Mostly suckers. I met a guy (Brig Hart, you can look him up) who made $50 million by suing Amway. See
The gist of the thing is all the double diamonds or whatever they call the top of the pyramid make HUGE amounts of money be selling training videos, which often go for $1000 a set, to the rest of the "associates". All the people downstream are pretty much required to push these videos to all THEIR downstream. He was pretty successful with Amway, but realized the people above him were making fabulous incomes from HIS hard work selling the videos, and not cutting him in at all! Various state attorneys general have investigated Amway, and most of them say that none of the rank and file ever make ANY money at all with it.
My mother in law got into Mary Kay, and she now has $50,000 of stuff she was forced to buy to stay in the program stored in her beasement and all over her house. My daughter brings over cases of the stuff and has garage sales just to get rid of it.
My wife got involved in Brig Hart's newest venture, Monavie, some kind of rainforest berry that is supposed to be the fountain of youth or whatever. They sell it in a big green wine bottle for $40 (if you are a member). Yeah, that's right, $40 EACH bottle! How can you not make money putting a liter of fruit juice in a glass bottle for $40? So, my wife has spent some $3000 or so on the glop
- she believes all the crap they tell you, and has made me drink the glop and it's done nothing for me. Oh, yeah, one of the formulas gave her headaches! Gotta be great stuff, right?!? Anyway, it is another MLM (Multilevel Marketing system, ie. Ponzi scheme) and as usual, unless you are the first 10 people in, you can't make a buck unless you work an 80 hour week. Brig Hart has the personality to just walk up to people and you think you've known him all your life, but that is rare. (Note I don't call it a gift, I think it is a common trait among professional con men!) They give you a debit card that they are supposed to deposit your commisions in, but nobody ever gets any. There are all these insane restrictions that prevent you from ever cashing in. Like, your downline is split into the "right leg" and the "left leg". You have to have your two legs equal, or you lose all your commisions. AND, you can't transfer somebody from one leg to the other, you have to ADD a new member to balance your legs. And, if you have $1000 in commisions that are pending something, and you don't bump your sales up another notch, you lose it all. And so on..... Some people have told me that most of this organizational stuff comes straight from Amway, too.
The Amway products seem to be pretty good, but a $40 bottle of shampoo, or a $30 bottle of vitamins is just insane. I can't believe my wife laps this stuff up, she is SO gullible. She goes to this health food store, and they also have all these $30+ vitamins, too. "Oh, but this is better for you!" Look on the label, and it is all biotin this and biotin that. Check with a chemist, and some say there is no such compound. (Used to be ALL of them would say that.)
Jon