Is Arbonne a Scam That Will Rip You Off

Company: Arbonne

Website: www.arbonne.com

Type: MLM

Products: Skin care, shampoo, soaps and cream

Rating: 5/10

Will Arbonne scam you? 

Arbonne is a multi level company that promotes a whole range of products around skincare, soaps, creams and fragrance. The way it sells the products is through multi level marketing. Multi level marketing is a marketing structure that allows you to earn commissions through direct sales and that of other people that enlisted under you.

You can earn commissions from multiple generations deep. I am not really a huge fan of mlm because I got burned in the past, but I promise I will give you an unbiased review. First of all we need to understand the product before we can go through with the compensation plan.

Arbonne products

There is a wide variety of products that you will find on their website and all of them are focused around beauty. Mostly women are attracted to the products, but men can also benefit from the compensation plan. Below is a list of products that you will get:

1. Cream
2. Lip balm
3. Acne treatment
4. Anti ageing
5. Soaps
6. Shampoo
7. Sunscreen
8. Makeup
9. Cologne
10. Protein shakes
11. Bags
12. Holiday cards etc.

Compensation plan

It took me a while to fully understand the compensation plan and now I am going to give it to you. There are various levels that you can reach and each one of them has their own requirements and benefits. There are in total 5 levels that you can reach and I will describe them below:

1) Independent Consultant

If you want to reach this level, you need to generate at least 150 PQV (Personal Qualifying Volume) per month. The PQV is the amount of volume that you personally sell to your customers or if you buy the independent consultant starter kit. Once you qualify, you will earn 15% commission from the sales that you personally generate from customers.

You can start to build your own downline of Independent consultants, but you will not yet qualify to earn an override from them.

2) District Manager

As a District Manager, you will start to earn override, but you need to accumulate at least 1000 PQV or 2500 QV (Qualification Volume). The qualification volume is the amount of money that your team has generated in sales. You now have started your qualification process and now you must complete it. To complete your qualification you need to generate at least 6000 QV in 1 or 2 months or 7500 QV in 3 months.

After that you can gather more QV to reach the next level. Remember that you can start to build your own team as an Independent Consultant, but you will not earn any override yet.

As a District Manager you will still earn 15% commissions from personal sales, but in addition you will earn 8% override from your central group. The central group is the team of Independent Consultants that you have enrolled. Once one of your Independent Consultants have reached the District Manager level, they will move out of your Central group and join your 1st generation.

You will also earn 8% override from your first generation. To be able to earn from the second generation, you need to enroll a total of 2 Independent consultants and for generation 3 you need to enroll a total of 3 Independent Consultants. Below is a diagram that will show you the summary of the plan. For each enrollee that has reached the level that you are in, you will earn one generation deeper.

3) Area Manager

The next level will be the Area Manager. To reach this level your team need to generate at least 24 000 QV over 2 months or 30 000 QV over 2 months. You will still earn 15% from direct sales to your customers, but now you will earn an additional 6% from your central group and 1st generation. In total you will now earn 8% + 6% = 14% from your central group and 1st generation.

To start earning from your 1st generation, you need to enroll 1 Area Manager and the same goes for the 2nd and 3rd generations.

4) Regional Vice President

To qualify for this level, your team needs to earn 96,000 QV over two month’s period or 120,000 QV over three months period. You will now earn an additional 3% from your central group and 1st generation for example.

If you want to earn from your 1st generation, you need to enroll 1 Regional Vice President and the same goes for the 2nd and 3rd generations.

5) National Vice President

To reach this level you need to accumulate 384,000 QV over 2 months or 480,000 QV over 3 months period. You will now earn an additional 1% on top of that from the District Manager, Area Manager and Regional Vice President. If you look at the diagram again, you will see that you can earn an additional 1% up to 6 generations deep. This is what makes the NVP so special.

Should you join Arbonne?

This is a pretty hard compensation plan to understand and I have only scratched the surface. The main reason why I do not like mlm is because of these complicated plans. You should also keep in mind that it does not matter whether you understand it or not because if your prospects cannot understand this plan, then you will not make money.

If they do not understand it, then how can they promote it? You only have about 15 minutes to get the attention of your prospects and if they do not understand this plan then you have wasted your and their valuable time. Most MLM companies have binary structures which are much simpler than this one.

On the other hand, the products from Arbonne is great and I do not think you will have a hard time selling the products, but the plan is too complicated to understand in 15 minutes. I also looked at their stats and it does not look good.

These stats prove that the top earners will always be the 1% and it is very common for MLM.

Why I prefer Affiliate Marketing over MLM

Affiliate marketing is where you promote products from other companies such as Amazon or E-bay. It is a very simple model because if you sell a product, you will earn a commission from it. So many people get drawn into MLM because of the passive income that they can generate.

Not many people know that you can also generate a passive income from Affiliate marketing. What you need to do is to create a website (which is easy to build btw) around a niche and promote affiliate products on that site. Websites are like a virtual asset that you own that will make money for you for years to come.

>Click here to start your affiliate marketing business<

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