How much does your MLM upline actually make from your purchases?

I decided to calculate exactly how much money flows up from my monthly purchases. I spend $150/month on autoship. My upline gets approximately 5% = $7.50. Their upline gets about 3% = $4.50. And so on up about 7 levels. In total, about 40% of my purchase price goes to commissions for various upline members. That means only 60% goes toward the actual product and company operations. In a regular retail business, the company keeps about 50-60% as gross margin. In MLM, only 60% goes to the company AND product, which means either the product costs less to make or the quality is lower. This math concerns me.

Here is what bothers me most about the MLM industry: the blame-the-victim mentality. When someone fails, they are told they did not work hard enough, did not believe enough, or did not attend enough events. It is never the company fault or the model fault. This is textbook manipulation.

This is really helpful. Do you have a link to the income disclosure statement you mentioned? I have been trying to find it for my company but they make it surprisingly hard to locate.

Former Herbalife nutrition club owner here. I invested $25,000 to set up my club. First year was brutal - barely covered rent. Second year I started making about $3,000 per month. Third year I was at $6,000 per month. Then COVID hit and I lost everything. The business model worked but it was fragile.

How long did it take you to build your team to that level? And what percentage of your team members are actually active versus just maintaining autoship?