Your upline posts the cheques. Here is what the 2025 disclosures, the FTC and 601 past sellers actually show.
This in-depth guide covers everything you need to know about is mlm worth it? the honest numbers (2026). Based on verified income data and real-world case studies from our database of 138 side hustle tactics.
For most people, no. MLM is worth it only if you would buy the product anyway at that price, or if you already have customers outside the company who will reorder without being recruited. The companies' own 2025 disclosures show median yearly pay of $0 at Young Living and at Amway (for the levels Amway reports), before most expenses. In a 2018 AARP Foundation-sponsored survey, 47% of participants said they lost money and 25% made a profit. A small number of people earn a living, and almost all of them have been in for years.
The cheque on the screen
Someone in your team posts a screenshot. A commission payment, a new rank, a pink car or a holiday "paid for by the business." The caption says that if they could do it, anyone can. You look at your own back office and see $43.
You are not lazy and you are not stupid. You have done the posts, the parties and the follow-ups. You bought the starter kit, you kept your monthly order going to stay active, and you told yourself the first year is always the hardest. Maybe you have started to wonder whether the problem is you.
It probably is not. The problem is usually the maths, and the maths is something you can check tonight.
What people actually earn
These figures come from each company's own income disclosure for calendar 2025. They are gross payments from the company, before your costs, except where noted.
| Company (2025, US) | Who is counted | What they report |
|---|
| Young Living | All Brand Partners | Median $0, average $778 a year. Associates (73.9%) averaged $12 |
| Amway | IBOs at Founders Platinum and below | 52.3% had $0 "adjusted income" (after renewal and reported training fees); median $0, average $553 |
| Arbonne | Consultants "engaged in business building activity" | Consultants (81.7%) median $105 a year; 13.5% of them had no gross earnings |
| MONAT | All Market Partners | Average $665 a year; the 91.69% at the entry rank had a median of $8 |
| doTERRA | "Active" Wellness Advocates | About 58% earned no commissions |
Sources: Young Living 2026 US Income Disclosure Statement, Amway 2025 US Income Disclosure, Arbonne Independent Consultant Earnings Statement, MONAT USA 2025 Income Disclosure Statement, doTERRA 2026 Opportunity and Earnings Disclosure Summary.
The averages look better than the medians because a few people at the top earn a great deal. At Young Living, the Royal Crown Diamond rank averaged $1,240,335 in 2025, and that rank held under 0.1% of Brand Partners. The median tells you what the person in the middle got. The average tells you what the top pulls the number up to.
The regulator's picture is the same. FTC staff reviewed 70 income disclosure statements and concluded that many participants received no payments, and "the vast majority received $1,000 or less per year", which is less than $84 a month. That finding covers the 33 disclosures where staff could compute it, and it is before expenses. None of the 70 statements accounted for all expenses.
For the full method of reading these documents, including the ways they shrink who gets counted, see how to read an MLM income disclosure statement.
Commission is not profit
A commission statement shows what the company paid you. Your profit is what is left after everything you paid to keep earning it. To work it out:
- Add your commissions, bonuses and retail markup for the month.
- Subtract the product you bought to stay active, keep a rank or hit a bonus. Count only the part you would not have bought anyway at that price.
- Subtract samples, shipping, website or app fees, event tickets, travel and anything else you spent because of the business.
- Set aside tax on whatever is left.
- Divide by the hours you worked.
A hypothetical month, worked through
This is an illustration, not typical earnings. Say you earn $120 in commissions and $40 of retail markup. You buy $100 of product a month to stay qualified, and spend $50 on samples, shipping and a monthly fee. You put in 8 hours a week and set aside 20% of any profit for tax.
| Line | Amount |
|---|
| Commissions and retail markup | $160 |
| Required product | minus $100 |
| Other costs | minus $50 |
| Profit before tax | $10 |
| Tax set-aside at 20% | minus $2 |
| What you keep | $8 a month |
| Hours (8 a week, about 34.7 a month) | about $0.23 an hour |
Now change one thing. Say your commissions fall to $40 and you sell nothing at retail, but keep the $100 order and spend $30 on costs. You are $90 down for the month and $1,080 down for the year, before counting a single hour.
Run your own numbers in the MLM profit calculator. Use your back office for commissions, your order history for purchases, and three months of bank statements for everything else. The participants in the AARP survey reported working an average of 13.3 hours a week, so be honest about the hours too.
Question to sit with: if you were paid the figure the calculator gives you per hour at any other job, would you stay?
You have probably seen the claim that 99% of MLM participants lose money, often credited to the FTC. It comes from Jon M. Taylor of the Consumer Awareness Institute, in a 2011 self-published book, The Case (for and) against Multi-level Marketing. He submitted it to the FTC as a public comment during its Business Opportunity Rule rulemaking. It sits on ftc.gov because comments are published there. It is not an FTC finding.
Taylor's figure is a model. He used average earnings reports published by 30 MLMs (the examples in his table cover years from 2001 to 2009), then added his own assumptions about costs and about how many people stay in. His cost figure comes from his own one-year test of Nu Skin, where he put minimum operating expenses at about $25,000, and his table uses 10% of that. He counted everyone who dropped out as having lost money. On that basis he reported an average loss rate of 99.6%.
Those assumptions may be fair, but they are assumptions. When people are asked directly, the picture is less extreme and still grim. In the 2018 AARP Foundation-sponsored survey of 601 current and former participants, 47% said they lost money, 27% broke even and 25% made a profit. A peer-reviewed paper using the same survey data (DeLiema, Bosley and Shadel, Journal of Labor and Society, 2021) found that about 24% reported a cumulative profit, 11% a profit above $5,000 and 6% above $10,000 (manuscript copy) over the whole life of their distributorship.
So the honest version is this: about a quarter of people say they came out ahead at all, and about 6% made more than $10,000 in total across all their years in it.
How long the people at the top took
The higher ranks pay real money, and they take years. Young Living reports the median time to reach each rank: 25 months to Silver, 35 to Gold, 47 to Diamond and 144 months to Royal Crown Diamond. Herbalife's 2025 statement says the tenure of its top 1% "typically ranged from five to 12 years." doTERRA says its Presidential Diamonds have averaged over 14 years with the company.
Most people do not stay that long. In the AARP survey, 44% worked at it for less than a year and only 15% were still active when surveyed. In its 2016 complaint against Herbalife, the FTC alleged that nearly 50% of the US distributor base quits in any given year. In its September 2026 complaint against Amway, the FTC and Washington State alleged that over 100,000 IBOs left the opportunity each year from 2020 to 2023, and that only about 0.7% got annual bonuses of $40,000 or more in 2023. Amway agreed to a proposed $225 million order to resolve those allegations.
When the people at the top tell you to keep going, they are describing a decade. Ask yourself whether you can afford a decade at your current monthly result.
Who it can be worth it for
There are people for whom an MLM membership makes sense. Be honest about whether you are one of them.
People who just want the product cheaper. If you already use a brand and joining gives you a discount, with no monthly minimum you would not meet anyway, that is a shopping decision. Herbalife's own statement says the majority of its distributors in 2025 "joined only to receive a discount", and doTERRA says about 93% of its new US customers are wholesale and retail customers buying for personal use. Treat it as a membership card and do not let anyone tell you that you have "a business."
The rare seller with real outside customers. Some people genuinely like selling and already have a circle of buyers who reorder because they love the product. If most of your income comes from those customers, and you would keep earning without recruiting anyone, you are closer to a small retailer than to a pyramid. Direct sales done right and how the top 1% succeed show what that looks like in practice.
People who want the community and can afford the cost. Some people stay for the friendships and the events, and that is their choice. Just call the money what it is: a hobby expense. In the US, the IRS says losses from a hobby "aren't deductible from other income." This is general information, not tax advice.
A five-minute decision test
Answer each question with a number, not a feeling.
- What is the median yearly pay in the company's latest income disclosure? If the company has no disclosure, or the median is $0, the typical person earns nothing.
- What do you have to buy each month to stay active or qualify for pay? Write down the dollar figure.
- What share of your current income comes from people who are not in the business? If you cannot answer, you are probably being paid on team purchases.
- What does the calculator say you earn per hour? Compare it with your local minimum wage.
- How many months could you keep going at your current result? Compare that with the median months to the rank where people start earning.
If the answers worry you, the next steps are in how to leave an MLM, and the routes with better odds are in MLM alternatives. If you have not joined yet, work through how to evaluate an MLM first, and keep the MLM red flags list open while you listen to the pitch.
The wider series starts at MLM and direct sales: the honest guide.