. you need more than that, you need to be fucking incredible at convincing people. Both on the phone and face-to-face. 2- you need to dispose of a lot of time (kinda stupid since it so obvious) it serves as a main occupation. most of the time. also you can do it part-time early on, but its still many hours. 3- you need to have the most unshakable patience in the world and be prepared to hear the word pyramid a couple hundred times a day.
If you have these 3 attributes, i honestly suggest you go for it. you'll make loads of cash early in life, and if youre smart enough you won't ever again have to work a day in your life. how young the company is is not an important factor as long as the company is "decent" for a direct selling company. you just gotta be an insane salesman.
On August 18 2010 02:43 Ciryandor wrote: Seriously, I do know the risks. I'd rather be a pure salesperson and just have a commission-based job than anything like this... and thanks for convincing me I should just keep them hanging a bit more; since I SHOULDN'T be that desperate.
I knew I could count on you guys to knock some sense into me. Not having a job for this long despite graduating from the BEST university in our country with a Business degree isn't exactly good for your self-esteem and morale. Shit sucks, but if I can use this travesty of even thinking of stooping to this level to turn myself around and make a good life out of it, I'd owe it partly to you guys.
Also, if you live in the US/Europe, please DON'T be so ticked off when people call you to offer you stuff especially if it's in the name of a major company, lots of people here in Asia earn their living from it. It's best to just say no politely, and ask the company that did it to opt you out of getting offers from them in the future. I still hate jobs like that, either annoying people by selling additional stuff for say Dell, or having to deal with some twelve year old screaming at you because his X Box doesn't work anymore and he wants his Modern Warfare 2 fix RIGHT NOW. It's a really shitty job, but you have to thank yourselves that it's not you as adults who have degrees manning them, but us here in Asia who've got decent degrees but no other options than to either emigrate (to help fill the skill gaps in the West's workforce) or get shit-tier jobs you'd pay people minimum wage to even consider (like encoding financial information or digitizing medical records)
Edit: For the record, I live in the god-forsaken FAILipines. Graduate of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines (best school in this country, period) So it's not exactly a good option to even cashier or gas boy here (they take HIGH SCHOOL graduates for those for chrissakes)
Wait, if you live in the Philippines, then why is your country listed as United States? Everyone in the thread assumed you lived in the U.S.
EPT
So it's not exactly a good option to even cashier or gas boy here (they take HIGH SCHOOL graduates for those for chrissakes)
