I've gotten 3 of these offers in the past week from 3 separate people...

[Tommy92l]

In the past week I've had 3 separate people contact me over these things like Amway, Vemma, and Market America.

The "I recruit you, and we market things to people after we receive our own domain name from the company. There is this level and that level, and you get a bonus if you get to that, and this..."

I'm not gonna be a dick because I know nothing about them, but has anyone else been offered these?

 

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[theag]

:bgh:

run. fast.

 

[MJ DeMarco]

LOL.

You can create pyramids or climb them.
You can lead or you can follow.
You can innovate or subordinate.
You can be the wolf or the sheep.

You decide.

 

[Tommy92l]

Well, I am not even contemplating joining one, just a little curious as to why so many people in their 20's keep telling me they make 7 grand a week doing so, and how many millionaires it's sparked.

 

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[PaulRobert]

I'm not gonna be a dick because I know nothing about them, but has anyone else been offered these?

Too many times. It's something about our age. They think everyone at our age is so naive.

Well, I am not even contemplating joining one, just a little curious as to why so many people in their 20's keep telling me they make 7 grand a week doing so, and how many millionaires it's sparked.

Ask how many of them are liquid. I've seen from experience, people pitching their Amway shit out of their car (which is falling apart) saying this is making him/her rich.

 

[TheBlackLion]

The MLM space in general makes me cringe. Yes, I've gotten offers like these in the past and they can be kind of annoying. In fact, many of these kinds of schemes use cult-like tactics to deal with "non-believers". Wild stuff.

 

[Barry]

Ask how many of them are liquid. I've seen from experience, people pitching their Amway shit out of their car (which is falling apart) saying this is making him/her rich.

:smilielol: People would do better if they knew better

 

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[CommonCents]

More and more people will resort to these. The number of these offers is prob a an inverse correlation to the real jobless rate, unlike the BS phoney BLS unemployment rate number.

 

[Tommy92l]

Just went to one tonight, saw a kid with the company mercedes and logo's on it, in his name, and another kid that made 1400 in his first 6 days..........These are all close friends from around the area.

 

[AllenCrawley]

Did you sign up? If not, you better do it quick.

 

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[theag]

I smell big monies to be made fast

 

[Tommy92l]

About 15 people there, I was the only one who didn't sign up, and won't. But would you care to explain how this works and why you are against it? The witty comments are funny but I need more.

 

[AllenCrawley]

About 15 people there, I was the only one who didn't sign up, and won't. But would you care to explain how this works and why you are against it? The witty comments are funny but I need more.

This topic has been covered here ad nauseum.

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

Maybe you should let him sign up and experience it first hand.

I mean, didn't we ALL get sucked in at one point? I know I have.

Gawd that was dumb... but it's much more fun to learn from experience...

Go ahead and touch the stove, Tommy! See if it burns you :smxB:

 

[Tommy92l]

I just said I'm not, but I am still curious why it is a scam. It won't effect my decision, because mine had already been made.

 

[johnp]

I mean, didn't we ALL get sucked in at one point? I know I have.

haha first time for me was Don Lapre - The World's Gratest Vitamin.

I was in 6th or 7th grade. The wealthy looking Don Lapre came on TV at about 2am talking about the World's Greated Vitamin. Everyone was talking about the thousands of dollars per day that they were making. They were flashing their checks with all of the 0000000s infront of big homes and fancy cars.

And all that I had to do was sell 10 bottles for my first 1K. ( I think it was 10, maybe 20?)...And if I sold 10, + another 10, then I made a huge bonus. And better yet, if I got a group of people to sell below me, then I would be shitting out cash. It all sounded so easy.

And....It was on TV. It had to be real!

That next day I bought the program for like $75 bucks using the money that I made from mowing lawns haha. I was brainwashed.

