Forever Living Products, MLM and Pyramid scams

Multi-level marketing is always a scam. Basically, your friend gets money when you sign up. The company gets money when your buy their products in order to sell them to other people. The products are cheap and not something most people want; you would have to work ridiculously hard to sell them at a level that would make any serious money. But if you sign other people up, you get a kickback from the company....see where this is going? Do not sign up for this.

I was always sure they were promoting a scam, I mean, people with a real money-making opportunity don't have to post it on telephone poles. They guard it with encrypted emails, copyrights and lawyers.
More... very good read here on how it's a pest of a system

Yes, your instincts are correct here. This is a scam, specifically a multi-level marketing (MLM) scam. Essentially, the way these work is people are approached to sell a product (the product itself doesn't matter much), with unrealistic descriptions of the kind of profits they can make (such as being able to quit your job to travel the world.) The point is to get people to buy large quantities of the product to sell, pay for "seminars" about being a better salesman, recruit more people who will pay in more money, etc.

If anyone ever asks you to become a seller of a product, it is almost definitely a scam. Maybe not a scam exactly but so close to being a scam that for all intents and purposes there is no difference.

Here is the main question you need to get answered: in the model of how much money you will make in the future, what percentage comes from selling the product, and what percentage comes from people you've signed up?

In a real business, the profit will come almost entirely from selling your product. I don't know if Dunkin' Donuts or Herbalife sets you up with a referral fee for signing up new franchisees, but it sounds perfectly possible. However, the franchisees of these businesses make their money from selling donuts, or whatever it is the business makes.

In a scam business, the profit is promised mostly from selling signups to other people. It looks so tempting on paper, but it essentially only ever works for a few people involved at the beginning of each scam. Partly because the horrible reality of the mathematics of exponential growth quickly mean that every person in the world has to sign up as a Forever Living Products rep, and partly because for the downline people to kick up to you *someone still has to actually buy the goddamn products*.

I've never heard of Forever Living Products, but I just looked at their website. Every single thing on the front page is about becoming a reseller of FLP. Not about who would actually buy the soap or whatever. Also, their products look indistinguishable from the dozens of other products on the shelves at every single grocery store.

Real businesses sell products and services for more than it costs to provide them. This difference is profit. That's the money you make. Scam businesses have illogical promises of ever-growing amounts of income from...what? Convincing other people to get involved in the same scam? How long can that go on? Or, looked at another way, how do you know you are not the last generation of people paying in to the business? If you were, could you still make money? With a real business, the answer will be 'yes', because you'll plan on profiting from your sales of whatever the product or service is to customers. If the answer is 'no', because the only real profits come from signing up new members/franchisees/reps, etc, then it is a scam business.

Worst thing is when relatives are involved and keep bombarding you to join.