Is Melaleuca a Scam? (It’s 100% a MLM, No Questions Asked!)

Welcome to my Melaleuca review!

Chances are, someone has just introduced to you certain products by Melaleuca or a way for you to make a living from this company.

First of all, I must Congratulate you for taking your time to do your own research before buying into any "seemingly good" product.

That's the way to avoid scams and find the legitimate way to make money online!

Let me cut straight to the point...

Product-wise, Melaleuca is a pretty good company.

Income-wise, Melaleuca is not a good business opportunity.

I'll explain in full with real evidences in my review below...

• Melaleuca is a Network Marketing company selling health and wellness-related products.
• It's founded by Frank L. Vandersloot in 1985.
• Currently, it's a multi-billion dollar company with operations in almost 20 countries worldwide

So, it's pretty much like Amway, Herbalife and Norwex. They adopt the MLM business model and sell environmental-friendly health and home products.

There are more than 400 different products being sold by Melaleuca.

Let me just give you some of the categories:

• Nutrition
• Medicine cabinet
• Beauty
• Household
• Bath & Body
• Essential Oils

The "Unique Selling Proposition" that Melaleuca is trying to go after is the "environmental-friendly" and the "healthy" parts.

However, the problem is that currently these markets are quite saturated just like the examples I've given you earlier on.

As I mentioned earlier on, Melaleuca adopts a MLM business model.

This means that if you want to make money, you need to pay $29 and become their "Independent Marketing Executive", the term they use to describe their distributors.

Basically, you're like buying a low cost franchise that gives you the right to resell their products. Then you earn commission based on the amount sold.

The problem with their compensation plan is that it's quite complicated and confusing.

So, let me just give you a quick overview...

There are 3 main ways for you to make money with Melaleuca:

1. Sell products to customers yourself and earn a retail commission (7% + a 30-40% discount for the products your purchased yourself. So it can total up to a maximum of 47%)
2. Enroll downlines and coach them to make sales on their own (You earn based on the product sales, not the enrollment)
3. Earn BONUSES (e.g. Advancement Bonus, Mentoring Bonus, Leadership Growth Bonus, etc.)

These three ways to make money in a MLM business is very common for many other companies as well.

The only difference is that some companies allow you to earn commission directly by recruiting members.

This can sometimes cause the problem that members just focus on recruiting instead of selling the actual products, which can make the company like a pyramid scheme.

The good thing about Melaleuca's compensation plan is that all commissions and bonuses earned are based on the sales of products and NOT from recruiting members.

So this definitely separates them apart from those shady companies who may be regarded as pyramid scheme.

The amount of income you can earn from your Melaleuca business is determined by 3 factors:

1. The number of customers/downlines you have
2. The amount each customer (including your downlines' customer) purchases each month
3. Your effectiveness in building your downline team and helping them to succeed and advance in ranks

I've tried my best to explain the complicated compensation plan to you in simple language.

If you're interested to find out the detailed compensation plan, please refer to their PDF document here or watch the video below:

As you can see from the screenshot below, Melaleuca has an "A+" rating by Better Business Bureau.

If you are familiar with BBB, you'll know that getting an A+ rating is extremely difficult. Lots of legitimate companies are unable to get that rating.

What makes it even more difficult is that Melaleuca has been accredited by BB since 1987 which is a long long time ago and it's still able to maintain that rating for the past 30+ years.

This is definitely something to commend Melaleuca for.

Just for your information, having an A+ rating doesn't mean this company is perfect.

The rating is mainly based on the customers' complaints and how the company manages those complaints.

So this rating shows that Melaleuca has a pretty good customer service to help costomers resolve their issues.

Melaleuca was founded in 1985. This means that it has been in business for over 30 years.

It's difficult for a company to last for so long if it doesn't have a decent business model selling above-average products.

Just take a look at companies like MOBE & Digital Altitude, they were once very popular but both of them have been shut down by FTC.

MOBE only lasted for 5-6 years while Digital Altitude only lasted for less than 2 years.

There's startup fee of $29 and a yearly recurring fee of $19.90 if you want to become their independent distributor selling their products to make money.

But on top of that, you still need to meet a monthly order requirement in order for you to stay as an active member eligible for earning commission.

Some people may regard this as a bad thing about MLM. I too hate this requirement.

But let's face it, it's almost the same for most of the MLM companies.

Relatively, Melaleuca is better than others because it's monthly order requirement is quite affordable.

There's only a requirement of 35 points per month, which is equivalent to roughly about $80 per month.

