Multi Level Marketing or MLM is an desirable business opportunity to many people but is often confused as a pyramid scheme but in fact it is not.
Participating in MLM you make your money by refering goods or services that are ready available to be circulated by a registered agent (known as a distributor) to people that you may know and by referals from them (your customers) to their friends and family and so on. You may have also paid a joining fee to become a agent and you also need to recruit other like minded people to join your team and do the same as you this is known as your down line and the bigger this becomes the bigger your pay check will be.
Pyramid schemes on the other hand are outlawed in most countries and do not offer goods or services they just require you to recruit people usually for a large upfront fee and offer no product or service, no support, training or marketing materials and the ones at the bottom of the pyramid lose often out as it becomes more difficult for the ones at the bottom to recruit and the whole scheme falls apart.
Before you join an MLM company it is always wise to check them out and this can be done quite easily these days just by performing a simple search on the internet. I would ask myself questions like is there a large upfront fee to join and when I say large I mean over £200.00 sterling and is there a cooling off period or money back guarantee if you decide that it is not for you.
See if you can visit the company's website and if possible try to attend a local meeting that has other people in the business and ask them questions such as how long have they been members and how well are they doing and also try to get a sample of the product or try to find someone that is or has used the service offered.
It is also a good idea to seek out the company's marketing materials especially if it is a company that you have never heard of before and try to find out how long the company has been trading and if it is registered at the appropriate authorities in your particular country or the country it is claiming to be from. Soon enough you will find information if it is legit.
The greatest difference between pyramid scheme's and multi level marketing is in the business operations as the objective of a pyramid scheme is to part you with your hard earned money and then use you to recruit more people where as MLM is a business model designed to move product and reward its distributers accordingly.

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