Network Marketing - Pyramid Scheme Or Home Business Opportunity?

So why isn't Network Marketing a Pyramid Scheme?A pyramid scheme is the same as those chocolate bar chain letters you or your kids might have received. The letter states that if you send one chocolate bar to the person who sent you the letter and then pass the letter on to six other suckers (I mean "friends") they will send you six chocolate bars.Some letters even go so far as to threaten you or your children of they don't pass on the letters or "break the chain". I've seen letters sent to small children telling them if they don't join the pyramid scheme their mother will be killed in a car accident!It's worth noting that in most countries participating in any pyramid scheme is illegal so if you thought letting your kids pass on chocolate bars was harmless fun you may wish to reconsider training them up to be duped later on in life!A pyramid scheme relies on the next person down supplying goods to the person above for NOTHING IN RETURN. After 16 layers of six people sending six letters you actually run out of population in the world to keep sending goods up the line. So a pyramid scheme eventually has a bottom - wherein lies the problem because the vast majority of participants are at the bottom and have no-one below them to supply the six chocolate bars. Pyramid schemes are illegal because they don't work, eventually you will bottom out and only the person (or people) at the top benefit. For a person to make money (or get chocolate bars) in a pyramid scheme someone else has to GIVE GOODS AWAY because there is no product being sold.There are some super-elaborate pyramid schemes/scams around with fancy investment brochures and flash presentations which can make it difficult to tell the scam from the reality. These are also called Ponzi schemes after Carl Ponzi who took millions from investors and then used money taken from later investors to pay "returns" to the early investors so they'd keep investing. Although nowadays Bernie Madoff has so outdone Ponzi at his game we should perhaps rename them Madoff Schemes!If in doubt ask yourself: "What product or service is being sold to make the money?"Network Marketing is about selling goods and servicesIn Network Marketing you start at the bottom (as we do with most organisations) and start selling products. You make your money from selling the products. As you recruit and train other network marketers they make money from selling products and the company compensates you for training them. In the past network marketing usually meant your long lost friend or sister-in-law invited you for tea and an hour long spiel later left you empty of pocket and with an armful horrifically expensive dishwashing liquid / plastic flibbidy-gibberts / anti-ageing face masks.Fortunately the internet has been invented and now network marketers can look for people who actually want to buy their products around the globe and most of us are safe from "Checkbook Dinners". This, in turn, has made network marketing a lot more viable than it was in the past. For those of you looking at network marketing for the first, or second, time after years of skepticism you need to realise the way we can promote these products has changed and in response to an increased interest in marketing online a number of companies providing online marketing training and services have cropped up over the last few years.As a home based business, network marketing can provide flexibility and most companies include full training of their distributors. They key to network marketing is duplication, as long as you are willing to follow exactly what the people above you in the business are doing you can, hopefully, get the same results. Like a Franchise Business, network marketing follows a set formula for promoting, pricing and distributing products for business owners to follow. Like any business you should do your research first and reassure yourself that you are signing up for a legitimate company and not an elaborate scheme.