Network marketing blog

Information on network marketing, also known as multi level marketing

Saturday, December 11, 2004

Entrepreneur.com MLM criteria

The 6 questions posed below come from an article I read at http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/0,4621,276027-4,00.html while the answers are my personal opinions about operating a Nu Skin business.

1. Is it a legitimate business or a pyramid scheme?

NuSkin is a business. You don't have to give moeny to anyone or ask other people to give money to you. Rather, you have to buy high quality products and ask others to do the same.

2. Do you like the products? Would you buy them?

I do buy them. My chapstick addiction is cured. So is my eyebrow dandruff. Lifepak and Reshimax seem to be making me healthier.

3. Does this company emphasize sales or recruiting?

Recruiting. The best way to make money is to have a large network with high sales volume.

4. Party plan, person-to-person or opportunity meeting? Are you more comfortable demonstrating products to groups of people, doing in-home trials one on one, recommending products from a catalog or taking people to opportunity meetings?

You can do any of these with Nuskin. I prefer to person to person but am also comfortable in groups. I wouldn't say party as in Tupperware party but the other day my wife and I, our sponsor, and our sponsor's sponsor all got together. Then a friend stopped by and decided she wanted to hear about the compensation plan. I'm also perfectly happy giving a demonstration to say three people at a time.

5. What's the compensation plan? Do you have to recruit a certain number of people before you can start earning money? Does your unit "break away" at a certain level? Are people paid directly?

You can begin earning money immediately. If I were to sell only one ten dollar item at my cost I would still get a small commission. If I were to sell that item at list price, I would sell it for about 14.30.

I prefer selling at cost. Working for a high personal sales volume will normally be less effective than building a large network that does high volume. The best way to do a large volume is to sell at cost (you still get a few percent commission plus ececutive bonuses and things once you reach that level).

You have to have a certain sales volume (which varies by country although 2,000 US dollars/month seems common) in order to become an executive. This includes personal sales volume and group sales volume. Executives earn a nice bonus and are the people who can eventually make big money.

6. How good is the company itself?

NuSkin is financially sound. This blog entry on Nuskin stock has some more information.

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My one criticism so far is that Nuskin sells products directly online. They also try to keep you from competing with them for search engine traffic. No MLM is perfect, and for my wife who has no intention of selling products or recruiting online this is inconsequential. If you're looking to establish a primarily online business, it's still possible but this would be a serious drawback.