This is perhaps the most important post I have written, it’s my hope that Amway and the IBOAI is reading.
It’s been my opinion that a major component of Amway’s struggles for growth, particularly in english speaking markets, has been the Internet and Amway’s misguided decision some years ago to effectively leave Internet discussion about Amway to the critics (read Amway and the Internet – A History Part I). In my view, neither Amway nor any of the major leadership’s truly understand the magnitude of the effect that a relatively small number of internet critics have had on the Amway business.
Now I’ve got data to back it up, and it is far worse than even I imagined.
Last week Google introduced a new keyword tool for advertiser’s that provides them with statistics about “keywords” and how often people are searching on particular topics. You can find out how often people search for a particular term. I have done this for Amway and Quixtar keywords and the results are stunning. Combined with information from compete.com about Google’s share of the search engine market, and what folk then click on, the information is shocking.
More than once ever 2 seconds, someone in the world googles “Amway“.
In more exact terms, the keywords “Amway” or “Quixtar” are googled on average 1,069,000 times a month. Compete.com estimates that google has 68.7% of the search engine market.
This means “Amway” or “Quixtar” are searched for –
- 1,556,400 times a month
- 51,868 times a day
- 2,161 times an hour
- 36 times a minute
- more than once every 2 seconds
Normally this should be a cause for celebration. A company should be delighted that people are searching for information about them. It’s an enormous opportunity. Or it should be,
In the case of Amway, it’s a disaster.
A cursory look at google’s search results for Amway shows why. Keep in mind that 68% of search users do not go past the first page of results and 92% don’t go past page 3. So what do they find on page one? Here’s what I get (note that it will vary for different people and different locations)
- Wikipedia article on Amway – while much much better than it was, this article still highlights criticism of Amway with virtually no reporting on the many positives.
- Amway official website
- Amway India official website
- Amway Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore official website
- Skeptic’s dictionary article on Amway – an old article heavily critical of the Amway business opportunity
- Dave Touretsky’s Amway/Alticor/Quixtar Sucks – a “free speech” advocate’s website, heavily critical of Amway and full of extremely outdated information, including “mirrors” of other negative websites
- Amway Australia official website
- Welcome to Amway: The Continuing Story – another old website extremely critical of Amway
- The Peril’s of Amway – very old website extremely critical of Amway
- Youtube – Amway Neighbour – a video making fun of Amway stereotypes.
Of the first 1 links, there are 4 corporate sites and 6 sites critical of the Amway business. Page 2 gets even worse, with 3 corporate sites and 7 critics sites. It’s not until page 3 you come across any non-corporate website with something positive to say, and that’s this site, The Truth About Amway. If you happen to be one of the few who goes further, it doesn’t get any better.
Google’s search results for Quixtar are much the same. If you do what most internet users do, which is use the internet to research something, your perspective of Amway and Quixtar is overwhelmingly going to be a negative one.
More than one person every two seconds is doing this.
In the US and Canada alone there are over 328,000 english searches every month for Amway or Quixtar. This doesn’t include searches for things like “Amway business” (nearly 3,000) or other possible terms. 328,000 searches on google equates to 48, searches across the major search engines like Yahoo, Live etc.
That’s 16,000 a day just in North America
Compete.com, through a number of mechanisms including ISP log files, toolbar data and research panels, also estimates what people in the english-speaking world actually click on from these results. Total number of “Amway” searches in the english speaking world is 44,000/mth or over 14,000/day. According to Compete.com, here’s the top 1 sites visited by “Amway” researchers the last 3 months –
- 6.3% amway.com – Official site
- 13.3% wikipedia.org – Critical of Amway
- 4.9% cmu.edu – Touretsky’s anti-amway site
- 4.6% skepdic.com – anti-amway article (see above)
- 2.7% apollowebworks.com – anti-amway website (see above9
- 2.3% yahoo.com – I’ve been unable to identify this site, probably an adclick
- 1.6% webkinz.com – probably an adclick
- 1.2% amway.com.au – Amway Australia
- 1% msn.com – the Dateline NBC article critical of Quixtar
- <1% quixtar.com – official site
Well over a quarter of all searches end up at a critical site. The results are similar for Quixtar (though Quixtar itself takes top place and other sites like Amquix move into the rankings.
So in North America alone, a minimum of a million searchers a year are getting a bad impression of Amway just because they did some internet research. Note that because of the way people surf the web, after visiting Alticor/Amway/Quixtar sucks, they’re clicking on the links on his site that only go to other critical sites (Touretsky refused a request from me to link to The Truth About Amway). The researchers thus continually get the “Amway – bad” idea reinforced. Now, obviously there’s going to be some overlap, with folk searching more than once (like me!) but this data also doesn’t include the more than a hundred thousand global monthly searches for things like “Britt World Wide” or “Network TwentyOne. It also ignores the fact that most people who click on amway.com probably also click on other links as well.
Does anyone believe this is not having a drastic effect on our business?
Still don’t believe me? Scott Larsen, who runs one of the better known critics websites, linked to by virtually all the other websites, regularly publishes correspondence he has received. A couple of years ago I went through every email he published over a 6 month period. Well over a third of them were people researching the business or brand new IBOs who decided to not join or quit because of what they read on his website. They hadn’t even had a “bad” experience – they quit because of what they read on Amquix.
A study by Forrestor research showed that people don’t trust obvious blogs so much, they do trust what they read on self-styled “consumer opinion sites” like Amquix and Pyramid Scheme alert. Wikipedia is considered authoritive by many people, and university hosted websites like Touretsky’s anti-amway site also have an appearance of officialdom.
Thousands of people a day are visting these sites, thousands of people a day are believing them
Still don’t believe me? Here’s a graph from compete.com with estimates of the traffic visiting The Truth About Amway with traffic visiting critics sites Amquix.info and Webraw.com (Quixtarblog). I can confirm from my own logs that the data for TTAA is roughly correct, I average around 700-1000 visits a day. The critics are getting at least ten times the traffic.
This year Amway is spending tens of millions of dollars on traditional advertising – television advertisements, newspaper ads, sponsorships. Millions of people are seeing these ads, and then doing what a sensible person would do – getting online to do more research. Hundreds of thousands of people this year will probablybe shown the Amway business opportunity this year in North America alone. Most of them will do what a sensible person would do – get online to do more research.
For Amway, it’s millions of dollars potentially wasted.
For Amway IBOs, it’s a disaster.
Drastic action is needed – NOW
(continued in The Internet War Against Amway Part II)
Leave a comment below or Discuss this post on Amway Talk
IMO the leadership of accredited groups need to have IBOs that are above platinum get on the internet and post on the behalf of Amway and their groups. It’s not wise for new IBOs to do this because being new, they aren’t qualified to represent Amway. They should though give thumbs up and such to positive commentary for leadership. It is also paramount that this is not done for recruitment purposes by the leadership because that could be misconstrued as disallowing new IBOs to do so but they should encourage posters to get back with the people that are willing to coach them or the Amway corporation to refer them to someone else near them, and not appear to steal prospects from others. Not that they do this, but just to avoid a train wreck of appearances that would ensue if such practices were not considered beforehand.
We need the leadership to represent on the web, not the newbies.
In my opinion, any logical thinking person would never trust thr internet for much. I trust my gut first when appriached by a person. I know the Amway business. Have briefly met Rich DeVoss in Boise,ID years ago. I immediatly know I was shaking hands with a top quality person. I will never forget this. ALL the negative regarding this wonderful business comes from people who can’t own up to their negatives. It’ programming from the world system. Believers have the responsibilties to just press on and be an example to those who have believed the internet.
I believe you are right. The Amway owners are top notch people. However, with distributor all around the world, I’m sure there are some bad apples.
ibofightback Why is Amway so against people getting an education? my mother is an IBO and everytime i she puts the conferences via internet they are always talking down about education and how its a waist of time.. Its just upsetting me . I know they are trying to persuade poeple to do the business but i totally dont agree with trying to talk people out of going to school … I love health and i enjoy learning new things everyday ! I dont think is very smart of them to be against education !!! if anything they should direct there attention to people that are working at dead end jobs … You get what im saying ?
sincerly,
Mady
Mady,
Amway isn’t against education. Unfortunately some Amway IBOs on the other hand … well, let’s just say they’re a little over-zealous. Trying to talk people out of going to school isn’t only offensive to many people (myself included), it’s not even very smart. Amway is designed to be something done part time. Why not pursue a career you love and use Amway on the side to develop an income so that need for money doesn’t ruin that love? There are Diamonds like Dr Stuart Menn who has used his Amway business to help fund his medical research.
I don’t believe half of what I read on wikapidea…it’s nothing in my opinion more that a left leaning website. Promotes socialism…dependency etc.
Earl, if you don’t like what’s written on wikipedia than may I suggest contributing to editing it? I need all the help I can get 🙂
1. If you don’t know all the FACTS about Amway Global (Global, because this is now across the world) don’t cut the company down.
The facts about Amway Global are listed, in my website. However, they keep updating to make the products better for the families, the enviroment, the communities, and me. I have had many jobs, including with Amway once before, however, I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis and can do this to make a living. I am exactly why Amway was started, to help people!
2. If you are not a sales person, don’t put down what you don’t know how to do.
Thank you, for your time.
God Bless everyone and their families who read this blog, In The Name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen!!!!!!!
Sincerely,
Laurie Kampa
Thank you, Lord, for directing my path to Greg and Joanne. I Worship and Praise Your Holy Name, Jesus Christ!!!!!!!
Thank You, for dying for my sins, for Your Grace and Mercy, for being my Savior, my King.
I LOVE YOU, Jesus Christ!!!!!!!
I appreciate what you are doing to show others what some of us have known for Decades, and others may or may not learn. The company are those who traversed in the trenches of their former selves, to emerge into whom they are today. You can never Hire someone to do that. Because true freedom must always cost us something, and yet have a greater reward that price can never pay. I BELIEVE THAT THIS BUSINESS HAS BEEN A DOORWAY TO FORM CHARACTER IN THOSE WHO OPEN THEIR HEARTS TO TRUST, BELIEF, DREAM, AND PERSEVERE. FROM A FORMER IBO 1996
I understand the need for this site and what you are saying in this article. Recently there has been a new head executive in the New Zealand and Australian market with Amway that is changing things a lot within the company. One of the first things he did was to set up a strategic task force made up of leading IBOs in the market to talk and strategize directly with Amway!! This is a MAJOR deal because for those of you building, as we know, what actually works is often different to what people think. I know that they are pushing to enforce real facts (Libby Tricket campaign) and I am all for it.
At the end of the day, some will some wont, it doesn’t bother me too much. It is a self weeding garden. But people need to view the real facts to get the real story. Thanks for the work you do.
N
I find your website the most refreshing. I was into Quixtar several years ago, and was fiercely dedicated while at this time I was in the Navy. The largest check I made was about $235. But that as MY FAULT. The true principles of sales and the correct way to run a business are taught in Amway, and were taught in Quixtar. Any business with people can have corrupt ones, but to say that all of them are the same is a very close-minded and uneducated response.
There are some truths to some of the alegations. But the problem I have is that there is so much good in my life that was taught by the system. The success system is beneficial in all aspects. Unfortunately, I left my IBOship years ago, after I was convinced I’d failed. Since then, I’ve been a leader in every job that I’ve had, and have almost always been a favorite and hard worker of the boss. Why? Cause I learned how to think like one. If you have something negative to say, back it up.
I can say that although I spent tons of money, time, and didn’t understand it at the time, I was developing talents and skills that I implement five years since I listened to a tape or went to a function. Explain that…naysaysers…You may not get rich, but to get smarter in business and people relations will make you wealthy beyond your dreams in other senses…of course, the best part about freedom is that you have the choice, to say yes or no.
Just don’t kill someone else’s dream because you don’t agree. That in any sense makes you lower than life and proves you are weak. In the long run, it shadows your cause and raises those who would support you against you. Please, save your anger and put your efforts into succeeding elsewhere in life.
Just to clarify the customer rules in North America…
It used to be, per month:
10 customers
OR
$100 in sales
OR
50 PV
Now the requirement is 50 PV to registered customers.
And the requirement is not to keep your IBOship or to earn personal bonuses and retail differential or maintain a PV bracket. It’s a requirement if you want to earn bonus differential on downline volume.
If you have downline differential money coming to you, but do not meet the 50 PV customer requirement, then that money will go to your upline Platinum.
Very interesting site and information. I have been associated with Amway in someway since 1978. I have purchased products used them in a janitorial business. I can attest to the push to buy books and tapes. I did not always buy tapes. Interestingly when i was in insurance there was an incredible push to buy tapes there too. I think what so many people are angry about is (1) don’t tell anyone it’s Amway until they see the business. (2) is the push to sponsor, redirect your own purchasing buy purchasing your own products and teaching others to do the same. Number (3) is the lack of attention to actually selling products. To build any business one must move product at retail as well as wholesale. Amway has always had a 10 customer rule but to the best of my knowledge never enforced it. fortunately this year because of technology Amway is requiring an IBO to build a balanced business and will financially reward IBO’s who do. As for me i will not sponsor anyone until I have 25 solid customers. This way I can say I am making money and will be able to then teach others how to do the same. Notice my website is to the health and fitness product line.
Thanks for your good work here.