The package shipped out to me with like 10 CDs, marketing material, business cards, and instructions on how to access my shitty landing page. I even put money into PPC at the time. I sold 6 units, then got annoyed. I called up and asked to return their program. They wanted to charge me double what the program cost to return it, then I said "forget it" and they charged to sell me more marketing materials. That's when I realized that all of the multi-level marketing, downline scams, or w/e you want to call it are stupid, at least for the grunt. I realized that for every second that I waste on this stuff I could have been building something real, something more valuable, rather than living somebody's dream.


So that was my experience with it. I later found out from someone on this forum that Don Lapre went to jail and killed himself.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20536466,00.html

 

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[ALSL]

Tommy, maybe instead of asking us right away, you can do a little research of your own. Considering research and due diligence are 2 very important things that any business owner will have to do, you should learn to do it.

Google it. Simple. "Why is MLM bad?" or something along that line. What's Wrong With Multi-Level Marketing? that is one of the things that pops up and explains in GREAT detail why MLMs don't make sense.

Search through the forum. MJ DeMarco participates in thread after thread talking about why MLMs are bad news.

Do your own work.

 

[Tommy92l]

Extremely condescending post.

I've come across 3 people

1. The ones who attend the meetings Iike me who are clueless and just know nothing
2. The ones who hate it, no middle ground, pure hatred because they paid 500 and wanted to be a millionaire.
3. The cult like followers

I posted here because any time I research "is vemma a scan", the article usually ends like-


"So vemma is not a scam, it's just difficult to recruit people..... If you wanna know the secret to recruiting people follow this link and!"

 

[DennisD]

I hate when in forums people say "just look around" for the answer, or to 'google' the answer.

I understand it's annoying to repeat yourself, but it really sucks when there are no resources linked to or hard answers. These threads show up in search results, and in 10 months somebody might google "why is MLM bad" and this thread will pop up in google. Excitedly they'll click the link and look for the answer, and all they'll get is the advice to "just google it". This has happened to me SO many times.

-----------------------------------------
Example of an MLM:
You go to a conference and there's a lot of 'rich' people dressing fancy. They tell you the got rich by selling water filters. You sign up under them to sell water filters. You have to pay $500 to get into the program, and you'll make $50 off of each water filter you sell. You figure "I can easily sell off 10 to make back my money", after that it's all profit. In order to sell 10, you need to ORDER 10 at $50 each. Right now you're $1000 in the hole. If you're a good sales person you sell all 10 which breaks you even, and then you have to order 10 more. (back to -$500). You have a harder time selling this lot, your 'mentor'/person above you tell you to be more aggressive, ask EVERYBODY multiple times even if they rejected you the first time. Good sales people are assertive, after all. You sell those 10 and make your first $500
profit..... After a month of what equates to fulltime work.

You ask your mentor what you're doing wrong. He tells you the REAL money's in selling licenses to other people so THEY can sell water filters. You make 10% of what they sell so you can sit back and collect. The license to sell licenses is $500. You put in your $500 profit into this and you hit the streets.

you approach your friends and tell them how excited you are, how much money people are making form water filters. You promise them you'll get rich together and convince them to buy into the program for $500, and they order 10 water filters for another $500 (you get 10%! Woot! $50 here I come!).

The cycle continues. At this point, you made OTHER people a few thousand from your fees, your and product sold, and your friends money. You actually LOST more than you gained... not to mention the time wasted in the process.

-------------------------------------------

Most MLMs encourage you to promote to your personal friends and family and teach slimeball tactics for getting them involved. They teach practices that burn bridges. MLM ladders don't care about your long-term success, because by YOU burning YOUR bridges with YOUR friends and family to promote an expensive useless product, the person above you makes more money. Because of this messed up dynamic, the person above you usually gives you horrible advice because it's in THEIR best interest that you make sales quick, it's NOT in their best interest that you grow as a sales person or keep your friends.

MLMs all claim you'll get rich, but it's basically just a basic commissions sales job with worse returns than legit sales jobs. They don't make money because they have a product people need, they make money by tapping into peoples greed and selfishness. Nobody in an MLM cares about the customer, they care about how much they get paid.

