I thought I will share this with you guys, this is a reply which my best friend who is doing well in MLM wrote, but that aside I never liked the concept of MLM...
((The idea that those on the top are the only ones who makes money is completely a myth. I have seen how MLM's work for a long time and I think most people have opinions about it that are emotional instead of logical.
Nobody can make money in a MLM without working hard, thats a fact. No matter how early that person started, unless he/she got people into the business by hard working, he/she will get nowhere. So any new person who comes in today can make huge amounts of money in months if they are really good at making clients or briging people into the business.
It is just plain obvious that without work you will not succeed in MLM. Now what brings negativity into MLM is the same as companies like ReMax and so on, the scheme relies on independent individuals to run "franchises" and as in a normal business some people will do anything to sell including cheating lying making up things or omiting essential information. In MLM's they usually omit information that they think the person should not know and distort some facts which is why people feel they've been tricked later on. Those who succeed are usually people who see they got "eaten" but have a winner spirit and just try to get the best out of it nevertheless.
For example in Herbalife they try to get people in the business but they never say that you can actually return the 4000 EUR in products to Herbalife if you want to give up the business after some months.
Herbalife returns 90% of the money if the products haven't been used of course. ))
They also avoid telling you some other things that would make it less likely that you'd join.
What I found to be impressive is the marketing plan organized by the top individuals, all explained so anybody will understand and that really tells you how you can start up. Governments should do that as well to help small businesses starting!
Generally I dislike MLM's. When someone from a MLM start talking to me I already know what they're going to say as most of it comes out of pre-defined scripts (like in callcenters) and specific training instructions. So when they talk I can see behind the scenes hehe.
Resuming, the negative input comes from:
1. Less honest MLM members who will do just anything to get their money in.
2. The fact that they will not tell you everything when they recruit you and some things you find out later on for example that you have to pay a yearly fee to stay on.
3. Some MLM's documentation and support is just very bad so it will be much harder for someone to get started and that dreamish idea of multiplication that you get 5 people and each gets 5 people in reality is you get one person and that one gets you none so you think the problem is the scheme, not you that are a lousy seller and didn't work enough to get it working. If you think at the number of people who complain there's no jobs in the market and see their profile, they're normally people who are not willing to work harder to make things happen. So they blame the system for their lazyness as they believe things should fall out of heaven and somehow they deserve something like winning the lottery.
2 cents