Hey guys, what’s going on? This is Erik Johnson. So over the last nine years I’ve been with my wife, and every once in a while she wants to get in shape really fast and she orders these shakes, and I have to admit they’re really good. I mean, if it was an MLM company, I would jump all over it because I don’t really hear about them in network marketing news or anything like that. And I ask why? Why don’t people know about this shake, it’s so good.
It’s like a Mediterranean vegan protein shake that just literally starts repairing her and she looks younger and it’s just really a good flavor. And I’ve been doing it with her on and off over the years. We would buy a box and we would use it and then our interest would take us somewhere else – we would start eating food again or, I would be craving steaks or whatever, and we would get off of it and feel like crap again.
But every time we got on it, it felt amazing. And I can’t believe that this isn’t a network marketing business. And finally, just a couple days ago, I looked at it again and I was like, these shakes are so good, I’d like to explore the company a little bit more, because I look at different companies all the time. I’m always appraising companies. I believe as a network marketing professional, you should analyze companies to keep up with MLM news, subscribe to the businessforhome newsletter, and really look at the trends – look how companies are made, what their mission statement is, where they’re from, are they network marketers themselves?
Do they have marketing tools? How much do they pay, look at their compensation, because it’s kind of like a stock investor, they really analyze each company that they invest in, look at Warren Buffett, he really gets close to the company, to the CEOs. I mean, he goes to their board meetings, you know, he buys enough stake in the company that he’s their primary shareholder, and he knows all the numbers for that company.
I believe you should do that as well with your network marketing company. I’m not saying to join 10 different companies, I think you should laser focus on one and grow it and be faithful to it. But you should also be on top of MLM news and know what’s going on. So I look at new companies all the time even though I’m faithful to one company, I like to just know what’s going on.
So I dove into Pure Trim a couple days ago, and I found out that it’s a direct selling company. And I always kind of thought that direct selling was the same as network marketing. But on my wife’s website, it says all over the place: “This is not MLM. This is not network marketing” And so
I watched the promotional video, and I discovered that it still pays many levels down. In fact, I think it pays up to 10 levels down.
But, here’s a couple characteristics that are different with a direct sales company compared to an MLM company is for:
Number one direct sales is all about the product. It’s not about recruiting at all. It’s all about the product.
Number two is you don’t have some sponsor that is just hounding you to sign up. There’s not a lot of aggression. It’s all product centered.
Number three is that in MLM there’s a binary match pay, which happens weekly or monthly, you get business volume on your team, you get paid on that and it’s usually like 10% to 20% when people reorder, whereas a direct sales company, particularly this one, when someone reorders, you still get 35% Commission’s on that, on that product order.
So, you’re still getting $50 to $100 per sale each month when they reorder. Whereas network marketing, it’s 10 to 20%, which is like 15 bucks. It’s usually a binary match in MLM, meaning that you match the volume between your left leg and the right leg and they pay on your lesser volume, and it ends up to be about 15%.
So, if you add 1000 bV on your left leg and thousand bV on your right leg, you’d make $150 for that month, but that’s about 20 people. If you look at both legs, that’s 20 people and you get $150. But, with direct sales, if you had 20 people reorder, you would get almost $2,000. And there is no hype in direct sales, it’s all about the product.
I want to talk about one last thing with Pure Trim- the retention is amazing, because it’s about the products and the products work, at least in this company. I mean, they’re just amazing. And the reorder rate, the retention rate is 83%!
83% of the people that sign up and order their Pure Trim products reorder again, whereas in network marketing, you’ve heard these numbers before, but 97% quit within a year. So those are the striking differences between MLM and direct sales, direct sales.
The other thing is that in a direct sales sense it’s very product specific, you would have to promote it way differently than network marketing. With network marketing, I lead with the business opportunity. I talk about the 50% commissions, the automated email system that we get as distributors, and the high definition landing pages we get. Everything I talked about is very business opportunity specific, whereas direct sales, you would be very product specific.
You will talk about how much weight you lost and how your skin looks. how you feel, which is a little risky because you have to watch out with medical claims. You can’t say anything too dramatic or the FDA will come after you. You can’t say that it cures cancer. You can’t say that your anxiety is gone. Even though it might happen. You can’t say it like that or the FDA would shut you down. So the advertising would be different.
Instead of promoting MLM the keywords I use for mlm in a pay per click ad are like, join MLM opportunity, best MLM company, how to join network marketing, fastest rising MLM companies, top MLM companies with direct sales if I did a pay per click Ad I would have to use whatever the products do: best colon cleanse, best liver cleanse online, best diet shakes online, etc, etc. So it’s a way different feeling.
But, I think Direct Sales feels stable, you know, because there’s no hype, and there’s no massive attrition. And you could literally live off the products.
A lot of MLM products are dubious. You know, it’s like, some companies you feel like, do these products actually work? Or is this just a vehicle for them to get rich? I’ve been in a couple companies where I’m just like, you know, this product wouldn’t be around if the MLM wasn’t around. Like, it’s all about making money.
It’s usually MLM companies that only have one product. They’re just starting out. There’s a lot of hype. There’s a lot of “Ground Floor opportunity” feel, and everyone comes in for two years and then they all bail and then the company goes away.
So this company (Pure Trim) has been around for at least 15 years, and it looks like they revamped everything. They got a new website, and new landing page for reps to use. So you can check it out. I’ll leave the link under this article. I’m not leaving my company. This is not a change of companies. This is just an article that explains the differences between direct sales and MLM because I really didn’t know.
All these years I thought direct selling was an old school definition of network marketing. I did not know it was completely different. And it seems like it’s different. What’s cool is that you can get paid down 10 levels, if you open up your ranks, and you do open up your ranks by ordering a big pack your first month, then after that the auto ship is only like $30 a month.
But the first month you gotta buy the director promoter + autoship if you want to lock in the 25%, which is like $450 and then you have to activate your autoship, which opens up 10 more percent commissions. So you’re at a total of 35% and I believe you get paid down 10 levels.
So there is some passive income there because you can get paid down 10 levels and unlike MLM binary bV, which pays like 15% I think you still get 35% down all those levels, which could really add up to a lot of money.