Market America Scam Or Legal?

Is Market America a scam or is it legal?

Market America has been getting a lot of attention recently. Online forums are a buzz as to whether or not Market America is a Scam. The quick and simple answer is no...it is not a scam. However, after doing my research on this company I have found several troubling issues.

What exactly is Market America?

According to Market America they are "a product brokerage and Internet marketing company that specializes in One-to-One Marketing." What is One-to-One Marketing? Just a fancy term for MLM or Multi-Level Marketing. And what exactly is a product brokerage? A fancy word for a wholesaler. They provide what they call an "unfranchise" to their members which allows the members to recruit more members and get paid commissions on their purchases.

What do they sell?

Market America sells everything from shoes to financial lending. They do seem to really push their lines of generic health, personal care and anti-aging products. However, you don't have to buy them and there are name brand products available as well.

What is the Market America Compensation plan?

The compensation plan is just plain confusing...either they don't do a good job describing it or they purposefully made it confusing to hide what your real profits will be. So I did more research to find out exactly what their compensation plan is and what their real payouts are. This is where it gets scary folks.

So I went to the Market America main site (not an affiliate site) and I could not find any detailed information on their payout structure. Hmmm...I wonder why? So I started a chat session with someone named Alex who kept telling me to call their field office to answer my questions (yeah right!...like I am going to fall for that one just to end up on a hard sales call). After a lot of persistence Alex finally told me that I could find a presentation on an affiliate website, but that some affiliates choose to turn the presentation off. I wonder why they would do that? So I did several searches and finally found an affiliate site that had a presentation and wow did my head start to spin. I had to view the payout structure several times to understand what they were talking about. Now I know why most affiliates choose not to show the presentation.

First in order to qualify to start making money you must purchase 200 BV (Business Volume) worth of product.

What is BV you ask? Yeah me too. So back to friendly but frustrated Alex at the chat center, and again I am continually told to contact their field office to answer what BV is. Well not entirely Alex does give me some rehearsed definition of what BV is but can't or maybe won't answer how much BV relates to in dollars...you know the funny green stuff us humans use down here on planet earth. So I went back to the forums and search engines looking everywhere for the elusive BV. Finally, I found it on some regional Market America Challenge site...it seems like they challenge their members to buy specific products and if you win the challenge you get preferred seats to their conference (that you still have to pay for). The BV exchange rate is variable and depends on the products sold. BV is approximately 60-90% of the dollar value of the product. Most products seem to have a BV value of around or just under 80% to the dollar. So to qualify you must buy approximately $250 worth of products...hmmm that's not bad I wonder why it's so secret?

Next refer two people to qualify.

To start making money you need to refer two people (who both buy 200 BV worth of product) to your right and left business line.

Start making money!

You make money based on the GBV (Group BV) and you are limited to only two business lines...but wait you can add an additional two business lines by doing something they call "Re-Entry". What's Re-Entry you ask? I have no clue and frankly I am tired of searching to find out how to translate Market America terms and acronyms. Once both legs of your business line generates 5000 GBV each then you receive $1500. So if BV equals approximately 80% and you need 10,000 BV to earn $1500 that means your business lines need to buy or sell approximately $12,500 worth of product. And that means that you receive approximately 12% commissions. Sorry for the algebra problem.

But wait it gets better...

There is also something called IBV. I know you are going to ask so here is what Market America defines IBV as "IBV (Incentive Business Volume) is the Unit (Point) Value assigned to an IBV Product/Service to calculate IBV Commissions". Are you confused yet...yeah me too. Also, now you can make even more money by signing up for a Market America credit card and using it on all your MA purchases! WooHoo!

So how much can I make?

The Market America presentation will show you how easy it is to make $10,800 a week or $561,600 a year! Ok...you want the truth right? The truth is that based off of the earnings statement for the Canadian version of the presentation only 2.07% of members make more than $80,000 and 65.75% of members make $3000 or less and 44.89% make $1000 or less per year. Tip: always view the Canadian version of a business opportunity presentation because in Canada network marketing companies must disclose the actual earnings of their members. So do you want to spend your time, money and effort the promote a program that has an average earnings of $1000 or less for almost half of their members?

In Conclusion: Is Market America Scam or Legal?

Market America is not a scam and is legal. However, their payout structure is very confusing and the average members success rate is not very good. They do seem to carry a wide range of products that should be able to entice most online shoppers. If you are going to join Market America do so for the products they offer not the business opportunity. Any business opportunity where you only make $1500 commission off of $12,500 in sales is not very good in my opinion. So my advice is to keep looking and just shop because you want to shop, not to make money.

Written By: Dustin Drummond

Dustin Drummond is a former Marine who has developed the skills of leadership, training, and mentoring people over the last 10 years as a member of our nation's elite forces. Currently, Dustin is working with a team of online marketing mentors teaching others how to avoid MLM Scams and Pyramid Schemes [http://www.vipmoneypass.com], to learn more about Dustin Drummond and his team of mentors visit, [http://www.vipmoneypass.com]

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