Job Vs Network Marketing

This will be an exciting post, in which we are going to see a straightforward comparison between Jobs and Network Marketing.

If you visited any MLM Company’s seminars, you will find that leaders always compare MLM with other businesses and jobs to prove that, MLM is superior. But that is not the reality.

Wearing a tie, clicking photos with someone else luxury car, or showcasing a rich and busy lifestyle on Instagram not makes someone successful. It takes real scarifies and hard works to achieve a dream life.

Business, MLM, or even a job can make anyone successful. But before that, we need to make the right direction for ourselves, cause right direction is more important than speed.

The purpose of writing this post is to share my personal opinion on Job Vs MLM, which will help newcomers to make their decisions.

Before going ahead, I want to convey that, I am neither a pro-MLM nor an anti-MLM. This will be an unbiased comparison, where I will try to show some real actual facts and helps you to make your decisions.

For Job Vs MLM comparison, I have selected a few parameters which will make it easier to understand the ground reality.

Qualifications
Skills and Work Interest
Work-Life Balance
Success Rate
Earning
Risk

Here MLM includes all network marketers/distributors who work in any MLM Company and Job denotes corporate jobs.

So let’s get started, without any further ado.

1. Academic Qualification

One thing which brings a major difference between MLM and Job is academic qualifications.

In MLM person never required any academic quantification/degree. But in job qualification is mandatory and qualification is like a label.

Passing from top IIM can easily provide 1 to 2 lac from the first month of the job and if a person graduates from any random engineering college, then it’s become hard to get a 12k monthly salaried job.

In 2019, 16.3% of graduates are unemployed in India, and in the same year, One IIM Indore student gets the highest package of 50 lac.

In proves that, at beginning of a career in the corporate world degree and college/university matters. Your job (field, salary, and designation) will be depended on the qualification. So for a better job, a person has to spend years in getting a decent academic qualification first which MLM most certainly never demands.

On this parameter, MLM is better, which didn’t require any qualifications and anyone can start it at any stage of life.

Initially, a corporate job is highly dependent on academic qualifications, but after a few years, experiences and skills get more important than the degree. Hence only on the qualification basis, you can’t neglect jobs.

2. Skills and Work Interest

Skill is the most important aspect in every work, skilled people can do their job with ease, while unskilled struggles.

In MLM as well as Job, skill is the most crucial factor which decides your career growth and in long term, your earning will be highly dependent on skills.

Every person learns skills from their life experience or work in which they spent most time or practice most.

In MLM you need communication, marketing, presentation, management, convincing, and other interpersonal skills.

In jobs, required skills highly vary according to the work and people can work on their favorite skills to get paid more. In MLM you don’t have a choice, you have to learn interpersonal skills in any circumstances which is a drawback of MLM.

The major advantage of a job is that you can choose the job and field according to your interest.

Graphics Design
Astronomy
Coding
Economic
History
Photography

In any subject of your interest, you can do a job and get paid according to your skills.

In MLM, your work interest is not considered. You have to do product selling, marketing, and recruitment which may or may not be of interest. So if you have the passion and love a particular work, then try to follow that because it will give your money as well as happiness.

If anyone is fascinated to interpersonal skills, then MLM can be a choice.

3. Work-Life Balance

The next point of comparison we will consider is work-life balance. Usually, you may hear this from MLM promoters, “MLM will give you early retirement and you will have economical and time freedom together which other industry can never give you.“

Statements like this are extremely controversial. About the economical aspect, we will discuss later, but the time freedom is not actually as shown by leaders.

Doing MLM and managing a team of thousands of people is not an easy task. You have to put extraordinary efforts into doing so. You can never expect ultimate time freedom from MLM, but you will have some time flexibility where you can choose your own working hours.

In an interview with Sarita Raj, who has more than 3 lacs people in the downline, said that “you have to make a various sacrifice while doing MLM especially in the early stage.” After being a successful networker, She is still unable to give enough time to her family. So yes growing in MLM is a hectic job.

On the other side, in the job, the work-life balance is highly dependent on the job type. Mostly corporate jobs give 1 or 2 days off in a week.

But in some jobs, peoples have to work overtime or even on Sunday to complete deadlines.

In the end, most of the jobs are not hectic as doing MLM. Even most high-paying job providers understand the work-life balance of their employees.

On the basis of this parameter, Jobs are better than MLM. Cause MLM requires extraordinary efforts, especially in the beginning.

4. Success Rate

The next parameter for comparison is Success Rate, for me which indicates the gratification from the work.

