Amway IBOs Talk A Good Game Plan?

 Having blogged for a number of years now, I have observed that IBOs talk a good game about retailing, sponsoring and doing Amway business related activities. They will tell you to set yourself up with 20 customers, sponsor 6 frontline, show a number of plans and set up certain follow ups with contacts, and doing other activities supposedly to build an Amway business. I find if humorous when these same IBOs start throwing insults or diverting the discussion when someone asks if they are actually making money. Of course, it would be understandable and perfectly reasonable if a new IBO would admit they had not made a fortune as of yet, but it seems that even that response is not forthcoming from IBOs.

It seems that the Amway business is simple enough. Buy some products, sell products and try to sponsor some downline in order to leverage your volume with your downlines. IBOs mistakenly believe that you can build it once correctly and that the income will flow into future generations. What goes unnoticed is that IBOs come and go with such a high frequency, that a business generating residual income would be like a sandcastle on the beach. You might build it nice and big, but the waves of attrition would quickly turn that sandcastle into nothing. The same would be true of an Amway business. The IBOs dropping out would wipe out your business unless you are constantly replacing the people who quit. IBOs like to talk about Amway sales and how the company is growing in sales, but the Amway sales have no relationship with making IBOs more profitable.

IBOs may also toss in comments about how they are nicer people or how they are improving their marriage because of the Amway business. I often wonder how that can be when functions and meetings take you away from your family and spouse. I suppose it could be because the uplines talk about people being nicer or tossing out lies about Amway and the AMOs saving marriages. I remember a WWDB diamond talking about how WWDB members had a 2% divorce rate while the rest of society has a 60% divorce rate. Ironically, that diamond's marriage ended in divorce. I believe this crap is still taught as a WWDB IBO who blogs, had mentioned this tidbit on his blog last year. I don't believe Amway IBOs or anyone else has a higher or lower rate of divorce than society, but it becomes an issue when uplines teach it and their downlines repeat it.

It would seem that Amway IBOs talk a good game. They know what to say and how to act, but they're like poker players who are bluffing. If you call them on it, they are likely to fold in their hands because they don't have the goods. It is why many Amway discussions turn into an insult contest, when the IBO suddenly gets confronted with facts that are contrary to upline teaching. It's usually quite funny but I wonder if these folks question their upline or go on their merry way repeating uplines lies? It becomes apparent to everyone but the IBO when they are repeating crazy stuff taught by their upline. Good luck to anyone who tries to build this business against nearly insurmountable odds.

Amway IBOs can talk the talk, but struggle to walk the walk.

An Amway Shill?

 Nice Article. Could not resist posting it.  This article is a bit dated but it illustrates the lengths that suspected shill IBOFB used to go through to defend Amway.  Joecool did not author this article.  But enjoy.  LOL

http://network21amway.blogspot.com/2011/04/truth-about-amway.html

The real truth about Amway is that Insider is A Paid Shill - IBOFightback has been exposed.

Massive News for those familiar with the history of deceitful Amway business practices, it's finally confirmed: David Steadson AKA IBOFightback / IBOFB / Insider / Insider201283 who for years everyone has suspected to be paid by Amway has finally been exposed as a professional shill / public relations imposter and we have proof!

Talk about "selling your soul" for the almighty dollar.

For those who are not aware of David Steadson, his ignorance is only matched by his arrogance. He'll go to any lengths to make his point no matter how stupid or false. Constantly lying and spinning the truth, which appears is actually what he does for a living.
For those who are not aware of David Steadson he is pretty much the only pro-Amway person on the internet. He runs at least 20 (we found 23+) sites dedicated to attempting to improve the public image of Amway, Network 21 and Multi Level Marketing schemes in general, and cover up any material that does not paint these companies with a super positive point of view.

