A couple of my buddies joined Quixstar a couple of years ago. All they talked about was Quixstar and how great it was and they had all these motivational CD's and stuff with guys talking about how great it was and they were free from the system. WOMP!!! I was never going to buy in to the crap they were talking about. Of course my friends talked and thought they were gonna retire in 5 years but by the end of the year they were done with it, I knew they would be. You can't make money like they are talking about unless you are a big wig there. The seminar was kinda creepy. They way recruiters talk about the armed forces and the latter day saints dudes talk about God is how these dudes talk about financial freedom.
two ways of becoming rich and doing it legally. 1) Start your own business. 2) Learn to invest in stock markets and other investments.
I have no great affinity for Amway/Quixtar. I was in the business for a couple of years ~ 1990 to 1993. Made a little money but it was a grind. It's no pyramid scheme because there are products purchased. Yeah, it can be shaped like a pyramid but that's about it. As someone pointed out, it is a naturally occurring structure in the business world: one top exec overseeing a fleet of middle managers overseeing a herd of workers.... Some people have made fabulous fortunes at it but they turned their lives inside out to do it. The business model is certainly viable and both under- and over-rated at the same time. You will only earn what you create; that's what some people both love and hate about it...
My friend basically fell out with almost all of his friends behind it [we fell out for different reasons] He was pushing it so hard. . . to the point of basically tell folx a 'Real Friend' would do this etc. . . . I mean . . you lose a friend of over 20 years behind a so called business . . .well that is ridiculous he tried to sell me on it .. . I asked on question . . . DO YOU MAKE A PROFIT he replied. . . . IT DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU MEAN BY PROFIT At which poiint i was done listening Rocket River
The products are just a front. The bulk of the cash flow up the pyramid comes from recruitment fees, not product sales. If they had no products to sell, that would make them an illegal pyramid scheme. So in order to avoid being deemed a pure pyramid scheme by the FTC, they put up a pretext of selling products, which makes them nominally legal. When the guys up top (DeVos) get rich enough I bet they can and probably do buy influence in the FTC and whatever other regulatory bodies need their palms greased. Not saying that they don't actually sell products, they do, but the people at the top get rich from the recruitment fees, motivational tapes and such, not the products. It's like Genco Olive Oil in the Godfather, just a front to what's really going on.
You don't know what you are talking about. Commissions are paid only on products. Amway won this case in court decades ago. You don't have to like it but you are flat wrong. There are no recruitment fees. They do have a secondary money stream that is generated by their training materials-- but that is nonetheless a product. No one makes a dime until someone buys something that they can walk away with.
Actually the IBO that was tryin to recruit me said the initial package cost TT$2800 (US$1=TT$6.3). That was to get the registration number for the Quixtar website and all that. I think he mentioned that you get products to try for yourself but I doubt it would be $2800 worth. There was also a $324 charge per month for the "motivational" material that had to be purchased for at least the first 2 months. So basically to get on board initially I would have had to cough up $3124.
My cousin and her husband did well selling Amway products in the 1990s. But both were excellent salespeople and put in a ton of time. I think Amway makes more off the distributors with seminars and such as they do off the products. The products are good, but very expensive. There are better ways to make money for your time.
You're right. I probably conflated Amway with one of the multitudes of other MLM's/pyramids out there. So Amway doesn't use product sales as a front to hide recruitment fee income. I stand corrected. Instead, Amway uses product sales as a front to hide income made from selling books, tapes, and registrations to seminars and rallies to new recruits, which amounts to pretty much the same thing AFAIC. Who needs sales books, tapes, seminars, etc., other than recruits? So technically, no, they don't have official recruitment fees. Instead they have "motivational material" that new recruits can purchase. Seriously, those guys are slippery. They've got the money to buy political clout. They've seriously got all their bases covered. But I ain't hay-in. They got their money by any means necessary, congrats to them. I see it like casinos, except casinos aren't as bad because at least you're fully aware that you're throwing your money down the drain just to have a little fun. They don't explicitly mislead you like these guys do.
I'm not sure what you mean here. You have to buy through an IBO-- Independent Business Owner, so you need some kind of IBO ID# to purchase anything from Amway.
The money made buy the kingpins on BTF (books, tapes, functions) was my biggest gripe about the Amway business, but ironically it is also the most valuable thing I carry from all those years. The problem was that the big guys kept all the income from that for themselves. If they had just shared it like income earned from soap then it could have been a good thing. The murmured word was that they made as much money from BTF as they made from the products. When I started, it was $124 for a "kit" which included about $100 worth of products. The balance was paid to the company for back-office functionality. I'm an uneasy defender of Amway; I wouldn't do that business again, but at the same time most of the problems and gross perceptions of the business have been created by the active distributors and not the company itself. Amway has spent years and even filed lawsuits against their own distributors to try and get the BTF income streams under control. They let it go on too long and soon there was too much money at stake to just reel it in easily.
It's ridiculous. See my post below. It cost me $124 in 1989 B.I. (Before Internet) and most of that was for products. I was probably spending $50 to $100 per month on "motivational" material (books, tapes, functions). That was the easy money for the big guys... and it was held out as a carrot: you had to build the Amway business to get into the BTF business...
But think about that, it's impossible for them to share that "BTF" money if the people at the top want to make any profit. If they shared it with all the members evenly, everyone would end up with zero net profit. In effect, the recruits would be buying the BTF from themselves. That's what makes it shady. The many at the bottom take a net loss, so that the few at the top can make a net gain.
Is all that is. Had a friend who tried it, and another friend who knew a guy who was in it as well. Refused to work because he was so completely convinced it was his way out...dropped out of school, parents wouldn't help him because he wasn't helping himself, and was close to getting evicted.
Not really because to get into the BTF income stream you had to build a big business moving Amway products. That was the qualifier to get your hands on the BTF money. If they had shared it more broadly, they would sell even more BTF. Everybody loses money when they start. Some just never get out of that rut. It's not all that different from other traditional businesses; sometimes it takes a long time to get into profit and many traditional businesses likewise fail (usually due to inadequate capitalization which does not allow them to survive the poor cash flow). It's a great industry (as someone said here, "Everyone needs a schedule C.") in which I still participate. I use the net and the phone and direct mail to grow a business not deceptive dinner parties (never had one, never went to one either). Amway was the giant that led the way but they are also a dinosaur trying to adapt to a different marketplace. They do something like $6 Billion worldwide.
Here's a great little ditty I learned from my training in my Big A days: "Success whispers; failure shouts..." People are people. I met some men and women who had enviable success. It's just easier to blame someone else when you don't earn it yourself. I've done it. It's a tendency because it is comforting. From my years, most people's problem is they do a lot more talking than working and to make matters worse they think that thinking about it is actually working! Never throw the bath water out without checking first for the baby.
Ultimately, you get paid however much society values what you do. How much do you think society values people trying to sell them overpriced products that they would already have if they needed them?
