Let's look at how this product distribution model works:

First, the product manufacturer makes a product (a bottle of juice, a bottle of supplements, etc.) This product might cost 10% of the actual retail price it will eventually be sold for.  Next, the advertisers and marketers spend millions of dollars running ads in the popular media in order to create consumer demand for the product. This often adds 20% (or so) to the product price.

Once this consumer demand is in place, the manufacturers sell it to product distributors at about 40% of retail price (a 60% discount from the retail price).  From there, the product transportation companies get paid to deliver the product, in bulk, to retail stores. This typically adds about 5% - 10% to the product price.  The retail stores then buy the product at about 50% - 60% of retail price and put it on their shelves to be sold at full retail price.

Finally, a consumer enters the store, buys the product and pays retail price.  In this model, if the product costs $100, here's how this money is actually distributed:

• The manufacturer got $20
• The advertisers got $20
• The distributor got $10
• The transportation company got $10
• The retailer got $40

As you can see, your $100 in cash spent at the health food store effectively pays out commissions to all the various players in this distribution chain.  You may also recognize the interesting fact that, since there are thousands of health retailers serving millions of customers around the world, this distribution model is a network marketing model, too!  Every time a consumer buys the $100 product, for example, the distributor earns a 10% commission, the retailer earns a 40% commission, the manufacturer earns 10% as profit, etc.

How the direct sales model compares

In a direct sales model, the advertisers, distributors, transportation companies and retailers are all eliminated!  They are replaced with a human network of individuals who serve those same functions: Advertising, distributing, retailing, enrolling, etc. Just like in the above example, retail sales that occur in this network generate commissions for the people who brought you the product. Except that in the case of network marketing, it's really the People -- a network of individuals -- rather than a handful of corporations who earn the commissions.

In essence, then: The direct sales model is a more Democratic, decentralized model of product distribution that distributes economic benefits to the People rather than concentrating them in the hands of a few corporations.

Where the retail distribution model creates profits for the few, direct sales distributes those same profits (markups) to the many (distributors
                                                                                                                                     

Key differences between direct sales vs. conventional retail

Here are other key differences between the two models:

• The Wal-Mart model economically benefits a few rich corporations.
• The Direct Sales model economically benefits a large network of People.

• The Wal-Mart model traps wage-slave employees in a system of low wages.
• The Direct Sales model shatters the glass ceiling and creates the potential for unlimited earnings, regardless of education, race, or work experience.

• The Wal-Mart model wastes resources on needless inventory sitting on shelves in a massive network of local warehouses.
• The Direct Sales model delivers products to people as needed, bypassing local warehouses and avoiding the cost and waste of needless real estate.

• The Wal-Mart model enriches advertising executives, television networks and mainstream advertising outlets (think: soda ads).
• The Direct Sales model enriches the people doing the work, spreading the word about intriguing, life-enhancing products.

• The Wal-Mart model encourages the formulation of cheap, low-cost products with high markup.
• The Direct Sales model makes possible the direct sales of high-quality products with only a 50% profit margin (although some direct sales products are also cheap, low-cost filler products, so be sure to discern the difference).

• The Wal-Mart model disempowers the People, giving them no voice in the product or the company (unless you are a wealthy shareholder)
• The Direct Sales model empowers the People, giving them a powerful voice in the future of the company: Its products, formulations, policies, etc.

• The Wal-Mart model focuses on the lowest price, regardless of environmental concerns, sweatshop labor or other ethical considerations.
• The Direct Sales model demands accountability due to the combined voice of the large number of individual distributors whom the company must keep happy.

• The Wal-Mart model is considered successful when the people SPEND more money (weakens household finances).

• The Direct Sales model is considered successful when the People EARN more money (strengthens household finances).

• The Wal-Mart model treats customers like cattle: Nameless, faceless Joe Public consumers who shuffle through security detectors, monitored by video cameras and secret anti-shoplifting agents.
• The Direct Sales model treats people like real people. It's a face-to-face business built on strong relationships and genuine trust (if you choose the right organization, of course).

• The goal of the Wal-Mart model is to take your money and get you out of the store as quickly as possible.
• The goal of the Direct Sales model is to show you how to MAKE money as quickly as possible.

The Wal-Mart model is, metaphorically speaking, Communism.
The Direct Sales model is, metaphorically speaking, Democracy.

In essence, the Wal-Mart model is about centralized control.
The Direct Sales model, in contrast, is about individual freedom.                                            

Network Marketing distributes power among the People

When I first got all this, it was a stunning realization. The Direct Sales model of product distribution and compensation represents a mass Democratization of power and profits. When done with integrity (with real products that offer real value at reasonable prices), it is nothing short of revolutionary.

We are talking about a system here that completely bypasses the centralized, power-hungry, mega-wealthy corporations that traditionally funnel all the profits into their own profits, often while selling harmful (even deadly) products to consumers. 

That model, I believe, is in many ways hopelessly outdated and socially lopsided.

Network Marketing is more efficient and uses fewer resources

The Direct Sales approach to product distribution uses far fewer resources to get the same job done (the job of distributing products into the hands of those who value them and benefit from them).

In the Wal-Mart model, hundreds of millions of dollars must be spent to buy land, build retail buildings, hire employees, stock inventory, advertise in local newspapers, and so on. These are real resources being wasted: Land, commercial real estate, concrete, paper, etc. And they're entirely unnecessary, because in the Direct Sales model, all this waste is cleverly avoided.

This has serious implications for sustainable living and environmental stewardship. The Wal-Mart model, most people have come to recognize, is environmentally non-sustainable. But the Direct Sales model is not only sustainable; it is efficient! By relying on the People to do the job of a typical retail store, enormous real-world resources are conserved. The eco-footprint of the Direct Sales model, in other words, is vastly superior to the Wal-Mart model.

It doesn't mean Wal-Mart has no useful role in society, of course. People will always need cheap plastic spatulas, AA batteries and contact lens solution. They're not likely to buy these through a Direct Sales organization, and they need the convenience of having such products stocked locally on physical shelves. Convenience stores will always have a place, but for many products, they are remarkably wasteful and disadvantageous to the people.

Product acceptance and market penetration

In marketing schools, the term "market penetration" describes the percentage of the target market that has embraced your product. If you sell disposable razors for men, for example, and 4% of the men in the country buy your razors, you have achieved a market penetration of 4%.

Perhaps the greatest challenge for any product manufacturer is to achieve some degree of market penetration. For the big consumer product corporations in the world, that means running endless television ads that try to convince people their virtually-useless products need to be purchased again and again, at ridiculously-high markups (like Swiffer cleaning products, or most pharmaceuticals).

The conventional retail model of product penetration relies on advertising to imprint logos, packaging designs and product names into the heads of consumers. This is accomplished through various propaganda techniques, including song jingles, implied sex appeal (beer ads), a hidden promise of social acceptance (soda ads, sports shoes, etc.) or even empty promises of health (drug ads). All these promises of course, are really just clever lies disguised as entertaining ads.

The cost of such propaganda campaigns is so high that the amount of money left to put into the product itself is often shockingly low. A $1.00 can of soda, for example, contains about three cents worth of actual ingredients. Some prescription drugs, as another example, are literally marked up 565,000% over the cost of their ingredients. The conventional retail / advertising approach to product penetration is a tremendous waste of resources, and it results in extremely low-cost products being sold to consumers at ridiculously high prices.                                                              

The Direct Sales model is vastly superior to this because, by avoiding all the overhead of advertising, public relations and costly propaganda campaigns, Direct Sales companies are capable of bringing high-value products directly to consumers at reasonable markups (if they so choose). The money traditionally spent on advertising gets redistributed to People.

Even more importantly, the Direct Sales model is capable of achieving impressive market penetration without the need for organized advertising campaigns.  Why is this?  Because the viral nature of face-to-face product demonstrations and distributor enrollment has the potential to reach every single person in society... even without a single dollar being spent on national advertising.