What is already known about his role as a distributor?
In one source from November 2008 it was claimed IBOFB was not building an Amway business and was last fully active in 1999. "This business" was handed over to his ex-wife. We find that a "David Steadson" had a 100 PV business in Australia in 2008. On the Amway Australia website data reported IBO number 6195154 David Steadson from QLD Australia qualified for the minimum bonus level in 2008!
How does this contradiction occur? "I've operated 6 different and separate Amway businesses" IBOFB says.
Why would anyone operate that many Amway businesses? Cause for suspicion.
On Dec 17, 2009 he stated "I currently have three" when asked about his many Amway businesses.
That is not even more than a year and a half ago, yet last night we were informed of this interesting claim by Insider made only the other day "More than a decade ago I actively built an Amway distributorship, I have not done so for many years and that business was transferred to my former wife. Like many other people I continue to maintain a membership primarily for the purpose of getting Amway products" It seems the truth about Amway and David Steadson changes whenever it suits him, yet another lie and deceiving behaviour.


Some of his propaganda sites include:
http://www.amway.com/nedami
http://www.thetruthaboutamway.com / www.thetruthaboutquixtar.com / ttaa.biz
http://www.amwaywatch.com/
http://mlmliberal.blogspot.com/
http://amwaynorthamerica.blogspot.com/
http://quixtarbusinessreview.blogspot.com/
http://quixtatic.blogspot.com/
http://amwaylatin.blogspot.com/
http://www.amwaywiki.com/
http://amwayaustralia.blogspot.com/
http://www.amwaytalk.com
http://amwayeurope.blogspot.com/
http://www.amwaywatch.com/
http://amquixvideo.blogspot.com/
http://ibofightback.vox.com/
http://ibofightback.livejournal.com/
http://www.amwaypricecomparisons.com
http://www.mlmfacts.net
http://www.nedami.com - Network 21 promo site
http://www.youtube.com/user/insider201283 Copyright issues?
http://twitter.com/#!/ibofb

and these are just the ones we found with a few minutes research, there are possibly many more.
The name is a bit of a slip up anyway, "Insider", a reference to working from the inside of the company, not just an IBO, or perhaps a reference to the movie about the real life situation of big tabacco companies, law suits, coverups and public relations gone mad?

Why would you, and what would motivate someone to run so many sites dedicated to one cause? Running a hobby site or 2 is way more effort dedicated than most people would want to waste time on, 20 is beyond obsession, more like profession. His close minded verbose rants on Wikipedia are enough for a part time job in themselves. I don't have the time nor inclination to read and dissect his over 2000 contributions / propaganda efforts, mostly on Amway, Network 21 and MLM related articles under the alias Insider201283, but the truth is obvious to any half intelligent person that reads any of his edits.
In particular I have been made aware of:







He is posting heavily biased contributions, attempting to remove or play down all negative aspects



Rewording things to sound much better than they are in reality (like replacing the term pyramid scheme, or attempting to remove it all together etc)



Outright lying



Posting press releases, sometimes with data not yet even available to public (which is proof enough of some dubious inside connection).



Generally making the articles sound like promotional material and advertisement brouchures.



Posting his own sites as references, then lying through his teeth saying he has not.

Attempting to discredit and character assasinate anyone with a valid fact that does not meet his not so hidden agenda, one of the lowest forms of debate, and indicative of someone who's argument holds no ground.

As a result of his arguments holding no water, he uses these tactics a lot on Wikipedia and on all of his sites and other people's. Smart people can filter out this cheap trickery, however it may work on a certain demographic, such as those less intelligent, more desperate in life people that pyramid schemes seem to attract that are not by nature critical thinkers but more like easily led sheep.

There seems to be a couple of minor efforts to keep him in check, but I think most people have better things to do with their time than sit on Wikipedia and makes hundreds and thousands of edits childishly arguing the rules to the same extent and a few other people on there do. Whatever the case, that is one sad excuse for a life.

So where is the smoking gun evidence that David Steadson is paid to promote such companies, and trawl the internet all day attempting to fix their image?

