|
Multi Level Marketing (MLM) raises its ugly head again and again. It can make a return in a variety of guises. Does it work? You bet is does. SOMETIMES. My first encounter with (MLM, matrix programs, chain letters or whatever you like to call it), was when I was incarcerated in a fashionable girl’s boarding school, which had an uncanny resemblance to StTrinians. All the girls in my class handed over half their term’s pocket money to Matron so that she could dole it out for things like stamps, toothpaste, sanitary towels or money for the church collection. Matron was no fool, she was well aware that we hid the rest of it to use as the school term’s betting money. She did not look for any girl’s betting money unless they broke a school rule that she was determined to enforce. If she wanted to confiscate somebody’s betting money until the end of term, she found it. It was usually wrapped up in that girl’s dirty underwear of a dirty handkerchief and stuffed in a dirty laundry bag!
Matron and most of our parents did not care if we spent a our pocket money on the horses. It was an era when there were no betting shops. It was also a time when postal and telephone betting was deemed a vital part of the post war “Enterprise Culture.” Most of our parents had an account with a local bookmaker and sent in postal bets on a variety of sporting events. Matron laid down the rules of the game. She insisted that we must not gamble with money, that we could afford to loose. Nobody was allowed to issue IOUs. She taught us to hedge our bets. She also taught us some of the moral principals. She warned us that most of us would loose our money and insisted that we bore that misfortune with the traditional British “stiff upper lip.” Nobody got any sympathy if they bellyached about their losses. The rule was “There is no point crying over spilt milk.” If any of us backed a winner, Matron paid us in full within a few hours. Matron was a very competent program manager.
We all made “money” on one MLM program. In the early 1950’s almost every girl and woman longed for the opportunity to wear some of the new nylon stockings. Matron discovered a “matrix program.” There was a scheme, where we were invited to buy a coupon, which cost a big chunk of our term’s betting money. We had to send the coupon to the first name on the list and we had to write sales promotion letters to the other names on the list telling them why they must work hard to promote the scheme. When the first of us started getting our coupons in, we wrote to the names on the list again and told them that the coupons were arriving almost every day. We wrote to them again to say, that some girls had had their coupons redeemed and they were wearing their nylons. We wrote to all members of our “downline” five or six times during that term. We wrote to all our friends telling them not to believe any parents or other adults who said it was a swindle, as we had positive proof that the scheme was working. It was hard work but I went home at the end of that term with enough pairs of nylons to share with my mother and my sister. They both asked for an invitation to get on one of my friends’ lists. They both signed up and sent the coupon to the first name on the list but when they discovered how much time and effort it took to get more people into the program they lost interest and the program started to fold.
Moral of this story. How did Matron know how to run an MLM scheme which was a large Ponzi? She must have been nearing retirement age, when I was at school and she was probably born in the late 1890's. These programs are not new. They are an online version of ponzis that have been around for donkey’s years. If you are going to make a success of any type of matrix program, you need a product which is in high demand. You need to work to promote the program. You need to write your own sales letters. Do not be fooled into the belief that mass produced sales letters sent to, what the promoters call, a massive optin list is going to be much use. The only e-mail lists that are of any real value are the ones which you build yourself. The promotional web pages which the program managers provide for their members, are unlikely to attract any interest if you only advertise it on networks where there are hundreds or thousands of replicas. Use a bit of common sense and you could find one or two suitable matrix programs.
|
