I’m sure you have heard of Multi-Level-Marketing before, heck if you read Aridni just yesterday there was an article supporting it. Today’s article is not going to be quite as affirmative.

If I were to start up one of these companies, for the example we’ll call it “Todd’s super-cool MLM company” the first step I would take would be to find some product to sell. Okay how about we sell lemonade and lemonade accessories.

I’ll get my catalog all set up and good to go with all kinds of exotic lemons, juicers, squeezers, mixers, pitchers, and those big wooden spoons. Now it’s time to take TSCMC out to make some money.

I go around to some houses selling overpriced lemonade and find out one big thing. It’s only a matter of time before I discover that selling things is hard work and not very much fun.

My next step is to get an army of cronies to go door to door. I’ll sit at home watching movies while they fill the streets selling my lemonade and lemonade accessories. Now for every piece they sell we both make money.

But then they get tired of selling products so they each raise an army of cronies each to go sell the overpriced junk. Now we’ve got a bunch of people sitting in my living room with me watching movies.

Before long my house would be jam packed with people who love to watch movies. Each person would have an army of lemonade peddling thugs waiting to move into the house. It would be just a little too crowded for me, and it is growing at an alarming rate.

So I slip off into the den and make up some promotional materials. And for the low low price of $80, I will sell it to anyone who works with TSCMC and wants to learn how to sell more lemonade faster.

Then I have my higher-up cronies sell the pamphlets to the younger ones for a share of the profits. All this leads up to the higher-ups making more money with the things that are sold internally to the members. TSCMC begins focusing more and more on getting new resellers, not to sell lemonade products for them, but rather to be sold books titled “How to sell a boatload of Lemonade and make a pile of cash” and things like that.

Now I’m not saying that people don’t make money with these outrageous pyramid schemes, because the higher-ups stand to make a mint; however it’s from the pockets of its own employees.

Here are two more Aridni Articles about this type of thing.

They’ll take your pants
Network Marketing – A way to make your first million