How to find out the best MLM company?
First of all, before choosing to join one or another network, you should consider a lot of factors to make a good decision. Unlike affiliate programs, where one can get paid referring new clients without much involvement, the MLM business model assumes an investment for membership fees and the maintenance. Thus, many companies while promoting a customer wellness and satisfaction, are in fact hunting to sell you their packages, regardless of your needs and the abilities to promote it further. Some people would always get lucky, but as these companies are growing like a grass in the Philippines, you should depend on luck and consider the following factors:
1. Popularity
Popularity is an important factor in the MLM, though often overrated. A network becomes popular while having a lot of members to promote it, and a typical wanderer would assume: the more members are in, the better must be the condition, as the people choose it among many. Now why is this assumption not necessarily true? Because not everyone actually tries to volunteer for every network available and compare the results. Most of the people join through the friends, or advertisement in the media into some network, and they feel attached and compelled to stay by their recruiters, instead of experimenting with other networks, and in some companies they are being forced to stay by the policies.
Determining the popularity of the network
Here in Philippines the networkers usually lean for word of mouth awareness and opinions. You could ask your friends whether they have about some particular network, assuming they pay some attention to this subject, but as it is the 2013 year right now – there are better ways to do it.
Alexa Traffic Rank
Alexa.com provides the traffic data for most of the known websites. If you enter into the search the site of your company, it will show the alexa rank. The lower the rank, the more traffic it receives and thus can be a good indicator of the entire company’s popularity. A very popular, worldwide MLM company could have a rank about 20 000, (e.g. Forever Living), while some other local Philippine networks could have about 2 000 000, (e.g. Dla Naturals). If it has alexa of more than 10 000 000, I would strongly recommend to avoid it, as it has a very few people and could be quite risky. Note, while comparing you’ll need to consider whether the company is localized or worldwide, for obviously the traffic rank will greatly vary. The disadvantage of this method is it may not always reflect the popularity specific to your country, as what is popular in US can be unknown in the Philippines.
Here are some global ranks for the top international MLM companies, also operating in Philippines (as of March 2013):
Alexa Global Traffic Ranks
3,631 Avon www.avon.com
9,324 Amway www.amway.com
15,644 Nu Skin www.nuskin.com
16,389 Forever Living www.foreverliving.com
29,011 Herbalife www.herbalife.com
35,226 4 Life www.4life.com
93,287 Laminine www.lifepharmglobal.com
155,419 AIM Global www.allianceinmotion.com
173,284 DXN www.dxn2u.com
190,098 Reliv www.reliv.com
How to use this data? Having a traffic rank below 200,000 is a great achievement for the company, meaning they have an established business which is unlikely to close or collapse, as there are probably millions of people supporting it. However, a popular company does not necessarily offers a better opportunity.
The Advantage of the Popularity
The advantage of the top popularity networks, is that they are more supportive and can supply a lot of business materials. When you research the popular companies, you could easily find the details on their business opportunity, products, as well as reviews and testimonies. This not only helps you to understand and communicate its advantages to your clients, but would also raise your credibility in their eyes. Many consumers are internet-savvy and would make their decisions based on the information they can find from the open sources. Another advantage is the support, the popular companies tend to have more comfortable offices with a lot of branches, and personnel to assist the distributors and conduct the seminars.
The Downside of the Popularity
The bottom line of the popularity is a competition, so the more people are active in the network – the more difficult it is to leverage it, as there are other independent distributors who become your competitors! Take for example the Avon, there are just too many distributors, and in order to stay in the business, they have to chase their clients with friendly offers, such as selling their products on credit and accepting the pay in installments, providing the free of charge deliveries, giving away the brochures, etc. That’s why I would not recommend chasing the most popular networks.
Determining the popularity of the network
Here in Philippines the networkers usually lean for word of mouth awareness and opinions. You could ask your friends whether they have about some particular network, assuming they pay some attention to this subject, but as it is the 2013 year right now – there are better ways to do it.
