This video is from the new nutrilitedoublex.com website and is apparently appearing on US television, though I’ve been unable to locate a screening schedule. It, obviously enough, promotes Double X and appears to be the second product focussed ad, following that for Nutrilite Brainiums DHA.
IBOs in various forums on the internet are reporting that the Quixtar/Amway Global television advertisements have been having a noticeable effect both on IBO pride and confidence as well as a positive public reception. TV advertisements are not a new innovation for Amway. There used to be spots in the US in “amway” days and other markets have also been taking advantage of the medium. Here’s a fun ad for Glister from Amway Thailand –
Post a comment below or Discuss this post on Amway Talk
ibofightback did a great job in responding, but I’d like to chime in as well to Syn Holliday.
Here’s your estimate… 🙂
Okay, the average income of an active IBO who does as he is instructed by his upline to:
–Contact 10 strangers per day 3-5 days a week as the first step in the process of finding new customers and/or business owners.
–Call all of these 10 names and numbers to set up appointments to show the plan, overview, or pitch a product.
–Follow up with at least 2 times those that don’t set an appt with you.
–These actions should culminate in 3-5 appointments per week and 1-2 IBOs per month. It should also yield 100+ PV in volume outside of personal usage. This will yield a bonus. This volume will be a mix of new IBO volume and some retail volume… so some retail profit on top of your bonus.
–Counsel weekly with upline
–Use your own products where it makes sense to do so, especially the product line you plan to focus your retailing energies so that you are familiar with it.
–Attend the weekly Open Meeting to support your team as they bring guests. You would want people to do the same for you.
–Listen to tapes daily (borrow them from upline for FREE if needed).
–Read at least 15 minutes a day (use the library or borrow from upline for FREE if needed).
–As you add more IBOs the money will climb.
Unless you can see your sister-in-law’s call log on her phone, you can only take her word that she is being consistent with calling enough people to set enough appointments to build a successful Amway business. Unless you can see her planner, you cannot prove that she is going on 3-5 appointments per week. How do you know for a fact she is meeting 10 people a day? That she reads 15 minutes a day?
The answer is because I estimate only about 10% of IBOs that reguraly attend an open meeting are corely commited like this and only a small fraction of those stay committed long enough and consistent enough to get any real results from their efforts of building a downline.
It takes consistent commitment over a 2-5 year period. Consistent means every week, not some weeks, not most weeks… but EVERY week for a 2-5 year period.
Building a business part-time is not easy. It is very easy to treat it like going to the gym, or NOT going if you don’t feel like it that day.
Most people at the meetings that are upbeat aren’t really building it, because building it is hard. It means you can’t be afraid of meeting people. It means you can’t be scared of “no”.
So you’re saying uplines don’t make any money from the sale of support tools and function tickets?
No, to the contrary. I never thought that was an issue. Why people would be surprised that someone selling you something is making money on it is beyond me.
Still, what I’m saying here is that – contrary to the internet and lawsuit rumour mill – for the vast majority of Diamonds and above, it’s a secondary income, not the major one.
No surprise in selling a product. The surprise is in your comment (which sparked my question):
“Recruit ten thousand people into Amway, none of whom buy, sell or use the products how much do you make? Zero. Not a cent.”
How does that work, if you make money off the recruitment and motivation tools?
There is much more emphasis on pushing the tools than on the actual products. Even Quixstar members I know won’t deny that after I push the issue long enough.
Syn, you *don’t* make money off the recruitment. Now if you recruit somebody and sell them something then you and/or upline might make some money, but the point is in a pyramid you make money without selling them anything. Amway is not a pyramid. Full stop.
Most new IBOs would for example buy some Amway products with registration. They’re getting something for their money (and at a discount). So they’re getting value for money and their upline may make a percentage on the sale of that product.
Most new IBOs do not initially buy any business support materials (eg tools), but if they do, then, again – surprise! – just as you would expect (and are informed of by Amway, multiple times) someone may make a percentage on the sale of that product or service.
Regarding “emphasis”, I think that varies quite a lot between different groups, however it’s my experience shows that “pushing the tools” leads to increases in sales of Amway products (including retail sales to non-Amway members). Pushing Amway products alone might result in a sale of an Amway product alone to that one person I “pushed” to. Encouraging them and motivating them to sell the products to others might result in the sale of Amway product to millions of people!
Having said that, both aspects are necessary and it’s clear that in the past (and probably the present to less extent) some groups certainly didn’t undertake enough product focus and training. This was abundantly clear when Amway kicked out TEAM a few years back and various TEAM bloggers made it obvious they actually had little to no clue about the features and benefits of Amway’s products compared to the competition.
