Is Valentus A Pyramid Scheme?

Here's the thing: Multi-Level Marketing (MLM's) operate almost exactly like a pyramid scheme. Look at the image below:

That is exactly how most MLM's and Valentus work. There's people at the top who recruit others to sell underneath them. You get a piece of every commission of every person that sells underneath you. You even get a part of the commissions of the recruits of the people you recruit.

That's why MLM's are so lucrative for the people at the top. All they're doing is talking people into selling a product and letting everyone else do the work. 

All the money flows upwards and the people at the bottom are battling over scraps. 

Eventually the market gets saturated with the MLM product and it's not only harder to sell the product itself, it becomes difficult to recruit people to sell underneath you - the pool of people available evaporates.

So if you really do want to get involved in a MLM, you have to get involved early or else you're going to lose money.

You'll Have To Sell To Friends And Family

One of the worst parts about MLM's (which includes Valentus) is you'll most likely have to sell to friends and family if you're new.

If you're an experienced network marketer I'm sure there's ways to get people to sell under you and get people to buy what you're selling. But if you're starting out it's almost inevitable you'll have to pester friends and family. 

That's one of the biggest turn offs with MLM's. I've read many stories of important relationships getting ruined because of this. 

There's a chance that you've been approached by a friend to either buy a MLM product or sell one. It's ALWAYS an uncomfortable experience in my opinion and it can really change your opinion of someone. 

How Much To Join Valentus

If you've spoken to someone trying to get you to sell Valentus products, you were probably told starting a home MLM business is cheaper than starting a brick and mortar store. 

This is actually true. The average start up cost for a brick and mortar business is $100,000! This means you'll have to spend a significant amount of your life savings or even worst have to get a bank loan. 

The success rate for brick and mortar businesses isn't that high either.

So when you hear that starting a home business selling Valentus is cheaper than a brick and mortar, you're actually being told the truth.

Instead of spending $100,000 for a real store you'll only have to spend between $49 to $499 to start selling with Valentus.

The problem is the success rate for MLM's is VERY low. In fact, the median yearly salary is just $2400 - that comes out to less than $1 per hour of work if you're working 40  hours of week. That's a slave wage. 

So unless you plan on paying for high level training, chances are you're not going to make a lot of money selling Valentus products.

Valentus Compensation Plan

MLM's are notorious for having very confusing and difficult to understand compensations - Valentus is not an exception to this.

I'm going to try my best to explain the compensation plan and if you want to look at it for yourself, click here.

Below is how much you'll have to spend to buy certain amounts of Valentus products:

You get 25% commission of every product you sell - the more you buy, the more you can make (I think if you get the Business Builder pack it's about half as the basic).

You get paid every week too. 

Next up, you get a bonus when you order your first batch of products. Here's how much you get off each amount:

Now it starts to get difficult to understand the payouts and you definitely should click the link I provided up top to read it yourself. 

Next up is called Dual Team Cycle Commissions. I'm not entirely sure how it works but I'm pretty sure it involves building your downline (getting people to sell underneath you). This is what it looks like:

According to Valentus you can make up to $100,000 a week. This is more of a theoretical statement I'm sure and I highly doubt anyone is making anywhere near that selling Valentus products. 

There's also extra bonuses you can earn like car payments once you sell a certain amount.

There's more to this compensation plan but it's honestly too hard to explain in an easy way. It basically boils down to you making 25% for every product you sell and you get a commission for what every person below you sells. 

Valentus Products

I'm not a nutritionist or doctor (despite calling myself The Affiliate Doctor) and I can't really tell you if these products are healthy or anything like that.

I'm sure they're not dangerous or more unhealthy than the average health product but I doubt they're as good as Valentus would like their customers to believe. 

I do think they are pretty pricey so if you expect to sell a lot of Valentus products you better have some good salesmanship - most people aren't going to to want to spend $100 for coffee. 

There's actually a pretty good amount of products to choose from too. A lot of times MLM's will only offer 2 or 3 products but Valentus offers 15+. 

Victims Of Valentus

There's probably something you should know about Valentus - there's a whole Facebook page and community dedicated to people who feel they have been treated unfairly by Valentus.

The fact that there's a support group for Valentus should be a HUGE red flag. 

Here's a link to the community.

You'll find posts about unethical sales techniques and stuff like that. If you go through the different posts I'm sure it'll scare you away from Valentus for good.

What I Like About Valentus

There honestly isn't much.

Valentus hasn't been around forever so that's a good sign - MLM's are usually hot for 2 years and you need to get in early if you want to make any money with a MLM.

So if you're dead set on doing network marketing this may be a good opportunity.

What I Don't Like About Valentus

There's not really much I like about Valentus.

I'm not a fan of MLM's and they are too similar to pyramid schemes - most of the money stays at the top while the people doing most of the work get the least amount of the money at the bottom.

Also, the success rate is so low with MLM's. Chances are you are going to lose your money and even if you don't you're not going to make a lot unless you're at the tippy top of the pyarmid. 

Lastly, the products are overpriced and there's a lot of competition with weight loss products. 

Here's A Better Way To Make Money

Hopefully I've been able to persuade you away from joining Valentus - it's just not something you want to get involved in. You don't want to get involved with MLM's either.

If you do want to make money from home, you'll want to check out Wealthy Affiliate. This is the best place to learn how to make money online and you get top of the line training, tools and a community of over 1 million people to ask questions to. 

The best part? It's completely free to try.

If you want to read my full Wealthy Affiliate review, click below: