It's not a pyramid scheme...

OU812

..,It's an inverted sales funnel

Actual phrase used by someone to try to recruit me into "the forever lifestyle".

Now admittedly, it seems to work quite well for him, he regularly travels internationally to their events and solely funds the family lifestyle through it & *seems* to be doing quite well but he got into it pretty early.

But it's still a pyramid scheme.

Your experiences with them?

The Backwards Man

The Ancient Egyptians are all dead.

That tells you all you need to know about pyramids.

GLaDOS

Wtf is "the forever lifestyle"?

Riesen_Meal

I know a lad who is into this shíte, he's a Dublin Bus driver, he must be hard up these days with all the strikes and pyramid schemes on the go...

flazio

Must be a trapezoid scheme so.

whiskeyman

OU812 wrote: »

But it's still a pyramid scheme.

Your experiences with them?

Dodgy Gizas

The_Valeyard

OU812 wrote: »

..,It's an inverted sales funnel

Actual phrase used by someone to try to recruit me into "the forever lifestyle".

Now admittedly, it seems to work quite well for him, he regularly travels internationally to their events and solely funds the family lifestyle through it & *seems* to be doing quite well but he got into it pretty early.

But it's still a pyramid scheme.

Your experiences with them?

Did I not read this on Reddit yesterday??

blinding

Send me money

........its always worth a try

Your Face

whiskeyman wrote: »

Dodgy Gizas

I sphinx you're right.

OU812

The_Valeyard wrote: »

Did I not read this on Reddit yesterday??

You appear to be confusing boards with the journal.

Wibbs

Not that Amway crowd by any chance?

BoJack Horseman

Invigaron?

marcbrophy

A cheap suit and a discount hour rate in the ballroom of a fancy hotel, during the midweek slump and any fraudster with a powerpoint can convince people they are wealthy. Wealthy beyond belief, mind you.

And they made all their money, by forcing all their friends away from them, trying to peddle them cheap shít like health juice and washing detergent.

Amuses me no end, how people are so fcuking gullible

Esel

Downside up?

Yeaaah, that's the ticket....

astrofool

OU812 wrote: »

..,It's an inverted sales funnel

Actual phrase used by someone to try to recruit me into "the forever lifestyle".

Now admittedly, it seems to work quite well for him, he regularly travels internationally to their events and solely funds the family lifestyle through it & *seems* to be doing quite well but he got into it pretty early.

But it's still a pyramid scheme.

Your experiences with them?

It *seems* to work for him, yet he's hanging around like a fly on sh*te to any idiot he can shill to.

If someone is telling you they spend their life as leisure time but are in fact working at recruiting in front of you, they are lying. It also means he spends the majority of his days talking to morons and trying to convince their little brains to give him money so he can spend tomorrow doing the same to more morons.

kunst nugget

Two people in work have sunk money into OneCoin, convinced that they are going to make a fortune. One even thinks he'll be able to retire early because of it. No amount of research I've pulled up on it can convince him otherwise and he says that it's propaganda spread by the likes of BitCoin to stop OneCoin being even more successful than it is. I've tried but at this stage, let him off. The thing is I thought he was a smart enough fella but it really has me questioning that.

Speedwell

OU812 wrote: »

...he got into it pretty early.

Well, there you go, you yourself said it. If you can't replicate the conditions under which he made his own money with a "downstream", how are you going to reproduce the results of his "upstream"?

Tell him that when you can get in on the same ground floor as he did, with the market offering the same low saturation rate of prospects as when he started, then you might listen to him about the "opportunity".

lawred2

OU812 wrote: »

..,It's an inverted sales funnel

Actual phrase used by someone to try to recruit me into "the forever lifestyle".

Now admittedly, it seems to work quite well for him, he regularly travels internationally to their events and solely funds the family lifestyle through it & *seems* to be doing quite well but he got into it pretty early.

But it's still a pyramid scheme.

Your experiences with them?

wifey had a shot at it

it needs a lot of time for little return

you'll end up buying a lot of products yourself

fresh meat is constantly needed at the bottom - if you don't embarrass easily and have lots of friends who are victims of the big sell then you could build a network under you for sure.

It's a pyramid scheme - nothing else

your friend got in near the top but my wife was surprised at the amount of people who had already heard about forever, were already buying products and had already been subject to recruitment attempts.

she jacked it in sharpish - took us a while to get through all the snake oil crap that they peddled

martinn123

kunst nugget wrote: »

Two people in work have sunk money into OneCoin, convinced that they are going to make a fortune. .

