Is Network Marketing Worth It?

Question of the day: is network marketing worth it?

Yes, in my opinion, network marketing is absolutely worth it.

Even before COVID-19, I think that the vast majority of lower and middle class folks could intuitively feel that something just wasn’t right with the economy. And the pandemic has only made it worse.

You work hard day in and day out. Year after year. Every year or two, you get a raise from your boss…

And yet, it seems as though your paycheck has less and less purchasing power as the years go by.

And if you want to prepare for retirement, you’re forced to put your hard earned money at risk in the stock market because that’s the only hope you have of accumulating enough to even dream of retirement.

A job alone just doesn’t have the earning power to take care of you and your family indefinitely.

So what’s the answer?

It’s entrepreneurship!

But, what a second…

Starting a business is risky, right?

It’s true.

In fact, only 40% of startups are profitable. About 30% break even, and the other 30% actually lose money on an ongoing basis.

Not only that, but 90% of startups don’t even survive at all.

So network marketing seems to be the best option. 

You get all the benefits of being self employed. No income cap, no boss, set your own schedule. 

And you can do this without any of the risk that traditional entrepreneurship involves. You don’t need inventory, logistics, accounting, manufacturing, supply chains… all that stuff is done for you.

OK, so let’s talk this through.

The first thing we need to discuss is the state of the economy.

The State Of The Economy

If you look at the unemployment statistics for the United States, you will see that as of June 2022, it’s about 3.6%. 

That’s pretty low.

But if we look at the Labor Force Participation Rate, you can see that it’s been steadily dropping since the Dot Com Crash.

What does this mean?

Well it means that if you’ve been out of the workforce for 6 months or more and have not been actively looking for work, they will actually remove you from the unemployment statistics.

This makes it appear as though the Unemployment Rate is much lower than it is, even though less people are working than ever before.

So naturally, governments are going to noisily publicize the data that makes them look good, right?

Additionally, more working people than ever before are receiving food stamps in order to put food on their tables. 

According to a report published by Manufacturing.net, 70% of food stamp recipients work full time.

So it stands to reason that people are dropping out of the workforce because they’re simply not getting paid enough to put food on the table. 

If they’re going to a job everyday and still can’t afford groceries, they ask themselves, “What’s the point of working?”

Folks Miserable At Work

I can clearly remember the knot in my stomach I used to feel as I was driving to work on Monday morning.

Every Wednesday, I could feel a glimmer of hope because the weekend was near. I worked for 5 days at a job that I hated, just so that I could enjoy 2 days of freedom. 2 days where I could be myself and do the things that I enjoyed doing.

I suspect I’m not the only one who felt this way.

In fact, Men’s Health published an article in 2017 where they found that the risk of heart attack for young working people was 20% higher on Monday mornings than any other day of the week.

That is not a happy statistic.

Why Is The Economy Stagnant?

Let’s talk about debt.

Debt is a deflationary force. 

If you have to set aside a large percentage of your income every single month in order to make payments on various loans, then you obviously have less money to spend in the economy and invest for your future.

Makes sense, right?

And every single part of the global economy is completely overloaded with debt.

The US government has a national debt level of $30 trillion. That’s $30,000,000,000,000.

And their unfunded liabilities (meaning things that they have promised to pay in the future) sits at $170 trillion. These include Medicare and social security benefits.

This is unsustainable. 

While the government debt levels are absolutely egregious, household and corporate debt levels are not that much better off. 

As corporate debt levels rise, they start to run into cash flow issues. Meaning they need to cut back on expenses, especially when interest rates start to rise. 

And their most notable expense is the wages they pay me and you, the working class citizen.

So Why The Debt Levels?

During the 2008 financial crisis, the credit markets all over the world stopped functioning. I mean, they completely seized up. For a brief period, people were completely unable to send money to anyone.

This nearly brought down the banking system, which would have meant global mayhem.

So the central banks around the world had to step in and add money to the banking system in order to “jump start” the economy back into action.

They did this by a process called quantitative easing (QE).

I know, the financial folks like to use big fancy words in order to deter regular folks like you and me from figuring out what’s really going on.

Here’s basically what it comes down to:

The central banks printed money out of thin air and pumped it into the banking system so that it would start functioning again.

This was completely unavoidable. The collapse of the global economy simply could not be allowed to happen.

The problem is, it created a moral hazard. 

The government saw a way for them to spend more and more money and make promises that they couldn’t afford to keep… because they now have a money printer at their disposal via the central bank.

This means forever rising government debt. And the bigger that debt gets, the more it acts like an anchor on the financial system. 

The velocity of money (speed at which money flows through the economy) starts slowing down. Business profits start to stagnate, making it impossible for them to pay workers what they’re worth.

Making life more and more difficult for the working class.

Jobs Sent Overseas

All this has resulted in many of the working class jobs being sent away to China and other overseas countries. 

So not only are people choosing not to work, in many cases they couldn’t work if they wanted to. High paying jobs are being sent away in order to save money and provide us with cheap plastic stuff.

Not only that, but jobs are increasingly being taken over by technology. 

Computers and robotics are making life better in many ways. But it’s also causing our jobs to disappear into the technological abyss.

