Several things: first, the key word above all your piece, Marsha is PREDATORY. Long before there was an internet, and long before Silicon Valley had sorted out how to turn us all into Pavlov’s dogs just waiting to hit BUY, there was Amway. I got hijacked over the years into more damned meetings than I can count. People abused my friendship, my trust, and assumed that because I had such an energetic personality I would make them rich. Well, screw you.That’s not my job..
People I otherwise respected got into supplements, skin care, hair care, video programs. If someone could have sold toenail clippings via MLM they would have done it.To your point, there is no faster way to alienate those who love you than by trying to sucker them into a downline.
I even had a guy take me to lunch via a Match.com dating profile, and then try to get me into his downline. I do not have words for such behavior. There are simply no words. That happened twice, in fact.
I no longer care if someone’s nose gets out of joint if they pitch me some MLM program. Talk. To. The. Hand. Years ago I started a senior executive women’s group in Eastern Washington state. Nobody could join except through me. One woman pestered me mightily to get access to that group- and I flat refused. She was MLM and it would have shattered the trust we all shared. We had relationships and all she saw was money. This is how it twists us into monsters.
However, and this really is legit, you might want to look into writing for the Illumination folks here on Medium. No cost, nothing to buy, you just see if you might like to be part of a fast growing publication. Very diverse, lots of different voices, and one thing I love about it is that your articles go up pretty quickly. You can publish and then submit it to them . A lot of the people whose material hasn’t been getting eyeballs have watched their stats go up. The pub has been growing like mad and a number of the writers have been helping all of us get our material out onto Facebook and Twitter. Nobody gets paid other than by Medium. The more eyeballs get drawn our way the more everyone wins. Kinda cool, I think.
You still have to do the work, just like we all do. You still have to write. However, I keep finding that many people read my work, comment, support, tag and link, and that helps stats. You can find a bunch of articles on their publication about how to write for them or reach out directly to the publisher Dr. Mehmet Yildiz. Nobody has a downline, we all are down on writing, getting it published, getting feedback, and growing. Perhaps the piece I like best is their commitment to diversity, which I share, which is why I thought you might want to look into it. Here’s what we all get which is how we get highlighted for our work:
I’m all for legit communities. This is one of them. You can check them out on Slack at #Illumination. It either appeals or it doesn’t, but it might be worth checking out. At least nobody (to my knowledge) is likely to sneak you an email offering you a “terrific opportunity.” Report. Block. Delete.
Important article, and thanks for pointing this out. This in fact runs as a sister to one I did on phone scammers. Same thing. Predatory.