The pitch from upline might be like this; Do your like selling? No? Then Amway is perfect for you! Or, do you like selling? Yes? Then Amway is perfect for you! They cover all bases but in the end, it doesn't change the fact that Amway goods are hard to peddle because overall, they are not priced competitively with products sold at big retailers.
The buying from yourself concept makes you a customer and not a business owner. Buying from yourself doesn't generate your business a profit. Would you open a car dealership to buy a car? Now I am not suggesting that supporting your own business is a bad idea. What I am suggesting is if you are the primary or exclusive customer of your Amway business, then you aren't really running a business. You are simply a glorified customer. I believe some or many IBOs fall into this category because they are simply unable to move products to non IBOs. They might be taught by upline to pay themselves full retail and call the difference a "profit". But in the end, Amway makes a sale and your bank account has less money at the end of the month no matter how you back peddle to try and justify this nonsense.
What an Amway IBO is really doing is paying his upline's bonuses. Amway overcharges more than 30% of the cost of their product. They have to do this in order to be able to pay IBO bonuses. Since most IBOs are at 100 PV or less, the lion's share of the bonuses earned are channeled upline when a purchase is made. It is not a level playing field as some IBO leaders might suggest. Also, some of your uplines who don't even know you might benefit from your efforts. Now that's residual income right?
What compounds the situation and makes it worse is when an IBO pays for standing order or attends functions where some of these IBO leaders may teach this bad business practice. You as an IBO already overpay for products for which upline gets most of the bonus, but then the problem is made worse by IBOs paying to receive this bad advice via voicemail, audios, books and functions. When I was an IBO, I heard speakers talk about skipping rent or mortgage payments to attend more functions, or having your family skip a meal so you can buy standing orders. Buying from yourself is just another example of bad advice given from upline to downline. What makes it worse is that uplines profit by giving bad advice.
Are you buying from yourself almost exclusively? Can you think of any truly successful business where the owner is the main or possibly the only customer? I can't think of a single example.
The buying from yourself concept makes you a customer and not a business owner. Buying from yourself doesn't generate your business a profit. Would you open a car dealership to buy a car? Now I am not suggesting that supporting your own business is a bad idea. What I am suggesting is if you are the primary or exclusive customer of your Amway business, then you aren't really running a business. You are simply a glorified customer. I believe some or many IBOs fall into this category because they are simply unable to move products to non IBOs. They might be taught by upline to pay themselves full retail and call the difference a "profit". But in the end, Amway makes a sale and your bank account has less money at the end of the month no matter how you back peddle to try and justify this nonsense.
What an Amway IBO is really doing is paying his upline's bonuses. Amway overcharges more than 30% of the cost of their product. They have to do this in order to be able to pay IBO bonuses. Since most IBOs are at 100 PV or less, the lion's share of the bonuses earned are channeled upline when a purchase is made. It is not a level playing field as some IBO leaders might suggest. Also, some of your uplines who don't even know you might benefit from your efforts. Now that's residual income right?
What compounds the situation and makes it worse is when an IBO pays for standing order or attends functions where some of these IBO leaders may teach this bad business practice. You as an IBO already overpay for products for which upline gets most of the bonus, but then the problem is made worse by IBOs paying to receive this bad advice via voicemail, audios, books and functions. When I was an IBO, I heard speakers talk about skipping rent or mortgage payments to attend more functions, or having your family skip a meal so you can buy standing orders. Buying from yourself is just another example of bad advice given from upline to downline. What makes it worse is that uplines profit by giving bad advice.
Are you buying from yourself almost exclusively? Can you think of any truly successful business where the owner is the main or possibly the only customer? I can't think of a single example.
The "Buy From Your Own Store" baloney actually throws a strong light on the real business structure of Amway (and all other MLM scams).
ReplyDeleteIn a genuine retail business, the engine that drives profits is consumer demand, and consumer loyalty. The people who love Coca-Cola and demand it regularly are what keeps that company rich, and in business. The customer base is self-sustaining, meaning that you do not have to keep on hounding and pressuring your customers to buy. Sure, Coca-Cola advertises, but the ads are to spread the word about their product and gain new customers. They certainly don't need to produce advertisements to keep their happy and self-sustaining customer base buying Coke.
In Amway, the structure of the business exists solely to hide (and make up for) the lack of serious retail demand for Amway products. If Amway tried to compete in a real-world setting, selling its goods against competitive products in a store, they'd be blasted off the shelves in a month! The plain fact is this: Nobody really wants the stuff. This is proven by the absence of consumer loyalty -- when someone quits Amway, he certainly doesn't keep on buying Amway products.
So the notion of buying from your own store (an asinine idea, but it sounds catchy and cute) is really just a way to distract IBOs from the fact that Amway products are mostly unsellable, and will have to be consumed by the IBO himself. Since this doesn't bring in any profit for him, the IBO has to be bamboozled with bullshit about how he is "an independent business owner" (an owner of what, you might ask), and how he is "helping others" (is that a goal of a business?)
The IBO sees eventually that all his money is going to up-line, and no real income from sales is coming in for him. So he does one of two things: First choice: he quits the Amway racket altogether (a very smart move.) Second choice: he tries to build up his own down-line by recruiting new IBOs who are stupid enough to believe that they are "independent business owners" and that they are "helping others." And he hopes it will be a long while before they catch on that they are being robbed by him.
Do some of the people who make this second choice succeed? Yes, of course. But they are a tiny minority (less than one percent) of all the IBOs in Amway. And they are chained, for the rest of their lives, to keeping their Amway down-line alive by replacing dropouts, showing the Plan, and convincing discouraged members that "success is just around the corner."
This was what opened my eyes about Amway so many years ago. When my sponsor said "The key to Amway is not selling the products -- the key to Amway is selling the Plan", I knew that the entire thing was a fraud.