When In Manila, you’ll encounter people who’ll try to recruit you or sell you deodorants, food supplements, whitening products and other marketable products. This is the result of the mushrooming of networking companies in the country during the past decade. The word network marketing though has an awful reputation, mostly because people think that they’re all pyramid scams when the two are different. 
To compare and contrast, a pyramid scheme often does not offer selling products; rather, members just pass around money among hands. This is illegal as it’s usually built on fraudulence. Eventually, when the pyramiding scheme crumbles, only one (the person on the top most) makes decent money and all the rest suffer.
Meanwhile, network marketing or multi-level marketing (MLM) has a solid business model. It offers high-quality products or services to their members or networkers, wherein profits of different amounts are rolled up to the people in the top from ground level. In this article, you’ll learn how to avoid scams by spotting the things you need to look for in a networking company.
1. License to Operate The company should firstly present the license or certification to operate issued by local and/or international bureaus, federations, agencies and groups. This is where you can find out if they are abiding by the country’s laws and if the country acknowledges the existence of their business name. Furthermore, look out for stamps of approval of their products from respective bodies of the government and related prominent private institutions.
2. Track Record As with investing your money in banks, you want to know how stable the establishment is before you entrust your property or reserves with them. In the case of networking companies, find out how long it’s been running with stability in the business. Check about their business and background. Make sure that they are experienced in this field. A solid five years beneath their belt is good enough. Know about the risks surpassed and challenges the company had overcome through thick and thin economics.
3. Living Testimony
Following this stability portion is the living testimonies of networkers who have been there themselves. These are the people who can attest about the responsibility of the company and the rate of dependability it has for its marketers. Owners should be visible and REAL as much as their members. You can search on the Internet, newspapers and other clippings to read about comments and knowledge of others about them.
4. Demand of Products/Services The products should have excessive demand and should be very consumable. These products should be able to be used by people on a regular basis so that your potential income can be residual month after month. They should not require much persuasion for somebody else to use. As well, they should be easy to deliver.
5. Initial Investment Avoid schemes requiring multitudes of investment to cash out upfront. You don’t want to spend for a big investment all at once. In a pyramid scam, the top people get paid from the money taken from the investment from the new people whom they say would be raking in profits immediately and be rich in weeks. Make sure that the golden egg in that basket is real before the scammer gets your cash. Have them hand over what you pay for (e.g. initial products to sell or machines to use for services).
When In Manila, Multi Level Marketing (MLM) is an exciting and rewarding form of business. In a networking company, you have the opportunity to be the business-owner yourself and become financially free. Sadly, this business model has been stereotyped as scam in the Philippines, merely because of the schemes of scam companies, especially of “pyramids groups.” The wise thing to do is conduct proper research before venturing and entering into one good, trusted and reliable networking company that will help bring you to the top sans-scam.
Network Marketing in Manila — How Not to Get Scammed