Alexa Traffic Rank
Alexa.com provides the traffic data for most of the known websites. If you enter into the search the site of your company, it will show the alexa rank. The lower the rank, the more traffic it receives and thus can be a good indicator of the entire company’s popularity. A very popular, worldwide MLM company could have a rank about 20 000, (e.g. Forever Living), while some other local Philippine networks could have about 2 000 000, (e.g. Dla Naturals). If it has alexa of more than 10 000 000, I would strongly recommend to avoid it, as it has a very few people and could be quite risky. Note, while comparing you’ll need to consider whether the company is localized or worldwide, for obviously the traffic rank will greatly vary. The disadvantage of this method is it may not always reflect the popularity specific to your country, as what is popular in US can be unknown in the Philippines.
Here are some global ranks for the top international MLM companies, also operating in Philippines (as of March 2013):
| Alexa Global Traffic Ranks | ||
| 3,631 | Avon | www.avon.com |
| 9,324 | Amway | www.amway.com |
| 15,644 | Nu Skin | www.nuskin.com |
| 16,389 | Forever Living | www.foreverliving.com |
| 29,011 | Herbalife | www.herbalife.com |
| 35,226 | 4 Life | www.4life.com |
| 93,287 | Laminine | www.lifepharmglobal.com |
| 155,419 | AIM Global | www.allianceinmotion.com |
| 173,284 | DXN | www.dxn2u.com |
| 190,098 | Reliv | www.reliv.com |
How to use this data? Having a traffic rank below 200,000 is a great achievement for the company, meaning they have an established business which is unlikely to close or collapse, as there are probably millions of people supporting it. However, a popular company does not necessarily offers a better opportunity.
2. The Momentum
While the popularity signifies the current standing of the company, it is even more important to analyze the current trends, to see whether it is still fresh and has the momentum to increase, or if it has already had its popularity and is now at its decline. Every MLM company has it’s period of rising and downfall, and thus it is important to join in the right moment.
Utilizing Google Trends
The best data regarding the trends comes from Google, the most popular search engine. This service allows to compare the search volumes for specific terms (in our case the names of the companies) and shows how they change over time. Unlike traffic ranks, it does not give you any exact numbers, but allows to compare up to 5 different entries among each other. The huge advantage here is that you can also choose to show the country-specific data, which in our case is Philippines.
Trends Comparison
*The above graphs show the Philippine MLM trends since June 2006 to this January 2013, you can click the graph for more details.
Trends Analysis
The data suggests that for most of these companies, the popularity almost does not change over time. What this mean is that they are already saturated, and have reached their maximum capacity, so while some new people are joining, the others are getting frustrated and leave the network. As such, it is unlikely that they’ll get a significant increase in the future, and are thus void of momentum. To promote such a company, you would need to be ready for hard work, and should not expect easy leads.
DXN, Forever Living and Nuskin show a decline in ratings over recent years, and would be a bad choice for these seeking the best mlm companies. The decline in trends means that the people are simply getting fed off with it or turn to competitors. On the other hand, Laminine shows a really huge increase, while also being the most fresh of them, and the graph looks somewhat impressive.
Freshness
In addition to trends, the freshness is the second component in determining the possibility for momentum. Basically the more fresh a company, the better it is for their distributors. Not only because joining ahead of others can result in a lot of downlines being assigned under you, there is another simple thing that is always working, which called curiosity. People simply want to try new networking companies and their products, provided they have decent conditions and a demand for their products (we shall discuss these factors later in details). On the other hand, the networks quickly stale over time, and look impressive no longer.
The people who make gain in the initial period serve as a good model for new distributors, and can further stimulate the growth, and yet it finally gets saturated, and works no longer. As the time passes, more and more people would be attaining membership, thus making it difficult to find and recruit new members. It often happens with the old companies, when you try to recruit someone, they would answer that they’re members already, or have a member in their family, and are not interested to continue. It is difficult to promote an older network, when you hear your friends have already abandoned it, thus greatly reducing your reach.
