Multi-level marketing or MLM for short is one of the fastest -rising star in business. It is easy to set up, fast to do and not very difficult to manage as long as you manage a tight ship and create a structure without the holes. These reasons, however, are also the ones that made multi-level marketing as a business tool notorious. People who are out to rob other people of their hard-earned money, used the business structure to create scams. I am sure you have heard of the pyramid scams. The models they used are similar to multi-level marketing except that they are not legitimate business with no legitimate products.
As a business tool, MLM is ingenious. Instead of creating stores and distributing through the usual channels, MLM makes use of ordinary people and their wide range of contacts. It actually takes advantage of the fact that communication now is so much better than before. This means that people you have not even seen in decades can easily be contacted. And the more contacts you have, the better for multi-level marketing because in essence, you will be using their contacts too.
To make you understand MLM much better, here is how it goes. A company with products recruits distributors that will help them sell their products to people. Usually what big companies do is look for big companies who can put their products in the market. The same concept is applied to multi-level marketing except that people act as distributors and not companies. It's the marriage of distributorship and the legendary Avon way of selling, direct to consumers. This actually gets the best of both worlds.
With this business tool, multi-level marketing companies companies people who can directly distribute their products to consumers. These people however do not just sell the products, they can also recruit people who can help them sell their products. Thus, increasing their total sales. When a lot of people are already part of one person, this is already considered as a group and group sales are often rewarded with responsibilities. In fact, the more people you have, the bigger sales you will naturally have. This is the principle of multilevel marketing.
The beauty of this business tool is the fact that products are sold directly to people and yet you have people under you to help you do it. To earn a commission, you do not need to actually sell the products yourself. You can recruit people to do it for you and then have them do the work. This is ideal for people who have a lot of contacts and network that they can use. Some people do not even have to meet in person to strike a business deal. This is especially true if the MLM company has offices in different states and countries.
One word of caution though when thinking of joining a company that engages in multi-level marketing is to see if they have legitimate products that they can actually sell. You should also see if the company is also a legitimate one. This means it needs to have some manufacturing plant and a main office and business structure to qualify as legitimate. This separates companies that uses it as a business tool and companies that are out to just scam people. Knowing the difference can make save you a lot of effort and of course hard-earned money.
