Howdy folks!
There's a lot of MLM's out there and Bellame is one of the newest ones to come onto the scene.
If you've been approached to join this company and sell their products, you're probably wondering if it's a scam or pyramid scheme.
I'll answer all the questions you have about this MLM and more in this post and you'll know if it's a good opportunity for you by the time you're done reading.
Ready?
Bellame Summary
Company: Bellame
Price to join: $99 to $300
Rating: 50/100
Do I recommend? No
Summary: Bellame is a MLM company in the beauty/personal care market and as far as MLM's go is actually one of the more ethical you'll find.
Still MLM's are hard to succeed with and although the main focus of Bellame is retail sales, there's still a large focus on recruitment to make money.
This leads to bothering friends and family which can sour close relationships. Plus, the beauty market is extremely hard to break into because most people have their favorite brands already.
Better Opportunity: If you want to see how I learned to make over $100,000 online as a broke beginner, click below:
What Is Bellame
Bellame is a beauty company that follows a MLM model to sell their products. This means instead of spending money on advertising and marketing campaigns they allow people to sell their products directly to customers.
There's many pitfalls with this business model and it usually just leads to people losing their initial investment.
The company is headed by husband and wife duo Scott and Melissa Thompson.
This combo seems to be quite a good match for a beauty company as Scott runs an INC. Top 500 business called Astoria Company and Melissa was a top direct seller for other beauty brands like Avon, Belcorp and Shaklee.
Between the two they claim to have 45 years of experience in beauty and digital marketing.
I would definitely say there's strong leadership here and is probably one of the biggest pluses for Bellame.
Is Bellame A Pyramid Scheme?
Some people confuse all MLM's with pyramid schemes and this isn't necessarily true. Some definitely are and others have elements of a pyramid scheme.
Anytime recruitment is the main source of income in a business you're in or are very close to being in a pyramid scheme.
It's summed up with the picture below:
While recruitment is definitely encouraged in Bellame and you can make money with recruitment, retail seems to be focused heavily with this MLM.
You have to maintain $300 of retail sales every 3 months to be eligible for the program.
This means you'll be spending more time trying to sell Bellame's products directly to customers instead of recruiting people into the system.
This is a good sign for a MLM and means it's less scammy than other less ethical MLM's.
Success Is Hard With MLM's
Some MLM's have what's called an income disclosure where they share the success rates and how many people are actually making money with them.
The income disclosures are always grim and always show more people losing money than making money.
Bellame is only a couple of years old so they don't have an income disclosure yet.
You can still learn a lot about your odds of success by looking at the success rates of the industry as a whole.
Here's some stats that should make you think twice about joining a MLM:
- 75% percent of people lose their money
- 50% of people that do make money make less than $500 per month
- 66% of people who join a MLM say they never will again
- 40% stopped because they didn't like recruiting family members and friends
There's a lot of pitfalls to the industry and while Bellame is pretty solid you're still going to run into the same problems others have.
WANT TO LEARN HOW I MADE $100,000 ONLINE?
How Much To Join Bellame?
The good news with MLM's is it's way cheaper to join a MLM than starting a brick and mortar company.
While you're more than likely to lose your money with MLM's than make money, losing a couple hundred is more manageable than losing $100,000 (the average cost of a brick and mortar business).
Bellame's start up costs are pretty reasonable and to join it will only cost you $99. If you want to add product packs that will cost you an additional $45.50 or $197.60.
If you buy the more expensive product pack you get a discount which means more commissions on your retail sales (up to 35%).
Bellame's Compensation Plan
Usually MLM's come with compensation plans that are very hard to understand and use very complicated language to explain things.
I personally think this is done on purpose to confuse people that can't understand the jargon.
Bellame's compensation plan isn't too difficult to understand and can be summed up in a single graph while other MLM's can take up to 25 minutes.
If you want to know every detail of the compensation plan, watch the video below:
You can also look at the graph below which sums it up:
I'm not going to go over every detail of the plan but here's the most important things to consider:
Retail Commissions
Unlike many other MLM's, Bellame has a very big focus on retail sales which is a good thing.
