Home based MLM business has been around for decades. In fact, it's probably safe to say that virtually all MLM business is, or at least certainly can be, home based. That's often the beauty of the MLM industry and the primary intrigue for those who join an MLM as a distributor.

The first home based MLM business was Nutralite, which is now a subsidiary of Amway. Nutralite, founded in 1949 by Jay

VanAndel and Rich DeVos, was the start of network marketing and the start of the food supplement and vitamin sales industry.

In 1959, after long standing internal wrangling between the manufacturing subsidiary and the marketing folks, VanAndel and DeVos decided to create a whole new company as a resolution. This was how Amway, the first national home based MLM business, was formed.

Amway bought the Nutralite product and firm in 1969 and has long retained its title and largest MLM business in the world, home based or otherwise.

Viewing the Amway success, other home based MLM business ventures soon cropped up, including those not so reputable. A scam called the Ponzi scheme, actually developed back in the 1920's, was redesigned to look like an MLM but designed to deliver profit to only the designers and the con artists running the scam. This home based MLM business look alike came to be known as a pyramid scheme.

The basic difference between a legitimate home based MLM business - one that can and does actually reward every hardworking distributor with commissions on the products they sell - and a pyramid scheme is that there is a product that does pay profit to the seller. A pyramid scheme is solely about rewarding those at the top of the pyramid heap.

In a pyramid scheme, which, by the way, is illegal, the scammers lure others to join what they present as a legitimate home based MLM business by telling them of hefty profits quickly and ask that the victim and would-be distributor, send payment for the products to sell. In a true home based MLM business there is also typically an upfront cost for a sample box of

products to start selling but those products are legitimate for sale products. In a pyramid scheme, what the would be entrepreneur gets for her or his payment, is the information on how to present other would be distributors with the lure of quick dollars, take their money and send them the very same instructions on luring others. There is no product in a pyramid scheme.