Let's just let the cat out of the bag! In last week's posting, I was actually referring to MLM(Multi level Marketing). I extracted a funny Q&A from http://www.vandruff.com/mlm_FAQ.html

Don't agree with me? Well, I thought the response SOUNDS funny.

Qn: Why can you not see the OPPORTUNITY of MLM for the unemployed? What is the difference between MLM and any small business?

I grow weary in answering questions that should have been clear from the article. But just in case I was not as lucid as I think I was about this, let's have YET ANOTHER go at it...

Imagine you are a teenager in the mall, looking for an "opportunity" to work. You see a clothing store with "help wanted". You go in and ask for an application and how much the "job" pays, and you are told to wait in a very long line that extends out the door and into the mall. As you are standing in line, you notice a certain smell, a sort of stink. Perhaps this is why there are very few, if any, customers walking into this store, only nervous applicants.

When you get to the front, you are told that the "job" is really a "business" and will cost YOU to participate in. If you pay the nice lady sitting at a desk (there seem to be more desks here than clothing racks...), you can then sell the fine products they have on display. But you have to buy the inventory yourself on top of the fee to be "hired". And MOST IMPORTANTLY, you are told that to succeed, you must do what she is doing, recruit others to make them "successes" like her.

You do the math on the clothing profits, and indeed it is not likely for you to even make minimum wage just selling product, and besides this... there are all these other people in line as well. The profit, it appears, is to find others who will pay, like you, to be "hired" into this "ground floor" opportunity.

You should set up a similar store next door, you are told.

You walk out confused, and as you pass the long line , the thought strikes you that all these many people will be attempting to recruit EVEN MORE PEOPLE in geometric expansion to set up a store "next door".

What do you think, a good opportunity?

If such an absurd clothing "store" were ACTUALLY to show up in your local mall, could you really NOT see the difference between it and the other businesses: the way they hire, the likelihood of saturation, etc.?

Can "success" be had through voracious "recruiting" of competitors? How could this possibly be sustainable?

With MLM, of course, there is no mall or line--just nice meetings in homes; the odd lunch with a "friend"; the seminar at the hotel--so that you cannot see the absurd line forming of those whom you will be "competing" against for yet even more recruits.
Great opportunity, eh?

Even a teenager should not fall for such a daffy idea... Trust your nose!