I have a couple of friends who have recently joined ACN.  If you are not familiar with it, it is a MLM which deals in communications and power.  It is a company not unlike AMWAY or one of the many others.  Anyway, They want me to come to an orientation meeting and check it out.  "It is not like anything I have ever seen!" they say.  "It's amazing, minimal work, it is like investing. If things keep going this way, i will be making $100K a year" the other says.


I don't buy it, nor will I.  I think that the next time either of them bring it up I will tell them how I really feel.  It makes me kinda sad to see them getting sucked in deeper and deeper and they don't realize it.

That is just my opinion.  Any of you ever have any contact with these type of MLM companies?

I'll have to check my book , but I think T.W.R.A  now offers an AMWAY stamp for their hunting/fishing licenses.

This post could be really long so I will edit (aw screw it Ill cut and paste some crap below anyway)
they are a joke and people in them are morons
http://www.mlmwatch.org/
never been involved but was approached I did very little research and ran the fuck away



Lie #1: MLM offers better opportunities than all other conventional
business and professional models for making large amounts of money.
Truth: For almost everyone who invests, MLM turns out to be a losing financial proposition. Fewer than 1% of all MLM distributors ever earn a profit and those earning a sustainable living at this business are a much smaller percentage still.

Extraordinary sales and marketing obstacles account for much of this failure, but even if the business were more feasible, sheer mathematics would severely limit the opportunity. The MLM business structure can support only a small number of financial winners. If a 1,000-person downline is needed to earn a sustainable income, those 1,000 will need one million more to duplicate the success. How many people can realistically be enrolled? Much of what appears as growth is in fact only the continuous churning of new enrollees. The money for the rare winners comes from the constant enrollment of armies of losers. With no limits on numbers of distributors in an area and no evaluation of market potential, the system is also inherently unstable.

Lie #2: Network marketing is the most popular and effective new way to bring products
to market. Consumers like to buy products on a one-to-one basis in the MLM model.

Truth: Personal retailing -- including nearly all forms of door-to-door selling -- is a thing of the past, not the wave of the future. Retailing directly to friends on a one-to-one basis requires people to drastically change their buying habits. They must restrict their choices, often pay more for goods, buy inconveniently, and engage in potentially awkward business relationships with close friends and relatives. In reality, MLM depends on reselling the opportunity to sign up more distributors.

Lie #3: Eventually all products will be sold by MLM. Retail stores, shopping malls,
catalogs and most forms of advertising will soon be rendered obsolete by MLM.

Truth: Fewer than 1% of all retail sales are made through MLM, and much of this is consists of purchases by hopeful new distributors who are actually paying the price of admission to a business they will soon abandon. MLM is not replacing existing forms of marketing. It does not legitimately compete with other marketing approaches at all. Rather, MLM represents a new investment scheme couched in the language of marketing. Its real products are distributorships that are sold through misrepresentation and exaggerated promises of income. People are buying products in order to secure positions on the sales pyramid. The possibility is always held out that you may become rich if not from your own efforts then from some unknown person ("the big fish") who might join your "downline."

MLM's growth does not reflect its value to the economy, customers, or distributors, but the high levels of economic fear, insecurity, wishes for quick and easy wealth. The market dynamics are similar to those of legalized gambling, but the percentage of winners is much smaller.

Lie #4: MLM is a new way of life that offers happiness and fulfillment.
It provides a way to attain all the good things in life.

Truth: The most prominent motivational themes of the MLM industry, as shown in industry literature and presented at recruitment meetings, constitute the crassest form of materialism. Fortune 100 companies would blush at the excess of promises of wealth, luxury, and personal fulfillment put forth by MLM solicitors. These appeals actually conflicts with most people's true desire for meaningful and fulfilling work at something in which they have special talent or interest.

Lie #5: MLM is a spiritual movement.

Truth: The use of spiritual concepts like prosperity consciousness and creative visualization to promote MLM enrollment, the use of words like "communion" to describe a sales organization, and claims that MLM fulfills Christian principles or Scriptural prophecies are great distortions of these spiritual practices. Those who focus their hopes and dreams upon wealth as the answer to their prayers lose sight of genuine spirituality as taught by religions. The misuse of these spiritual principles should be a signal that the investment opportunity is deceptive. When a product is wrapped in the flag or in religion, buyer beware! The "community" and "support" offered by MLM organizations to new recruits is based entirely upon their purchases. If the purchases and enrollment decline, so does the "communion.'"

Lie #6: Success in MLM is easy. Friends and relatives are the natural prospects.
Those who love and support you will become your life-time customers.

