Are these the same company or what? What percentage of these people can really make a living doing that? What is the turnover in Amway/Quixstar dealers? Is there some type of religiousity involved in Amway/Quixstar? Has Amway/Quixstar ever been proven to be a pyramid sales scam?
Here’s a page with some negative opinions. And here is the Skeptic’s Dictionary on the subject.
I do have an acquaintance that’s been doing Amway for 20 years or so now - he must get something other than income out of it. He is a well-paid professional during the day, and I doubt he truly augments his income to an appreciable degree.
The Amway Loser downstairs from me gets mail with that name all the time. Everytime she hears me come in she tried to peddle me freakin cult soap. Mind you her house is a pig sty. Real weird people. I’ve lost count of how many times her electric has been shut off since she’s here yet she swears Amway’s going to make her rich. The cassette tapes they sell her say so! Yes I can Yes I can …
The non-active Amway distributors do get something other than augmenting their cash from being a distributor. They get to buy the stuff for themselves at the wholesale, instead of retail, price.
Of course, they never notice that the whole sale price is usually vastly inflated when compared to the retail price on the same merchandise at the supermarket down the road…
My lawyer tried to get me started with Quixtar, but fortunately, my employer forbids such things (ethics, y’know), and I could turn him down without hurting his feelings.
My take on it is that you get the illusion you’re successful, even if you’re not raking in the big bucks. These things are a LOT of work to generate any kind of income, and the harder you work, the more successful you feel, especially when you “work for yourself”.
The other thing is, when my lawyer was showing me Quixtar’s promotional materials and such, I noticed a lot of the people featured already had fairly high-dollar careers to begin with. It was not apparent where the salary ended and Quixtar began. If I’m going to make a significant investment in time and/or money, I want to see these people’s balance sheets to make sure it’s all on the up-and-up.
Robin
The bigger bucks come in not from sales, but from recuiting other people onto your “line.” As your chain of command grows, the more money you get.
It’s not a classic, illegal pyramid scheme because they sell legitimate items, goods that have a value.
I joined Amway many years ago as a favor to a friend. There was another company, INA, that basically put on seminars and sold tapes. From what I could tell, the real big money was made from the tapes by the distributor who owned the tape/seminar company. I was told they were making a million a month. I always found the product to be of acceptable quality, but I lacked in the sales department and my friend lost interest in keeping me in it.
Interesting point, Robin; my one Amway example falls under that description. I’m not sure what to make of it.
I have a very close friend (my business partner of many years) who became involved with an MLM (Big Planet) that sucked up huge amounts of her time (much to my frustration) when our industry was in the doldrums. I did get the feeling that her efforts were of greater psychological importance to her than the bottom line. As in, my real world business is cratering, but at least I’m doing something - or some such.
She never did make an income that would support her (best month after a year of active effort was ~$1300, second best ~$900 and no others came close to that). When real world business sorted out she dropped it.
The most annoying aspect of MLMs.