Never to return.

How To Prepare For The Future?

Financially speaking, you need to invest in hard assets. 

As governments are printing money, the currency becomes worth less. Your buying power gets diminished over time.

So it stands to reason that you should be putting a portion of your money into things that can not be printed and devalued, right?

These include:

• Real estate
• Farmland
• Gold
• Bitcoin
• Carefully selected stocks

But how is that even possible? 

If you barely have enough money to put food on the table and pay your rent, how can you be expected to put your money into things that may or may not rise in value over time?

Look, the government will not take care of you.

Even if they were altruistic and truly wanted to help, they can’t. They’re financial situation is simply not sustainable.

So you need to take responsibility for you financial future.

And a regular job ain’t gonna cut it.

You Need To Start A Business

Becoming an entrepreneur will allow you to increase your earning power.

As Jim Rohn said:

Profits are infinitely better than wages.

Building a business allows you to grow your income exponentially if you’re able to grow and scale it properly.

If you start a successful restaurant, you could expand and start a chain of restaurants. You can hire employees to run it for you, allowing you to scale it to a nearly infinite degree.

Your income effectively has no limit.

The problem is, starting a traditional business is risky. 

There are massive startup costs and so many complex things to consider.

• Logistics
• Accounting
• Supply chains
• Product development
• Manufacturing
• Distribution
• Marketing

All of these are skills that can take half a lifetime to learn. Most people just don’t have the means, skills, or fortitude to undertake all these taks.

And just one of those things gone wrong can cause the business to fail. And you could potentially lose your life savings and livelihood.

The reality is, most businesses do fail.

An angel investor is someone who invests in startup businesses from the ground up.

And guess what? 14 out of 15 angel investments go to zero.

And 90% of restaurants fail.

But there’s hope, because there really is a better way…

Network Marketing – A Better Way

This is where network marketing comes in.

Is network marketing worth it or not?

Well, yes.

This business model allows you to get all the benefits of traditional business ownership, but without all the financial risk or overhead.

You don’t need to create a product, because it’s done for you.

Corporate logistics, distribution, manufacturing, and training is all taken care of for you.

And your income has effectively no limit.

Your task will be to sell products, as well as grow your team of distributors who will also sell products and build their own teams. 

You will earn income from sales you personally generate, as well as the sales of every single distributor on your team.

And some of the top earners in the profession have teams of hundreds of thousands of people.

It’s real. Folks are doing it all over the world.

For a full explanation of network marketing and how it works, you can check out this deep MLM analysis here.

The MLM Industry

Don’t be thinking that network marketing companies are just tiny companies that nobody’s ever heard of. 

Network marketing companies are some of the biggest, fastest growing companies in the world. They are companies that lead the stock market, earning billions of dollars per year.

Because the business model is so efficient. 

They pay for marketing only when sales volume is produced, so it’s perfectly efficient.

As reported by GrandViewResearch, the global market size of network marketing in 2021 was valued at $189 billion. 

So this is not some cute little side gig that you could use to make some extra cash.

I mean, it could be that if that’s what you wanna do… but this is a massive industry. And if taken seriously, you could build a serious level of long term income using this model.

Look, compared to network marketing, you could say that the movie or music industry is a cute little gig.

You can see in the chart above that just the commissions paid out to distributors is more than the music industry and the NFL combined.

But one of the criticisms often thrown at network marketing is that “only the people at the top make all the money”.

But if we look at the data, we can see that this just isn’t true.

Globally, there are about 500 people who make over $1 million per year in network marketing. If we round that up to $2 million, that only accounts for about $1 billion.

This means that well over $70 billion is paid out annually to people who earn less than 7 figures per year…

Most of the commissions paid out are going to regular folks making a few thousand extra per month.

Some experts think that network marketing has created more millionaires than any other industry in the world… I couldn’t find the data to support this… 

But none of what we’ve looked at today contradicts that.

So in my estimation, network marketing is worth it.

Don’t Most People Lose Money In MLM?

There are over 100 million people all over the world involved in network marketing. 

According to recent polls, 82% of these report good or excellent experiences in the industry.

So obviously people are happy…

So then why the dismal income numbers?

You often hear that most of the people involved in MLM don’t make it. 

But what you don’t hear is that the vast majority of people that get involved are not actively building the business… they simply have a membership in order to receive discounts on the products.

And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as they’re happy customers. And the polls seem to show that they are.

I compare it to having a Costco membership. You have the membership so that you can enjoy preferred customer discounts and other benefits. This is no different than most network marketing customers.

To Wrap Up…

Most employers are looking for skilled labor. To exploit you for the skills and knowledge that you have.

And that’s OK… it’s capitalism, and it’s good.

But network marketing is better.

Because MLM aims to train you to succeed, regardless of your skills or current knowledge.

So is network marketing worth it?

In my oh so humble opinion, the answer is unequivocally yes.

As Robert Kyosaki says:

In a job, you work just hard enough not to get fired. And they pay you just enough to keep you from quitting.

That’s just no way to live.

Hopefully you got some clarity from reading this… if you have more questions about network marketing, feel free to check out our network marketing FAQ page.