Truth: The commercialization of family and friendship and the use of"'warm leads" advocated in MLM marketing programs are a destructive element in the community and very unhealthy for individuals involved. People do not appreciate being pressured by friends and relatives to buy products. Trying to capitalizing upon personal relationships to build a business can destroy one's social foundation.

Lie #7: You can do MLM in your spare time. As a business, it offers the greatest flexibility
and personal freedom of time. A few hours a week can earn a significant supplemental income
and may grow to a very large income, making other work unnecessary.

Truth: Making money in MLM requires extraordinary time commitment as well as considerable personal skill and persistence. Beyond the sheer hard work and talent required, the business model inherently consumes more areas of one's life and greater segments of time than most occupations. In MLM, everyone is a prospect. Every waking moment is a potential time for marketing. There are no off-limit places, people, or times for selling. Consequently, there is no free space or free time once a person enrolls in MLM system. While claiming to offer independence, the system comes to dominate people's entire life and requires rigid conformity to the program. This is why so many people who become deeply involved end up needing and relying upon MLM desperately. They alienate or abandon other sustaining relationships.

Lie #8. MLM is a positive, supportive new business that
affirms the human spirit and personal freedom.

Truth: MLM is largely fear-driven. Solicitations inevitably include dire predictions about the impending collapse of other forms of distribution, the disintegration or insensitivity of corporate America, and the lack of opportunity in other occupations. Many occupations are routinely demeaned for not offering"unlimited income." Working for others is cast as enslavement for "losers." MLM is presented as the last best hope for many people. This approach, in addition to being deceptive, frequently discourages people who otherwise would pursue their own unique visions of success and happiness. A sound business opportunity does not have to base its worth on negative predictions and warnings.

Lie #9. MLM is the best option for owning your own
business and attaining real economic independence.

Truth: MLM is not true self-employment. "Owning" an MLM distributorship is an illusion. Some MLM companies forbid distributors to carry other companies' products. Most MLM contracts make termination of the distributorship easy and immediate for the company. Short of termination, downlines can be taken away arbitrarily. Participation requires rigid adherence to a "duplication" model, not independence and individuality. MLM distributors are not entrepreneurs but joiners in a complex hierarchical system over which they have little control.

Lie #10: MLM is not a pyramid scheme because products are sold.

Truth: The sale of products does not protect against anti-pyramid-scheme laws or unfair trade practices set forth in federal and state law. MLM is a legal form of business only under rigid conditions set forth by the FTC and state attorneys general. Many MLMs are violate these guidelines and operate only because they have not been prosecuted. Recent court rulings are using a 70% rule to determine an MLM's legality: At least 70% of all goods sold by the MLM company must be purchased by nondistributors. This standard would place most MLM companies outside the law. The largest MLM acknowledges that only 18% of its sales are made to nondistributers

Yeah, I lost a friend over a long distance company she thought was the best thing ever

Man, these guys do not stop.  I have to tell them "NO" about 20 times.  I don't want to lose a friend but I am going to have to tell him off before he'll stop.

Quoted: www.gifford.uk.com/01-pyramid-B.jpg

Beat me to it.  For those that need an explanation, MLM is a fancy way of saying "pyramid scam."

Quoted: Man, these guys do not stop.  I have to tell them "NO" about 20 times.  I don't want to lose a friend but I am going to have to tell him off before he'll stop.

The best reason why you should run far and fast from these schemes. Just imagine you having to do that to all of your friends and family, plus everyone you meet in the future.

Interesting facts from www-glock19-com too. At most only 18% of sales to non-distributors overall. So most of the time, people who try to sell the product to their friends and family lose a friend instead of gaining a customer, just like they're doing with you. The only thing they can really sell is more distributorships, making the whole thing a pyramid scheme based on shuffling overpriced crap around.

I think the upper  echelon of all of the mlm's know each other! lol...they seem to all know when a new plan is coming up. My wife has a friend who, with her husband, do mlm's full time very profitably..it seems the way they are successful is by getting in on the top tier of new startups so they are among the winners. It damned near cost a long-time friendship when she tried to push some of these schemes on my wife...finally had to tell her to back off if she valued the friendship. You know, the funny thing is, I think they really believe their own BS....

MLM works if you a) have something people want and b) have the willingness to work really hard at it. My Dad is involved in a MLM operation, and he is one of the few that has made it work for him.

Let's see what Ponzi has to say about MLM....



Says he likes it!!!!




Just remember - for MLM, pyramid or any Ponzi scheme to work, someone has to lose money in order for you to gain. Even if it's no one you know, you are a FUCKING CRIMINAL and/or scumbag for profiting off of it. If you urge others into it, merely to jack up your earnings, you deserve cancer.