From: george@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Jorge)
Newsgroups: misc.jobs.misc
Subject: Network Marketing (In particular: AMWAY)
Date: 4 Oct 92 05:29:24 GMT
Organization: Tazmanian Devil Appreciation Society

Well, I am not going to try to preach, but I am going to disclose what I 
personally have discovered in the area of "network marketing", primarily thru
an organization named AMWAY.

About a year and a half ago, I was approached by a good acquaintance of mine
wishing me to listen to this "business opportunity" which eventually ended up
to be AMWAY.  I was told by the presentator that it was the only "legal" 
Pyramid scheme allowed in the United States.  It sounded great on paper, but
after careful examination I decided to wait to see how my would be "sponsor" 
would do.  I told him that I would try to help him "recruit" people, and got
a very close friend of mine involved in AMWAY quite unfortunately.

Tho I was never a distributor, I witnessed the innards of this program and
how it worked.  In my opinion, Network Marketing can be successful if the
following three characteristics are present:

1. You are willing to pretty much sell your mother for a dollar:  AMWAY 
practically requires that you enlist your friends and family to join their
scheme so that you can have a good solid base quickly.  To be successful, you 
must be willing to throw away good friendships to puke out a presentation to
someone that probably can't find a nice way to tell you no, so they decided
to join just to make you happy.  I'm not saying that the only way is to 
include your friends and family, but I noticed that most of the "successful"
people in AMWAY have been brought in by, or have enlisted the help of their
friends and family.  BTW--one of AMWAY's "products" is MCI long distance 
service...note the resemblance of their netwwork marketing and MCI's Friends
and Family campaign.  Basically, if you begin AMWAY, be prepared to make 
difficult presentations to these people that probably can't say no to you.

2.  You must be able to disguise the "pyramidness" of this structure.  AMWAY
presentation pitch continually emphasized that a distributor could in fact
be more successful than their sponsor, and thus it was not a pyramid scheme.
Don't let this fool you, AMWAY is a classic pyramid scheme.  

3.  You must not be too far down the pyramid, or you will never be successful.
In a recent observation pointed out to me, most pyramids cannot survive after
the 7th or 8th level of participation.  The sheer fact that there is a finite
population on the earth limits the amount of success a Network Marketing
scheme, like AMWAY can have.  AMWAY make you believe that there are so many
people still waiting to "join" that there is no way you cannot be successful.
When I was first exposed to AMWAY, I asked roughly about 20 of my friends if
they had ever heard of this.  All of them have been directly approached or
knew someone approached/involved with AMWAY.  There may be millions and
millions of people NOT in AMWAY, but easily 75-85% of them have been approached
or have made the decision not to be in AMWAY.  Also, most people beginning
AMWAY fall between the 7th and 11th level according to information provided
by an AMWAY distributor.  Thus the odds of succeeding are slim.

I suppose I have gotten to start to "preach", but my $.02 worth (now about
$.75 :-), network marketing, and in particular AMWAY will only cause you
problems and in my opinion, will not help you at all.

George Galindo


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