One of the things that many Amway IBOs mistakenly believe is that they will build their Amway business and then they will have the ability to "walk away" from the business while the income continues to flow in. I believe if there was such an incredible benefit such as lifelong residual income that could be achieved from Amway, I'm fairly certain that Amway would advertise this as a benefit of being an IBO. But Amway does not. It is very likely that your LOS such as WWDB or BWW or one of the others will promote this benefit while telling you that your best chance to achieve it is by subscribing to their "system".
One thing that goes unnoticed all too often is that there seems to be nobody who is actually retired and living off the efforts of having built a big Amway business once upon a time. Seems that even the crown ambassadors still have busy lifestyles running from function to function and participating in other business related activities. While many of these leaders may claim they love their downlines or some other bunk, it is my belief that these leaders keep working their Amway businesses for one reason only. That is they need to keep working in order to keep the income flowing in.The diamond lifestyle that is often portrayed may seem like a great goal or dream to achieve, but the fact of the matter is that a "diamond lifestyle" cannot be sustained on diamond income. The average diamond, according to Amway, earns about $150,000 a year (Amway now says 600k but that is for Q12 diamonds which is quite rare. Most diamonds are not Q12). While that may seem like a great amount of income, it's not nearly enough to sustain the kind of lifestyle portrayed by diamonds. Even if that income is supplemented by income from the sale of tools, you can't fly your family around the country first class to do all kinds of functions and still end up with much leftover to own fancy homes and cars.
If I deposited $1000 in the bank and never touch the money, the bank would pay me a certain amount of interest each year, guaranteed. That is residual income. In Amway, you can basically earn income in two ways. You can sell products for a profit, but there are problems with this. First off, Amway products in general are more expensive than local retailers. It is why you hear so many justifications about quality and concentration, because you are hard pressed to argue cost. Secondly, you are severely restricted from advertising, thus selling can be difficult. The other way to generate more income is to build a downline in hopes that the downline will help you to leverage your volume. But then your downline will have the same problem that you had in moving products. That being said, even if you achieve some level such as emerald or diamond, your business will immediately begin to fall apart once you stop working because attrition will take its toll. It is why there are hoards of "former" platinums. If platinums are not sustainable, then neither is any other level.
There are many many instances of diamonds quitting, resigning, or falling out of qualification. People come and go in this business every day. Do you really think you can bank on retirement and residual income under these circumstances? If you believe that, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you.
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There used to be a sentence that was used in recruiting in Amway: "There's money in width, but there's security in depth."
This meant that if you sold a lot of Amway products to many customers, and you had an IBO under you who did the same, you'd get a good cash return. But you'd have a secure and solid source of income if you developed your down-line in depth (the 6-4-2 plan or something like that).
The plain fact is that neither option guarantees you any "residual income" of a permanent sort. If you have a wide personal customer base, your income is dependent on keeping those customers happy to insure that they will continue to buy from you. And that will depend on three things: 1) the quality of your product, 2) the level of your prices, and 3) whether your customers stay in one place. All of these things are variable and uncertain, and the first two (quality and price of Amway stuff) are very uncertain right from the start. The third is also uncertain, because Americans move so much.
As for "security in depth," this depends crucially on your ability to recruit successfully, and your ability to keep your down-line happy and convinced that they are on the way to profitability. Those two things are very difficult to pull off today. Even if you've built a 6-4-2 structure, how do you keep it alive? How do you keep disappointed IBOs from dropping out? How do you persuade IBOs to keep on spending vast sums for meetings and functions and tools and CommuniKate?
As soon as you decide to "retire," your entire down-line will begin to collapse like a house of cards. Without your active presence, it will disintegrate. There is no "residual income" in Amway.
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