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Ask HN: Why do people join MLMs?

PaulHoule 2y ago
I’ve had many friends who were into right-wing politics who got attracted to Amway. For instance a childhood friend in the 1980s had parents who were trying to get vouchers or a tax break for sending kids to private school and we’d go visit people who lived at Hampton beach and would drive down to Massachusetts to picket abortion clinics. They tried to get my parents to join Amway. Another friend was a leader in the College Republicans in the early 1990s and a member of the John Birch society. He “drew circles” to show me how many people got a cut when I bought a $7 tube of toothpaste and concluded with “How does Amway deliver a great product at a low price? [taps presentation board with stick] By eliminating the middleman!” Amway has always targeted this demographic and I’d say it has the ideological function of vaporizing private enterprise and pushing the idea that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps but the reality is that it is more unequal than the economy as a whole because only a tiny fraction of people can make a profit in Amway. There are other MLMs, particularly those who recruit women, who have different appeals.
- billy99k 2y ago
  Amway is a very religious organization. They have prayer rooms in their main HQ, which is probably why you have many people on the right attracted to it. "Another friend was a leader in the College Republicans" All of these people sound young. I had friends get into the phone MLM schemes in the 90s. They now know better. "and pushing the idea that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps but the reality is that it is more unequal than the economy as a whole because only a tiny fraction of people can make a profit in Amway" It's really no different than a commission-only sales job. Only a small amount of people make a living at it. The majority of influencers make money through affiliate marketing, which is not much different than an MLM. If you have a large audience and are good at marketing, you could also make money with Amway. It's less about 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' and more about making money without having to put the R&D into building your own product.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    The real money in Amway is being a big distributor and having a lot of people under you who have more people under them. There is also a huge parallel business of selling “tools” https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/tools.htm https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/tools.htm which are usually motivational dreck to keep you on the hook and are not helpful at the hard problem of commission-only sales. Granted, Amway has a huge product catalog of things you could possibly sell but I think it is not your best choice if you have the talent, temperament and attitude to make it in a commission-only sales job. If your plan is to make money selling a product your cost structure is ruined by your upline. If you want a zero R&D product try Alibaba.
JohnFen 2y ago
The people I've known who have joined various MLMs over the years all seem to be doing it because they are lured by the promise of having something resembling your own business without having to bother with the parts of having your own business that suck. I view it as a variant of the lure of the get-rich-quick scheme.
billybuckwheat 2y ago
Like other commenters, I've known a couple of people who got sucked into MLMs because of the promise (either real or imagined) of making a lot of money on the side without doing too much work. It never happened that way, though.

I’ve had many friends who were into right-wing politics who got attracted to Amway. For instance a childhood friend in the 1980s had parents who were trying to get vouchers or a tax break for sending kids to private school and we’d go visit people who lived at Hampton beach and would drive down to Massachusetts to picket abortion clinics. They tried to get my parents to join Amway. Another friend was a leader in the College Republicans in the early 1990s and a member of the John Birch society. He “drew circles” to show me how many people got a cut when I bought a $7 tube of toothpaste and concluded with “How does Amway deliver a great product at a low price? [taps presentation board with stick] By eliminating the middleman!” Amway has always targeted this demographic and I’d say it has the ideological function of vaporizing private enterprise and pushing the idea that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps but the reality is that it is more unequal than the economy as a whole because only a tiny fraction of people can make a profit in Amway. There are other MLMs, particularly those who recruit women, who have different appeals.

billy99k 2y ago
Amway is a very religious organization. They have prayer rooms in their main HQ, which is probably why you have many people on the right attracted to it. "Another friend was a leader in the College Republicans" All of these people sound young. I had friends get into the phone MLM schemes in the 90s. They now know better. "and pushing the idea that anybody can pull themselves up by their bootstraps but the reality is that it is more unequal than the economy as a whole because only a tiny fraction of people can make a profit in Amway" It's really no different than a commission-only sales job. Only a small amount of people make a living at it. The majority of influencers make money through affiliate marketing, which is not much different than an MLM. If you have a large audience and are good at marketing, you could also make money with Amway. It's less about 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' and more about making money without having to put the R&D into building your own product.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  The real money in Amway is being a big distributor and having a lot of people under you who have more people under them. There is also a huge parallel business of selling “tools” https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/tools.htm https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Amway/AUS/tools.htm which are usually motivational dreck to keep you on the hook and are not helpful at the hard problem of commission-only sales. Granted, Amway has a huge product catalog of things you could possibly sell but I think it is not your best choice if you have the talent, temperament and attitude to make it in a commission-only sales job. If your plan is to make money selling a product your cost structure is ruined by your upline. If you want a zero R&D product try Alibaba.

JohnFen 2y ago

The people I've known who have joined various MLMs over the years all seem to be doing it because they are lured by the promise of having something resembling your own business without having to bother with the parts of having your own business that suck. I view it as a variant of the lure of the get-rich-quick scheme.

billybuckwheat 2y ago

Like other commenters, I've known a couple of people who got sucked into MLMs because of the promise (either real or imagined) of making a lot of money on the side without doing too much work. It never happened that way, though.