Interested in Amway opportunities and not sure if it’s right for you or not? 

I know how it feels like, I’ve been there. The overwhelming income opportunity presented to you and the people around you who kept saying it’s not good at all. OR maybe… The other way around – you don’t really think you should join but you need to find out more about Amway, because some people said it’s good. 

Confused? I’m glad you’re here because I want to answer the questions you probably have right now. 

Is Amway A Scam? Is Amway A Pyramid Scheme? Is MLM a good home-based business?

Will this worth your time and investment? Will you ever earn a full-time income so you can quit your day job, stay at home, and work anytime you want? 

Or probably… you basically want to know how Amway really works and the compensation plan whether it’s possible or not.

So, let’s get started… 

Table of Content

What Is Amway?

 Amway is one of the popular MLM businesses that is available worldwide today. 

Amway was founded back in 1959 by DeVos and Van Andel and the business has been generating profit over the years. In fact, their annual revenue report for 2018 is at $8.8 million.

Over the years, Amway has on the other hand also faced some of legal issues such as about their business practice and tax fraud case.

In 1979, after four years of litigation, Amway won a landmark case concerning the legality of MLMs as Federal Trade Commission (FTC) ruled that Amway was a legitimate business and could continue to operate. The main reason as because distributors can earn income on direct selling in addition to their downline. 

This Amway case became the birth of numerous MLMs with similar loopholes.

So, can you earn full-time income with direct selling that made Amway legally qualified as a legit MLM? I doubt it. see below.

How much can you really earn? Not much. 

Take a look at Amway Disclaimer for the “Active” Independent Business Owners (IBO): 

General Info About Amway

Product Names

• Artistry
• Body Works
• Glister
• LOC
• Nutrilite
• Satinique
• XS

Sports Endorsements

• Orlando Magic (DeVos owns the franchise)
• San Jose Earthquakes
• Los Angeles Sol
• Detroit Red Wings

How To Join The Amway?

To become an Independent Business Owner with Amway you need to buy a startup Kit. 

You can choose between the Starter Kit For $62 or the Product Starter Kit for $99. 

 Go to their website and choose the country where it’s available near you – if it’s available in your country it will normally redirect you automatically. Alternatively, you know know someone who works with Amway or an IBO, approach them and say you’re interested to join, and they will more than happy to help you out with the application process. 

Can You Earn A Full-Time Income With Amway?

Just like any other MLMs, generating a full-time income with Amway is quite complex and far to be easy. As a matter of fact, active IBOs are only earning an average of $200 a month or $2,400 a year. That’s not even enough to pay bills. 

Let’s say you became a distributor with Amway. This is what you “could” be earning. 

Below is just one of the bonus plans you can get when you recruit people on your downline. 

Aside from performance bonus (shown above), you can also get the following bonus as your climb up the MLM stairs:

1. 25% Bonus (performance)
2. Silver Producer
3. Gold Producer
4. Platinum
5. Founders Platinum
6. Ruby
7. Founders Ruby
8. Sapphire
9. Founders Sapphire
10. Emerald
11. Founders emerald
12. Diamond
13. Founders diamond
14. Executive diamond
15. Founders executive diamond
16. Double diamond
17. Founders double diamond
18. Triple diamond
19. Founders triple diamond
20. Crown
21. Founders crown
22. Crown ambassador
23. founders crown ambassador
24. Global Award Recognition. 

 This is the longest list of bonuses I ever seen so far. Amway is giving away monthly and yearly bonuses according to IBOs performance. 

The saddest this is, even though Amway has an enormous and generous bonus packages, active IBOs are only earning an average of $200 a month according to Amway’s Income Disclosure Statement.

Why it’s not easy to earn a full-time income with MLM businesses?

So, let say your desired full-time income is equivalent to a decent $5,000 a month. If you are a distributor that earns 25% of your personal sales, then you need to sell $20,000 worth of products.

The main challenge in selling the products is that they are relatively expensive on the retail market compared to the products outside MLMs – and people who buy these products are mostly those who patronage the products itself. And you bet they’re not that many.

Another thing is, they’re a lot of distributors of the same MLM company everywhere. Yes, even in your own town. So, the competition is high because the other distributors are not on your team when you just got started. 

What’s your last option? You need to RECRUIT new members/distributors who will face the same problems and then quit after a couple of weeks or months max.

What will happen to your business then? D.E.A.D.

Is Amway A Pyramid Scheme?

This is one of the biggest questions that people have when they hear about Amway and it’s business practice. 

The good news is – no, it’s no a not a pyramid scheme and it’s legit. In fact, Amway won the legality of MLM business as ruled by the FTC back in 1979. 

The bad news is – people still think it is a pyramid scheme and scam. Unfortunately, it has this some signs of being one. That’s why they were sued on the first place. 