This is socially important because it allows people to learn about important health products they might otherwise never discover. The FDA, you see, is engaged in a campaign of routine health product censorship. It has outlawed true, scientifically-supported health claims on all health products, and it has gone to great lengths to disrupt, oppress or otherwise destroy the natural products industry. (If you're skeptical of this statement, see my articles on the FDA here: www.NaturalNews.com/the_FDA.html )

Thus, if left to traditional product advertising, marketing and fulfillment channels, many genuinely miraculous health products would never see the light of day. The Direct Sales industry enables many critically-important health products to actually get into the hands of the people who need them most -- such as cancer patients who can use South American rainforest herbs to eliminate cancer tumors and regain their health (various rainforest herbs deliver potent anti-cancer phytochemicals, including Una de Gato, Sangre de Drago and many others).

Through Direct Sales organizations, people have real access to lifesaving herbs, supplements and health products that the pro-Pharma establishment would prefer to see outlawed entirely. This is one reason, by the way, why the FTC and FDA have both attacked Direct Sales companies so aggressively over the years: It's a product distribution channel they cannot control, and they absolutely hate the fact that two people can sit in a room and privately discuss the truth about anti-cancer herbs in a way that cannot be censored or regulated by the government.

This is why Direct Sales organizations are, in one sense, a kind of underground railroad of information: They allow people to pass along lifesaving information about natural remedies that they would never learn through traditional, tightly-controlled information sources (network news, newspapers, magazines, etc.).

The social implications for this are nothing short of huge: People who are involved in health-related Direct Sales organizations are more knowledgeable about natural remedies than those who are not. That's because they're plugged in to a channel of word-of-mouth information that is currently censored in traditional information sources.

The upshot of all this is that Direct Sales organizations provide not only an alternative channel for physical product distribution, but also an alternative channel for knowledge distribution. In a very real sense, network marketing distributors are passing along the truth about health products like ancient storytellers would hand down important cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. The active people in Direct Sales today are the ones keeping alive the endangered knowledge that the FDA would just as soon wipe clean from our minds.

Personal freedom vs. the wage slave workers

Another important social implication of the new wave of Direct Sales companies is that they are showing people how to successfully quit their jobs and build their own income streams.

This is especially important in these times of global financial crisis: Peoples' paychecks are in danger. The vast majority of U.S. cities and states, for example, are now virtually bankrupt.  Paychecks, pensions and health benefits are all endangered, and that means the livelihoods of those who depends on such paychecks are also potentially in danger.  Thanks to the global financial wipeout of 2008, and the realization that banks, governments and even well-known corporations are often skating on thin ice, there's a resurgence of interest in how to create your own income, independent of any fixed paycheck.
                                                                                                                                          

For many people, the presumed reliability of a steady paycheck from a "solid" institution is suddenly being revealed as illusion. Reliable income, more people are realizing, does not come from a paycheck that can be taken away from you at any time; it comes from owning and controlling your own income, using independent sources. In this way, Direct Sales organizations are vastly superior to almost any job, unless you happen to hold a key position (board member, for example) of the corporation providing your paycheck.

Even then, your paycheck in traditional jobs is almost always limited by unfair considerations: Your race, skin color, speaking style, sexual orientation, marriage status, parental status, education, background, religion, etc.  While job discrimination based on these criteria are illegal, anyone reading this who identifies with one of these probably has dozens of stories about how they were discriminated against in a job interview or job termination.

In Direct Sales, nobody can keep you chained to poverty, and nobody can fire you (for any reason!). Your income is entirely up to you, and once you build it, it's yours to keep, month after month, year after year. You OWN the income stream, and it cannot be suddenly taken away from you.  The harder and smarter you choose to work, the more money you can make.

That's real financial security. It's also one of the reasons many people are now joining more than one network marketing company at the same time: They are achieving income diversity by representing TWO companies offering products or services they feel aligned with. By doing so, they are creating double income streams that they own and control.

