Editor’s note: This article was first published in May 2010. The $30,000-a-month and $9,000-a-week figures it mentions are illustrative examples from the original, written in 2010.
Making money with affiliate systems, making money fast with multi-level businesses, MLM, network marketing… Are they deceiving you? Is it a scam? As we discussed in the previous post, there have always been companies devoted to recruiting affiliates, distributors or simply people who would invest an amount of money that could be recovered quickly. At other times, they offer to make you rich, or to have you earn $30,000 in a month.
Rule number one: if someone offers you the chance to earn more in a week than you earn in a month, and as you listen or read you wonder whether they’re lying to you, they are indeed lying to you.
Rule number two: if someone offers you quick, easy money, telling you you’ll see the profits in the first week and be rich in two months, and you have no doubt at all that they’re telling the truth… you’re facing a skilled smooth talker who has taken advantage of your weakness, because the reality is that they’re lying to you.
Multi-level businesses and online network marketing are businesses like any other. They require a small investment, a big initial effort and good sales and advertising work before you make any money. But they can never, ever, under any circumstances be businesses that give you quick, easy money.
Engrave that in your mind before you make your initial investment thinking you’ll get that money back quickly.
Rule number three: run when you go to a meeting and they show you a PowerPoint presentation of the luxury houses and cars their affiliates have bought. It would be more believable if they told you those houses and cars belonged to the owners of the multi-level business.
Rule number four: run when they show you bank statements or online earnings pages with their affiliates’ surreal earnings. Nobody with a lot of money shows off their bank account, much less to convince you to make an investment.
Rule number five: everyone knows a friend of a friend who earns $9,000 a week thanks to these businesses. But the truth is that if you ever happen to run into that person and arrange to have lunch, they’re the typical person who has forgotten their wallet when it’s time to pay, and who has come in their second-hand car because the Ferrari is in the shop.
In short: I don’t look down on multi-level businesses or online network marketing; quite the opposite. I respect these businesses, because I think they’re a very honest way of doing business. But I like to call things by their name.
When you start a business of this kind, you should expect to earn some extra money for a few months and, with a lot of luck, a salary. With effort and over time, it’s true that you can earn quite respectable profits. There are even people who left their jobs to carry on with these businesses.
So remember this: a multi-level business or network marketing business is a business. Never take it as a way to make money fast or get easy money, because you’ll end up disappointed.
I hope you find some business ideas or ways to make money in the articles we’ve published, and in the ones we’ll keep publishing.
Further reading
- The ideal job
- Profitable business ideas in times of crisis
- How to start a business with no money
- The businesses of the future
Featured image: Artaxerxes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
