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Written by Mark Caliber
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Friday, 17 July 2009 |
Mona-Vie (and frankly any other Multi Level Marketing scam.)
Mind you, I’ve always been very leery about any multi level marketing proposal. I’ve had about a dozen individuals proposition me for Am-way over the years so I’ve been given more than a fair shake and have put MLM’s under the microscope long before Mona-Vie came along . . .
Mona-Vie (and frankly any other Multi Level Marketing scam.)
Mind you, I’ve always been very leery about any multi level marketing proposal. I’ve had about a dozen individuals proposition me for Am-way over the years so I’ve been given more than a fair shake and have put MLM’s under the microscope long before Mona-Vie came along.
Now, if you keep your eyes peeled, you will no doubt notice quite a few people who are sporting Mona-Vie stuff (car stickers, jackets, headwear, etc.) So here is my experience and understanding to you, free of charge.
First, I got into Mona-Vie because of a friend of mine. He’s had a life long ambition to succeed at a MLM (ANY MLM), and he’s been keeping his eyes peeled and ears to the ground, in search of the perfect opportunity.
And so after about six months of research on his part, I got a call from him asking me some questions.
No he didn’t try to sell me on Mona-Vie. He wanted to ask me some questions about Copy write law. As it was I saved him about $200.00-300.00 in legal fees, so he was quite pleased with me. Over the course of the transaction, I got my hands on his “Super Secret” MLM formula and he explained how he was not only going to jump on board with the Mona-Vie MLM, but he was going to make it explode for him.
First, lets start with the six months of research that he had just concluded.
By now I bet 90% of you are wondering what in the world the Mona-Vie stuff is, and lets start with that. It is a fruit juice combination featuring the new Acai berry coming out of South America. (Yes this was part of the six month research.) The health benefits are supposed to be phenomenal as it is a “Super-Anti-Oxydizer.”
Next, Mona-Vie is the distribution company that is selling this Acai berry juice via their exclusive Multi Level Marketing ‘Pyramid’ scheme.
The next salient bit of research my friend discovered was that Mona-Vie put together the instructional information regarding their MLM in a manner to deliberately confuse potential candidates. This is deliberately done in order to reduce the payouts that Mona-Vie makes to their participants.
In short, my friend had plumbed and uncovered the most efficient manner of generating revenue from Mona-Vie. (I won’t bore you with the details, quite yet.)
Said friend, then outlined how he was going to purchase presentation equipment, and take his show on the road, explaining his ultimate plan to generate tons of money not only for him, but his clients.
His plan hinged on the key failure for most MLM’s; and that is that most people are lousy MLM sales reps. In any MLM you are required to sell not only the product, but the MLM concept. If you’re a lousy sales rep, you will fail. My friend, on the other hand, is an excellent salesman. He’s quite capable of selling ice makers to Eskimos in Alaska during winter. His ingenious concept was to do the selling for all of his down line clients.
The concept was simply to get people signed up under him and get enough lead build to start generating real money for as much of his down line as possible. Those individuals would then share their success with their friends, who would be sold by my aforementioned friend. In short, you don’t sell anything to anyone, you just buy your healthy Mona-Vie drink, enjoy a nice check every month, and invite your friends to learn more, so that Super Sales guy could include them in the deal.
On paper, this sounded like a really good idea. I was interested in joining, but being dead broke at the time, I could only offer ancillary support. Long story short, I was brought into the network and paid in kind until the network became self generating for me.
As you can well guess, the whole concept failed. And I’m here to happily tell you why and how.
Obstacle 1) Mona-Vie’s MLM payout scheme.
Mona-Vie requires that new participants on your down line follow a 2 for 1 pattern. As you add “clients” below you, you place them in pairs. So everyone is required to have two people below them. (You can have more than two people below you but you will only suffer for your ignorance!) Now, that you have two of those people, buying Mona-Vie juice, you get a commission off of their sales based on who bought the least. So if one of your buddies decided, “I’m sick of this crap, I’m out of here!” you get paid nothing, even though the other friend continues to purchase. If you put more than two individuals under you, the odds of one of them backing out only increased, and conversely so decreases your chance at a commission check. In short the perfect Mona-Vie pattern is to have two individuals below each other individual. If you happen to have three friends, you should put the third friend below either your first friend (or the second) as one of their clients. Still you only get paid based on the group who purchases the least quantity.
