Amway - What Are You Duplicating?

Duplication. It was sold as the key to success when I was an IBO and I believe it is still promoted as an important component to succeeding in Amway. But I believe IBOs are misguided in understanding what duplication really is. Sure, it's very easy to stand on stage as a tenured diamond and talk about duplication, but in practical application, can it be done? In my opinion, duplicating sounds great in theory but will not work in practice. In the US, I believe Amway is not experiencing growth. The name change from Quixtar back to Amway was made for a reason. I believe that reason is because Quixtar had a bad reputation. Now I also believe that Amway has a spotty reputation as well, but the company braintrust must have felt it was still better to be Amway than Quixtar.

So back to topic. What are you duplicating? Many IBOs do little or nothing. That is not a mystery. So duplicating nothing gets you nothing. But let's look at the 6-4-2 plan. The majority in the plan do 100 PV and get about $9 or $10 as a bonus. In order to succeed, upline will expect these IBOs to be on standing order and to attend functions. Thus these IBOs will earn $9 or $10 but spend about $150 to $200 a month on training materials. So duplicating yourself will compound the overall losses of the group or team as some like to call themselves. If you sponsor a few people and move up to 300 PV group volume, you will earn about $30 but still spend about $150 to $200 in training materials. So duplicating yourself still creates more losses. Even if you achieve platinum or higher, you may finally reach a point where you have a net gain, but your downline will continue to lose money, primarily due to the cost of the training materials.

So duplication is the key to Amway success. Amway and the people selling the education materials become very successful by your promotion of "duplication", but the IBOs themselves get no benefit from duplicating themselves unless they can get enough downline to absorb the losses for them. It is why some people consider the Amway opportunity a pyramid. While legal, the opportunity still resembles a pyramidal compensation plan as you will only make a significant net gain when you have enough downline "under" you to take the losses. While you can outearn your sponsor, you will never overtake one of the tenured "crown ambassadors".

So the question for IBOs is, what exactly are you duplicating?