I have begun. The portal opened and I stepped foward and I saw the stars arranged below the sun and the planets below the stars and the earth was below the sky and the core below the earth, feeding off of each other.

In layman’s term, minus the writer symbolism, I’ve joined a network marketing company called Visalus. Also known in darker circles as that dreaded terror commonly referred to as: Multi-Level Marketing.

You’ve probably heard of these models. A lot of people use the term pyramid schemes as their method for describing them. Though, let me put to rest, MLMs are not pyramid schemes!

A pyramid scheme is a business model illegal in the US of A and a lot of other countries as well. For one, it is a total con artist model for any real entrepreneur. The model is completly unsustainable. Not to mention it mostly tries to confuse participants with wordy dialogue mixing hype and financial scams without ever really focusing on the actual product. Hell, sometimes there is not even a product to be had.

While pyramid schemes are doomed to failure right from the start, Multi-Level Marketing(Or MLM) is not. MLMs are not just about getting people under you and the awesome flexibility that comes with any commissions job, but they’re also about the product. As in, you actually have to sell the product instead of going to worthless motivation conventions to get you hyped on nothing.

Instead, MLMs actually take hard work, at least at first. But it gives you the choice to decide, “Do I want 500 dollars a month from doing this part-time?” or “Do I want 10g a month from doing this and how much time will I dedicate to it?”

As a student of marketing, entrepreneuriship, business, and all things money as to the best of my ability (Hard to share time with economics. I know. I know. I got to rekindle my relationship with her next semester.) I must say, MLM is probably one of the most viable vehicles in business models today. Albeit, its image is pretty tarnished by the world of scammers and connivers.

So how does multi-level-marketing work? It’s pretty simple. The basics is this: You enroll-usually a usary fee similar to having to pay for a real estate license yearly or business license, you sell the product where you get comissions, you recruit downliners for your organization(In layman’s terms it would be akin to an employee without all the hassle of having one, or an independent contractor) then you collect commisions from the product sales your downliners sale, your downliners recruit downliners from them, you collect a smaller commission from your downliners’ downliners.

There is talk of how MLMs can overload markets. Thus, driving down prices (Hey! Economics! Oh how I missed her…). Alas this varies. As with any business one can overflood the market, it has happened before it’ll happen again, whether a business is MLM or not. The thing to remember with MLMs is not to worry about overflooding the market, becuase it is more than likely that half the people you recruit won’t do anything. They’ll just kind of sit there and forget about the whole organization.

As in any business, most owners fail in the first year or fold before four years. That is something that needs to be remembered. Most business owners don’t even profit in the first year of their new ownership. What with overhead, employee cost, licenses, product costs, invetory costs, accounting costs(You hearing that Brip Blap?!) and so on.  With that much going, the stresses of the new responsbility, the mega hours one has to put in (Oh yeah marketing?! WHO BELIEVES IN THAT THOUGH. WE CAN SCRATCH THAT FOR BETTER CHAIRS.) it is no surprise that most owners end in failure.

So what is the viability of a Multi-Level Marketing Model?

Surprisingly. It’s really good.

Usually most MLMs have a low overhead, a small venture capital is needed, and the product is provided. There really is not much to it other than marketing and making the close. You get a monthly fee for your product inventory, but you also make it back quickly once you have some downliners underneath you who actually work, in the end it’s not a big deal.

But there are inspirational conventions all the time. AND THAT IS A PYRAMID SCHEME SIGN.

Uh. No.

Look around. There is management inspirational conventions. Marketing. Copywriting. Graphic design. You name it there are inspirational speeches, there is even people who are involved in teaching people to get chicks as pick-up artists.

I am not touting MLM like some crusader.

But I am not throwing it on the witch’s pyre.

I’ll give you guys updates on it all as the time goes on in the Multiverse I’ve entered.

Till then, if you checked out Visalus and liked it, here is my number you can use to help your starving blogger: 354328

When you buy something online from Visalus Sciences  it’ll ask you for the mailbox number of the distributor you used to buy it. That’s where you put in that magical number that gives your favorite writer his beautiful commissions.

I’ll keep you guys updated. I got protein shakes coming from this company in a few days to help with my Atkins. Should be pretty awesome stuff!

Your good ol’ pal

-Coddigus or Greg. Whatever.