There is a mountain of circumstancial evidence, as mentioned by others in the past, made obvious in his own posts, and little things like Amway/Network 21 removing other people's videos due to copyright claims, yet allowing "Insider201283" to post all of these official Amway videos (and who do you think gives him these videos in the first place?):

Our attention was recently directed to these mysterious sites discovered:

www.tribetalk.net
www.tribetech.net

Registered to one:David Steadson
Phone Contact: +46.732536211 Email: david@steadson.com

From these sites:
"Reputation management in the Internet Age"
"TribeTech provides professional internet community development, monitoring, reputation research and crisis response services"
"Whether you like it or not, you and your company are being discussed on the Internet. With our unique cross-discipline experience in internet technologies, public relations, social media, and marketing we can help you build a positive brand presence on the internet, and in the marketplace.
• THREAT ANALYSIS
• CRISIS RESPONSE
• SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
• MARKET RESEARCH
• COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
• SOCIAL MEDIA ENGAGEMENT
• REPUTATION MANAGEMENT
• STRATEGIC INFLUENCE"

Funny, isn't that the description of exactly what he is already doing for Amway? Sounds pretty guilty to us. That is clear admission, and evidence he is a public relations paid shill.

When you're already dedicating enough effort to your tonne of Amway sites, arguing on the internet, doing legal document research and constantly corresponding with official Amway employees, enough to easily be a part time (if not full time) job, where do you get time to run your reputation management / propaganda business? Easy, you combine the two! Everyone on honest and legitimate Amway blogs and websites have long been making these accusations, as it just looks obvious, but there was never any hard proof apart from his completely disengenous posts that are not at all believable to anyone with a brain. People have for years been disproving his lies and credibility (and reporting his honest level in the Amway business), and know not to trust a word of what he says ever, especially when he disguises his warped opinion in facts and an undeserved authoritative tone.

Now it makes perfect sense that some part of the Amway organisation is paying Mr Steadson, and if you ask us, the fact he has a site offering his services for these exact accusations is pretty damning proof!

So who pays the money to Mr Steadson for his efforts, is it Amway Global, Network 21, Jim Dornan, Alticor or perhaps some obscure shady Delaware corporation? It is doubtful he will ever come clean and admit who pays him for his reputation management services, but my money would be on the IBOAI, or some other general Multi Level Marketing association or other Amway front group. Just another tick in the box for these merchants of deception.

Now it all makes perfect sense, and the final piece of the puzzle has been put in place, not that he had any credibility to begin with.


Operating these businesses, and working in other IT fields as reported on his other sites is proof enough that the Amway system is a failure. After more than 10 years being in Amway he obviously is not living on an island paradise, but is in fact working at least one JOB, constantly busy, and his wife has left him, not really the picture of a successful Amway person is it? Can you believe this guy is basically the public face of, and self proclaimed expert on Amway?

Even if we didn't prove Amway was paying David Steadson, and for
arguments sake let's just imagine he had no vested interest, and honestly was just doing it for the love of the company, success or not. At best, he is a crazed zealot, likely to have some kind of serious mental disorder. What sane person would champion Amway so fiercly, and waste so much time with all those websites, trying to fix their tattered image as a complete business scam for tools. You'd have to be not quite right in the head and not have a shred of integrity to be living such a lie.

Let's pretend for once his lies and deceit were true and he was just legitimately sticking up for Multi Level Marketing Scam groups (though only selectively for obvious reasons), he still would be the biggest loser in the world. What a tragic excuse for a life.

Now, even if Mr Steadson came out and admitted he was on the payroll as a paid representative or employee of Amway (even if technically disguised in reality as a 3rd party consultant), he is doing such a poor job, spreading lies, stretching the truth, and giving such a dishonest representation of the truth that anyone can see through the marketing hype. When your stories, research and lies you present as facts seem so fake, do not seem at all genuine, it's a wonder why Amway would pay (or even allow for free) anyone to stuff up their reputation so badly. He is doing a lot more harm than good, which is hilariously ironic if they are the ones paying for such poor service.


Very special thanks to those who wrote in and helped provide damning evidence and research and Wikipedia references, I can't use it all unfortunately. We've had a surprising spike in feedback lately, and we appreciate it all, from the poorly typed insults and rebuttals from scammers, spammers and brainwashed idiots, to the cries for help from those family members who feel their loved ones have been suckered in, and of course all the helpful feedback and support.

