Interesting Idea

One of my friend invited me over for a presentation on a marketing scheme he's excited about. I have to admit, it was very interesting.

The company is ACN and they multi-level market (pyramid) home services - phone, VoIP, Internet, cell phones, satellite TV, home security. Their rates are reasonable but not actually as cheap as they initially seem.

Their main marketing gimick is a video phone which they present as the 'next big thing'. It's exactly what you'd expect - a phone with a webcam and screen. It uses VoIP and again comes at a reasonable cost.

Personally I have no interest in the video phone (I have webcam and msn on my laptop should I want to see someone already and it's even cheaper - it's 100% free). But they add a little something in that you can purchase another for $15/mth to send overseas and then have unlimited conversations with that friend/relative without l/d. Of course, if you think about it, if both people have internet already they can already do this without the videophone but many people are not that tech savvy or just like the familiarity of a phone. Plus if they are using calling cards or ld now to talk extensively to those relatives/friends/lover this could be a substancial savings. It also does have a 'cool' factor about it.

So the question is, even though I'm not motivated to switch this does have potential. Could I make money selling this myself? Well I could do a better presentation than the guy I saw and he's obviously enjoying some level of success with it. The initial start up cost is reasonable $500. Seems reasonably easy to make that back so the risk involved in minimal and during the recession people would be more prone to try something like this than normal.

Something worth considering. Right now I'm investigating what the 'net has to say about ACN and it's customer service.

Edit: Interesting research. ACN is a mixed bag. You can make money off it but it's a lot of work. Residual income is a joke. Only the top level people make any real money and it's next to impossible to reach those levels. In fact, it may be impossible mathmatically. So really it's only the bonus pay that you get for recruiting new people that matter. Doing that you can make decent money. But you will always have to be doing it. Forget depending on people under you, they'll burn through their friends, fail to qualify (2 reps, 20 customers) and fall off. You could of course find a couple of go-getters but then they need to as well and so on and eventually because someone gave up it'll cause a crash in a leg and you need to develop another leg to replace it. IE: Expect to recruit everyone directly, anyone under you is a bonus.

So you need to be able to go to new places to meet new people to sell them.
Frankly it's not that it's bad, but you can only make money on recruiting new agents and most of those people will lose money on this venture.