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Plan mechanics, commission math and compliance — written for operators, not for recruits.
Showing 49–60 of 63 articles
Legality, Trust & Compliance
A pyramid scheme does not fail because it was run badly. It fails because the only thing funding it is new participants, and every level needs more of them than the level before. The collapse is scheduled from the first day; only the date is uncertain.
MLM Plans
There are seven plan families in real use, and the difference between them is not marketing language — it is where the money leaks. Each one is described here by its placement rule, its payout mechanism and the specific way it becomes unfundable.
MLM Plans
A compensation plan is a budget with a marketing story attached. This guide covers the six components every plan is assembled from, how to sum them into a real payout ratio, and the four decisions that are expensive to reverse after launch.
MLM Plans
A binary plan pays on the weaker of two legs and carries the excess forward. That carry-forward is a real liability sitting on the balance sheet, and it is the part most plan models leave out. Here is the formula and a worked three-period cycle.
MLM Plans
A matrix plan fixes both width and depth, which makes its maximum size knowable in advance. That is its real advantage and the source of its worst failure: plans costed against a full matrix, when real matrices are never full.
MLM Plans
The unilevel is the easiest plan to explain and the easiest to underprice. Unlimited width, fixed paid depth, one percentage per level — and a total cost that is several times the number most founders first write down.
MLM Plans
Anyone who answers this question with a plan name is selling something. The plan that fits depends on four facts about your business, and this is the framework for working through them in order.
Comparison / 'vs' Content
The difference is not the shape of the organisation chart — every company has a pyramid-shaped org chart. It is where the compensation comes from, and that is a measurable property of your order data rather than a matter of opinion.
Legality, Trust & Compliance
Yes — direct selling is a lawful business model in the United States, and specific plans within it are routinely found unlawful. The distinction is where compensation comes from, and it has to be evidenced rather than asserted.
Legality, Trust & Compliance
Yes — and South Africa's Consumer Protection Act names multiplication and pyramid schemes explicitly, while POPIA governs every piece of distributor data you hold. Two regimes, both with real consequences, and both operational rather than theoretical.
Concepts & Glossary
Multi-level marketing is a distribution model, not a business category. Stripped of both the hype and the hostility, here is what it actually is, how the money moves, and the terminology you need to read any plan document.
Concepts & Glossary
Upline and downline are simple. Sponsor and placement are not, and conflating them is the single most common data modelling mistake in this industry — one that quietly makes every future commission dispute unresolvable.
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