The Best Freshness Scenario
We have already concluded that the freshness is very important for multilevel networking. And yet, there is always a risk when dealing with fresh companies, as they could turn out to be unprofitable or manipulative, and could close for one or another reason. It is generally true, but there appears to be an exception to this rule, such as when an established company makes an overseas expansion. In that case, the company already has a lot of credibility, so there ain’t much risk. At the same time, you could become a pioneer and make some solid gain for getting ahead others.
Getting back to our graphs, one could easily spot the cases of overseas expansion, which are 4life, Reliv and Laminine respectively. They all came from US and are fairly recent in Philippines. Yet again, the Laminine has the best momentum, and it definitely worth some analysis.
Utilizing Google Trends
The best data regarding the trends comes from Google, the most popular search engine. This service allows to compare the search volumes for specific terms (in our case the names of the companies) and shows how they change over time. Unlike traffic ranks, it does not give you any exact numbers, but allows to compare up to 5 different entries among each other. The huge advantage here is that you can also choose to show the country-specific data, which in our case is Philippines.
Freshness
In addition to trends, the freshness is the second component in determining the possibility for momentum. Basically the more fresh a company, the better it is for their distributors. Not only because joining ahead of others can result in a lot of downlines being assigned under you, there is another simple thing that is always working, which called curiosity. People simply want to try new networking companies and their products, provided they have decent conditions and a demand for their products (we shall discuss these factors later in details). On the other hand, the networks quickly stale over time, and look impressive no longer.
The people who make gain in the initial period serve as a good model for new distributors, and can further stimulate the growth, and yet it finally gets saturated, and works no longer. As the time passes, more and more people would be attaining membership, thus making it difficult to find and recruit new members. It often happens with the old companies, when you try to recruit someone, they would answer that they’re members already, or have a member in their family, and are not interested to continue. It is difficult to promote an older network, when you hear your friends have already abandoned it, thus greatly reducing your reach.
The Best Freshness Scenario
We have already concluded that the freshness is very important for multilevel networking. And yet, there is always a risk when dealing with fresh companies, as they could turn out to be unprofitable or manipulative, and could close for one or another reason. It is generally true, but there appears to be an exception to this rule, such as when an established company makes an overseas expansion. In that case, the company already has a lot of credibility, so there ain’t much risk. At the same time, you could become a pioneer and make some solid gain for getting ahead others.
Getting back to our graphs, one could easily spot the cases of overseas expansion, which are 4life, Reliv and Laminine respectively. They all came from US and are fairly recent in Philippines. Yet again, the Laminine has the best momentum, and it definitely worth some analysis.
3. The Demand
Having said about popularity, the demand is another crucial factor that determines the success of an MLM company. The first thing you should consider is the competitiveness of the product, as a lot of competition would make it very difficult to persuade the consumer. Here are some checkpoints to help assessing it:
Assessing the competitiveness
| Bad | Good |
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Let us now draw some real examples from our top mlm list, in order to assess the competitiveness.
A. Avon specializes in cosmetics, and there are lots of similar products in the market, available both through mlm and over-the-counter at a much cheaper price. There is no innovation, as the industry has been already explored decades ago. The target market is mainly mid-age women, and though not useful to everyone there are still a lot of consumers. The brand is well known, yet as per satisfaction there is no clear advantage and nothing extraordinary when comparing to the similar over-the-counter products.
B. Amway offers wellness products, which are mainly nutritional supplements and multivitamins. All of them could be easily obtained through the pharmacies with no prescription required and at a fraction of cost. People more or less educated in medicine would never use this type of products. There is no innovation, as these vitamins have been discovered for almost a century ago, yet these supplements are potentially beneficial for all people, starting from little children end ending up with grown adults and elders. The brand is quite well known, and yet it does not seem to gain a lot of recognition in Philippines.