If I haven’t convinced you of the futility of making money from Mona-Vie, by now, keep reading.
Obstacle 2) Receiving Payments.
Mona-Vie doesn’t issue checks. No they issue commission payments through a Visa looking debit type card.
After earning money from Mona-Vie, you are mailed a card that looks like a Visa card and has an account that you can access and look at your balance via an internet site.
The card network is provided by Citi Corp (and if THAT name doesn’t raise any alarms, you obviously haven’t had any dealings with them yet.)
In reality, I found that no merchants could access the funds in my account. (Another awesome execution by Citi Corp. Way to go guys.) And in the couple of early months that I was a member, I did make some money. Sadly, I couldn’t spend it. I did eventually find that if I went to a local grocery store and went to their customer service desk, and filled out a ton of paperwork, they could get the money to pay for my groceries.
Obstacle 3) Earning Commissions.
Fundementally, if I’m going to get involved with an MLM, I expect to receive a commission which represent a percentage of total sales.
I learned MUCH later, that Mona-Vie doesn’t do that. No, they were paying me based on how many active clients I had under me. Well, no it wasn’t even that direct a correlation, and it turned out to be a LOT less money than I had expected. I was figuring that Mona-Vie had to pay something like a 5% or 10% commission, but the figures were MUCH less. In the end, I didn’t see a single commission based check in spite of the fact that I had an average of no less than $700.00 per month of product being purchased below me. (At $40.00 per bottle that’s a lot of juice people!) And how much in commissions did I get paid for ‘selling’ that consistently for three months in a row?
The answer is $0.00.
Really. And that $700.00 was my “bad” month.
Obstacle 4) The non-pyramidical shape of an MLM scam.
You must understand this about ANY MLM. The shape of the network is NOT that of a pyramid. If you open up a spread sheet program and figure that each previous client has two people below him and total out how many people are in the next level of the network, THEN graphically model that spread sheet, you will find that the shape of this MLM most closely resembles a speed bump on an interstate freeway in Kansas.
Indeed in the Mona-Vie MLM in order to have a network that is 30 levels deep, you would need to include EVERY MAN, WOMAN, AND CHILD, as an INDIVIDUAL in the United States of America.
At 42 levels deep you would need everybody in the world. Mathematically those are individuals and NOT families!
In short, that’s a LOT of people buying stuff and not getting a commission.
Unfortunately this mathematical reality is true for ALL MLM’s.
As a word of warning to those out there considering an MLM. If the shape of an MLM doesn’t represent the Washington Monument (eg: ONLY one client beneath each other client) then the MLM is doomed to failure.
Literally, it is mathematically impossible for any other MLM network to succeed.
Obstacle 5) The price of Mona-Vie acia juice.
It’s true of any MLM product. In order to provide commissions in an MLM, there’s going to be some mark up of the product. When I was in the system, a single bottle of Mona-Vie juice cost $40.00 each, and each client was purchasing a minimum of 4 bottles per month for about $130.00 per case. Not a bad deal for a rare product exclusively available from one source eh?
Remember that grocery store where I was getting my kinda Visa something not quite debit card cashed? Guess what I found in their refrigerated section the week before this MLM network collapsed? A bottle of Acai berry juice for $10.00.
Obstacle 6) The product.
I sat down, after getting my first bottle of Mona-Vie and read the Federally required list of ingredients.
In short Mona-Vie juice is a combination Grape/Apple juice combo (with other similar domestic juices) and the last listed ingredient was Acia berry. Incidentally, grape juice has ALSO been found to be one of the top 10 Super-Anti-Oxidant sources.
In short Mona-Vie juice is just supped up grape juice.
The Aftermath.
We only lasted three months. My friend put a LOT of work into his network and found quite a few people willing to jump on board. But the writing was on the wall and after only three months, my friend realized that Mona-Vie, in spite of every thing he did right, was not going to ever be a source of revenue for anyone in his network. Right before we were scheduled to all purchase our fourth installment of Mona-Vie, he called everyone in his network and waved them off.
The moral of the story? Obviously, if one of your friends comes knocking and tries to introduce you to Mona-Vie, just walk away (or any other pyramid scam.)
If you still like them, you might also want to point them at this article as well.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 17 July 2009 )
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