Is An Amway Business Sustainable?

 One of the big selling points of the Amway business is for people to do the work once and then reap financial benefits for life. Thus, the term lifelong residual income or passive income. But that simply does not happen for the vast majority of IBOs. The reason why most IBOs do not have a sustainable business is because their business is not based on sales to genuine non- IBO customers with a genuine need or desire for these products. Most IBOs themselves will not buy Amway products once their affiliation with Amway is over. Many IBOs are willing to pay the "premium" prices while they believe Amway will make them rich, but when the reality sets in that they are not making money or losing money (more likely), somehow their loyalty to Amway products goes out the window.

If you are an IBO doing your 100 PV monthly, then your only way to increase volume is to sponsor downline in hopes that they will also do their 100 PV as shown in the plan. And even if you are somehow able to accomplish this and sponsor a bunch of people as shown in the plan, chances are that many IBOs will "do nothing" and of the remaining, some will move 100 PV, but they will likely quit in one year or less. The attrition and failures in Amway make it nearly impossible to build and sustain a group. Even diamonds are working hard to help their downline keep up the volume or they too, will fall out of qualification. Has anyone actually heard of a diamond who walked away from Amway and is collecting large residual checks while doing nothing? IBOs often talk about it but not a single one can name one of these individuals.

In many or possible most cases, IBOs are only selling the Amway opportunity and not Amway products. They sell the possibility or hope that they will build a business, walk away and collect untold wealth for the rest of their lives. It isn't going to happen. Say for example, you sold 100 PV monthly on a consistent basis to customers. These customers will automatically go online and make purchases when they run out of their products. If you are lucky, they will also refer friends to make purchases. But most IBOs do not sell products, they are selling the opportunity. Thus, once the business building stops, so goes the product purchases in the vast majority of cases.

That brings up the next point about why an Amway business is not sustainable for most. The products cost more than most other retailers. That will limit the potential for customers and referrals. Amway defenders like to cite quality issues, but most customers who shop online aren't familiar with Amway products and have no way to know whether Amway has quality products or not. That leaves them to decide based on prices. And Amway in general, costs much more than Walmart for the same or similar products. A tough sell indeed and for these reasons, I find the Amway business to be unsustainable. There is no other conclusion that can be made.

The Foolproof Business?

 One of the pitches I heard about Amway was that it's basically "foolproof". And what the speaker meant by that is that when you join Amway, you either make money or save money because you save about 30% by buying from Amway. On the surface, that sounds like a can't lose proposition. How can you lose when you either make some money by selling tuff or at least save money by purchasing at a discount from your own "store"? Well, if you take the statement at face value, you'd be a fool not to sign up right?

But most people do not check into these statements with a skeptical eye. Amway products are generic in nature, but premium in price. And they have to be because Amway's "generous bonus" to the IBOs are included in the cost of their products, not to mention Amway has to make a decent profit. For that reason, you would be hard pressed to find similar products at Wal Mart or Costco that aren't a fraction of Amway's prices. Take the time to do your own comparisons and you'll see. Also, the 30% savings that is referred to is 30% off full retail price for Amway products. It is not a 30% savings from comparable products you can get at Wal Mart or Costco. So, a good example, is Amway's flagship vitamins (double x). Double X multi vitamins (30 day supply) is around $80 at full retail price and the IBO price is about $52 or so. So yes, you have significant savings as an IBO from the full retail price. However, I can get a 90 day supply of multi vitamins at Costco or Wal Mart for about $24.99. You can argue quality, but there are no unbiased scientific studies that indicate that Amway vitamins are any better.

The other flaw in Amway's foolproof opportunity is Amway's money back guarantee. Amway has a decent return policy on products that aren't satisfactory, and they may even refund your signup costs for the business opportunity. But here's the flaw in that refund policy and in the past, resulted in Amway settling (without admitting fault) to pay damages for people who lost money running Amway businesses. presumably following bad business advice by Amway uplines and diamonds. So, look at it this way. You get lured into a business opportunity where you can spend significant time and money after signing up to be an Amway IBO. You can follow upline advice and you can still lose a lot of money. For all your lost time and money, Amway might make some product refunds and refund your small signup fee. Despite what you may have been told, you may have endured significant financial risk running an Amway business. Some people have lost thousands, tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands trying to build their business. It's no consolation to get some product and possibly the signup fee refunded.

