Multi-level Marketing Programs vs Refer-A-Friend Programs
By Vernon T., September 26, 2011, Careers/Jobs, FAQs, News, Save Money, Special Offers
Multi-leveling Marketing (MLM) based businesses sound like quick and easy ways to make a pile of money. They sound more like pyramid scams or Ponzi-schemes. A casual glance at them tells you why: they charge people to “pay to play”. That is, a company contracts with you as an independent agent to sell their product or service, however, you must pay a fee, typically several hundred dollars. The money is paid, in part, to others who are higher up in the organization. In some cases, company profit is overwhelmingly driven by recruiting-fee income instead of product sales.
This isn’t to say that MLMs are bad, but they are troublesome business structures. Two large Texas Retail Electricity Providers, Ambit and Stream (including Stream’s marketing arm, Ignite) are being sued as of July, 2011 under the Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) as pyramid schemes: Stream case. Ambit case.
“Refer-a-Friend” programs, meanwhile, are all together different animals. They are designed with the idea that you are just buying a good or service and are not interested in building a career around it. In the 1990′s Paypal started out by offering a $10 billing credit to those who got their friends to sign up. One of the best programs right now in Texas is Bounce Energy’s Refer-a-Friend Program. When you sign up, you get a code to share with your friends and family. Each time one of them signs up for Bounce Energy, you both get a $50 bill credit. Since it’s a billing credit, it stays on your account until it’s all used up.
How does this differ from MLM plans? No pay-to-play fee. No minimal number of new customers. No maintaining a new customer base. Sure, there are some drawbacks: the bill credit is paid just once after the referred friend has been a paying customer for 60 days. However, there are no restrictions with how you share your Refer-a-Friend code. You can put it on your website, blog, Facebook page, and Twitter page. You can print it out on cards and hand it out to people at cookouts, concerts, and baseball games.
That means no recruiting presentations. No hotel conference rooms to rent. No riding hard on friends and family to stay with Bounce Energy. No awkward moments and bad feelings at family get-togethers (well, no new ones). It’s just a once-’n-done deal done each time.
Not only do you get a great rate with Bounce Energy’s electricity plans, but if you get 2 friends to sign up, that’s a $100 credit. Sign up 4, that’s a $200 credit. Sign up 15, that’s… uh… a lot of savings on your electric bill.
Learn more about Multi-leveling Marketing (MLM) and Refer-A-Friend programs, by reading the whole article here.
Follow @BounceEnergy