Other MLMs make money off of YOU directly. Your membership cost is their main source of profit (not product sales). They encourage you to sell entry to the MLM to your friends and family. You're told to tell them how rich they'll get if they join, and the MLM gains another member, collects another membership fee, and they make money while you use it. They'll send you marketing materials (that you have to pay for). They'll send you product in advance (that you have to pay for).


-------------------------------

If you can get involved with a company that sells a good product, has minimal/no entry fee, and provides free training you might gain some great sales skill out of the whole thing. But at that point you might as well drop the risk and get a job as a sales person

 

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[SideSwipe]

:smilielol: People would do better if they knew better

If everyone knew better, it would be harder for the people who figured it out to win

Like it or not, we need people on both sides.

 

[AllenCrawley]

I hate when in forums people say "just look around" for the answer, or to 'google' the answer.

It's lazy Dennis. People need to learn how to do due diligence. You can always tell those who haven't because they ask the most general and broad questions.

BTW, haven't you done some 'let me google that for you' posts? Maybe not. I'm too lazy to look it up, lol.

 

[DennisD]

It's lazy Dennis. People need to learn how to do due diligence. You can always tell those who haven't because they ask the most general and broad questions.

BTW, haven't you done some 'let me google that for you' posts? Maybe not. I'm too lazy to look it up, lol.

I absolutely have. I've just been frustrated this past week looking up thinks like "Why does everybody hate Monsanto?" or "What constitutes fair use?" or "does premiere pro support closed captioning?" or other related topics.

I ALWAYS seem to land on a forum with 4 posts. It's the question at post #1.. posts 2-4 are all saying "jesus just google it!" or "Learn how to use the search function." and then the mod closes the thread.

Mother****! I'm someone NEW and I'm finding this post THROUGH search! So then I try to use the search function on the site and can't because it's closed unless I register. All of a sudden I'm taking 10 minutes and opting into a newsletter to find out if it's normal that my cat has bad breath.

I just think it might be good for the life of the forum if there were at least resources given, even if they WERE just links to google searches that provide actual results, to give newcomers years down the road SOME sort of value. If I ran a forum those are the type of rules I'd implement to ensure lasting value and encourage new blood.

 

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[Kung Fu Steve]

I would tend to agree here.

The best advice is from people who have done it.

I ask people their opinions long before I do any googling.

Many of them are on this forum - good place to ask questions. We poke fun at him because we were all there at one time but how else is he going to learn if he doesn't ask the question? I was very dumb when I started here years ago - now just look at me, I'm only pretty dumb!

 

[MJ DeMarco]

I absolutely have.

This forum is "the Fastlane" forum which is a supplement to the book, The Millionaire Fastlane . In that book, I give very clear explanations why MLM should be avoided, or at best, be used as a learning experience. (Sales, teamwork, organizational structure, etc are good things to learn.) In this case, I refuse to elaborate on something that I have already spent considerable time and effort on, not only in the book, but here on the forum in multiple instances.

While your concerns are valid, a forum filled with the same questions, over and over and over again (which have already been answered, or can be answered by spending 3 minutes at Google) devalues the forum. If G00GLE chooses to index these repeat questions, there is really nothing I can do.

"So vemma is not a scam, it's just difficult to recruit people..... If you wanna know the secret to recruiting people follow this link and!"

You're witnessing the cult followers trying to control the dialogue through strategically SEO'd web pages.

You can always tell those who haven't because they ask the most general and broad questions.

Usually a topic with no responses is either 1) The question is too general and people don't want to be bothered with such a simple, "googleable" question or 2) People simply don't know the answer. Sometimes, more often that probably realized, the reason is #2.

 

[CommonCents]

A few can make money if they get in early and are a relentless recruiter of new people in new cities. But those programs wear out fast from simple math as it doesnt take long before everyones friends/family are hammered. Almost all of these programs have a short life because of exponential growth in hammering so many people will cause it to collapse under its own weight, and that the underlying product is crap and doesnt deliver anyone value. The few successful MLMers jump from one program to the newest in a hurry. I could not sell anyone on something I don't really believe in. One of the big drawbacks of MLM is you are rarely building anything, zero equity in anything. Good luck selling your network you may have built up, as most are stable as a sand castle.