Therein lies the scam. If you are trying earnestly to follow upline advice and "hang in there" and try your best, you may expend significant time and money trying to succeed in your Amway business. Big deal if Amway gives back the signup fee. What about the thousands you may have spent on standing orders, attending functions, ordering books, and "driving the miles" to succeed. While Amway may have some small print disclosures about how you may not achieve the same results, there certainly isn't the kind of full disclosure that legitimate business opportunities have. And Amway is legally separate entities from their IBOs because they are "independent". In my opinion, the only way to stop this is to hold Amway accountable for lies and deception used by their IBOs. And that's how it should be - because if someone lies or deceives to get someone to sign up and build the business or to sell products, Amway is certainly a beneficiary of those lies and deceit. They should be held accountable.

Amway is far from foolproof, unless you have been fooled.

What's The Bottom Line?

 In my point of view. one of the most critical mistakes that many IBOs make is to ignore the bottom line when analyzing their Amway businesses. (Many IBOs don't even analyze their businesses) Most business building IBOs, sadly, are taught by their uplines to ignore losses, or to view losses as investments into their businesses, or that money is really not important. Some upline may teach that the business is more about making friends or being a nicer person. All of these things may be nice side benefits of reading personal development books, etc., but when running a business, the only goal should be to turn a profit. 

For many IBOs, their businesses consist of listening to standing orders, attending functions and meetings, but not focused on selling products and earning a net profit. And for most IBOs, nobody can blame them as upline may give them bad advice and because the Amway business is person to person selling, it is so inefficient that many groups end up teaching IBOs to simply buy their own volume and get others to join the business. For groups who operate primarily in this manner, you are probably running an illegal business because new and existing IBOs can profit only by continuing to add more downline IBOs in the hope that they too, will buy their own volume and sponsor others. 

When you look carefully at the business plan, whether it is 6-4-2, 9-4-2 or some other variation, the majority of these business building IBOs will have low volume and likely to earn only about $10 a month. But to earn that $10 a month, you are likely to have to spend $300 on products, and if you are on standing order, voicemail and functions, then you likely spend anywhere from $150 to $250 monthly to participate in the teaching system. Thus, these IBO's bottom line is a net loss! It is only when you are able to sponsor many downline that your losses will get smaller, and you will only profit when you have a sizable downline. That means your bottom line is a loss. And while Amway defender will argue that Walmart doesn't even give you $10 a month, you can certainly get more products from Walmart for $300 than you can get from Amway for the same price. Walmart will match any advertised price on a product that they and a competitor may carry. Also, Walmart's advertising reaching millions of people, which is much more effective than person to person. While Amway runs some ads now days, they do not directly drive customers to IBOs. The vast majority of IBO business is still to themselves and their downline, and not to non-IBO customers. 

I challenge IBOs to look objectively at their bottom lines. It is likely a new loss. If it is, ask your upline how long this is expected to last. Set hard goals and if you are doing what is advised by upline and results to not improve, you may have to ask yourself what will change to make your business profitable. Basically, if you aren't adding active downlines and customers regularly, you aren't going anywhere and are likely to be running your business at a loss month after month after month. It won't take long before you realize that you have lost thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars. 

As a former IBO with a 4000 PV business with eagle parameters, I was not making a net profit. I saw my bottom line and although doing and achieving what my upline advised, there was no money. I decided the effort, time and money invested wasn't worth it. Plus, my upline started to interfere in my personal life. I saw my bottom line and wasn't satisfied, and I left Amway. I later discovered the lies my upline had fed me to keep me in the business and to keep me buying tools. It is why I started blogging. For now, my bottom line is to get the truth out about the unethical and IMO, illegal tools scam run by upline. That is bottom line for this blog.

