I wanted to write this post from long time at least 2 years now, when I came across MLM for first time, I think the company was some ‘quest’ selling some gold coins, but I was refraining from writing but few days back I got a similar mail saying it’s some ecommerce business and details will be only disclosed when I meet them in person, I was able to sniff the MLM from it pretty easily.
Mail contents are as shown below
Hello,
I’m getting in touch with you for a specific purpose. I’m currently building my business that’s based on an e-commerce platform and a network marketing model. I’ve partnered with some very respectable and highly accomplished business people and Investors from India & Abroad. We have established markets in India, Middle East, Singapore, UK and are looking to expand further Globally. In this regard, we are looking at working with people who already have or would like to set up their own business. The model is tested and proven, and here’s what’s available for you, should you choose to take up this opportunity.
- An opportunity to build a new business, starting off on a part-time basis, and in a matter of 3-5 years, have it run on auto-pilot for you, in terms of earnings.
- Learn to leverage the internet to build your business globally.
- Create a network with the guidance some highly successful people from various walks of life.
- Be guided directly by the leaders in this business in India and globally.
I’m assuming if you’re like most people, you’ve probably come across network marketing in some form or the other. I’m unaware of your experience of the industry, and would like to add that the opportunity I’ll be sharing with you, should you choose to take a look at it, is unique and highly rewarding, provided it is done with the right mindset. I prefer not to discuss any details/numbers over the mail or phone. I’d prefer that you get in touch with me on my number below, or alternatively respond to my email with your contact details, if you’d like to know more. We can set a meeting accordingly.
Thanks and Regards,
P.S – Just to reassure you, this is NOT a get rich quick scheme but a genuine business that requires good work for one to succeed.
I have removed contact details and some irrelevant things from the mail.
So why I say MLM is fraud, I say it because the basic principle on which it is based is flawed, I am not going to cover all the detail of MLM there is umpteen material available on interent just Google for it, adding fraud word it leads to lots of results too, yeah getting back to why I say it’s a fraud being a programmer I have read the concept of binary trees so what so special about binary trees every programmers knows about it, special thing is that number of nodes which will have two nodes below them is half the total number of nodes, so drawing this parallel to MLM which seeks every person to have at least two person(Nodes) below them, wait a moment what I just said contradicts concept of binary trees so that’s practically not possible. So come what may half the people joining in MLM pyramid is bound to loose all their money. People who get money out of this are not getting it by doing something but fooling more people to join in and laying there hands on their hard earned money, so there’s no business here.
That was just one point but there is more to it, products which you have to sell is at much higher costs than their actual value, for e.g. some coin which you need to sell was around 30k 2 years back it was rare according to them as it was manufactured in less quantities and will have a very high value in future, is that the definition of rare if today I start manufacturing something and just create on piece out of it will it make it rare, I looked at ebay to get actual price of that coin, it was easily available and at much lower cost.
Though many a times it’s difficult to prove that this business is illegal but than there are things which are legally right but ethically wrong and things which are legally wrong but ethically correct.
I will end this here promising to revisit this post again sometime in future with some more details, but for me bottom line is MLM is fraud in most of the cases.
Some links related to MLM happy reading.
Wikipedia definition of MLM
RBI flashes red signal at MLM companies
MLM Watch
, this issue has been recently estimated, I hope it gets completed in this decade, Atlassian has been very prudent in suggesting it’s customers to use crowd for ldap, I liked the business model but I hate it as customer and end user.