C. Nu Skin is all about skin-care products, while also providing nutritional supplements. All the products could be bought over the counter in malls and pharmacies, yet the price is overall cheaper than these of the Amway. The products are not unique and mainly targeted for women. The company is well known, but not in a good sense, as it received just too much complaints from all over the Philippine market. Just try to google “nuskin philippines” and see that about the half of results are talking trash, in a harsh language too. All companies have a number of bad reviews, but few could compare with Nu Skin on that part.
D. Forever Living is another old company that offers a great variety of wellness products, ranging from personal care and skin products to nutritional drinks, supplements and weight loss solutions. In terms of components, they utilize some of natural ingredients that are not commonly found in the Philippine market, such as aloe-vera, bee products and others. The products are fairly unique, and yet most of their natural components have been already utilized for centuries, so it’s hard to talk of any innovation. It also lack on promotion in our country, and although there have been many satisfied customers, right now it’s just slowly becoming a part of the history.
E. Herbalife is a wellness company that offers fitness, nutrition and personal care products. As usual, all these products can be bought over the counter, cheaper and probably better. The products are by no way unique, and some of them are just too trivial, for example, they have about a dozen of products that are basically lemon and vitamin C tablets, while the similar tablets could be bought ₱2.00 / peace in the pharmacy. Their personal care products are quite fine (though somewhat expensive), and as per fitness lineage, I would rather choose the body-building supplements, which are cheaper and more effective at the same time. The brand is well known and more or less neutral with the reviews, but with a lot of competition it’s unlikely that someone would stick with this brand.
F. 4 life is a bit different from the above, and provides a range of supplements targeting different conditions. They have supplements for brain support, immune system, cardiovascular, skin and much more – this variety, made ready for important condition is quite impressive. Their products and the ingredients are also unique, and are unlikely to be found in the market. They do have a lot of innovation and target their products rather well. However, the brand is fairly unknown in the Philippines, and there aren’t many reviews, meaning you would need to do a lot of persuasion. Overall the competitiveness is good, and it gives a good potential for this mlm company.
G. Laminine is a stem-cell enhancer supplement, that is capable or repairing the damaged cells, thus being good for almost all people at different ages and different conditions. They have only one product, which is quite unique and innovative, and could not be bought anywhere over the counter. They have a viral promotion and one of the most amazing testimonials on the web. Regarding the competition, there was another mlm company MannaTech, whose product also enhances stem-cells, but it didn’t gain much recognition. The product is a bit expensive comparing to other wellness solution, though 100 times cheaper than the stem-cell therapy.
H. Aim Global is another wellness company that has been for a while, with rather modest range of products. Their products are semi-unique, except only the fish oil supplement, and are unlikely to meet any analogues with similar ingredients over the counter, in addition offering a fair price among the competitors. However, as their supplements are mostly all-purpose and lack an extraordinariness, they would be facing a lot of competition from other wellness companies. The brand is moderately innovative and targets a great deal of the market, and generally receives good reviews.
I. DXN has been for a while in the Philippine market, providing natural supplement extracts as well as personal care products. The problem with all these extract supplements, is that there is too much competition. Only for spirulina, there are dozens of brands available in the Philippines both through mlm and over-the-counter, and despite the good reviews, or even the best acclaimed quality, people just keep going to competitors. The reviews are somewhat good, but it’s just not enough to win the competition. Though popular in the beginning, overall it has become fairly old, and the promotion has stopped long time ago.
J. Reliv provides a nutritional supplements for weight loss and general use, combined with multivitamins. Their supplements are packed in cans, and provide more net content than of the competitors. They are somewhat innovative, however their products aren’t well targeted, and would be useful only to some percent of the consumers. They hardly offer anything beyond than the typical nutritional supplements do, which could be bought over the counter. As usual with international companies, they received too little promotion in the Philippines, and have not collected any stunning reviews that would attract the consumers.
