Sep 11
5
mlmrankings.com
MLMRankings.com is a popular website that attempts to rank different MLM companies against each other. They have some rather interesting statistics, however I think they are misleading. Generally speaking, the data is good for trending, but that’s about it. It works by searching major search engines and seeing how many results each receive, each 30 day period. There are flaws in its model, for example for the last few months, the now defunk Bellamora company seems to be gaining… but they’ve been out of business for several months now. Why the raise in interest? Because people are talking about it. Other companies don’t have a great deal of web presence, simply because they’re not built on the Internet, rather they’re built by word of mouth.
Another flaw is that top gainers might be brand new companies. Going from 10 pages to a 100 doesn’t mean its really growing, statistically speaking it might still be brand new. While other companies that have been around for decades and show a 10% growth, really have not grown at all, its just some new news or search might have kicked up a spike in interest.
Its important to note, that MLM companies on MLMRankings.com are simply not gathering data from sales, or really new enrollments, but from general news and interest from Internet queries. A good example, is One24, a business that is nearly entirely Internet marketed, isn’t really growing at all, but people are simply putting up more content to try to grab the last few people to get into their downline.
This is one reason I really like LiveVantage. Since the company is public traded, they report their numbers on the Internet as a part of their SIC filing requirements. These revenues can be used to measure real growth. It would really be nice if the other 99% of MLM companies would report their numbers.
See: http://www.mlmrankings.com/faq.asp