Clearly I wish to distinguish the items that you have sold to consumers versus the sell of the "rights to sell these items" or commissions.
Ok, we make no money selling the "rights to sell".
As for handling products, Amway since the late 1990s has operated on direct fulfillment. I don't handle the products for resellers I sell to, I don't handle the products for my sponsored IBOs who purchase the products for personal use, and and in most countries (including the US and Australia) I don't handle the products even for retail clients.
Here in Sweden, and earlier in Oz, I have some clients I deal with orders personally, but it's a small part of my sales volume.
We're in
marketing more than sales.
To distinguish what I mean further, a wholesaler sells products to a retailer; once sold, the wholesaler usually no longer cares what the retailer does with the products. They can resell them, or eat them or bury them.
Much the same with us, except that they can also return them to Amway for a refund, and any commissions that may have been paid out for it are deducted or must be repaid.
In other words, outside of samples, pretty much
every product ends up in the hands of an ultimate consumer
To be clear, commissions, in this case, mean money you have obtained from other Amway sales reps., either from selling the right to sell Amway products or as a percentage of the profits or sales of people you sell to
There are no commissions for obtaining other reps. That would be payments for recruiting and are a classic sign of a pyramid scheme (in fact, under the legal "Koscot test" it's the key feature of a pyramid scheme - if you don't have it, you're not a pyramid.)
I thought, however, that you used the term "commission" in a prior post. Sorry. By percentage of their profits, I mean, unlike most wholesalers, any money you would make as a percentage of what the retailer makes. If the retailer burns the products, you would not see any extra percent profit; if the retailer sold $100 of items, you would earn a percentage of those sales on top of the money you already made by selling the retailer the products themselves at wholesale.
Ok, some basic explanation. It's easier to think of how this works before the days of direct fulfillment, since the money flow still works the same way. I'll use US figures and the male of the species.
(1) The "direct distributor" purchases products from Amway at a base wholesale price less a 25% volume discount for purchasing over 7500 points in product (around $22500) for the month
(2) He sells the products to personal clients and adds whatever markup he wants, recommended is around 25%
From this income he can thus profit up to around 50% per sale.
(3) He sells the products to other retailers and wholesalers in smaller lots, offering them a standard volume discount which ranges from 0% to 25%. This scale is set by Amway. If he sells to someone at the the 0% volume rebate, he profits 25% on this wholesale sale. If he sells to someone at the 25% volume rebate, he profits 0% on this wholesale sale unless he fulfills some other criteria which kick in other commissions.
From this income he can thus profit up to 25% per sale.
So why would you do number two versus number three? It's easier to get larger volumes through a team of sales people and their customers than it is to try and do everything yourself. A smaller percentage of a bigger pie can be bigger than a big percentage of a small pie.
I am not certain what you mean by "false starts." Are these you attempts at Amway that lost money?
No. Think more like "this month I'm going to start going to the gym regularly!" - going once or twice and then getting distracted and not getting back to it.
Perhaps if you just told me the figures for the last 10 years, and the time you actually spent at it, it would work out okay, even if you only spent the last few months doing the Amway business. I suspect you must have some idea, because you are so happy with Amway. Most people in business can at least estimate how much they made in profit and how much time it took them. In fact, I think you need to tell the tax agency how much profit you made any given year.
If I averaged out # of hours per month over the past 15 years, it would be zero. As I said Amway reports the income and taxes to the tax authorities for me. Since my expenses have been minimal it's not worth my time to worry about collating them and submitting them. So, as I said, can't tell you.
Here's what I do know.
Back in the mid to late 90s I joined primarily to get the products cheaper (I already knew them from previous experience). I later decided to build the business, I did what was recommended (10 to 20hrs per week) and reached profitability within a couple of months. So everything worked as advertised. I was never pressured to buy things I didn't want. I was taught not to harass people. I was to taught to treat people with respect and operate the business with integrity. I was taught about the features and benefits of the products. I was taught retail sales were important as well as recruiting to build teams. I never had any problem finding customers, and I nearly always founds the products to be excellent value, not overpriced at all. I never heard people called "quitters" and "losers" if they weren't interested. I never had politics or religion proselytized to me. I never lost or alienated any friends or family, and I made many. When I decided to stop building, I continued to have the friendship and support of the people I'd worked with in Amway, and I'd seen the same with other people I'd worked with. I saw friends, some of whom I'd known since childhood, continue to work with Amway and build significant businesses and income, allowing them the ability to pursue their interests out of a passion rather than a need to earn a salary. One sold his veterinary practices and started spending more time at home with his kids, working when he wanted as a consultant. Another built Amway, quit his job, then started a company using his Amway profits to support his family. That business now has turnover in excess of $65 million. He never could have done it without what he learned from building an Amway business, and the income that gave him the freedom to do it. He's now back building Amway again to a new, higher level. Other friends, my sponsors, stopped building Amway at a relatively small level, but used the financial education and money they'd made through Amway to make an astute business and property purchase and start up what is now an award winning Chocolate production business.
These are people I've seen grow their businesses from the start. The business worked for me, as advertised, and it worked for my friends, as advertised. And every single month for the past 15 years, some of the people I introduced to Amway's products back in 1997 and 1998 have continued to order the products they like from Amway, delivered to their door, and Amway has paid me a commission. Sometimes the commissions have been a few dollars, sometimes they've been thousands. Depends what people bought. I have no idea what they buy. People do what they want to do.
Now, what also happened is that I read reports on the internet of "how Amway works" and they were not at all a reflection of my experience. In many cases my experience was
the exact opposite. You'll see people on this very forum claiming I pressure friends and family to buy overpriced products, and lose friends etc etc etc.
Not how I operate, not how anyone I work or worked with operates. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Amway is HUGE. Just a few days ago my wife, working with a downline (Tony), called one of his contacts to book a meeting to explain what we were doing. The fellow asked a few questions and asked if it was Amway, my wife said it was. He said he knew all about it, had been in Amway in Turkey, great products but wasn't interested in working with it again. My wife said "great, maybe Tony can practice his presentation on you then, since you already know all about it?" He agreed and came over. Here's the thing - after he saw what we did, he explained that what he did was going door-to-door selling cookware. That was Amway to him.
There's literally millions of Amway independent agents around the world, affiliated with hundreds of different network organisations that all do things in different ways, with different cultures.
Amway at it's base level is simple. Find people who like Amway's products. Get them to order direct from Amway, connected to my Amway ID. Earn a commission every time they order. Find people who'd like to make some money doing the same. Teach them how to do it. Get them to order direct from Amway, connected to my Amway ID. Earn a commission every time they (or, up to a certain point) someone connected to them, order.
Do that properly and you can sit on beach in the Caribbean and when someone in Australia orders a product from Amway, Amway puts money in your bank account because without you, the sale wouldn't have happened. Or you can spend 4 months living in Paris, and someone in the US orders a product from Amway, and Amway puts money in your bank account because without you, the sale wouldn't have happened. Or you could spend a few months living in Hong Kong, and someone in the middle of Sweden orders a product from Amway, and Amway puts money in your bank account because without you, the sale wouldn't have happened.
This isn't theory to me.
I've done all of that. That's part of my experience. So when people tell me Amway doesn't work, I just shake my head.
