Amway - IBO Progress/Success?

Many Amway advocates claim that IBOs will eventually succeed if they don't quit. Some of these same advocates claim that if you work the business as shown in the plan for about six months, you are virtually guaranteed to succeed. While this may be true in foreign countries, I do not believe this to be true in North America. Far too many people have a negative impression of Amway for IBOs to build a business and recruit downline without some degree of deception or outright lies. Even if you manage to sponsor a downline, the likely result will be that your downline will either do little or nothing, and they will not be IBOs one year later.

But let's look at a real example of someone who is core and sponsors 2 downline per month for 6 months. This IBO would have 12 downline. (And this would probably be a top 1% of all IBOs) Well, more than likely, 6 of these IBOs will not do enough to earn a bonus. These IBOs may very well do nothing at all. But say the other 6 downline all do 100 PV like good soldiers. Add that to your 100 PV and you have a group PV of about 700, and bV of about 2100. Your group bonus would be about $189 and your 6 downline will each receive about $10, leaving you with $129. A tidy little sum I suppose.

But wait, you and the 6 downline who are core, are on voicemail, websites, standing orders, and attend all open meetings and functions, thus your monthly expense can range from $200 to $300 a month on average. So the group leader suffers a net loss as do all of his downline. The downline suffer the biggest losses until they eventually can sponsor enough downline to absorb the cost of the system tools. And because many groups do not teach and emphasize retail sales, there is little money coming in from customers, thus IBOs are their primary customers, which means an IBO's job pays for these losses. These 7 core IBOs spend $1400 to $2100 a month on tools to earn a bonus of $189. If you add more downline, the collective group losses get bigger, but the initial sponsoring IBO's losses get smaller until there is enough downline to offset the losses. Thus the larger your core group gets, the larger the overall losses are. You succeed at the expense of your downline.

IBOs progress doesn't equate success. It equates success for someone upline, probably someone who promotes and profits from tools.