If you are anything like me, when you first started looking into work-at-home opportunities, you may have been a little confused by some of the opportunities that you saw advertised online and elsewhere. In particular, ads for work-at-home opportunities that mentioned MLM had me scratching my head. Since I did not know anything about MLM, I passed over all of the ads that mentioned it.
Today, I decided to educate myself a little about MLM so that others who are looking to work from home can learn what it is if they don’t know about it already. MLM stands for “multilevel marketing”, and it is a form of selling where a seller makes money by selling products to customers as well as by getting other people to become sellers. If the incentives for signing up new sales representatives are greater than the incentives for actually selling the products, you should be skeptical of that particular business opportunity because the reality is that it’s difficult to recruit new sales representatives and therefore difficult to make very much money from that particular business opportunity. Also, be cautious of companies that require you to make a certain minimum monthly purchase in order to be able to receive commission, as this is a “red flag” that the “business opportunity” that you are looking at is a scam. Actually, MLM has often been compared to illegal pyramid schemes, but there are people that maintain that there are legitimate MLM opportunities out there.
Since I do not know enough about MLM to know whether this is true or not, I woulld make the same recommendation about MLM business opportunities that I would for any other business opportunity – research it carefully before making a decision about whether or not it is right for you. Some things to consider when making your decision include the company’s track record as well as how easy or difficult it is for you to find out about the company’s track record, the products themselves, how you are treated when you ask questions about the company, what percentage of your income will come from actual sales versus recruiting other sales representatives, and whether there have been complaints filed against the company through the Better Business Bureau.