I actually like the direct selling/network marketing business model for a legitimate product/service but there has been so much scam in it in the past it is very tainted. The biggest problem is these are built around phony crap products with no value and just emphasize the recruiting for a ponzi scheme and not build a selling organization of the underlying product.

If you have the mindset, motivation, and skills for an MLM, you'd be better off starting your own recruiting company in demand areas such as nurses and tech/programmers to place them in legit jobs. It's essentially very similar skillset at its core, would be longer term sustainable, equity could be built, and be sellable.

 

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[Tony I]

I just said I'm not, but I am still curious why it is a scam. It won't effect my decision, because mine had already been made.

I'm gonna end this right now. I was approached this week by a Vemma idiot, and laughed in his face when he told me about "making my own hours" and my chance to "get a free BMW". He then told me my 7 year fastlane plan to be a millionaire is "too long", and that he will be making "bank" in a few months.

So I did a little research the other day. Knowing it was a Pyramid scheme, I wanted to look at what the average person makes.

Take a look at the official income disclaimer on Vemma's homepage: http://www.vemma.com/backoffice/pdf/income-disclosure.pdf

It states that 93% of people that join make less than $8000 a year.

Now Lets do some math:

Minimum wage part time job: $7.50 x 20 hours a week x 52 weeks a year=$7800

Basically, you have a 7% chance to earn above minimum wage! What a great opportunity to be your own boss! How about that Residual income!

And how about this: Out of the remaining 7%, 5% make about $11K a year! Awesome!

The remaining 2% makes 6 figures, and .01 make over a million a year. Sounds a lot like the lottery to me.

Like MJ says, the owner is the only one getting rich. They sell you the dream of having your own "business", and clueless kids fall for it. They are "fake fastlaners" in my opinion.

BTW: If any Vemma rep tells you they "stand behind their company", ask them about how their owner was accused of providing fraudulent claims about his old MLM, and currently has a lawsuit filed by the FTC.


Its just sad how young people like me fall for this garbage..Sorry for the rant guys, its been building up for a while!

 

[CEBenz]

Dennis, you forgot to mention the never ending pushing of "training" and "educational" materials. Books, CDs, etc..

 

[Brentnal]

In the past week I've had 3 separate people contact me over these things like Amway, Vemma, and Market America.

The "I recruit you, and we market things to people after we receive our own domain name from the company. There is this level and that level, and you get a bonus if you get to that, and this..."


I'm not gonna be a dick because I know nothing about them, but has anyone else been offered these?

Join them look how they do it start a better one.

 

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[ALSL]

DennisDuty & Tommy:

It's condescending because at the end of the day it was made to sound that way. Why? Because it took me ONE generic search that isn't even the correct way to look things up on google (because you're not actually supposed to type a question in the google search bar for maximum results). All I did was type "why is MLM bad" and the FIRST SITE that shows up, the #1 spot, is the link I posted in my first reply.

It is inexcusable for someone to not at least do that.

I understand if it's something they've really tried to look for and couldn't find. Example: as business owners, do you guys know of any unpublished ways to negotiate shipping prices? or What is the most effective way you've found to increase traffic (not what is the most effective way to increase traffic, what is the most effective way YOU'VE found to increase traffic, big difference.)

The. first. link.
He didn't even need to scroll down to look for it.

If someone who wants to go into business is not willing to google a very generic question and click the TOP LINK, I'm definitely going to be at least a little condescending to them.

I apologize for that, but come on.

 

[Tommy92l]

You're still not listening.

I was explaining that I've met multiple types of people within the past week when dealing with this.

- The cult like followers
- the kind that hate it and will not even be open minded
- the kind that are clueless.

If you go to youtube and type "Why is MLM bad!", which I've done- it's all thumbs down. Most likely because the population eats this garbage up because they want the "get rich quick!", and not "Get rich correctly".

I came here because I wanted responses FROM.THIS.WEBSITE. Individuals stories and experiences and opinions. Something you can't search.

There is no reason for an argument.