For the success rate of MLM, I will refer to Jon M Taylor’s research which is appreciated by FTC (Federal Trade Commission) as well, which proved that in MLM only 0.4% of people get success.

Usually, people involve in MLM to earn more money, the same situation was with Jon M Taylor, but even after becoming one of the top promoters of his company, he was not earning the amount promised. Jon M Taylor found that the same condition goes with other MLM companies and then he started his research.

After 15 years of long research on 350+ MLM companies, Jon found that the MLM success rate is extremely low to 0.4%.

In MLM, leaders at the top of the pyramid make most of the profits. Very few newcomers get success in network marketing even after putting extraordinary efforts for the years.

On the other hand for Job, There are no basic criteria available to measure success. In my opinion, success varies from person to person.

But we can consider monster salary index, an average of 75% of people are satisfied and 78.4% of people are happy with their corporate job.

An employee may not be called successful by society, but if a person is happy and satisfied with the job, then the person is already successful in their own way.

There is no parallel comparison, but on the basis of the success rate, MLM is far behind of Job,. Cause Job gives gratification to a higher percentage of people, compared to MLM.

5. Earning

Nowadays earning has become the most prominent parameter for measuring someone’s success.

Personally, I believe, high income is not a symbol of success. But it matters, especially when we are comparing professions.

In MLM 90% of people never earn and lose their money in buying overpriced products of MLM company,
9% of People merely get the return on their investment.
And the last 1% makes the most profits.

90% of distributed profit in most MLM companies goes to less than 1% of distributors. So to earn a good amount you have to become part of the top 1%.

Most MLM companies pay extraordinary amounts to the distributors for giving the motivational speech, performing on stage, and emphasizing the company’s image, which shows the dark reality of the industry. (Not targeting any particular MLM company, but various MLM companies show fake cheques.)

A report published by Herbalife shows that Herbalife gives on average $2700 annually to their US direct sellers, while in the US any person can easily earn $14,000 by doing the lowest wage job with 2 days off in a week.

Actually, there is a lack of enough data because most MLM companies never reveal the earning stats of their direct sellers. So it is hard to know the average income in MLM.

In my opinion, selected top MLM leaders like Sonu Sharma earn 8 figure income annually and on average 0.4% of networker in popular MLM companies earn 7 figure income annually. The name of these few top MLM earners is usually used to promote MLM. Rest 99% spent their money on buying products of MLM Company.

On other hand, in jobs income highly vary. People can earn 7k per month from a call center job which generally requires +2 qualifications.

C.P. Gurnani, CEO of Tech Mahindra earns 146.19 Crores in FY18 from his Job, which is even more than the annual turnover of most Indian MLM companies. It is a slap on the face of people who usually mock jobs for promoting MLM.

It is just a myth that a job can never make you rich, you have to become capable to achieve such jobs. Sunder Pichai, Satyam Nadela, Nikesh Arora, and Ajay Banga are a few examples who have become multi-millionaires from their jobs.

In Jobs initially, salary is based on academic qualifications, experiences, and designation. On the other hand, in MLM monthly income is highly dependent on the company’s compensation plan and active downlines.

At the beginning of MLM, for the first 2 to 3 years you can’t expect earnings from MLM. For survival, a person needs a different source of income.

Most significantly, jobs will pay you from the first month of joining, but the amount is highly dependent on your credibility. In MLM, your monthly earning can be 7,000 Rupees or 7 lac each month depends on the person, and the same goes for jobs as well.

If we compare according to the ratio of people who indulged in MLM and corporate jobs, then no doubt jobs made more people rich and given better average earning as well.

6. Risk

MLM and Jobs are known for the low risk compared to a business. But there is still some risk resides in doing MLM as well as Job.

Here are the few major risk in MLM.

Downfall of MLM company: Most MLM companies get shut down after 5 years, which directly ruins the hard work put by leaders to build a downline network.
Saturation of the company: Various popular MLM companies face the issue of market saturation after working for several years, which ultimately slows the growth after a time.
Loss of relationships: Usually, New networkers ruin their relationship with family and friends when they listen no.
Low success rate: Getting success in MLM is even harder than getting admission in an IIT.

Here are some drawback and risk which usually job doers may face.

Limited growth: Your growth is highly dependent on the organization with you are working, even if you put your everything.
Internal competition: Internal competition in the organization affects the job in all aspects.
Job insecurities: Due to the covid-19 pandemic 12 crores people lost their jobs, which shows there is always insecurity with jobs.

Conclusion

I hope this post on Job Vs MLM is beneficial for you and helped you to make your decision.

If you have any suggestions or query, feel free to comment below.