I know that many companies have a requirement that you need to spend at least a few hundred dollars per month on their products, which is the fastest way for members to get into much deeper debt.

Like I've said in the beginning, product-wise, Melaleuca is a pretty good company.

This is evident in the positive reviews you can see below. Most of them are just consumers of Melaleuca's product, not business builders.

They have many happy customers for their products:

Melaleuca has over 400 which is pretty ridiculous.

The good thing is that you can find almost anything you're looking for.

But the downside is that it's overwhelming for consumers as they may not know which products are most suitable for them.

In this situation, it really depends on the person who introduces and promotes the Melaleuca’s products to you.

There are distributors who genuinely have your interest in mind and who wants to help, but there are also greedy distributors who will only promote products that benefits them the most financially.

Also, if you're a new distributor of Melaleuca, it'll really take a lot of your time to learn about every single product before you can explain them to your customers and sell them.

I don't have experience with Melaleuca. But from my personal experience with MLM business, having too many products is not really a good thing.

There's a serious issue with their cancellation procedure.

Canceling of membership/orders must be done in writing. There are no exceptions and it must be done by a certain date in the month to stop one more automatic shipment.

Basically, you can't just cancel anything online by clicking some buttons or completing some online forms.

You MUST print it out and do some paperwork.

After all, they made it pretty easy to join. Shouldn’t it be that easy to cancel as well?

There are tons and tons of complaints from customers about this issue (proofs below).

So, this is not a case-by-case issue. It's a serious issue with their system.

If you try searching for products on Melaleuca's website, you'll realize that you can't find any product price.

Basically, you won't know how much each product costs unless you become a member.

I suspect that they're hiding this because their products are overpriced. They don't want new customers to have bad impressions on them.

If I'm not wrong, there are toothpaste that cost $80, which is pretty ridiculous.

This one is HUGE...

The founder of Melaleuca claimed that Melaleuca is NOT a MLM company. I think they use some terms like "Direct Marketing Program" or something like that.

But seriously, Melaleuca is definitely a MLM and there's no doubt on this.

This is pretty evident from their compensation plan and the way they sell their products.

By the way, the term "compensation plan" is only used in MLM companies.

Just take a look at the following video and you'll realize that Mr. Vandersloot is not being 100% honest...

I think Mr. Vandersloot has done some great job at brainwashing its fellow members that Melaleuca is not a MLM company.

Just take a look at some of the comments below by Melaleuca members. They're desperate to protect the company and debate against people calling them MLM.

By the way, many of them aren't just debating. They're really rude and scold people idiots, which is obviously an unacceptable behavior:

To be honest, there's nothing wrong with MLM. Being a MLM doesn't mean the company is a scam.

There are lots of legitimate MLM companies. There are even more successful & rich people doing MLM.

So, it's kinda funny that these Melaleuca members are desperate to argue that Melaleuca is not a MLM.

I think the reason is because they themselves don't have a right mindset and they don't really understand what is MLM really. (It's very obvious that these people are not making money with Melaleuca.)

That's why I suspect that Mr. Vandersloot has done some magical thing to brainwash so many people.

Unfortunately, I have to reveal to you that most people building their business with Melaleuca didn't make it.

Just take a look at the screenshot below taken from their income disclosure statement:

It says 90.2% of business builders are in the "Director/Director 2" rank.

And in this rank, the average annual income per person is only $2,093. That's only $174/month.

Unless you're extremely determined and you put in lots of effort with the correct help/resources, you're not able to build a full-time income from Melaleuca.

That's just the fact shown from its income disclosure.

Nope, Melaleuca is definitely NOT a scam. If not, it's impossible for them to be in business for over 30 years and still maintain a BBB A+ rating.

This kind of achievement is already a lot better than many other MLM companies.

That's why I gave Melaleuca a rating of 55/100.

My conclusion for Melaleuca is...

Good Product, but Not-so-good Business Opportunity!

You still can't deny the fact that the founder is not honest, the members seem to be brainwashed and most of them are struggling to make a full-time living from this company.

My opinion is this...

MLM is a legit and good business model to make consistent passive income, ONLY IF you choose the right company with the right system to follow.

There are many problems with most MLM companies so I'm not a big fan of it.

My top recommendation for anyone to make money online is via Affiliate Marketing!

The reason is simple...

You're not limited to only promote products from the same company.

In this case, you're restricted to only promote Melaleuca's product. But what if you don't really like their product? Or you don't really understand such a huge variety of their product list?

In affiliate marketing, you can literally promote anything you want. For example, you can promote anything you see that is selling on Amazon.

Cool right?

In fact, with affiliate marketing...