You may just be sitting on a time bomb. How can you be sure that the MLM company you are promoting or intending to promote is not the next Zeek Rewards or Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing (FTHM)? The pain many people have had to suffer and a drying of some income stream of affiliates is better not remembered. If you intend to engage in a long lasting business however, you will have to ensure that your priced opportunity could still be around for all times. Conduct due diligence in the areas that would be mentioned below.
Check With The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
All you have to do is to visit the Federal Trade Commission website and enter the company name in the search box. Any issues filed against the company with the FTC will come up. Read them to determine what decisions you have to make. Please note, every information you gather will serve as a pointer to your final decision making.
Check with the Better Business Bureau (BBB)
The next step is to check the company’s BBB ratings. Check how many complaints were logded, what is the nature of these complaints and whether the issues have been resolved. This will provide some level of comfort. Every company that is doing business will have issues with their clients. If complaints are resolved and closed at the BBB, this is a very good sign. You may consider the company. Care must be exercised though.
Check The Company, Its Products and Business Model
If the only way you can really make money with your MLM is to promote the opportunity, you are in for a big trouble. Your company stands the risk of being categorized a pyramid scheme. It is obvious for instance that 90% of distributors in FTHM lost money. The only way that distributors could really make any substantial income was from recruiting down lines. Do not fall for illegal schemes.
Social Proof
The explosion of social media sites such as facebook, twitter, linked in, google plus, etc have made it so easy to find out what the popular view held by the public on a particular issue. You can mine very important information from what people say. Other sites such as scam.com may also be useful in conducting your due diligence.
When applying these rules, it is always good to keep your brains and look at things objectively. Some people will generally malign a company just because they have had a bad experience dealing with the company. This should not be the reason why you loose out on a great opportunity that may be begging at you.
Search Reviews on The Company
Indeed, there is a lot of crap on the internet lately. People write reviews just to promote their offers or to bad-mouth a company. These people do not deal with issues objectively. They are usually swayed by their emotions of bitterness or their greed for money. Don’t worry. You can always tell a good review from a bad one. Just read in between the lines. None the less, reading reviews can reveal important facts that should help you tell whether to go ahead with your company. To search the reviews of a company, you can just type the company name with words such as “complaints” “scam”, “review” etc. in the search engines. For a company XYZ, you could type XYZ Scam or XYZ review.
Is the Compensation Plan Difficult to Understand?
If the compensation plan of the company is difficult to understand, ask questions. Usually, compensation plans are thorny issues that bring companies to face the law. The more frequent a company faces trial, the higher the probability of the company being declared a pyramid scheme.
Go with Your Guts
Always go with your gut feeling. If it does not feel right to you, do not join the company. Many businesses have collapse because entrepreneurs have refused to listen to their gut feelings. Other entrepreneurs have flowered because even though every thing seemed right, their gut feelings opposed it. They were right most of the time.
The post above is just to provide you with a guide. Each of these methods is not failure proof. It is important that you ask questions. Also check with your attorney to make sure that you are making a sound, legal business decision.
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