The Power of MLM

The direct selling industry is governed by the Direct Selling Association of South Africa. They are responsible for policing the industry and have placed a number of rules and guidelines in place to help member companies stay within legal and ethical boundaries.

At the 2007 DSA conference, they released some interesting statistic.

South African Statistics 06/07
The following are official statistics as published by the DSA for South Africa.

• 329,000 registered consultants
• Total sales volume generated by these consultants is R3,5 Billion
• They corporately earn R1.2 Billion

This means that the national Average income per active consultant is R3647 per month

To put this into perspective, the average income in South Africa is R1800 for women and R3000 for men. When you consider that the vast majority of MLMers are part time, the industry is doing really well.

As with any industry, you will find that 20% of the people are doing 80% of the work and earning 80% of the money. If we apply the 80 – 20 principle to the above statistics then we come to the conclusion that 65,000 independent business owner have earned R960 Million. This means that 16000 people are earning an average of R14,000 per month. There are not many industries that can make this claim.

Company Turnover

• 5 companies doing over R300M
• 4 companies doing between R200 – R300m
• 5 companies doing between R100 – R200m
• 2 companies doing between R50 – R100m
• 20 companies doing between R10 – R50m
• 8 companies doing Under 10m

I find it staggering that in a country with high unemployment, low average income and a very expensive trading environment that we have 16 companies doing over R50 million per year. 5 of these companies are doing in excess of R300 Million and I am aware of one company doing in excess of R570 million per year.

When an industry can provide this type of income for this many people then it requires serious investigation.