This Scam seems to be gathering momentum in Ireland

I am aware of weekly meetings in a Co. Louth Hotel which is pulling in loads of punters

Reports of similar meetings in other parts of the country.

Total rubbish, but there are people who will fall for a scam no matter how ridiculous it appears.

lawred2

Wibbs wrote: »

Not that Amway crowd by any chance?

oh god - my folks were suckered in to that at one point

RustyNut

blinding wrote: »

Send me money

........its always worth a try

Listen sorry about this but the cheque I sent you was for $10,000, I only meant to send $1,000 so it would be good if you could western union the ballance to me at account no 1canscam2.

Chuchote

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2015/05/the-case-for-prescription-heroin/

So heroin under prohibition becomes, in effect, a pyramid-selling scheme. ‘Insurance companies would love to have salesmen like drug addicts’ — i.e. with that level of motivation — Dr Marks explains. Prescription kills the scheme. You don’t have to sell smack to get smack.

tritium

I had a friend once who similarly to the OPs experience swore blind to me that the "sales' event he invited me to wasnt a pyramid scheme. I took out a pen and paper and mapped out exactly why it was. He just looked at me blankly and like a broken tape recorder repeated the same speil that id just rubbished.

Scary how brainwashed people get with these things.

El Weirdo

lawred2 wrote: »

wifey had a shot at it...

lawred2 wrote: »

oh god - my folks were suckered in to that at one point

Jesus.

Chuchote

I had a friend try to get me in on a succession of them. I'd say "But that's pyramid selling, isn't that illegal?" and he'd say "Not at all!" and I'd say "How isn't it?" and he'd say "Would you like another coffee?"

lawred2

El Weirdo wrote: »

Jesus.

I know...

can't be held responsible for my parents but I told the wife to leave it however she was determined (she's like that, also her friend was recruiting her)

We came to an agreement that as soon as she began to get the faintest smell of a rat that she was to drop it.

It didn't take long.

My parents don't like to talk about Amway

OU812

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRMwmMcZKAA

Speedwell

Christ. My father got sucked into Amway at one point because he was out of work and ashamed of it, the predator was in his Sunday School class, and the patter that year was heavy in "the American way of freedom and independence is to go into business for yourself", which my immigrant father was vulnerable to. He was nevertheless enough of a hardheaded engineer to force his upstream to buy the product back from him in a meeting in which he explained to them exactly why and how the product line was inferior to cheaper supermarket products.

Calibos

Speedwell wrote: »

Christ. My father got sucked into Amway at one point because he was out of work and ashamed of it, the predator was in his Sunday School class, and the patter that year was heavy in "the American way of freedom and independence is to go into business for yourself", which my immigrant father was vulnerable to. He was nevertheless enough of a hardheaded engineer to force his upstream to buy the product back from him in a meeting in which he explained to them exactly why and how the product line was inferior to cheaper supermarket products.

I thought you were going to say, "...when and how the product line would be inserted up which orifice" if he didn't buy the product back from him.

Calibos

OU812 wrote: »

You appear to be confusing boards with the journal.

I am 42 years old. I've read about pyramid schemes and Forever Young on many occasions in my life. I can honestly say I have never in my life heard the phrase, "inverted sales funnel" until this morning on Reddit and this thread an hour or two later.

What an incredible coincidence!!

Speedwell

Calibos wrote: »

I thought you were going to say, "...when and how the product line would be inserted up which orifice" if he didn't buy the product back from him.

To be fair, my dad, though a small guy, could have easily auditioned for the part of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter movies. He never committed a single act of violence against another man in all my life, but I am willing to believe that his blunt, take-no-prisoners, super-factual manner of talking and his air of "how dare you think I'm anything but 200 percent serious" came across to many people as having a chip on his shoulder the size of a battleship.

Going Forward

Everyone a bit shy naming these scams?

I remember in the early nineties there was a rash of them in the SE.

Lots of guys who'd never worn a suit before rocked up and invited me to join them in the pursuit of a dream.

I went to a meeting in a hotel and everyone was very enthusiastic...

Didn't bite, it all smelled from the start.
Trying to remember the name of it, NSA, National Safety Associates or some other important sounding monicker.

All fizzled out after 6 months, and the boys were back in jeans and Ts.

They were preyed upon, don't know if any lost money or how much.

I'd thought it had died out.

It would surely be difficult to carry off something like this today what with the internet?

ohnonotgmail

Going Forward wrote: »

Everyone a bit shy naming these scams?

I remember in the early nineties there was a rash of them in the SE.

Lots of guys who'd never worn a suit before rocked up and invited me to join them in the pursuit of a dream.