4. Marketing Plan
Introduction
We have discussed the demand, which basically concerns the consumers, and now we shall discuss the compensation or marketing plan, that concerns the distributors who are looking to gain by selling products. It is typical for the mlm model, that most of the promotion is done by the distributors, which in the end may shape the consumers’ demand (though in order to gain success it may need some nice push from the company at the start). Good marketing plan is what keep you satisfied with the company – and it is what helps to bring new recruits and make leads, hence everything is literally glued on the marketing plan.
As such, being the most important piece of the presentation, it is also often being the most obscure part of the business. However kind a particular company wouldn’t be, they simply cannot make rich every distributor who joins them, so they have to favor ones and disfavor the other ones. At the same time they want to make an illusion that their plan is the best. While some companies certainly have have the advantages, every marketing plan essentially has to determine the amount of risk and the effort you are to take. It is therefore, there is no cookie-cutter plan that would benefit everyone. Now let’s examine some of the variations:
Flashouts, Pairings & Leg-balance
Some marketing plans have pairing system, meaning that for every downline on the left side, you would need to have another downline on the right in order to gain the bonus. This potentially increases the risk two-folds, as it commonly happens, you could have 95 people on your right, only only 5 people on your left, thus gaining only as little as 5 pairing bonuses. At the same time, if you are lucky to get 50 people on your right, and 50 people on your left, you would gain 10 times as much. If you like the risk, you would enjoy doing pairings and balancing your legs, otherwise, non-pairing system could be less risky but also a little bit less profitable.
Flashouts imply that you would not only need to balance your legs sales volumes over time, but for each calendar month as well, and if you fail to balance it, you would gain nothing on that. This is definitely even more risky than the simple pairing system, however if you have thousands of balanced people, you could make an impressive gain at times, comparable to winning a jackpot. I would not recommend to rely on this type of gain, and make sure there are other viable means you could gain.
The Longevity
The best mlm plan would need to have a long-term consideration, that after bringing let’s say a dozen of people, you would continue to receive the gain, even though you stop the recruiting – and this is the whole idea of mlm. Some companies are prickly about it, and are trying to limit the amount you would keep receiving. If the plan is about the pairings, check the number of generations you would receive the pairing bonus for. If it says you receive the bonus for 5 generations, that allows for 2^5=32 persons, or 16 pairings, after which you would need to open another account. This is what I experienced with one of the companies last year. I have brought about a dozen of people into the network, and received some pairing bonuses, but within one year my gain did not improve, and is still only about 300-500 peso, while having the maintenance at around 4000 peso. Basically such a combination of a bad company with a bad marketing plan happens quite often, and it is for this reason a lot of networkers keep wandering and enter a lot of different companies.
On the other hand, the more generations are provided for the commissions, the more money you would receive over time as the new people are entering.
Entry and Maintenance
Finally, when examining the marketing plans, you should pay a lot of attention on the entry and maintenance fees. As a general rule, I would say that the entry cost for wellness mlm distributors of around 5000-6000 peso converts very well. When the entrance is higher, the people are very hesitant to join, as the people are interesting in gaining, not spending, and see for the lower entries. Once in another wellness company they have increased the entry fee from 6000 to 9000 peso, and suddenly no one wanted to join anymore, until they finally rolled it back. Anything lower than 3000 usually suggests of an ephemeral company, while even if it’s not, the distributors may not take it serious, and could leave as easily as they joined, as nothing is holding them.
The maintenance fee is somewhat straight-forward, and require a little explanation. All you need is to know the amount of points to maintain, and convert them to the cost of the products. Weigh carefully, whether you are able to sell an amount of goods monthly, or whether you would have to stock them. A big maintenance amount could make your business risky and unprofitable. On the other if the amount of maintenance is too low, the money could be distributing among the inactive members while disfavoring these work harder.
Conclusion
Marketing plans always looks good on the presentations, but not on the paper when it comes to the details. Keep in mind that this is just a part of equation, and no matter how good the marketing plan is, you should be ready to do some work.
