One legitimate, low-capital-way to start a business is direct selling, including multilevel marketing, if the opportunity is sound, and your expectations are realistic. Unfortunately, get-rich-quick schemes and exaggerated claims abound in this business, and new, ill-conceived companies set up shop and solicit associates regularly. A high percentage of direct selling companies fail, leaving their sales organizations without a product to sell or, worse, with a supply of worthless merchandise. There are several hundred established, legitimate direct selling and multilevel marketing companies, and they account for the vast majority of the sales in this multi-billion dollar industry. If you are considering a direct selling opportunity, determine that the company has a verifiable record of making money for its dealers through the sale of its merchandise, not the up-front membership fees associated with pyramid schemes.
Avoid opportunities that call for much in the way of an initial investment or inventory. Direct selling has an evangelical character; expect to be motivated in what might strike you as crude and unsophisticated ways. Expect to constantly recruit others to sell your company's products. Understand that successful products introduced by direct selling are quickly emulated in the retail market at lower cost. Realize that the reputable companies have already heavily penetrated the consumer market and it will take great effort to find new recruits and customers. With those cautions in mind, there is opportunity for determined people who are capable of systematically offering a salable product. Sales success is ultimately determined by the numbers of contacts made. Make enough contacts and you will make money.
Words Of Caution
The most popular rip-offs in the business opportunities marketplace involve direct selling. You need to be an intelligent consumer and not be taken advantage of as you launch or expand a home-based sales business. Avoid the pulp magazine ads showing beautiful people and fast cars. Don't pay dearly for a business plan you can acquire much less expensively by buying a discount-price computer and reading a few readily available books on how to offer popular services. Watch out for technology-based schemes that promise painless direct selling via telemarketing machines (which are rapidly becoming illegal to operate). Be careful not to buy an oversold idea like computer-based scholarship searches. By the time such ideas reach the mass market business opportunity mailers and magazines, you must ask hard questions (of yourself and potential buyers - not the promoter, who will have an endless selection of success stories) about their viability. On the other hand, if you are willing to put your energies into one of the established, household-word direct selling companies and can do what needs to be done, there is always an opportunity to prosper in sales.
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