I went to a meeting in a hotel and everyone was very enthusiastic...

Didn't bite, it all smelled from the start.
Trying to remember the name of it, NSA, National Safety Associates or some other important sounding monicker.

All fizzled out after 6 months, and the boys were back in jeans and Ts.

They were preyed upon, don't know if any lost money or how much.

I'd thought it had died out.

It would surely be difficult to carry off something like this today what with the internet?

has the internet made people smarter and less gullible?

Riesen_Meal

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

has the internet made people smarter and less gullible?

Exactly this....

I'd say in this day and age of social media and the like people are actually more susceptible this kind of stuff....

Mink

One particular couple I used to be friends with tried to get us set up as distributors for these three schemes. I did partake with Herbalife when I was about 20 and swiftly learnt my lesson.
They however did not and are into some other thing now but I'm not sure what as not friends anymore.

Herbalife (supplements that will change your life)
Melaleuca (a whole catalogue of products with Teatree oil in them, which will change your life)
Agel (vitamin gel sachets that will change your life)

You either have the mindset to believe in this stuff or you don't.

Going Forward

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

has the internet made people smarter and less gullible?

On the whole, yes.

Unless the reason for national broadband roll out is part of a conspiracy theory to make them less smart and more gullible of course

TheDoc

kunst nugget wrote: »

Two people in work have sunk money into OneCoin, convinced that they are going to make a fortune. One even thinks he'll be able to retire early because of it. No amount of research I've pulled up on it can convince him otherwise and he says that it's propaganda spread by the likes of BitCoin to stop OneCoin being even more successful than it is. I've tried but at this stage, let him off. The thing is I thought he was a smart enough fella but it really has me questioning that.

In fairness to him, he might just be speculating. Bitcoin looked an absolute racket on release, and now its pretty recognized where you can pay tax, buy things and trade them.

But they are still liable to scams, fraud and theft, but the same can happen with any currency.

Bitcoin is a pain point for me. I received bitcoin as payment for some work I did for a friend years ago, and sold them off about 3 weeks before the market went mental about 3-4 years ago. I'd sold about 40k worth of bitcoin for €400 : /

TheDoc

Fieldog wrote: »

Exactly this....

I'd say in this day and age of social media and the like people are actually more susceptible this kind of stuff....

Going by the fake competitions people share on Facebook and Twitter, I'm pretty convinced people are worse these days

Riesen_Meal

TheDoc wrote: »

Going by the fake competitions people share on Facebook and Twitter, I'm pretty convinced people are worse these days

A girl I know who I would call "intelligent in the real world" consistently shares these fake competitions on her FB page, I gave up moaning about it years ago and just had to mute her a while ago...

A while back I had a nosey at her profile to make sure she was still alive and all of it was months of competition's for trips to Dubai and the like with nothing else on there...

No one will give you a trip anywhere for "liking and sharing the page" on FB, possibly a trip to John of God's, but that's about it...

I wonder has anyone genuinely won anything on FB?

Especially over the value of say 500 quid?

Lackey

Got dragged to a 'forever living' party a couple years ago
Went home and did some googling, I found a site where they said:
'it's not a pyramid scheme, it's .....,
An Unfortunate Shapley Coincidence'
Lol!!!!!

kunst nugget

TheDoc wrote: »

In fairness to him, he might just be speculating. Bitcoin looked an absolute racket on release, and now its pretty recognized where you can pay tax, buy things and trade them.

But they are still liable to scams, fraud and theft, but the same can happen with any currency.

Bitcoin is a pain point for me. I received bitcoin as payment for some work I did for a friend years ago, and sold them off about 3 weeks before the market went mental about 3-4 years ago. I'd sold about 40k worth of bitcoin for €400 : /

Even a smidgen of research would show you that every one involved in it is a crook with ties to various pyramid schemes in the past and nobody with any expertise in crypto-currency has anything positive to say about them. I showed it to the guy in work and he got kind of annoyed with me as if I was somehow trying to trick him. I don't want the fella to lose his money but I've had to let him off.

ohnonotgmail

Going Forward wrote: »

On the whole, yes.

Unless the reason for national broadband roll out is part of a conspiracy theory to make them less smart and more gullible of course

i didnt say it made them less smart and more gullible. My point, which i thought would have been clear, is that it has not made people smarter or less gullible. people who were stupid before the internet are still stupid now. the same with the gullible.

GavRedKing

Parents nearly got suckered into one about a decade ago and nearly pulled the trigger on about a 10k investment.

One of their mates from the local swore it was a winner and was never going to fail.