That’s clearly not smart business either.
Syn, the fact you’re referring to Quixstar, when the company was Quixtar, and it doesn’t even exist in that name anymore, tells me you really don’t know that much about the company. On a positive note I suppose you are here learning 🙂
I am trying to learn. I’m not debating with any absolute judgment in my mind.
What made me suspicious years ago was that my brother and his wife took my wife and I out to dinner and offered involvement in Quixtar. My wife told them it sounded like Amway, to which they told us that it had nothing to do with Amway. Later on, my wife looked up their website and in small print down at the bottom – Amway. We told my brother about it but he still insisted it wasn’t Amway. The next time we saw them, he did say they made a mistake and that it was associated with Amway.
My agreement (as it is with any of my friends who offer me a part in a scheme) was that if they could show me a profit worth notice, I would sincerely be interested. It’s many years later now and I have seen nothing, and in fact she is still spending more than she receives. She majored in marketing, is very friendly and outgoing, and is still hyped on the Amway system. I’m still not sold on it.
Well Quixtar wasn’t Amway. They actually ran as two separate companies in the US for several years. After virtually everyone in Amway North America transferred to Quixtar though, it was decided to close Amway North America. Over the years Amway in the rest of the world evolved to be much the same as Quixtar, and a few years back it was decided to merge Quixtar back in to the Amway fold. Still, anyone claiming there was no connection with Amway was being misinformed or disingenuous to say the least. The Amway system is a great system, but like anything else it’s hard to do it on top of everything else in your life, and, IMO, extremely difficult to maintain the consistency needed over time to develop a significant income. This same problem exists in starting any business part-time. In network marketing the fact you have little financial risk makes it even easier to say “I’ll start next week”. My experience is that when I’ve done what has been recommended to me, I’ve gotten the result predicted (yes, including profit). When I haven’t done it, I haven’t gotten the results. It’s also my experience (including some unofficial surveys, and the research I’ve done while running sites like this one) that hardly anyone does the recommended things for the recommended time to get significant results. I can virtually guarantee that your brother and his wife (?) aren’t doing what they know they need to do to succeed. That doesn’t mean spending money on things like seminars etc is a bad thing. I’ve attended many amway-related seminars over the years despite consciously having decided I wans’t building an Amway business at that time. Why? Because I enjoy them and find them of value, both personally and in terms of the positive influence they have on my other entrepreneurial ventures.
The focus of a pyramid scheme is to recruit more people into the group, rather than on retail sales. However, I can reasonably assume Amway is not an illegal pyramid scheme (otherwise it would be shut down).
What happened to the Quixtar name?
Oh, and their natural energy drinks are awesome!
The Quixtar name I presume is still owned by Amway/Alticor. The domain name points to amway.com.
Well, my sister-in-law was full-time devoted to it. Though one can simply sell the products, it seems the “hope” they’re all after, the big success, based on what she talks about, IS focused on recruiting more people. In fact, that’s what she devotes the most time to. And the motivational material and events, which are highly encourage and cost money, are aimed at motivating others to join the group.
Who do you think makes the most money, the salesperson selling a product, or the person who owns a store or wholesaler that engages many people selling the product? If you want to build a business, rather than simply build a “temporary” sales income, then clearly you’d want to look at building a team to share the workload (and eventually take over as much of your work as possibile). That’s one of the attractions of building any business. You have to remember also that “recruiting people” is “selling the products”. As mentioned, many “recruits” simply become wholesale price customers. Others you show the business to you can “fall-back” to customers if they’re not interested in the business. Show the business and you can be killing two birds with one stone. Having said that, I and others (including at least one Diamond publicly) have been critical of the lack of teaching in how to actually do that effectively, and then how to properly maintain these people as customers. That area seems to be improving fortunately.
One note though – the general advice I’ve received from my upline is that trying to build “full-time” out of the blocks is actually more difficult than part-time, especially if you’re focused on recruiting over pure customer sales. Why? Most prospects can give the quite legitimately perceived objection, based on their experience with you, that “It’s OK for you, you’re doing this full-time. It wouldn’t work for me as I have a job on no time”
I’ve read numerous times that less than one percent of Amway members clear a true profit. What is the real percentage?
Difficult to say. First you need to exclude all the people who aren’t even trying to make a profit – many join just for the wholesale pricing, though Amway’s put in incentives to stop that in some markets. Then you need to look at income – expenses. Amway has no record of people’s expenses, and in most cases has no record of retail profit margin income. All they have is the bonus payouts. The “less than one percent” claim is based on bogus statistical analyses.
