Do you have questions about multi-level marketing? The FTC staff has guidance to help members of the MLM industry apply core consumer protection principles to their business practices.
Multi-level marketing is a diverse and varied industry, employing many different structures and methods of selling.
Although there may be significant differences in how multi-level marketers sell their products or services, core consumer protection principles are applicable to every member of the industry. The Commission staff offers this non-binding guidance to assist multi-level marketers in applying those core principles to their business practices.
The FTC offers 18 common questions about MLM and running a direct selling business.
1. What is direct selling? What is multi-level marketing?
Direct selling is a blanket term that encompasses a variety of business forms premised on person-to-person selling in locations other than a retail establishment, such as social media platforms or the home of the salesperson or prospective customer.
Multi-level marketing is one form of direct selling. Generally, a multi-level marketer (MLM) distributes products or services through a network of salespeople who are not employees of the company and do not receive a salary or wage. Instead, members of the company’s salesforce usually are treated as independent contractors, who may earn income depending on their own revenues and expenses. Typically, the company does not directly recruit its salesforce, but relies upon its existing salespeople to recruit additional salespeople, which creates multiple levels of “distributors” or “participants” organized in “downlines.” A participant’s “downline” is the network of his or her recruits, and recruits of those recruits, and so on.
2. Under Section 5 of the FTC Act, what is an MLM with an unlawful compensation structure, which is sometimes called a pyramid scheme?
The most widely-cited description of an unlawful MLM structure appears in the FTC’s Koscot decision, which observed that such enterprises are “characterized by the payment by participants of money to the company in return for which they receive (1) the right to sell a product and (2) the right to receive in return for recruiting other participants into the program rewards which are unrelated to the sale of the product to ultimate users.” In re Koscot Interplanetary, Inc., 86 F.T.C. 1106, 1181 (1975).1
1 This document is focused specifically on MLM practices that may violate the FTC Act. It does not address other types of unlawful structures that do not involve the right to sell a product or service, such as chain referral schemes (sometimes called “chain letters”) and Ponzi schemes.
3. How do MLMs with unfair or deceptive compensation structures harm consumers?
