In a pyramid scheme, new sellers have to put up money up front, often for expensive training or something and are also often required to buy a very large amount of product on spec, which they can't return if they don't sell it. (This is very similar to the process of being "published" by a predatory publisher
Yeah, it's like that "money should flow towards the author" rule -- people shouldn't have to pay to get published, or reviewed, or to have inventory they can sell. The very latest iteration of this appears to be people who put videos up on UTU about how you, too! can be a gazillionaire reselling returned stuff from Amazon, with the result people wind up paying thousands of dollars for "training" and even more money for inventory they can't sell (and might not even know what it is before they buy IIRC). Or the "publishers" who tell you that you've won a prize, and all you need to do is pay $35 for the poetry anthology your poem appears in....that kind of thing.
And I remember my mother briefly selling Mary Kay in the eighties, and IIRC she either had samples she didn't have to pay for, or took around a catalogue or both. (No, Wiki just told me now you have to buy a $100 starter kit. Hunh. Maybe they changed or I'm remembering wrong. She certainly couldn't have afforded a starter kit at the time.)
no subject
Yeah, it's like that "money should flow towards the author" rule -- people shouldn't have to pay to get published, or reviewed, or to have inventory they can sell. The very latest iteration of this appears to be people who put videos up on UTU about how you, too! can be a gazillionaire reselling returned stuff from Amazon, with the result people wind up paying thousands of dollars for "training" and even more money for inventory they can't sell (and might not even know what it is before they buy IIRC). Or the "publishers" who tell you that you've won a prize, and all you need to do is pay $35 for the poetry anthology your poem appears in....that kind of thing.
And I remember my mother briefly selling Mary Kay in the eighties, and IIRC she either had samples she didn't have to pay for, or took around a catalogue or both. (No, Wiki just told me now you have to buy a $100 starter kit. Hunh. Maybe they changed or I'm remembering wrong. She certainly couldn't have afforded a starter kit at the time.)