One of the things that attracts many IBOs to the Amway opportunity is the idea that they can work part time, 2-5 years and gain a "shortcut" to ongoing and voluminous wealth. Many of the prospects don't have the kind of income or resources that they would like, so the possibility of a shortcut to these trappings sounds like a good idea. They sign up and get started, and then the realities of the business sets in.
100 PV, is the defacto minimum quota for business building IBOs. It costs about $300 to purchase 100 PV worth of products. How many young and single people or couples for that matter, use and/or need $300 worth of household products each month? How many of these same people can actually afford to expend that much cash on household products? The pitch is to change where you shop but how many people were buying these kinds of good prior to Amway? My guess is none. I know I purchased many items, including vitamins, and I didn't need or use before Amway. But my desire to be teachable and to be an example to my downline kept me buying the goods, and trying to pawn off some stuff on friends and relatives to lessen my PV burden.
I also found that getting people to see the plan was no easy task. While my business was growing, it took more and more effort to recruit downline and I can see where many IBOs would reach the saturation point where there simply aren't anymore viable recruits and they might need to resort to cold contacting in order to generate potential prospects. This is probably why there are stories of IBOs stalking people in bookstores, malls and supermarkets. Even when people saw the plan, there wasn't a high percentage of new people signing up. It is why building and maintaining a business is a nearly impossible task, and it is why I believe there aren't people who retire, walk away from their Amway businesses and enjoy six figure residual incomes for life.
The more likely scenario is an IBO signing up, buy and using the products and tools and slowly but surely build up debt. There are countless stories of ex IBOs who got fired up, started building the business and fouond that in a relatively short period of time, found themselves in thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in debt. All the while upline was encouraging them to buy more tools and attend more function, even when they were not profitable. In my opinion, this is confirmation that uplines care more about their tools profits that they do about downline success. I sat in functions where upline would teach about reducing debt, but in the same breath, say it was okay to go deeper in debt if it was to purchase more tools. Self serving advice.
It is why I believe this opportunity, along with the tools system, will nearly guarantee IBO failure. It is sad, but it is also a reality.
5 comments:
Hey Joecool. I'm a 19 year-old male who was recently brought up into this whole Amway business by a good friend. He talked great things about it and I later met with his upline who goes by David. I have been skeptical from the start but after meeting with him a few times and watching a couple of videos he recommended it didn't so bad so naturally I was all fired up. His wordplay was great, very professional and he had a great car. So all this seemed believable. So as today I've been doing some research( and reading your blogs ) and now I clearly see it isn't what it's cracked up to be. I have one last meeting with him before I sign up as an IBO, do you have any tips or advice or possibly any questions I could ask him? Any help would be greatly appriciated.
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Thanks for writing. My advice to you is to do your due diligence. Even though they might discourage you, speak to people both positive and skeptical about Amway. If you only speak to people wanting to sponsor you, of course it will sound great. Also, before you sign up, ask for some product catalogs and compare prices. See if you think you can actually sell some of of this stuff.
Keep in mind also, that they (the sponsor) will expect you to buy these products and attend functions etc, to learn more about how to do Amway. Consider all of the costs and the likelihood of being able to sell products.
Then make your business decision. Feel free to write again if you need help.
Anon 11 18. Let me give you some advice. I believe you could make money in this. But its not worth the effort. My view. To make money you need to be diamond and above. To do so you need to show the plan to !etween 30 and 50 people monthly for up to 7 years. For that you need to contact about 10 people a day.you wont findall these people in your neighbourhood. So you will need to travel extensively. And all that guarantees nothing. And even if you build a big group there will be a large number quitting. Also you need to realise you need a group of several thousand people who you must motivate while knowing practically none will make any money. Thats my view on this.
I did give Amway a diligent shot--went to meetings, bought the products, books and tapes. My trust in my upline started to erode when they began to call at the end of the month, asking me to get in an order to help them hit a bracket. Amway started eliminating the basic household stuff from the product line--pet food, basic paper products, etc, and that left expensive vitamins and personal care products that were not competitive with drug store products. The whole scheme blew up for me when an upline--supposedly an Emerald clearing $100,000 per year --had a crisis and they had no money to handle it. They were asking downline to send in checks to support the family. I'm done.
That's really sad. What happened to the fabulous wealth and residual income?
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