Network marketing companies rely on people marketing products to their friends, family and colleagues. They usually involve MLM (Multi-Level Marketing) which means that if you sell something to your friend you get a percentage of whatever your friend sells to his friends.
John Oliver did a critique of MLMs and you can see it here.
The basic problem with MLMs is that they are usually disguised Pyramid or Ponzi Schemes (where you earn money from entry fees rather than from selling any useful product). 90% of people that join them make no money or lose money. They seem good at first sight. When you understand the details you see that you can’t benefit from them. And they are usually designed that way.
However there is nothing inherently wrong with MLMs. I like to work in my spare time so I investigated some MLMs many years ago. I couldn’t find any worth my time. I recently checked if there were any good ones around. I still couldn’t find any.
In the meantime I had been trying to think of a way to create a network of people who use that network for their own benefit. Large groups of people and information about those people are worth big money to businesses. Facebook, LinkedIn, Google etc use this and earn big money. I wanted to create a network that benefits all of the members, with bigger rewards for those that add value to the network by expanding it.
The result is Reward Network; www.rewardnetwork.se (& eng.rewardnetwork.se). It’s a cashback site where everyone benefits from money-back on their internet purchases. People who get their family, friends and colleagues to join get bonuses. This income is MLM style but without any of the usual complications and with no fees to join.
I think I’ve created the first good MLM (with help from friends of course). The website and administration is being done almost for nothing to allow maximum rewards for members. Everyone benefits from Reward Network, and I hope to enable a large number of people to make a very nice extra income. It has started. It should be an interesting journey.