Why Amway Is A Tough Sell?

 In one of my very recent posts, there was discussion about how in theory, someone could make a living selling Amway products.  But that person would have to be working nearly full time, servicing customers and prospecting for new customers.  My comment was that anyone who was that talented in sales could form a much more lucrative career selling cars or houses if that had that much accumulated sales acumen.  Let's face it, sales is a tough business.  That's why some uplines train their downline to ask prospects if they like sales.  And whether the prospects likes or hates making sales, the answer is "great, then Amway is perfect for you".  If the prospect likes sales, then you guide them towards sales and those that do not, are guided into the "buy from yourself" group.

The inherent problem with Amway, in my opinion, is that the business is set up where you cannot reach the high levels such as emerald or diamond, without an emphasis on recruiting downline.  It's possible for someone to reach platinum or ruby levels in Amway because they are based on PV volume and downline "legs" are of no consequence.   However, as far as I know, there are no long time sustained platinums or rubies based only on sales volume without downline.  They might exist, but they are likely more like sasquatch or UFOs.   People have heard about them, but there is no conclusive proof that they exist.

Back to sales, the challenge for Amway IBOs and prospects, is that they are selling generic in nature products (Amway stuff) for premium prices.  Selling little or un known stuff for high prices makes for a difficult challenge in sales.  Even premium products for premium prices can be challenging, but at least you get premium commissions.  Not so in Amway with the multi tiered layers of upline and downline.  And to make it worse, your spot in the hierarchy, including your upline, is all based on who signed up first.  Do you know how ridiculous this sounds in real life?  Especially when upline generally counsels downline on business and even marriage issues at times?

Let's say a 50 year old well established businessman with a good marriage joined and is somewhere downline of 20 something year olds.  That businessman is expected to take business and life advice from young kids because they signed up before him.   Yes, this is part of the Amway business, as taught by the LOSs such as WWDB, BWW, N21, etc.  Of course teachings might have variations and some groups might show a little more common sense, but the hierarchy exists in all Amway LOS, as far as I know.  For these and other reasons which we'll explore later, it makes Amway a very tough sell for anyone.

 

Why Critics Are Needed?

 I often wondered what the Amway opportunity would be without any critics. Many Amway supporters think that critics exist only to tear down others or to bash the Amway opportunity. As if my differing opinion would crush someone's big Amway dreams.  If they quit that easily, they likely would have found another reason to quit eventually.  I see it completely opposite. I believe that Amway critics are important for IBOs. Without any opposing voice, IBOs would mistakenly believe that they are in Amway utopia except that eventually, they would eventually notice that they are losing their shirts.

When I was an IBO, our upline (and many others apparently) claimed that nobody made any profits from the system (voicemail, books, tapes/cds/audios. functions). Without any opposing voices, this might still be happening. IBOs had no way of knowing back in 1996 or 1997 when I was an IBO. Upline just told bold lies and got away with it. To this day, none of these "awesome" leaders have even been held accountable for the lies. The diamonds simply ignored it. Sure, they now speak about tools profits, but there is little transparency about how you actually qualify for a share and how much you get when you qualify.

Critics have also pointed out that many IBOs are taught to ignore important facts such as their profits versus losses. Some IBOs are taught "fake it till you make it" or they are taught to "buy from yourself", both of which are ridiculous from a business standpoint. But without an opposing view, IBOs would never question upline. In fact, many IBOs are taught to avoid all negative. Don't watch the news or read the newspaper. In other words, upline wants you to be apathetic and only read and intake their Amway propaganda. This is why some people accuse Amway leaders of running a cult.

Think about this. Your body has pain sensors for a reason. What if you could turn off your pain sensors because you see it as a "negative". Do you think this would be good? Minor cuts or infections could become major health problems or other minor injuries untreated can become life threatening. You could touch a stove and burn your hands, but you wouldn't know it without some pain. For this reason, I believe that having opposing views are also important for IBOs to consider. Valid criticism is good for IBOs who are serious about building their businesses. To avoid negative just for the sake of avoiding negative is silly. Critics are important.