 Since the distributors can earn money through direct selling, it qualifies Amway to be a legit MLM business. But unfortunately, you can not earn a full-time income easily just through direct selling because of the saturated market.

Therefore, the people who join Amway or any other MLM business end up focusing on RECRUITING because that’s where the money is in the end (which is the main element of a pyramid scheme).

And those who do the direct selling stops because they realize soon enough that they just a waste of time since their goal was to earn a consistent full-time income.

That’s almost impossible with the direct selling alone because there are normally a lot of distributors in same area and the retail price of the products are too expensive for the non-members.

Take a look at this illustration:

This is how MLM exactly works. 

The reason why people are focusing on building their down line in their team (recruiting new members) is that being on top is where the money at – they make much more money from their down line members provided that the new recruits will do the same (recruiting) plus a little selling. 

So, the further down you are in the pyramid, the more difficult it is to make money because commissions are always flowing upwards and most of the profit is stuck on the top. 

So, the probability to earn money by joining an MLM business is very low. 

How low? 

Personal Experience With MLM Businesses

I was hard headed, even though my father said to stay away MLM businesses, I thought I could probably that I could do it anyway. If you’ve read my bio, you’d probably remember that I tried at least 3 MLM businesses for many years. 

Probably I thought it was that it was as easy as they presented it to me or maybe because I thought it’s a quick fix business. 

I thought – all I had to do was to recruit 2 people – one on my right and one on my left side – and the business would take care of itself. I thought it was that passive! And that’s far from the reality.

My last journey with an MLM business was actually a “nicest one” – great products and a good company. But no matter how great the products were and how active I was – I didn’t make a fortune.

I was recruited by my brother and a lot of my family members became members too. I recruited my friends too – some of them joined and some of them became aloof. 

But you know what’s the BIG problem was?! As the team became bigger, it became the communication became more difficult. The further the downlines were, the more difficult it was to be connected.  Which means, the recruits of my recruits’ recruits were no longer connected to me. So, once they stopped working, the business died.

Why? it’s because it was actually easier (although very difficult) to convince people to join an MLM business, than to convince them to stand up and talk about the business. 

Most of the people who join MLM do actually expect their uplines to do all the sales work. Little they realize that this mindset is actually the one killing the team – the idle members.

MLMs are not a quick rich scheme – it’s a real business that requires an enormous effort of selling tasks and team building, just to name the few.

BUT honestly, you’d be better off if you build your OWN business. 

Only 1% Make Money With MLM Business 

So, why are there only a few people who make real money with MLM? Because it’s designed that way – Only people on the top get rewarded and the people at the bottom lose money.

Here’s another static to digest on: Of the people that do make money, the average YEARLY salary is only $2400. That’s only $200 a month or around $17 a day. And Amway is not exempted at all – this is proven to be true through their income disclaimer statement.

Furthermore, if you have read the income disclosure statement of Amway, you probably have noticed that out of 300,000 active IBOs during the 2010 calendar year, only 0.25% achieved Platinum status, 0.08% achieved Founders Emerald, and 0.02% achieved Founders Diamond or higher.

That success rate is not even 1%. Which means more than 99% will never reach a higher level in the bonus ladder. 

Find out how I learned to earn up to $1,174.09 a day with my online business. 

It’s FREE to try it for 7 days (No credit card required)

Pros And Cons Of Amway

PROS:

• Legit
• Long history of existence
• Low Investment
• A wide selection of products
• High-quality products
• Open in many countries worldwide

 CONS:

• Saturated market
• MLM has a very low success rate (1%)
• MLMs are commonly and mistakenly thought as pyramid schemes and scams
• Needs a lot of time and effort in selling and team building
• Focus on recruitment – including families and friends

What Do Employees Say About Amway?

You can find a lot of reviews about Amway. In fact, even the current and former employees reviews can be found on the internet (Glassdoor rating at 3.6) – both positives and negatives.

Take a look at the pictures below – take special notice of their positions.

There’s literally a long list of negative reviews of Amway’s own people. You can see more here.

Here’s A Better Way To Make Money

I honestly hope that by now I’ve talked you out of joining Amway. Amway and its products are good. Unfortunately, MLM is such a broken money-making system and extremely hard to succeed with.

Talking about my experience with at least 3 different MLM businesses over the years, I know it’s not easy especially if you don’t like product demonstration tasks, direct selling, business presentation and bothering your families and friends over and over again.

If you’re a person like me who prefers a more silent work atmosphere and can work anywhere and anytime, then you should check out Wealthy Affiliate if you still want to have an home-based and online business. 

Wealthy Affiliate is the best place to learn how money-making online works and it has taught me how to earn up to $1174.09 a day. 

It’s completely free to try too! If you want to learn more, click below: