[quote]davidcox1 wrote:
So tonight, of all nights, after engaging in this discussion in this thread, I reconnected with an old high school friend on a well-known social networking site. No sooner had we restablished contact than did this friend proceed to pitch me on how to earn six figures in the next 35 days. Oh, the irony.[/quote]
And you went on to remove them, too?
I’ve got a few thoughts. I’ve had a few experiences with MLM in the past. Sometimes they have good products but they are not neccesarily cost effective because everybody and their dog is making 20 cents off the deal.
I signed up for Amway for a few months in late 1996. As part of the admission they made you buy this box full of stuff for over $100. I probably could have gotten the equivalent for $75 at Wal Mart. I was frequently attending meetings either in a hotel conference room or at someone’s home. I remember several occassions where I was out past midnight on a weeknight. These meetings were frequently long on rah rah and short on facts and figures. I really wanted somebody to explain the X’s and O’s of how we are going to make money by paying too much for soap and toilet paper and convincing others to do the same but it never happened. My orders were frequently wrong and calling the 1-800# to Michigan to straighten it out was a beating. I ultimately gave up when they tried to get me to go to Arizona for some conference. I would have had to foot the bill for a hotel room and gas, plus I would have missed work and I’d just gotten a promotion. They acted like not going was some great crime against humanity. I got a few sporadic checks, frequently from people I didn’t know, for $2-3 a piece, but they had no itemization or explanation. Hardly worth the effort,
I was not directly compensated for any of this time. The real kicker is that my employer at the time was allowing overtime. If I’d taken the $100 or so that I paid to join, plus the revenue generated from the OT, and put it in some type of investment vehicle I would have had something now. In addition, we had a great retirement system at my real job at the time. Had I worked those few hours of OT I would have made bigger contributions to the plan, and that $ would have earned 7% annually all of these years.
This is just 1 man’s experience but IMHO your time, energy, and cash would be better spent elsewhere. Take some night classes, get a P/T job and earmark the funds for something special, start a side business, or work OT if your employer will allow it.
[quote]RSGZ wrote:
[quote]davidcox1 wrote:
So tonight, of all nights, after engaging in this discussion in this thread, I reconnected with an old high school friend on a well-known social networking site. No sooner had we restablished contact than did this friend proceed to pitch me on how to earn six figures in the next 35 days. Oh, the irony.[/quote]
And you went on to remove them, too?[/quote]
Well, this person was my friend before there was social networking, so I really can’t just remove her. She hasn’t gone in for the kill yet, just a casual reference to her “network marketing” opportunity and pointed me to her website. I’m going to ignore the comment and hope we can salvage it.
I’ve seen a ton of friends and relatives (including my niece and my sister) try multiple MLM schemes. None of them have worked.
My basic advice is this: if you have the time, persistence, smarts, and drive to succeed in something like Amway, then you DEFINITELY already have those same traits needed to succeed in just about any career, including sales.
I convinced my young niece to get into sales, and now she’s kicking ass in a legit field and career.
I like what the other guy said above- take the time, energy, and commitment needed for Amway, and focus instead on schooling, a side job, a career, sales, etc.
Avoid Amway.
sounds good guys. I think we are not going to do any thing just yet, but be smarter with our money.
dont do it
And who actively tries to get into Amway?!?!
Usually people get asked by someone else, so calling up Amway in the phonebook and asking to be somebody’s under will likely blow their minds.
[quote]slippery_banana wrote:
My wife and I are thinking about joining Amway Global to get some extra cash. We have researched the internet, and also the information provided by the Amway mentors.
My question is this.
Is Amway a scam or legit???[/quote]
Legally legit. Morally a scam. Legally, not a pyramid scheme. Morally, a pyramid scheme.
I would say, there is better ways. There is franchises that you can buy for the same amount as Amway that will put 100% profit (after costs) into your pocket as well allow you to pay off the loan in six months. As well, you are not running the product through seven people’s hands before you sell it to a customer.
As well with a franchise (franchises bring support and guidance if you buy the right franchise) after you buy another you can start hiring managers to take over the businesses operations and deal with the main four things and otherwise just cash and write the checks. I love cashing and writing checks.
Amway is such an old company. It will be hard to recruit because almost everyone has already heard of the company. A suggestion, do your research and find a new company (or a few yrs old) that has different products than your average MLM / network marketing company. The problem is; there are a billion of companies with shitty compensation plans and it is unlikely you will get your family/friends to join.
To name a few old and large companies include… herbalife, ACN, Amway, USANA, Prepaid legal, Nu Skin, shaklee
From my personal experience, I been in a few different companies (non named above) throughout college to make a few bucks. It takes so much time and it is not worth it. Spending hours training a new recruit knowing that they will quit in the next week. It is very hard to find someone as motivated as you are that will help keep your business alive.
