Only people who get in at the top make “big Money”!

Many people believe that to really make money in Network Marketing you must “get in” right at the very start. You often hear people say the only people who make any money are the ones at the top.

Before I really learned anything about Network Marketing I used to believe exactly that. I would hear how this person and that person were top income earners with particular companies and how they were at the top of the company pay plan. Which I interpreted as meaning they were physically placed at the top of the pay plan so they must have been the first people in!

I remember being prospected by a friend and my initial response was how dare you ask me if I want to join Network Marketing! Firstly it is something people do who can’t get a real job and secondly it’s a scam because the people at the top make all the money from all the other people who join. You know it’s one of those pyramid things!

Fortunately for me, we had a close enough friendship that Phil could say “pull your head in” firstly, I thought you knew me well enough, that you would have know that I wouldn’t be involved in scam! And secondly, you know nothing about Network Marketing so how can you make comments about who makes money and who doesn’t? or anything else about Network Marketing for that matter.

Following those few “heated words” I decided to listen to what he had to say and to ask questions rather than get my daily exercise of jumping to conclusions. And deep down I thought I would be able to ask some really tricky questions that would expose this for what it really was a scam!

Phil explained all about the power of leverage in Network Marketing to make sure he got my attention he gave me a quote of John Paul Getty’s, “I’d rather have 1% of the efforts of 100 people than 100% of my own efforts”. As I said to Phil I already clearly understood the power of leverage. I just hadn’t thought about how it applied in Network Marketing, in all fairness I hadn’t thought about  Network Marketing to much at all let alone what it did or didn’t offer or indeed how it worked.

The discussion soon moved to the income side of things, and thought here is my chance I will show him how it’s a scam. I had heard on more than one occasion that only the people that really earned any money were the ones at the top. So I asked is it true that only the people who got in at the top or at the start of the business make the “big” money?

I want to qualify, again, that I really had no idea how a Network Marketing plan worked, so when Phil started talking about, sponsors, levels, ranks upline and downline  I found myself getting quite confused. The terminology was very different to what I was used to so I had to get him to go over it a couple of times before some of it started to sink in.

The wash up of all this was that some people who get in at the top make a lot of money but not because they got in at the top, they make big money because they work the hardest.

Wind the clock forward a few years and I can tell you for sure the company I am with, our top income earner is way down the line in fact he is about 130 something from the top, so there goes the theory that only people at the top make the “big” money

The pay plans or compensation plans as they call them, of Network Marketing companies usually require each distributor to qualify in some way. They must achieve certain ranks in order to get paid so many levels, or they must qualify at a certain rank in order to get bonuses. The qualifications are all usually based on achieving certain sales volume, the number of people on your team and the number of successful people within your team, so in essence you get paid more for helping other people become successful as well!

Because companies cannot pay out more than 100% there is a limit to the number of levels down a person can get paid so even though there may be one or more people physically at the top of a company pay plan, unless they do the work, the people underneath them who do do the work can and will earn more than them.

Now I found that quite intriguing because in my corporate life of almost 30 years I had worked in numerous situations where people where being paid the same amount of money to a job and yet clearly some were focused and diligent while others were there because they had to be there and did only as much as they really had to yet both lots of people took home the same wages.

So when I really got Network Marketing, and I got that the harder you work the more you get paid, I realised I had just found what I believe is the fairest system of them all.

So next time you hear someone say only the people at the top earn the “big” money ask them to show you what they mean. And you know what you will probably find that person turns out to be just like I was, quoting from hearsay not from correct information. But be kind to them, I do not suggest you speak to them like Phil spoke to me unless you have that kind of relationship, ask if you can show them how your pay plan works.

Yours in Success

Linda Cargill-Selfe