Stop writing. You dont know what you are writing about. Un informed skeptic.
Sure, they can estimate it. Bonus payouts versus the take in for instructional and motivational tools and event fees.
I view my sister-in-law as at least an average IBO. Like I said, she majored in marketing, she’s motivated (tons of energy), friendly, and after years of being part of Amway still hasn’t abandoned hope.
As Bridgett pointed out, how the heck is Amway supposed to know what I’m buying from independent third party companies? And what about other expenses like petrol, babysitters, demo products etc? These things will all differ dramatically from person to person.
And it wouldn’t be too difficult to exclude those who are not in it for profit. They would be the ones who do not buy any of the motivational products and attend events.
Actually, there are a fair number of Amway IBOs/Distributors who are “in it for profit” and who do not buy any motivational products or participate in the events.
In addition, because these motivational products are sold by third-party companies, separate from the Amway Corporation, Amway would have no way of knowing who is purchasing what.
Just like if I buy a book from a local bookstore, which will help me with my Amway Business, like a book on leadership or people skills or self-confidence, Amway has no way to track that.
But it would be great to see, even an estimate method that would be favorable to Amway, such as taking the total commissions paid out less total taken in for tools (favorable in that it would not take into account amounts spent on things like gasoline or third-party tools). If, as the rumor about 99% losing money, is true, then even the estimate I mentioned would show a loss. A common criticism seems to be that Amway isn’t able to give estimates, on an IBO level, based on actual data. All I hear is “Amway is a so-and-so billion dollar company,” but I never hear any kind of average of what a typical motivated individual can make. I’ve known personally people who have been involved in Amway, some very upbeat motivated people, who have nothing to show for it, and nearly all are no longer involved. If even on a personal level, people can witness friends or family prospering from the system, even one person, it would provide some credibility to the rational-minded people. But from what I witness, it’s the type who are gullible to getting drunk on hope who get involved with Amway. As long as there is a good supply of them, those few who sit at the top of Amway will prosper. I suppose that’s why people compare it with religion, not that Amway is a religion, but it sells dreams based on hope and faith, without having to provide any kind of reasonable evidence.
Syn, you are asking the impossible and being critical for not getting it. Having said that, income is based on results, and Amway does give you the formula to work out exactly what income you will be for all of the “lower” levels of achievement, and gives averages for many of the higher levels, as well as the percentage of people who reach those levels. Amway IBOs also *encourage* you to come and meet people “prospering from the system” – not just one, but many. Ask you’re sister-in-law, I’m sure she’d be more than happy to introduce you to some. The information and possibility is there, don’t complain you don’t have it if you’re rejecting the offer to get it.
As far as the hope it sells to people (their conferences remind me of televangelists-led tent revivalism), I think it’s a bit unethical. However, I do like their Double X product. My brother and his wife are involved in Amway’s Quixtar and they gave me the 31-day supply set as a gift. It’s the only vitamin supplement I’ve tried yet where I can actually feel a difference, after just a few days of starting on them.
Glad you find the Double X beneficial, I’ve had much the same experience. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the majority of Amway related conferences are not run by Amway, but by third party companies. Some of those do indeed have a televangelist feel. Not my cup of tea either, but fortunately the group I’m with doesn’t do this. Having said that – how on earth can offering “hope” be considered unethical?
Offering hope is fine. Selling hope is another thing. If the “hope” it sells is based on ethical practices, then I would consider it moral. However, Amway sells a pyramid scheme, because the big success (the big “hope”) is based on selling material that instruct how to sell the program itself. The big money does not come from sales of the products. The sales of the products, irrelevant of how great they are, appear to be used as a front to legitimize the business, make it easier to sell to newcomers, by diverting attention off the “pyramid” aspect Amway is primarily based on (and its image as a pyramid). I’m guessing it’s also used as a legal loophole to legally continue the scheme. Also, they divert attention away from the “Amway” name to a new name (Quixtar).
Syn,
Your comment is off-base in a number of areas. First of all, by definition, in a pyramid scheme you make money by recruiting other people. To keep making money you (or your downline) need to keep recruiting people. That’s simply not the case with Amway, where your income is based on the sale of products to consumers. Recruit ten thousand people into Amway, none of whom buy, sell or use the products how much do you make? Zero. Not a cent.
Secondly, virtually all of Amway’s $8.4 billion in 2009 sales came from the sale of these products (there was also some from other concerns, such as the Amway Grand Hotel). $8.4 billion is “big money” in anyone’s terms. A third of that money is paid back to the field who helped generate the sales – again, big money in anyone’s language. In addition there’s another 20-30% or so available in retail margin for those reselling the products. This is big business, much bigger then most people comprehend. There are people earning 8 figure incomes purely from the sale of Amway products. It’s big money Syn.
