"Hi, hon! I was looking at your page and was wondering if you'd like to model a product for me! I think you're SO pretty and would love our products! Plus, you'd get a HUGE discount for doing so! Wanna hear more?!"
Just one of the many messages I've received through Instagram by people trying to suck me into their MLM pyramid scheme. Trying to steal my money and gaining profit off of my foolish behavior and failure to resist buying something because it says, "Lose ten pounds in a week!"
I've come to find out? They're gimmicks and jokes.
An "MLM" is a multi-level marketing strategy. Basically, it's the "legal" way to create a pyramid scheme.
You see them everywhere. It Works!, Herbalife, Optavia, Doterra, LulaRoe, Arbonne, Younique, Monat, you name it, and you've probably seen it. You've seen the ads from people you went to high school with now promoting their body wraps that'll melt pounds off your body.
News flash, they don't. It's a gimmick, like their "skinny keto coffee."
Or how they're promoting some trashy makeup products that will be jacked up in prices so the people selling them earn some kind of commission. Even your friend from high school who was in a band with you? She's selling Doterra essential oils in an attempt to say, "They're life changing! I rub the stress one on myself and I feel amazing!"
Essential oils aren't supposed to go on your skin...
These "hunbots" will do anything for a new customer or member on their team, even if it includes trying to put a sob story in their sales pitch, or say how joining their team will be an amazing life-changing experience that you won't regret doing.
When we start getting into their money and the profits they're making, it's actually less than you think. They'll say they're making up to five figures in a month! I would love to make five figures in a month (who wouldn't?), but I don't think you're making five figures a month selling essential oils and Lulu leggings.
(Update: Just saw someone I follow on Instagram promoting a new product from ItWorks!... needless to say, they got the unfollow real quick).
In all reality, they aren't making five figures a month.
They're lucky to even earn profit some months off of their sales. These MLM's are very money hungry and will message anyone and everyone just to gain a quick fifty bucks from people who are foolish enough to fall for this scam.
Then they have to learn how to make the money back they just gave to someone else because once you're apart of their team, you have to buy the products that you will then try to sell to other people. It's a never ending pyramid that seems almost impossible to get out of.
Basically, if you want to get to the top of the pyramid where you're earning those supposed "five figures a month," you have to drain your bank account and buy products to sell back to people who don't know the scam an MLM really is.
So now that your bank account is empty and you have all these skinny teas, essential oils and cruddy MaryKay makeup that you can't sell, you're screwed. You fell down the rabbit hole and decided to fall for the gimmick of sketchy selling. I'm slowly being convinced that these "MLM" groups are just cults wanting to expand their group and take over the world with their body wraps and leggings.
So for the love of God, if a "hunbot" comes into your DM's wanting you to try a new product because they think you would make an amazing model, block them. Don't accept their essential oils, move on with your life and act like they never tried to get you to join the pyramid scheme.
Image Credit: Robert Nelson on Flickr