If you are going to do a shitload of work for $15 a week you might as well just blog-and-ping. At least then you can bring about how you’re on the 4 hour workweek like Tim Ferris.
I’ve met a lot of people who have been into MLM or of the other scam-ish sorts of business ideas. However, I’ve never seen any evidence to suggest that these people made a greater per-hour return than I did when I was a bartender for two semesters back in college.
Cool stuff guys. This info is all really helpful for my wife and I. Maybe for all of this great info I should post pics of her in the wives and gf’s thread over in sama.
You’re joking right? You are really this dumb?
yeah joking not that dumb, actually a co worker typed that in when I left to go to the bathroom. I had left this up on a work computer.
[quote]Nards wrote:
And who actively tries to get into Amway?!?!
Usually people get asked by someone else, so calling up Amway in the phonebook and asking to be somebody’s under will likely blow their minds.[/quote]
Someone had called up asking us to check out the info. We did not call them.
To clarify even further (3idspetnaz) I AM NOT THAT FUCKING STUPID!
If the Amway products were things that out of their quality, people would want to buy them for the price they sell at, then why in the world would the Amway owners not have this products available in your supermarket, at K-mart, Wal-Mart, etc?
They’d move a ton more product and not have all the layers inbetween eating up profit.
There seem to be only two possible answers:
Because the products are not worth their price and would not do well on the supermarket, etc shelves at the price they sell for.
Or the Amway top management is utterly stupid and just can’t figure out that they’d do far more volume and should make far more profit selling their well-worth-the-price products to retail stores, if they were worth the price.
Some people will have no problem pushing on others consumer products that aren’t worth their price due to lacking quality or to adequate quality but excessive price, but others really have better things to do with their life than that.
A fair question: If you haven’t been buying Amway all this time and still aren’t, have you really been missing out?
If wanting to be in the business of selling products, it’s a plus to actually be able to believe in the products, rather than to know that a person really can do better at their supermarket or at Wal-Mart and to “believe” in it only as a get-rich-quick scheme, and to hope to enlist others in the scheme.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
If the Amway products were things that out of their quality, people would want to buy them for the price they sell at, then why in the world would the Amway owners not have this products available in your supermarket, at K-mart, Wal-Mart, etc?
They’d move a ton more product and not have all the layers inbetween eating up profit.
There seem to be only two possible answers:
Because the products are not worth their price and would not do well on the supermarket, etc shelves at the price they sell for.
Or the Amway top management is utterly stupid and just can’t figure out that they’d do far more volume and should make far more profit selling their well-worth-the-price products to retail stores, if they were worth the price.
Some people will have no problem pushing on others consumer products that aren’t worth their price due to lacking quality or to adequate quality but excessive price, but others really have better things to do with their life than that.
A fair question: If you haven’t been buying Amway all this time and still aren’t, have you really been missing out?
If wanting to be in the business of selling products, it’s a plus to actually be able to believe in the products, rather than to know that a person really can do better at their supermarket or at Wal-Mart and to “believe” in it only as a get-rich-quick scheme, and to hope to enlist others in the scheme.[/quote]
In complete honesty, this is why we decided not to do it.
Years ago a friend “invited” me over for a party. I thought it was a B-day for his young son…wrong. Fucking amway. I remember loking at the products like toys. Crap quality.
So the pitchman was basically trying to get across to you that the only way to be happy in life was to have a alot of stuff. Chalet in Aspen, place in Bahamas etc. The guy looks to me holding my two year old boy and asks me isn’t that a beutiful home in some magazine he brought.
I told him that what is important in life is whats on my lap drooling and needs to be changed btw, and not trying to catch up to Sly Stallone on the slopes of Colorado.
Not what he wanted to hear lol. He didn’t go to me for the remainder of the “party”
On a side note, a friend of mine used to sell kirby vaccum cleaners. His best trick would be to look around the home to see if the homeowners had a dog. Then he would do the demonstration and while they were not looking he would break out a little bottle of fleas he carried with him and put a few in with the crap he vaccumed up.
He would then go through the crap and HO HO what do we have here! Do you have a dog?..no, well how long have you been living here? So that means that the previous owner had a dog and the whole time you’ve been living here your pathetic vaccum has been unable to pick up the disgusting fleas. Thats just awfull tsk tsk. Good thing I stopped by today cause right now we have special…
Worked like a charm. People are dumb.
Amway? Baaaaaa!
[quote]Iron Dwarf wrote:
Amway? Baaaaaa![/quote]
great pick ID. sums it up perfectly .