Thirdly, yes some people do make money selling “business support materials” (BSM), in some cases significant amounts. Entrepreneurs saw a market need for certain products and services, and they accessed it. Some people even make more from this than they do from their original Amway businesses, primarily because they marketed their materials and expertise to groups outside of their own Amway businesses – ie they sold BSM to a bigger market than they sold Amway products to. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this. But yes – just like in pretty much any other industry – there are people who operated with less than the best integrity and tried to take advantage of people. People have done it with their Amway businesses, and they have done it with BSM businesses.
The idea though that the 8.4billion Amway business is just a cover for these other, 3rd party, independent companies is ridiculous and a myth.
Great Answer IBOFightBack… I hope you are still in business and doing well. I am new IBO and felt great reading your replies that shows the truth about the business.
Do you even know what a pyramid is>? by commisioner definition it is paid for recruiting others, amway does not do, a legal pyramid is social security, steal from those working for one entity (gov) to spend it all and promise money to people later.. by your def apyramid is any business, ceo at top makes most, then fe admin below that, next level few more supervisors last level all grunt work by non professionals, buy the lies or see the truth mlm is legit if done like amway according to federal court cases in late 70’s they r gold standard for mlm all others have fallen short
The big money made by those higher on the pyramid is not from sales of the products, but from sales of the instructional and motivational material on the system itself, on how to recruit others into the scheme. In other words, it’s simply funneling money up to the top without providing any real product or service. THAT fits the description of a pyramid scheme.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_scheme
Most IBOs operate at a loss. The scheme depends on this, in order for those toward the top to become richer. This would be ethical if the loss (money given up) by those lower in the pyramid actually received a legitimate and honest product or service.
The instructional and motivational material is aimed at learning how to motivate others to join in at the bottom and operate at a loss, eventually working their way higher to the point that they begin to earn a profit, profit made from selling the instructional and motivational material to get others to join in at the bottom and operate at a loss.
As per my last response, the definition of a pyramid scheme is getting paid to recruit people. “Funneling money” without providing any real product or service may be another type of scam, but it’s not a pyramid scheme. Amway however provides some of the best products in return for money – indeed they’ve won awards around the world. The claim made that “most IBOs operate at a loss” is based on the assumption that most IBOs are actively trying to make money. The reality is that most IBOs don’t do anything at all. Half who join every year don’t even place an order for products after registering. You can argue this means they made a loss (ie joining fee), and a negative, but it’s a little disingenuous. One could just as easily argue it’s a sign of the fact it’s a low cost opportunity, so people can give it a try and decide not to do it. Not forgetting they can get their money back just by asking. Still, there’s no doubt there’s been a problem with people blinding recruiting others without actually trying to get them started properly, learning about the products and why they’re good, etc etc. From a “scam” perspective all you need to know is that Amway, and distributors, make very little money from these folk that sign up and do nothing. Indeed, in my Amway business if someone signs up and does nothing it generally costs me money.
Now, you claim that “the scheme depends” on IBOs operating at a loss, but that’s patently untrue. Even a cursory understanding of the business model shows that if everyone is making money, then everyone – including those at the top – would make more money. It’s in everyone’s best interest that everyone is profitable and promoting the products and opportunity. Mind you, humans being the way we are, not everyone operates in their own best interests!
I’m curious though where you get this idea that people are paying money for some “illegitimate” product or service? The Amway products are superb. The “motivational” products are entirely optional, and indeed the vast majority of people who join Amway don’t spend a cent on them. Those who do buy them, like myself, presumable find some value in them. I certainly do, that’s why I buy them. The fact that these materials and seminars etc are significantly cheaper than similar materials available outside the Amway world is a bonus.
I totally agree. If a IBO sign up and don’t do anything, you don’t get any benefit from that signup. It is not a pyramid and if you want to talk about pyramid, isn’t corporate America is a pyramid? Doesn’t Accounting clerk does the most work but CFO makes the most money? I know in our team that we have Triple Diamond (making $750,000) that has an upline who is Emerald (making $100,000) that has an upline who just become diamon (making $150,000) who has an upline that has been a double diamond (making $250,000). This gives you the idea that you can go to the next level before your upline which is not possible in pyramid type situation.
Amway has hundreds of thousands of products nimrod
My wife and I use double x tablets and they have improved our health status. We are a partner to AMWAY South Africa, though we stay in Botswana and we make an order for the tablets every month.
DOUBLE X ARE THE BEST!!!