One of the most-widely made accusations against direct selling industry is that not everyone involved in is making tens of thousands of Dollars a month. They bring this up in an attempt to show the inherent weakness or how deceptive this model is.
This is a fact, on the hand. A fact that both companies and network marketers that do business under ethical principles, publicly accept and say.
I have some factual information to share with you here:
- 73% of Herbalife distributors in the U.S. earned $1,000 and less in commissions in 2013.
- The top Herbalife 200 distributors (0.3% of those with a downline) earned $667,000/year on the average.
- The average yearly income of an active Amway Independent Business Owner in 2010 was $2,400 in North America. This group was 46% of Amway’s organization.
- The above also means 54% were inactive.
- The “Founders Diamond”, the highest-earning category at Amway that make up 0.3% of IBO’s earned on the average, $565,000 annually in 2013.
- In 2013, an active Nu Skin distributor made $2,100/year. Active Distributors represented 39% of the total.
- Nu Skin’s “Blue Diamond Executives” who are 0.2% of active distributors, received on the average, $640,000 as commissions that year.
Above are the situations in the world’s three largest direct selling companies. Based on these and on my personal experiences with others, I see no logical reasons to believe the general picture might be a lot different in any of other companies.
Given these facts, who accuses this industry for being deceptive on this ground? I group them under three categories:
1) Ignorants: These only have a vague idea of what this business concept is all about. Just like they do in the areas of daily politics or sports, they do not refrain from casting their “wise” opinions about direct selling, too.
2) Losers: After doing this business for a while and probably, trying at various direct selling organizations, they quit and point out the concept of network marketing as the reason behind their failures.
3) Opportunists: People like Bill Ackman who seek financial gains in damaging the industry’s reputation and public image.
I saved my last comments to those direct sellers that say they have lost $20-30-40,000 and are now blaming the concepts this industry relies. First, I would assume they are saying the truth. If they really have lost tens of thousands of Dollars in this industry like they say though, they should never and ever have tried to do any business at all!
My experiences in this industry have taught me two things:
1) Not everybody “can” or “will” achieve a huge income in direct selling.
2) If one has the “will” though, s/he “can”.
…….
For Herbalife earnings data please click here, for Amway here, and for Nu Skin here.