Introduction
We have discussed the demand, which basically concerns the consumers, and now we shall discuss the compensation or marketing plan, that concerns the distributors who are looking to gain by selling products. It is typical for the mlm model, that most of the promotion is done by the distributors, which in the end may shape the consumers’ demand (though in order to gain success it may need some nice push from the company at the start). Good marketing plan is what keep you satisfied with the company – and it is what helps to bring new recruits and make leads, hence everything is literally glued on the marketing plan.
As such, being the most important piece of the presentation, it is also often being the most obscure part of the business. However kind a particular company wouldn’t be, they simply cannot make rich every distributor who joins them, so they have to favor ones and disfavor the other ones. At the same time they want to make an illusion that their plan is the best. While some companies certainly have have the advantages, every marketing plan essentially has to determine the amount of risk and the effort you are to take. It is therefore, there is no cookie-cutter plan that would benefit everyone. Now let’s examine some of the variations:
Flashouts, Pairings & Leg-balance
Some marketing plans have pairing system, meaning that for every downline on the left side, you would need to have another downline on the right in order to gain the bonus. This potentially increases the risk two-folds, as it commonly happens, you could have 95 people on your right, only only 5 people on your left, thus gaining only as little as 5 pairing bonuses. At the same time, if you are lucky to get 50 people on your right, and 50 people on your left, you would gain 10 times as much. If you like the risk, you would enjoy doing pairings and balancing your legs, otherwise, non-pairing system could be less risky but also a little bit less profitable.
Flashouts imply that you would not only need to balance your legs sales volumes over time, but for each calendar month as well, and if you fail to balance it, you would gain nothing on that. This is definitely even more risky than the simple pairing system, however if you have thousands of balanced people, you could make an impressive gain at times, comparable to winning a jackpot. I would not recommend to rely on this type of gain, and make sure there are other viable means you could gain.
The Longevity
The best mlm plan would need to have a long-term consideration, that after bringing let’s say a dozen of people, you would continue to receive the gain, even though you stop the recruiting – and this is the whole idea of mlm. Some companies are prickly about it, and are trying to limit the amount you would keep receiving. If the plan is about the pairings, check the number of generations you would receive the pairing bonus for. If it says you receive the bonus for 5 generations, that allows for 2^5=32 persons, or 16 pairings, after which you would need to open another account. This is what I experienced with one of the companies last year. I have brought about a dozen of people into the network, and received some pairing bonuses, but within one year my gain did not improve, and is still only about 300-500 peso, while having the maintenance at around 4000 peso. Basically such a combination of a bad company with a bad marketing plan happens quite often, and it is for this reason a lot of networkers keep wandering and enter a lot of different companies.
On the other hand, the more generations are provided for the commissions, the more money you would receive over time as the new people are entering.
Entry and Maintenance
Finally, when examining the marketing plans, you should pay a lot of attention on the entry and maintenance fees. As a general rule, I would say that the entry cost for wellness mlm distributors of around 5000-6000 peso converts very well. When the entrance is higher, the people are very hesitant to join, as the people are interesting in gaining, not spending, and see for the lower entries. Once in another wellness company they have increased the entry fee from 6000 to 9000 peso, and suddenly no one wanted to join anymore, until they finally rolled it back. Anything lower than 3000 usually suggests of an ephemeral company, while even if it’s not, the distributors may not take it serious, and could leave as easily as they joined, as nothing is holding them.
The maintenance fee is somewhat straight-forward, and require a little explanation. All you need is to know the amount of points to maintain, and convert them to the cost of the products. Weigh carefully, whether you are able to sell an amount of goods monthly, or whether you would have to stock them. A big maintenance amount could make your business risky and unprofitable. On the other if the amount of maintenance is too low, the money could be distributing among the inactive members while disfavoring these work harder.
Conclusion
Marketing plans always looks good on the presentations, but not on the paper when it comes to the details. Keep in mind that this is just a part of equation, and no matter how good the marketing plan is, you should be ready to do some work.





