Customer Reviews

Multi-Level Marketing, Second Edition: The Definitive Guide to America's Top MLM Companies

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1 star:		(2)

 

 

Multi Level Marketing The Definitive Guide to America's Top MLM Companies is an excellent book on what the industry is all about. The compiler of the book is Larry Kramer who served as the executive director of the Washington Post and the Pulitzer Winning Team at the San Francisco Examiner. He does an extra ordinary job of getting as much information and raw data that you can on the industry, much of which is miss understood by most people. The contributing authors are the gurus of the industry such as John Kalench, Jeffrey Babener, Scott DeGarmo, John Milton Fogg, Doris Woods, Keith Laggos and Leonard Clements to name a few. It is a step-by-step overview of the most common questions that plague the industry such as: Saturation Fact or Fantasy? Franchises vs. MLM, Income Claims, Selling, Failures, Legal Issues and the Lies of MLM. The introduction of the first 79 pages are invaluable which are Chapters 1-3, however, the company profiles need work. Most of the information is accurate on the companies as a general overview. What is out of date are pictures of products, compensation programs that have changed and what's new with the company. What the book does best is offer the reader investigating the MLM or Network Marketing industry, a realistic nuts and bolts (no hype) about what it's all about. You'll learn about marketing trends, biographies of successful MLM entrepreneurs, a great listing of books, videos and organizations to help you in your search for the perfect business you'd like to be involved with, and just honest facts and figures that one needs to understand the industry of MLM. One area it does need work on is compensation packages. A common question is always,"What better, A Uni-Level, Forced Matrix, Binary or Stair-Step Breakaway program? It should also list many of the corporate websites no available by each company for people to reference to immediately to receive updated information not expressed in the book. Overall, The Definitive Guide to America's Top MLM Companies is an excellent source of reference, but the point is don't make it the only soucre if you're planning to get involved with an MLM company.

When first published (1996) this book probably provided a fairly comprehensive, top-line assessment of the MLM industry. Six years later, much of the company-related informational profiles seem woefully out of date - particularly as far as the compensation plans are concerned. There is some "interesting" historical background, but not enough to justify the purchase price. It's not the money I regret having spent on this book, it's the time I wasted looking at it...

Before you join any MLM program you must read this book to get the flavor of what's out there. It is not a "bible" but makes a lot of interesting comparisons.

I agree the comparisons of plans (one of the reasons I bought the book) are hopelessly out of date. At the least the author should have dated the date of his comparison. Many of the lead articles have their use.

I found this book to be invaluable in how to evaluate the network marketing opportunity.

A must read for anyone looking to start out like I did!

In this book there are various charts and graphs by which the reader can supposedly compare the compensation plans of the 24 "most successful MLM companies in the United States". This would be of great interest to many MLM'ers if the compensation plans shown were actually the ones in effect when the second edition was published in 1996. I can't judge the validity of the other 23 company's compensation plans, but I can tell you that the plan shown for my company has not been used since 1993. The meager Product Line description of only one of their 5 product lines is totally misleading as to the breadth of their products. The product photograph has been obsolete for years. The company address is obsolete, as is one of the 3 phone numbers listed. It appears that most of this information was compiled for the first edition in 1994, and was not changed for the second edition. Yet, surprisingly, the information on the foreign countries in which my company operates shows it in the UK--which did not happen until 1996, but it does not show it in Mexico--which happened in 1993! If the other 23 companies are as misrepresented as is my company, this book is so error-ridden that it should be pulled off the market. We don't need this kind of mis-information propagated any further. Amazon, please delete this book from your catalog and send your inventory back to the publisher with this review!