MoneyXperiment.com

From the FTC.gov website.  Just a measure in place to protect consumers.  Make sure you use them when someone is trying to sign you up with an opprotunity.

Twenty-six states have business opportunity laws. Most of these laws prohibit sales of business opportunities unless the seller gives potential purchasers a pre-sale disclosure document that has first been filed with a designated state agency.

State business opportunity laws typically cover every imaginable type of business opportunity that might be offered. If a business opportunity seller is not required to provide pre-sale disclosures by the Franchise Rule, these disclosures will almost always be required by the laws of the states listed below.

The disclosures required by state business opportunity laws differ, and usually provide more abbreviated information than the FTC’s Franchise and Business Opportunity Rule requires. However, most of these laws provide important rights and remedies for business opportunity investors, including required security bonds to cover investor losses.

If you are considering purchasing a work-at-home or other business opportunity, and reside in a state with a business opportunity law, we encourage you to find out more about the protection provided by your state statute before you invest.

The states that have these laws are Alaska, California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Marryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin.

Detailed contact infomation can be found for each state at the FTC.gov website.  Make sure and report people that cant provide you with the information required by law.

After my first evaluation of Herbalife, I thought ok, it seems like an honest legit opportunity with a real product although having some past issues.  I did think it would present challenges due to saturation of distributors though.  I continued to research more about Herbalife and found out more about the opportunity that disturbed me. 

To get started there is a business packet that you must purchase, not a big deal.  It has some info about the products, a manual and book of procedures.  And it also contains some of the actual products and books that you will be selling.  The cost is $195, again, not that big a deal.

Where I start to have bad feelings, and I have seen it other places, is the pressure to purchase the products for personal use.  I know it’s good to have product knowledge of what you’re selling but this just drives me crazy.  It isn’t  just pressure you get on conference calls or emails from the company, it has to do with how you sign up and directly what cut off of retail you pay for the product you will be selling.

For example, the first level qualifies you for 35% off retail if you sign up and agree to purchase a certain amount of product each month for personal use.  You reach a higher level, Supervisor level, by reaching so many points.  Points you accumulate by buying product for yourself.  Once you have purchased about $2000 worth of stuff, this supposedly qualifies you as supervisor and you get 50% off retail.  This just absolutely bugs the hell out of me.  Why not just offer an employee type discount to distributors and offer larger breaks on purchase price based on sales performance of the distributor?  It makes it seem as if they are signing up customers, not distributors.

Looking around more I do still think the issue of saturation is very real.  When you join Herbalife you have the option to purchase a business website package.  If you do a google search you will find a ton of competition for your website in the form of all the others that have the websites too.  The websites wouldn’t be all bad though and could be helpful if marketed in the right way.  Figuring out how to effectively market the website would be the hard part.  Many suggest google adwords, that’s where a saturation problem surfaces again.

Other means suggested to you may be newspaper, distribute fliers, and of course unsolicited email.  Some say eBay is a great way to sell the products.  I did a search and found over a thousand auctions for Herbalife products currently up for auction.  Seems most sell for a small fraction of the retail price so I would have to say this wouldn’t be a good way to try to sell the products.

I think one considering this opportunity should be ready to overcome some real issues that will make it difficult to succeed.  Some say if you can recover you initial investment if you are lucky.  Obviously people have made money from this opportunity and in my opinion it’s a legit opportunity assuming the product claims are accurate.  The pressure to buy product yourself is a bad sign to me and it bothers me though.  One should figure out how they will overcome the saturation and make themselves standout.   Nothing good usually comes easy and does take hard work.  Things do change so if you notice anything that’s inaccurate or changed with the Herbalife program, email me or post a comment below.

Moneyxperiment.com is looking for an experience from someone who is happy and has been successful with Liberty League International.  There is currently a member of LLI ranting on other sites that this site is biased.  While we do have an opinion, that of which we are entitled, this site is open for all sides.

So I re-extend an invitation to people currently or formerly involved with LLI to tell us about your POSITIVE experience.  So long as it’s clean in content and non-hostile, it will be posted unedited as you write it.  We are looking for an actual detailed account of the experience, not just a “oh it saved my life” kind of story.  We would like to see details of how you heard about it and who you signed up with, how did you market the business, what was hard about it, and what made it great.  Post financial records to substantiate your earnings claims if you like.  Whatever you can do to support your cause.

The ex members that tell their stories usually do so in such detail as to what they feel specifically led them to fail.  So tell us specifics too.  That’s all we ask.  Post in the comments section below or email to me and I will make a dedicated post for LLI Positives.

Recently there has been a request for this site to do a post on Herbalife.  We do not participate in Herbalife nor have we ever.  This post is a gathering of facts found through research done on Herbalife.  Like with other opportunities mentioned here, we want to hear the experiences of the readers. 

Herbalife was started in 1980 by Mark Hughes.  It had reached over 2 million in sales by its second year.  It has distributors based all over the world now.  At one point they were harshly criticized over their yellow signs posted all over city sign post and telephone poles.

Two things notable for mention is this post is the health concerns and past litigation brought forth upon them.  In most cases the two are related.  Health issues include a report issued by the Fraud Institute that claimed they found high levels of lead in the Herbalife products.  Other suits have claimed the products do not live up to the claims they make. 

One of the most recent claims brought against Herbalife was this year by a woman that developed lead related liver problems.  In one of its earlier suits, it was accused of making false claims of the efficiency of the product.  That one was brought on by the California Attorney General and was settled for $850,000 with Herbalife not admitting any wrongdoing.  Nearly 20 years later a suit was brought on by 8700 former and current distributors for Herbalife and accused them of running a pyramid scheme.

Ever see any of the Crazy like a Fox commercials?  They portray through actors, how they make 5-15k from a home business.  Through our research, it turns out these are apparently solicitations for the Herbalife business opportunity.  This is a marketing tactic similar to Liberty League where people talk about the crazy money they are making but give you no details about what the opportunity is about.  Until you leave your information and get a call back.  I don’t think the Herbalife uses this technique in all of their marketing however.

We didn’t intend for this to sound negative or biased against Herbalife.  This is just a collection of factual public information about this group.  I open it up to you, the readers to tell us what you have experienced.  Is it good?  Is it bad?  Doesn’t matter, we want both.  Stories about the opportunity as well as those who have used the products are welcome.