Charles
Charles, thanks for your comments. Actually I believe the 10 customer rule went out in the US some years back. I agree though with much of what you’re saying – trying to sell the opportunity as simply an online mall and redirect your shopping simply doesn’t work … it cuts the margins too thin and damages profitability. What’s more, when you look at the past decade as an “internet opportunity” it’s targeted to young “internet hip” people who probably aren’t purchasing products of Amway’s quality and price range before. Too many people seem to have had it marketed to them as “save 30% on your own shopping” when that’s not at all reflective of what their experience will be like.
i just wish the other mlm’s out there had as much negatives online as amway does, to even out the competition.
yet amway grows every year, faster than any other mlm. this proves amway will remain the industry leader
just remember, people are not as intelligent as they seem – people are actually very dumb creatures. only the few smart ones get to the top. the dumb ones waste time by making all these anti amway sites.
good luck to all.
I’m familiar with amway since 1977. I do support amway 100%. this is a good inviornment product. all amway product sold to our client on 1977 were very satisfy consumers. we must do our best to adjust the inviornmental World. and this is one of the key that is need it. Pedro C Sanchez doing his best to conserve our planet, education on our new Genaration should be teach on terms of safety products, I thanks Amway for all clean inviornmental product. Sinceramente su Amigo Pedro C Sanchez.
The trouble that Amway has is that much of the negative content is true. As a former Platinum Direct I know. I lived it.
The company has done a lot of good thing without a doubt. One of them is cleaning up the tool scams. To little to late perhaps.
When the company continues to stand behind king pins like Dexter Yeager and Hal Gooch (clearly Yeager is corrupt) I have to question their integrity and some of the negative press is deserved.
Brad, how do you know what the corp has or hasn’t done with regards Yager/Gooch? Dexter Yager appears to have effectively retired long ago and handed the reins to his children who run the show nowadays. Gooch I haven’t heard boo about in years, apart from the never-ending Bruce Anderson saga. Apart from old stories on the ‘net Are Hal Gooch and Dexter Yager relevant in 2009? Are they relevant to the majority of Amway that never had anything to do with either of them?
My husband and I became IBOs to buy the great products at a discount – we love the Nutrilite vitamins and i love the Artistry Essentials skin care (I tried others but none compare to the way my skin feels with Artistry). If someone brings up a negative comment about Amway or Quixtar, I keep it friendly but challenge them as to why they think that, and they basically say it’s because so-and-so’s uncle was in it and didn’t make any money, or there were pushy IBOs of the past. So nobody’s perfect–look at other MLMs out there–but I stick to my guns with the produts for one simple reason: they work! so i ask them have they ever tried the products, they say no, and then i either give them a sample if they’re willing to try. sometimes it takes a conviction like that for people to see that the products are great. by the way, great site!
hi ibofightback,
first of all , i thank you for this website which has helped me clear my perception of amway.
secondly what i feel and understand from the above post is that people around the world are becoming more and more pessimistic. if you see the trend , people like to visit a critics website more than a website which shows you the truth or the positive side.
Enormous efforts are needed to transform people from inside out. to move them from negative to positive or atleast to neutral so that they can see the truth.
If Yoda would have been here then he would have definitely said, “The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the future is.”
Hi Therese!
Well, one good thing that came out of the critics finding your blog and slamming you and Amway, is that their fake email address led you to here. 🙂
I am confused. I have gotten negative comments on my blog on a post I did on Amway. They have went into my Spam folder, exactly where they belong, if they were balanced comments or educated than I would leave them up, but they are not. Now, the reason I am confused is this, on the comments the e-mail address for them reads: ibo_fightback@yahoo.com, so I looked it up and I come to your website. Why would they use your e-mail, is that your e-mail?
That’s absolutely not me. There are one or more Amway critics who have decided I am Amway-critic enemy #1 and are impersonating me.
why hide your face if you proud of what you know and do???
(a) at the time I started this blog, it was the norm on the internet to use avatars and nicknames. Facebook seems to have changed that a great deal!
(b) It’s against Amway’s rules to blanket advertise on the internet, and a site like this, which attracts a lot of traffic, could be seen to be promoting myself as an IBO and thus in violation of that rule. Amway’s rules have lightened up a little since I started the site, but it’s still a potential problem
This is a great post. Well written and backed up with the numbers to make the case. It seems obvious that Amway is making the move to tackle these issues, and I’ll be bringing this to my Diamond’s attention too.
Thanks for all you do.
You make great points…I’m anxious to see what Amway/ Quixtar will do in regards to these numbers/ facts. I am registered as an IBO but not actively building the business (I completely believe in the business and the leaders in my organization but I’m currently working on a start-up that I started right before I got sponsored). Thank you for all the work you do…it was because of websites like yours that I decided to become an IBO.