Two past clients invited me to a presentation to join this group called Market America. Looks like some kind of Multi Level Marketing + website setup (they claim it’s not MLM). It’s difficult to make sense of how you’re expected to prosper as they claim as you’ll mainly be selling to only 10-15 clients through your internet portal store. The main focus seems to be less on sales than on getting *other * people to open Market America “internet stores” under your umbrella so a portion of their sales commissions/bonuses flow to you.
Based my quick review of brochures it seems to be strongly (though not exclusively) oriented toward selling a lot of extremely expensive new age health booster products with the usual blue sky health claims.
They do have this interesting service though
Anyone with information on this group? Scam or legit?
If they say “It’s not a scam/chain letter/three-card monty/MLM” and the business plan spells it out for you how much more explicit do you need? That you’re being recruited by people you no longer have contact with (“past clients”) shows just how many names you’ll need to deliver your pitch to before you get enough takers.
Amway/Quixtar/whatever also have brand-name products (and probably services by now). Even though the product/service may be legit do you really want to hear “let me be your upstream, everyone wins!” every time you deal with these people?
It sounds very similar to something that was pitched to me recently called Team National (or National Leadership… or National Companies. This one has so many different names, I can’t keep them all straight).
They basically told me that the difference between what they do and a “Standard” MLM was in the pricing structure (Like that means anything to me).
My unbiased side recommends you to do your research on them. See if they have any complaints or court cases against them.
My heavily biased side is screaming at you to run away as fast as you can from them!
“NutriPhysical Gene SNP DNA Screening Analysis Test Kit” -Looks like they want $ 250 for it. In looking at a lot of the other products since I posted my OP, their price for a lot of the stuff they sell is just over the moon.
It’s also interesting how they avoid getting sued for making the amazing (near impossible) claims for their product (ie cures cancer + 100 other things) and that is that Market America does not make these claims
ie
, but their members do. The persons trying to sell me the franchise told me point blank that the Isotonix OPC-3 product (one of their best sellers) helps cure cancer by fighting “free radicals.”
In looking at the overall structure it’s kind of interesting really. The setup is a near genius scheme for making gobs and gobs of money by the distributor. You start with a slickly marketed product with an incredible margin that you sell to your members for big price and they are expected to re-sell this for an even larger price to thier customers. The commissions / percentages / bonuses you receive are tied to sales and the sale credits reset to zero if you don’t sell enough in a certain amount of time so a seller is motivated just to buy product even if the don’t have customers for it.
On the other MLM side of the equation it’s more or less tacitly stated that “the real money” is in getting people to start “unfranchises” under your umbrella.
Every MLM/Network Marketing/Pyramid Scheme says that they’re not at least one of those. It’s rather amusing, really to see how many new names they can come up with for new flavors of the same scheme.
Any scheme where much of your money is to come from the sales of new people you recruit to make sales is without exception an MLM/pyramid scheme (at least I’ve never heard of an exception). Once you’ve sold the product to your friends, how will you reach new customers? The national organization isn’t doing anything to create new customers for you – other than trying to get people to sign up new distributors and sell them starter kits and initial inventory. Their whole shtick is to create competitors for you as quickly as they possibly can. And if I buy into this scheme and set up my little website, how is anyone going to find it?
You’re better off putting the cash in a money market account IMO.
I got pitched on this a couple of years ago, and was pretty leery then, though I didn’t do any research. I just said no, which is my policy for all MLM schemes.
Then I began working for a custom home builder, who had his website done through Market America. The amount they were charging him monthly was outrageous, and the services were mediocre and inflexible, and trying to un-entangle him was a mess.
I don’t recommend them, and I think it’s a rip off. YMMV, of course.
How am I going to make money competing with thousands of other unfranchise members and their websites selling the same exact products?
and the answer was …
“You don’t. You’ll have 10-15 people who are good customers and that’s all you’ll need. Some will become members and some will stay customers, but what you REALLY want is to have customers become unfranchise members under your umbrella.”
And the odd thing is that as long as people are convinced (and many are) that 50 cents worth of ingredients are worth $ 50 once put into a bottle surrounded with nebulous scientific claims is actually a miracle tonic for what ails them - the system works, and works quite well. People think they’re getting the juice of life, and open their wallets for it (and among these true believers and purchasers are lots of unfranchise owners buying for thier own use) and the rest flows through lots of pockets back to the distributor market America. As long as people keep believing and keep their personal realtionshiops with buyers intact it’s a virtually seamless, bulletproof setup.