The_Captain

OU812 wrote: »

..,It's an inverted sales funnel

Actual phrase used by someone to try to recruit me into "the forever lifestyle".

Now admittedly, it seems to work quite well for him, he regularly travels internationally to their events and solely funds the family lifestyle through it & *seems* to be doing quite well but he got into it pretty early.

But it's still a pyramid scheme.

Your experiences with them?

An inverted sales funnel is nothing to do with pyramid schemes, unless for some reason you think because a pyramid is vaguely funnel shaped they must be related.

It's a scenario where you market/sell to a small number of people, who then tell friends and family about you and give them your contact details. These new customers tell their friends, and your sales base grows.

It's inverted because you're focusing on a small number of customers, providing good service and using them to spread the word about your sales, whereas a traditional sales funnel is about advertising/selling to a huge number of people and then focusing down on the people who express an interest.

It's basically like viral marketing where you use other people to advertise for you by sharing ads with their friends.


Nonetheless, direct selling is an appalling way to make money and should be avoided*





*unless you're looking to work in 'proper' sales, then it's a good way to learn how to sell without making any money.

Sunny Dayz

My aunt got involved briefly in Forever Living. She's a divil for joining those "work from home/ work for yourself/ make loads of money" schemes. She's done Tupperware, Avon, Christmas hampers etc. Anyway she didn't stay long enough with Forever Living to annoy us for sales thankfully. She found that the other Forever Living people were not business colleagues, associates etc - they were competition and it was back stabbing!

the_syco

Fieldog wrote: »

Exactly this....

I'd say in this day and age of social media and the like people are actually more susceptible this kind of stuff....

Confirmation bias. You'll find things that will support your belief, and ignore anything that says otherwise. Look at christains and/or any other large cults that go for your money on some promise that they'll somehow "look after you when you're dead"... :pac:

SoulTrader

Mink wrote: »

One particular couple I used to be friends with tried to get us set up as distributors for these three schemes. I did partake with Herbalife when I was about 20 and swiftly learnt my lesson.
They however did not and are into some other thing now but I'm not sure what as not friends anymore.

Herbalife (supplements that will change your life)
Melaleuca (a whole catalogue of products with Teatree oil in them, which will change your life)
Agel (vitamin gel sachets that will change your life)

You either have the mindset to believe in this stuff or you don't.

Interesting. Do you think Herbalife is a scam? I only know about it from reading the regular articles on Bloomberg - hedge fund activist investor Bill Ackman is convinced it's a pyramid scheme and has a massive short position in it - he is betting the stock goes to $0. Other investors, notably Carl Icahn, disagree with him though.

Speedwell

SoulTrader wrote: »

Interesting. Do you think Herbalife is a scam? I only know about it from reading the regular articles on Bloomberg - hedge fund activist investor Bill Ackman is convinced it's a pyramid scheme and has a massive short position in it - he is betting the stock goes to $0. Other investors, notably Carl Icahn, disagree with him though.

My mother was into it. Definitely a scam, but more respectable looking than other nutritional supplement scams, in general.

Winterlong

SoulTrader wrote: »

Interesting. Do you think Herbalife is a scam? I only know about it from reading the regular articles on Bloomberg - hedge fund activist investor Bill Ackman is convinced it's a pyramid scheme and has a massive short position in it - he is betting the stock goes to $0. Other investors, notably Carl Icahn, disagree with him though.

Ackman has shorted Herbalife to the tune of $1 billion. He must be confident all right.

My friend's brother in Italy is brainwashed into the Herbalife Pyramid Scheme.

I am probably the most frequent visitor to his facebook page, everything he and his wife does seems to be consumed by Herbalife. They go on Herbalife holidays and take selfies on Herbalife-sponsored deck-chairs beside a Herbalife pool; they go to Herbalife conferences, everything they say and do on facebook seems to have a Herbalife component. My friend tells me they're both miserable behind it all.

It's sad but intriguing.

BrokenArrows

Fieldog wrote: »

Exactly this....

I'd say in this day and age of social media and the like people are actually more susceptible this kind of stuff....

Agree.

The people who fall for these schemes are the sort of people who will read 100 pages of negative reviews about the scheme, then find one glowing review which will convince them to invest all their money.

Or the people on facebook who comment on the pictures which say "Share and type 1234 into the comment section to see the amazing thing that will happen" followed by 1 million ****ing comments of 1234.

Or "Facebook has decided to donate money to this cute sick cancer stricken child whos parents died in a freak accident involving a carrot and a lawnmower, one like = one love = one dollar" - ****ing retards the lot of them.