If It Isn't Free, or Doesn't Offer Referral Compensation, Don't Bother

Multi Level Marketing programs which charge their distributors a fee to sign up usually do so for one or both of two reasons:

1. They need the fees to pay recruiting bonuses. In many places these referral bonuses are considered to be illegal pyramid schemes, including where Downstrike is located. This is because there are a finite number of prospects to join, which leaves many who join with no one to sponsor. When the sponsoring stops, the money stops flowing, and even those who were successful must look for a new program to join. They leave, sales drop, and the business dries up and blows away. Meanwhile MLM gets a bad rap.

2. Worse, they may need the money to stay afloat because they are not otherwise doing a profitable business. Again, when the sponsoring stops, the money stops flowing, but in this case, the business goes broke. Again, MLM gets a bad rap.

For the same reasons, Downstrike will not consider any program which requires distributors to make purchases to join, continue, or receive payment. If the business and its distributors depend on this to get the product sold, then sales commissions depend on sponsoring new distributors just as much as recruiting bonuses do. The business is just another pyramid scheme and will eventually fail for the same reasons other pyramids schemes fail - and give MLM a bad rap.

If you are currently working in partner - affiliate - agent - associate - referral - profit sharing - revenue sharing - commission programs - paid surfing programs which are not MLM or partner referral, have you signed up or sponsored anyone lately? You don't know do you? Downstrike has read, (and responded to), a number of posts at the original Associate Programs Forum, (when it was still working), by people who are very concerned that others, instead of buying through their pages so that they receive a commission, use their page to find out how to sign up so they can receive the commission on their own purchases. One person's main reason for believing this is happening, he explained, was that he had done it himself.

Downstrike must also admit that the usual way that he learns about a good program to sign up in, is from some other participant's page. How else do you usually find out about these programs? We may as well face it, this goes with the territory, so we may as well use it to our advantage rather than our detriment.

Sure, you can go looking for programs which supply separate pages for sales and recruiting. You'll find that a few sites are savvy enough to do this. You'll also find most of the sites that savvy are also using MLM or at least partner referrals in their programs. Some of them are listed in the Free Web Site Index.

Advertising should be paid for by those who want the advertising done - not by those doing the work. What kind of fools do they take us for?

A business which can afford to offer to pay downline commissions and provide free web sites for you - without charging for the service - is probably already doing a profitable business and simply wants to expand. They aren't going to go broke unless that was going to happen anyway. Even if they do, what have you lost?

Downstrike has learned these lessons the hard way, and invites you to learn at his expense instead of yours. If you too have already bought into these schemes, you have his sympathy.

Downstrike will say it again - Advertising should be paid for by those who want the advertising done - not by those who are doing the work. What kind of fools do they take us for?

And you thought Downstrike was just being cheap didn't you?

In a free country, not too many things are truly free. Yet there is a truly free business opportunity.