You can earn anywhere from 25% to 40% commissions on each sale you make, depending on the product packs you buy and your affiliate rank.
Affiliate Rank
There's 8 different affiliate ranks at Bellame and you move up a rank by reaching certain goals.
Here's the ranks at Bellame:
- Partner: You reach this rank when you sign up and maintain $300 worth of retail sales in a rolling 3 month period
- Senior Partner: Generate 500 PV in sales volume and recruit a partner
- Executive Partner: Generate 1000 PV in sales volume and recruit and maintain at least 3 Partners
- Director: Maintain 500 PV and 3000 GV a month and recruit and maintain at least 4 Partners
- Senior Director: Maintain 500 PV and 3000 GV a month, recruit 3 Partners and recruit 1 Director
- Executive: Maintain 500 PV and 3000 GV a month and maintain at least 2 Partners and 2 Directors
- Diamond Director: Maintain 500 PV and 3000 GV a month and maintain 4 Directors.
- Platinum Exectuive Director: Maintain 500 PV and 3000 GV a month, maintain at least 6 directors and $125,000 in total monthly downline sales volume.
If you reach the level of Senior your commissions jump up 5% to 30%. If you reach the level of Executive Partner your commissions jump up to 35% and if you can reach director your commissions jump up to 40%.
Residual Commissions
A large part of your income will come from recruitment even though there's a big focus on retail sales.
Bellame uses a unilevel pay structure with residual commissions and looks like the following:
You earn a commission based on the sales volume of the people recruited under you. Your rank and how much is sold determines how much you will make.
WANT TO LEARN HOW I MADE $100,000 ONLINE?
Bellame Products
Bellame is in the very crowded beauty market and I wouldn't say there's anything that separates their cosmetics and products from the rest.
Because of this you may have a hard time trying to sell them or to convince people to switch over to Bellame.
Here's the different products they offer:
- Hydrating Cleanser: This is a product for your face and costs $48 retail for a 5 ounce bottle.
- Hydrating Serum: This is another product for your face and supposedly helps against wrinkles and other blemishes. It sells for $88 per 1 ounce bottle.
- Hydrating Eye Cream: This is a product designed specifically for your eyes and costs $68 for .5 ounce.
- Hydrating Moisturizer: This is another face product and costs $78 for 1.7 ounces.
I have no clue if these products work the way they're claimed to work or anything like that. I'm very skeptical of the beauty industry in general and not really sure if these expensive products are worth it.
Is Bellame A Scam?
At the end of the day you came here to figure out if Bellame is a scam or not.
I have good news and bad news.
Bellame is definitely not a scam and is a legitimate MLM company. It's actually one of the better MLM's I've reviewed.
The problem, however, is all MLM's are extremely hard to succeed with. It doesn't matter what you're selling or what market you're in when it comes to a MLM.
More people will lose money than make money and of the people that do make money, they don't make enough to be full time or anything like that.
So at the end of the day I don't recommend this opportunity.
What I Like About Bellame
Bellame has a few good things going for it and the main things I like are:
New: MLM's usually only stay hot for a couple of years and you make money when you get in early. Bellame is new so there's a better chance to make money.
Retail focus: MLM's that focus on recruitment are near to pyramid schemes or outright pyramid schemes.
Good leadership: The husband/wife duo that runs this company are experienced in both running successful businesses and the beauty MLM market.
What I Don't Like About Bellame
At the end of the day there's more that I don't like about this company than do and the main things I don't like are:
Expensive products: Women are definitely willing to spend money on beauty products but these products are very expensive and come in small containers.
Low success rates: It's very hard to succeed with MLM's and Bellame is no different. You're more thank likely just going to lose money here than make money.
Bothering friends and family: One of the worst parts of MLM is you eventually have to bother friends and family to buy or be in the system. This literally has ruined close relationships.
Discover How I Make Money
Hopefully by now you've decided Bellame isn't right for you - it's just not worth your time and money.
However, there's still plenty of ways to make money from home and online.
I started making money online as a complete beginner and have made over 6 figures since.
To see how, click below: