Is Purium A Pyramid Scheme, Scam, or Legit?

In this review, I’m going to share with you if Purium is a scam, pyramid scheme, or legit. 

I’ll share with you the characteristics of a pyramid scheme and then see if Purium shares these characteristics.

Over the last few years, I’ve been busy creating reviews about all kinds of online products and opportunities.

Some turned out to be fake others were legit ways to make money online but in the process, I learned how to spot scams.

After reading this post, you can decide for yourself if Purium is worth your energy, time, and money.

What is Purium?

Purium is a company founded by Dave Sandoval and Amy Venner-Hamdi that sells health and wellness products. They do this primarily by using the MLM business model. Purium has been around since 2003.

Dave Sandoval is a best-selling author of The Green Foods Bible and continues to share his findings at guest lectures and The “Dave Sandoval Academy of Learning”.

Amy Venner-Hamdi has been in the nutrition industry for more than 20 years and has been involved in sales, customer service, purchasing, administration, and manufacturing.

Purium is not only active in the United States but also in countries like the United Kindom, Germany, Italy, Austria, and other European countries. 

Their headquarters is located at 2610 Homestead Pl, Rancho Dominguez, CA 90220

Purium lawsuit

At the moment there aren’t any pending lawsuits, but Purium has faced some legal trouble in the past. 

In 2011, the Environmental Research Center in Canada filed a lawsuit because they were caught violating health and safety codes in the manufacturing of 30 of their products.

There’s a document with all the information which you can read by clicking here.

Since then, there haven’t been any controversies.

How does Purium work?

Purium is a company that distributes health and wellness products. Instead of directly selling it to consumers they have chosen to use the MLM model which gives you the choice to earn money by:

• Selling the products for a commission
• Recruiting people to earn bonuses.

What is MLM?

MLM (a.k.a network marketing or direct selling) stands for multi-level marketing.

According to Wikipedia, multi-level marketing is a marketing strategy for selling products or services where the revenue is derived from a non-salaried workforce.

As a part of this workforce, you sell the products from the company, and/or recruit people to do the same thing. This group of people you recruit will work under you and is referred to as your downline.

The bigger your downline is the more money you can earn passively (technically speaking) because you’re getting paid a percentage based on the performance of your downline.

This also means the person that recruited you which is called your upline is making money based on your performance.

The act of recruiting turns an MLM company into a pyramid-shaped organization where the first people to join make the most and are on the top of the pyramid and those last to join are at the bottom.

Source: Wikipedia

MLMs have been around for a long time. There are Multi-level marketing companies active today that was founded in the 1950s. MLM has a lot in common with pyramid schemes, so scammers often use MLM to disguise their pyramid schemes.

Is it absolutely necessary to recruit people? No.

You can also stick to just selling products you can order at wholesale price (25% discount) and re-sell to make a profit. This is easier said than done for multiple reasons which are why most members try to recruit others so they can earn more money.

How to join Purium

Most people get referred to Purium but you can also sign-up through their website.

After that, you can become a Purium distributor by following these 3 steps.

Step 1: Sign-up 

Step 2: Purchase a starter kit
The basic Purium starter kits cost $49 but you can also purchase additional launch kits that provide more support. Click here if you want to see the launch kits that are available to new members.

Most Starter Kits contain:

• Your own professional Superfoods Online Store.
• Products and programs for the wellness goals of your future customers can ever imagine.
• Free training and support
• Builders Facebook Group.
• Marketing Tools
• Gift codes
• Back-Office

Step 3: Recieve training
You’ll receive some training about who you can target and basic conversation templates that you can use. After that, you’re ready to start selling and recruiting.

Is Purium a pyramid scheme?

To answer this question we need to know what a pyramid scheme is.

What is a pyramid scheme?

A pyramid scheme is a type of scam where people are promised money for joining the scheme and recruiting other people instead of selling products and services. 

No selling of a product or service is involved whatsoever.

So you might be wondering where the money comes from.

The people that join are expected to pay a one-time or a monthly fee and in exchange for that, they get a percentage of the fee of everyone they recruit after.

The remaining money goes to the creators at the top of the pyramid.

The problem with this model is from a mathematical standpoint it’s impossible for everyone to make money because you simply run out of people.

Take a look at this picture below showing how it’s impossible for everyone to earn money.

Source: Wikipedia

As you can see, in this pyramid model it’s required to recruit 6 people. You’ll notice from the 12th level and further, it’s not possible anymore for everyone to earn money.

The 2.2 Billion people on the 12th level need 13.1 billion recruits in total for them all to make money which is more people than there are currently on Earth.

At the point that people can’t be recruited anymore, the pyramid collapses because not enough money is coming in to pay members and sustain the pyramid.

Looking at the description of a pyramid scheme, Purium can’t be classified as a pyramid scheme from a legal perspective. Purium products have given people a method to make money without recruiting people.

That being said, there are pyramid schemes that disguise themselves as MLM companies because MLMs also use a pyramid structure but they sell products and services. 

These pyramid schemes offer products that are almost impossible to sell with the goal of pushing you to recruit people because you supposedly can get higher commissions.

From that point on it’s the same as a traditional pyramid scheme.

Who can benefit from Purium?

Who could benefit from joining Purium’s MLM program:

• Expert salesmen
• Expert recruiters
• People that already have an audience

That being said, even then I wouldn’t recommend it.

Who shouldn’t join Purium’s MLM Program:

• People that hate sales jobs.
• People that hate recruiting
• People that don’t have the budget for it
• People that expect to earn passive income
• People that expect to earn a full-time income

Purium products

Purium sells health and wellness products in categories such as:

Weight loss, Cleansing, Fitness, Immune support, and full transformation packs. 

Their best-selling program is called the transformation program. It’s a program designed to help you with fitness, weight loss, and health in general.

It’s a 30-day program where Purium provides you with recipes, education, and community support to achieve your health-related goals.

The cost of this program is roughly $12 a day.

Are Purium products aligned with the market?

Purium sells a lot of products so I’m not going over them one by one. I think it’d be more productive to show you 1 product since most of the products follow this trend regarding price.

For my example, I’m using The Daily Core 4 w/ Power Shake AND L.O.V.

As you can see in the image, the Daily Core 4 w/ Power Shake AND L.O.V. costs $258 which is very expensive.

You can get alternative products online for a cheaper price, especially with companies that don’t have MLM programs.

I can imagine it is hard to sell these products because of this reason.

Is Purium FDA approved?

Purium products have never been evaluated by the FDA.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• No bad business reviews 
• Stable company that has been around for a long time

Cons

• Products are not FDA-approved
• Sketchy history
• Products aren’t aligned with the price of the market
•  The business model has been proven to give members a low chance of succeeding

Purium Compensation Plan

Purium is very similar to a traditional MLM when looking at its compensation plan.  How much money you’ll earn is heavily based on your title which you receive by purchasing/selling products and recruiting others to do the same. 

Here’s a list of all available titles you can reach in Purium:

• Associate
• Builder
• Consultant 
• Director
• Executive
• Diamond 
• Green Diamond
• Blue Diamond
• Black Diamond
• Red Diamond
• Crown
• 2-star Crown
• 3-star Crown
• 4-star Crown
• 5-star Crown

Check out this image with the requirements needed to reach each title named.

You can make money in multiple ways such as:

•  Retail sales
• Commission through recruiting
• Residual income

Retail sales

This is a method that allows you to earn a commission based on how much BV you sell. It’s a simple and straightforward method of earning money.

Earn up to a commission of 25% based on your sales.

Commission through recruiting

A referral bonus is earned by recruiting others. Dependent on your rank the percentage you’ll get as a commission will differ.

Residual income

This is income you can earn by managing your team and their performance. You’ll earn an additional commission based on the team’s sales and capability to recruit others.

Here are a few examples of bonuses you can earn through Purium:

FAST START BONUSES ( WEEKLY & MONTHLY) 

A bonus that’s only available to distributors that have just enrolled and are in their first month. In this period, you can earn up to $3500 dependent on your performance.

FAST START MATCHING BONUSES ( WEEKLY & MONTHLY)

A bonus that’s only available to distributors that have just enrolled and are in their first month. In this period, you can earn up to $2500 dependent on the titles you reach during that time.

FIRST ORDER BONUSES

Earn a commission of 20% on every first order and a residual of 5% on the first 4 levels of your downline. This bonus makes it possible to earn up to 45% commission.

UNILEVEL Bonuses 

A bonus based on the residual income on 8 levels of your team. You can earn 3-5% of what levels 1-4 is earning. This bonus is based on the performance of you and your recruits.

INFINITY BONUSES

An additional 2 -4% commission can be earned based on levels 9 and 10 of your downline. This bonus is based on the performance of you and your recruits.

MATCHING BONUSES

Whenever you’re promoted to a new title and maintain it for 3 months ( which is based on how many products you and your team purchase) you’ll receive a bonus (10-20%). 

LIFESTYLE BONUSES

A bonus that makes it possible to earn up to $10,000 in monthly cash bonuses based on recruiting new people and having them buy launch packs and getting people to advance to the rank of consultant or higher.

5% PROFIT SHARING POOLS (Monthly)

A special bonus that consists of 2% of all the revenue made by Purium in your region. This bonus will be divided between every distributor at the level of Diamond or higher.

ACHIEVEMENT BONUS (Monthly)

For those who do not achieve FAST Start Bonuses within the required time frame, Achievement Bonuses are available as Brand Partners move through the ranks.

These are INSTEAD OF (and not in addition to) FAST Start Bonuses and do not include Matching Bonuses for the upline Enroller.

How much can you earn with Purium?

In theory, the sky is the limit but in reality, we know because of factors such as your ability to recruit, your competition, and the performance of your downlines there’s is often a limit.

You can read everything you need to about these bonuses in the compensation plan but I’m more interested in real numbers. Luckily, Purium has published an income disclosure.

There’s a lot of information in this document so I have decided to share with you the summary of my findings in quick bullet points of how much money members are making per year.

• Associates (16.05%) on average earn $5
• Builders ((29.03%) on average earn $15
• Consultants (24.41%) on average earn $49
• Directors (14.90%) on average earn $166
• Executive (9.73% ) on average earn $484
• Diamond (3.02%) on average earn $1,512
• Green Diamond (1.22%)on average earn $3,093
• Blue Diamond (0.24%) on average earns $3,828
• Black Diamond (0.31%) on average earns $7,632
• Red Diamond (0.42%) on average earns $10,510
• Crown (0.28%) on average earns $11,214 
• 2-star Crown (0.19%) on average earn $20,652
• 3-star Crown (0.10%) on average earn $26,687
• 4-star Crown (0.05%) on average earn $31,248
• 5-star Crown (0.06%) on average earn $38,226

69,49% is earning less than $49 every month (excluding expenses needed to maintain the business which is at least $50) In most cases, this will result in a loss of money. 

98,6% is earning less than what according to statistics is the equivalent of an average US full-time income.

Why aren’t people earning decent money with MLM companies like Purium?

I have summed up the reasons why it’s hard to make money with Purium and MLM companies in general into 3 points. As a Purium brand partner, you’ll have to deal with the 3 points mentioned below.

1. MLM companies are often associated with pyramid schemes
MLMs have a pyramid recruiting structure that you often have to join to be able to make decent money or at the very least not lose money. The problem is a lot of pyramid schemes disguise themselves as MLM programs making it difficult to differentiate the two.

This is the biggest problem why most distributors have a difficult time recruiting people. The moment people hear about how you can make money by recruiting people red flags appear in most people’s minds.

This isn’t good for your sales.

2. You have to consistently invest your money to earn commissions
You’re only eligible for bonuses and commissions if you buy their products. The bigger the bonuses, the more product you have to buy. You do get discounts but if you can’t sell the products I can see you easily fall into a financial deficit (which happens to the majority of distributors of MLM companies).

3. The price of the product often isn’t aligned with the market

It’s hard for a multi-level marketer to sell products because most MLM products tend to be a lot more expensive than similar products sold by non-MLM companies. This means even if you’re really good at recruiting your downline still needs to sell those same expensive products for you to make decent money.

You can see that translated in these statistics I found about Multi-level Marketing.

• Nearly half (47%) of MLM participants reported that they lost money.
• One in four (27%) MLM participants reported that they broke even (made no money).
• MLM participants are 7% more likely to declare bankruptcy during their lifetime.
• Direct sales have risen 79% in the last decade, but MLM participants continue to lose money.
• 90 – 99% of distributors in multilevel marketing only receive a couple of hundred dollars in commission per year.
• Out of the 33,000 interviewed, 90 people made enough money to cover the costs of building their businesses.
• 50% of the people who start a network marketing enterprise abandoned it in the first year.

Sources:
FTC
AARP
Jobsinmarketing.io

My Personal Take

What I like about Purium:

1. Stable company 

The company has been around since 2003 which is a great accomplishment. 90% of startups fail after a few years, Zurvita has been around for more than a decade. They also survived the financial crisis in the 2010s which shows that they know what they’re doing and are resilient.

2. Good Reviews

The majority of Purium product ratings that aren’t on their website seem to be positive. There are some low ratings here and there but overall the general consensus seems to be that Purium doesn’t produce bad products.

This is very handy to refer to when you’re pitching Purium products as an independent distributor.  

What I don’t like about Purium:

1. Products lack a unique selling proposition

Health and Wellness companies that sell supplements and weight loss products are anything but rare in the MLM industry. 

As a Purium independent distributor, you’re not only competing with other Purium members but also the distributors of other health and wellness companies offering supplements with similar benefits.

A unique selling point would help with standing out from the rest of the companies but Purium, unfortunately, lacks that.

2. People aren’t earning money with Purium

Almost 70% of people distributing products for Purium either break even or lose money. 

This shows that the cards are heavily stacked against you when working with Purium. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to earn money with Purium but you’d have to be an expert in recruiting and selling to succeed.

Most people aren’t expert salesmen or recruiters.

3. Products are overpriced 

The products are insanely expensive when you compare them to what other non-MLM companies offer for similar supplements. The internet has made it possible to find cheaper alternatives simply by doing a 5-minute Google search.

That alone decreases the chance of selling products drastically.

4. accomplishments are based on purchases, not sales

This is not unique to Purium but I don’t like it at all.

Instead of basing promotions and commissions on how much you sell, they base them on how much you purchase. This means technically you can buy yourself to the top.

I have read stories of people doing that and becoming MLM consultants or attracting potential recruits by the supposed money they earn every month.

It stimulates people to spend money without thing of earning a profit.

I don’t like that.

5. Purium products aren’t FDA-approved

None of the products that Purium offers have been evaluated by the FDA. 

This means I can’t say for certain that it’s 100% safe. They’ve been caught violating health and safety codes in the past.

The ingredients of their products don’t seem harmful but I can imagine missing out on sales purely because you can’t say to potential customers that the products are FDA approved.

Verdict

Is Purium A Scam, Pyramid scheme, or Legit?

Purium isn’t a scam or pyramid scheme but it isn’t legit either in my opinion.

The business model has failed a lot of multi-level marketers. The only people I can realistically see succeeding with this model are expert salesmen, recruiters, and people with an audience such as influencers.

I’d place it under the category bad business opportunity because Purium isn’t sharing any untruths. The degree of difficulty when it comes to succeeding is just exceptionally high for 99% of people.

Purium Alternative

Unfortunately, Purium isn’t for everyone. 

It comes with significant financial risk and it’s hard to scale because most of the marketing is done face-to-face and you can’t be at multiple places at once.

This is why I suggest to those that don’t want to deal with these 2 factors an alternative.

It is called affiliate marketing. 

It’s the method I use to earn most of the money I earn online.

How do you earn money with affiliate marketing?

You don’t have to sell products or services and you don’t have to recruit people.

The only thing you’ll be doing is referring people (that already are interested) to merchant websites such as Amazon, Walmart, and eBay. 

When people buy something based on your recommendation you’ll get a percentage of the purchase.

My #1 recommendation is an affiliate marketing training platform with more than 1.5 million members. 

Memberships are basically an all-in-1 package that comes with expert-level training, resources, and support from a community of people doing the same thing. 

Want to learn more? Take a look at my comprehensive review of the affiliate marketing platform.

Do you have any experience with MLM or Modere let me know in the comments!

That’s all for today. 

See you in my next post!

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