Multi-level Marketing

Even before the advent of the internet this form of selling has been around for a long time. The internet has merely allowed people marketing these 'systems' to reach a far wider audience of desperate gullible people eager to make their fortune from something that sounds almost too good to be true.

Often very similar to pyramid schemes and also known as network marketing they exist purely to make money without offering anything of any real value to the purchaser. The 'product' you buy is the very same product you must resell in order to make any income.

Remember the days of chain letters back in the dark ages before the internet and mobile phones? - (if you're not old enough to remember then bear with me here). A favourite pyramid scheme from those days is now back in the form of email/sms using Paypal as the means to collect the money. We have noticed it posted on a few forums, the authors purporting that it has recently been featured on Oprah or some other TV show.

It involves sending money to the person at the top of the list, crossing their name out, adding your name to the bottom of the list and then sending the list to x number of your friends and getting them to do the same. The idea being that by the time your name reaches the top of the list the message will have been sent to 1000's of people and you will be in the money. Don't do it, it's a scam and probably illegal.

Anyway, back to the MLM's of this world. You will have seen these sites, you may have even bought into one or two of them. If you have no idea what they look like, here's a brilliant spoof of one.

They will promise you income beyond your wildest dreams, in a short space of time, for very little effort from you and all you have to do is buy the ebook/product/whatever that is for limited time only available for a very special discount but hurry there are only a few available (how can you have limited stock of an ebook? forgotten how to copy a file!?) and YOU have been specially selected to receive this offer (aren't you lucky?) so hurry before it's too late.

Don't believe us? Ok, compare the above spoof link to this, real MLM site Babyboomer income. The similarities are uncanny, are they not?

At this stage we feel obligated to point out that the link is an affiliate link, so if you purchase that product, Cash Ninja will make money. How can we do this we when are clearly indicating that we believe this type of scheme is a scam? Simply put because that site is added as a real example of these MLM schemes and should anyone actually sign up, despite our best efforts to convince you otherwise, we want to make sure that the majority of the money from that sign up does not go to the person/people running the scheme. This is not some weird reverse psychology, we are serious when we say that we would rather you didn't sign up because it is very difficult to make any money from those schemes, unless you are at the top of the pile (did I say pyramid?). However, if you are determined to, then we might as well get the commission. Mind you, you're welcome to circumvent the affiliate link and go straight to their site if you want.

As with most ways of making money on the net, these schemes require you to attract a lot of traffic and then turn those visitors into buyers. We would love to hear from anyone who has successfully made a real income from one of these schemes and no, we're not talking about the dubious testimonials you see on those sites either. We wish you every success.