Everyone knows that Amway is a multilevel marketing scheme. You sell a little soap, but you also try to recruit lots of other people to sell soap, so you can take a cut of their sales too. The people below you in the pyramid are your "downline."

But it's hard to make money selling soap! So how do the folks at the top of the Amway pyramid rake in the big bucks? Here's the trick: Everyone in the lower levels of the pyramid is "strongly encouraged" to purchase lots of motivational books and tapes, as well as tickets to attend monthly "functions" (sales seminars run like revival meetings).

Even though you're required to foist these so-called "tools" on your downline, you don't get a cut of the profits from them. All those profits go to the folks at the top of the pyramid. But they don't like to talk about that.

To learn more secrets Amway doesn't want you to know, visit a mirror of Sidney Schwartz's Amway: The Untold Story. Amway's lawyers were trying hard to suppress this webpage. Then they had a run-in with me.

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