http://www.pinktruth.com

Pyramid scheme expert and multi-level marketing expert Robert FitzPatrick has been studying these schemes for years. He is an absolute expert on how they operate, the pay plans, and the failure rates of distributors. Robert  produced a report on 11 MLMs , including Arbonne, Cyberwize, Free Life, Herbalife, Melaleuca, Nikken, Nuskin, Reliv, Usana, Your Travel Business, and, Amway/Quixtar.

The study utilized information disclosed by these eleven companys, five of which are publicly traded. The annual revenue of these companies collectively exceeds $12 billion, and about 9 million people around the world are recruited into them each year.

• 99% of all distributors in these companies earned on average less than $13 a week in commission income. (In 10 of the 11 companies, the commissions were less than $10 a week.) This isn't even enough money to cover the minimum purchases they're required to make in order to "qualify" for commissions.
• Recruitment into these companies is largely based upon the offer of an “income opportunity,” yet these statistics show that the income opportunity is essentially non-existent and falsely promoted.
• Recruitment into these companies creates billions of dollars of losses to consumers each year.
• The losses of 99% of the distributors are transferred to less than 1% of the people at the top of the sales chain as “commissions.”
  
• The companies studied have essentially non-existent or unfeasible retail sales opportunities (i.e. participants can’t make much money selling the products because they’re overpriced).
• The promise of profit from retail sales by MLM sales representatives to consumers is the basis for the industry's claim that it is a form of "direct selling," yet virtually no multi-level marketing companies sell significant amounts of their products to the public and are therefore not in the “direct selling” business.
• The sales forces are churned (lost money/quit/replaced) at rates between 60-90% each year. Nearly all these churned sales people stop purchasing the products when they quit the schemes, indicating that they had made purchases primarily as part of the MLM income proposition in which they inevitably “failed.”
• The massive losses among MLM recruits are explained away by MLM’s lobbying organization with the claim that the great majority of MLM participants don’t want to earn money. They only are interested in buying the MLM goods at a “discount”, the Direct Selling Association claims. The explanation does not address the impossibility of broad-based profitability – regardless of time commitment, intention, motivation or levels of talent – in an “endless chain” recruitment model. The claim of “discount buyers” also does not account for the extraordinary churn rate among MLM participants, the majority of whom quit the schemes within a year and stop buying the MLM goods forever.
• The lack of broad-based and profitable retail selling is the single most telling sign that MLM companies are merely pyramid recruitment scams, not direct selling businesses. They have no “customers” and they have no profitable retail salespeople. A business in which almost none of its sales representatives earns a profit and almost none has a sustainable retail customer base cannot be called "direct selling.”
• In virtually all cases, MLMs require monthly or annual purchase quotas by the sales people in order to qualify for the promised “commissions and rebates” gained from new recruits. The required purchases gained by making false promises of future income account for virtually all of MLM “sales,” not consumer demand or legitimate marketing.
• Commission pay plans in these companies send most of the money to the very top levels:. One of the largest MLMs in the world sends 84% of all commissions to the top 1% of its distributor chain. What chance would the newest recruits at the bottom have to earn a profit?
• In half of the 10 companies, 70% or more of participants earned no income at all. For example, 96% of Arbonne’s sales representatives never earn any commissions at all. 80% of YTB’s “agents” also earned no commission at all. In other cases, the same pattern may exist, however, the companies hide that information by only counting the “active” participants or those “active for
  

Sidebars in the report that you should definitely check out:

• Recruitment Hooks and Lures of MLM Schemes (page 8 of pdf)
• Seven Key Factors Manipulated by MLMs to Keep Victims Silent (page 9 of pdf)
  

What does all of this mean for Mary Kay? After all, won’t the Mary Kay supporters claim that Mary Kay is different from all of these companies and these aren’t their numbers?

They’re right… Mary Kay’s numbers aren’t included here because they don’t release them. Why don’t they release them? Because the numbers are so fabulous and support the claim that MK is a fabulous income opportunity? Or are these numbers hidden because they would be proof of the dismal opportunity Mary Kay really is? (I’ll guess the latter.)

Mary Kay may not be directly represented here, but you can bet their numbers are no better than these. We have former directors from all levels who can attest that these numbers are true for Mary Kay. Women are not making a living with Mary Kay. The very top distributors earn mostly small incomes (not real career earnings) and a very tiny number of distributors earn big money. Everyone else earns next to nothing… with most everyone else actually losing money.