In any walk of life, you tend to believe that the longer something has been around, the better it must be. This is especially true in business ? after all, if a company were truly bad, it wouldn't still be around. With Multi-Level Marketing businesses, though, it's a little bit more difficult to gauge, since it's such a new concept. The exception to this rule is the Amway Network Marketing Program.



Conceived by the world famous Amway Corporation (itself part of the Alticor group of companies) way back in 1959, Amway Corporation has been selling quality household products for almost 50 years now, including skin care and cosmetic products, as well as water purifiers and even laundry systems. In 1999, Amway joined up with another company within the Alticor Group called Quixtar, and the Amway Network Marketing Program was born, as well as the term MLM.

In the beginning, the opportunity with Away was to sell their products and make a profit that way ? however, not long after the Amway Network Marketing Plan was conceived, the emphasis changed, and instead of making any real money through selling their goods, Amway affiliates earned their profits from the sales that people they had signed up made instead.

This is where so many complaints about Amway have come from. Although there is no doubting that the company's products are excellent, and that in general the affiliates are all honest, hard-working people, there have still been instances where Amway has been found guilty of breaking various MLM practices. Tales of distributors commissions being withheld are just some of the negative stories that have circulated over the years.

On top of that, Amway has extremely stringent rules that you have to pass before they make any payments to you. These include:

? Having to buy back any of the gods not sold by your team members. This comes into effect either if they don't sell it, or leave the Amway business completely.

? Each distributor must sell at least 70% of their monthly stock purchases to qualify for bonus payments.

? To ensure bonus payments, each affiliate has to also sell to 10 different people each month; otherwise they might not receive any bonus payments at all.

The problem with these, and the other rules that Amway has in place, is that the stock obviously needs to be kept somewhere, which can be problematic. And the pressure is on to make the profits via the people that you sign up to sell the Amway products for you, so it's not unheard of for distributors to upset friends or family members, as they keep pestering them to join the Amway Network Marketing Program.

The only real upside to this particular MLM is that there is no joining fee to become a member ? simply a screening process to make sure that you're the ?right type? of candidate. However, with the onus on you to sign up as many people as possible to your network of sales people, the Amway Network Marketing Program is definitely for the more aggressive-minded businessperson than your average Joe.