Thank you Marissa for filling in some blanks for me on the Trump Network and please accept my appologies for the delay. It was caused by pressure of other things not a lack of interest.
I would like to make a few comments to you in reply.
“How could a network marketing company even be legal if what you were saying was true?”
How do you know any network marketing company is legal including the Trump Network? Legality is decided by courts not promoters (you as a member are also a promoter). Until a business is challenged in the courts there is no guarantee that it is legal, only opinions.
If you doubt this do some research on Bernie Madoff. His illegal scheme operated at least 15 years and possibly as many as 30 years before being finally exposed. He was, until caught, a highly respected member of the business community. Look up 12Dailypro and see how big it grew before being closed as a Ponzi. Why not even look at the original Ponzi programme?
Look further and you will find MLM icons being challenged for legality outside the USA and some even legally prevented from operating. It seems for some reason that law enforcement agencies in the USA are reluctant to challenge the MLM companies. Those being challenged, or already challenged, include Amway, Usana, YTB and Prepaid Legal to name just a few. Nothing is legal until the courts say so no matter how long it has operated or who is operating it.
“And furthermore, how could someone like Donald Trump put his name on it?”
Of course that is a question you would have to ask Donald Trump but here is a question I would ask you. Did your due diligence include any reseach on Donald Trump? Mine did and it was interesting and enlightening.
“If you do your homework, you’ll realize that the Trump Network has the most lucrative payplan in the industry, paying out in the neighborhood of 55% to the field.”
Personally I would not be inspired by the prospect of investing my money in a business that keeps 45% of it before paying out the bulk to the Diamond Distributors.
To give a small example of a matrix 6 wide and 6 deep and each member paying $600 per year:
Total membership is 9331 so total income is $5,598,600 that means there is $3,079,230 available to distribute.
Assume the top level gets $6000 per year pay out and each lower level gets 10% less than those above them the money runs out before all those in level 5 have been paid. Out of the 9331 members 8584 (91.99%) will receive nothing because there is not enough money left for them after the higher levels have been paid. If it was shared evenly every member would lose $270 per year.
As an alternative if each lower level receives only 75% of the income of the level above there will still be 7819 (83.8%) receiving no money.
Of course you can reduce the payout, and so the profit of the higher members, but it will not change the result much there will still be many more people receiving nothing than those receiving payments.
Do the maths and you will find that in a 6 wide matix, once 4 levels have been filled, 83.3% of all members are in the bottom level where they are not yet earning. A further 13.9% are in the level above them and will be earning little if they are making a profit at all. In total, in this example, over 97% will be earning little or nothing and this will apply no matter how many members join. Calculations for any other matrix structure produce similar results although they improve slightly if the matrix is only 2 wide.
Not even Donald Trump’s presence can change the laws of mathematics.
“Also, Donald Trump does not own our company. He is a partner with our founders.”
Thank you for clarifying that. It does not really invalidate my point. Donald Trump is using MLM to make profit for himself. He is not a distributor he is a supplier of the product to the whole network which was the point I was making.
“Preventative health by comparison is so much less expensive, it isn’t even reasonable to compare the difference.”
I made no comparisons, I simply expressed my opinion that the products were overpriced and I hold that opinion regardless of the cost of any alternatives. The fact that it may be cheaper than the treatment does not automatically make it reasonably priced. As I understand it the “prevention” that is being offered is an ongoing cost, which over a person’s lifetime, will add to a very significant sum, especially for those who in fact never really need it.
“ps. Do you know that there are less than 10,000 active distributors right now and close to 40 Diamond directors??”
No I did not know that and I thank you for the information. It seems that Diamond Directorship must come when three lower levels are filled but payments must continue down to six levels. This was one of the items I was unable to verify on the website at the time so I had to assume that the payout level was also the qualifying level. Perhaps I should have talked about Diamond Directors on the maximum income level.
Once again it makes little difference in the end. Right now less than 0.5 percent of all members are qualified as Diamond Directors and that will never change significantly.
If we return to my original analysis of half the world population joining (assuming they all do join) then it is possible to appoint just over 12 million Diamond Directors. There will be over 2 billion people who are not and never will be Diamond Directors. There is nobody else left to recruit to raise them higher. Less than 0.5% can be Diamond Directors at any time.
“It might be wise to do more investigation before trying to be a calculator holding dream stealer.”
I did my investigation and while there were a few things of which I was not aware they make no significant difference to my calculations, comments or opinions. You may classify me as a dream stealer but that is only because, for well over 90% of the people who join MLM, it is and always will be only ever a dream.