Furthermore, these income streams will survive any potential future currency switchover. If the U.S. dollar inflates to the point that it is someday abandoned by world banks, commercial transactions will simply continue in whatever new currency is introduced. Consumers still need health products, of course, and a network marketing distribution system will survive a currency collapse that might bring down a bank or even a government.

In essence, building a successful Direct Sales distributorship sets you free! It frees you from the cage of depending on a steady paycheck from an organization you can neither trust, nor rely on to provide for your financial future. In a Direct Sales organization, you are building a pathway to your own personal freedom.  Of course, choosing the right Direct Sales organization is crucial to achieving your own, personal financial success. I review several companies later in this article.

Success or failure at network marketing

I've heard people say that "most people don't succeed at network marketing." That's a funny frame of reference, because if you're talking about making money, then nobody succeeds at the traditional retail distribution model.

I've never met anyone who got paid to shop at Wal-Mart. I've never seen someone go to a health food store, buy a bag full of products, and have the cashier hand THEM a few hundred dollars on the way out!

Thus, by the definition of "success," the traditional retail distribution model has a zero percent success rate. 

In contrast to that, millions of people are earning real money in Direct Sales organizations.  Most earn only a little.  Some earn a few thousand dollars a month, and a few of the hardest-working folks earn as much as six figures a month. (I've actually met someone earning over a million dollars a month, but that's extremely rare...)

Even those who aren't earning big profits are still winning by having access to life-enhancing health products. Granted, not all the health products offered by network marketing companies are impressive, but many of them truly are. The skin-care like from Nu Skin is quite impressive, by the way, and the Lluvia skin care line from the Amazon Herb Company absolutely blows away anything you've ever seen in retail (there's just no comparison whatsoever). If these Direct Sales companies didn't exist, consumers would have no access to these vastly superior products... at any price!                                       

Compared to traditional retail distribution, the Direct Sales model makes everybody a winner: The consumer benefits from access to the unique product line, the distributor earns an income by introducing people to the product, and society benefits as a whole by eliminating the waste overhead of competing retail operations (inventory, advertising, etc.). There are no losers in this equation.

Unless, of course, the product is garbage. That's why choosing a Direct Sales company that operates with integrity is so important. Below, I'm reviewing FOUR companies I see as representing the future of Direct Sales. For each one, I discuss its strengths and weaknesses. NaturalNews holds a distributorship position in two of the four companies, and I disclose those below.   For each company, I'll also reveal what kind of person it is best suited for.

This article continues with a review of the top four network marketing companies operating today. Three of them are less than a year old. One of them is barely a few weeks old, making them truly ground-floor opportunities.

                      Review of Revolutionary Direct Sales Companies: 

                            SHOP TO EARTH

                 **(has not been updated since fall 2008, many changes have taken place)                                

(NaturalNews) This is part two of a two-part article. Read part one first (www.NaturalNews.com/024515.html). Here, in part two, I'm reviewing emerging direct sales companies that are redefining the industry, sweeping away old-school network marketing and replacing it with high-integrity, quality-minded leadership.

For each company reviewed here, I include its strengths, weaknesses, company culture and my relationship (if any) with each company. I'll start with the most recently-launched company: Moxxor.

SHOP TO EARTH       www.shoptoearth.net/suzyk

Products: ShopToEarth is an affiliate portal that gives you access to a network of existing product companies including Dr. Bronner's, Nutiva, the Natural Dentist, and many others. You get paid affiliate fees on multiple levels (sort of like Commission Junction, but spanning multiple levels).

Attractive to: Working professionals, people who shop online, moms, etc.

Company culture: A bit on the macho side, but becoming more holistic over time.

Founders: Successful business men. Not very holistic in their own lives, but open to working with holistic companies.

Strengths: Unique business model is more like affiliate marketing than network marketing. No specific product to sell. Easy to explain the concept to others. No need to buy anything new; people simply buy what they already buy, but through the ShopToEarth portal. Easy to replicate online.
                                   
Launched on: March, 2008 already has over 70,000 members !

Enroll at:   If someone else introduced you to ShopToEarth, please enroll with them. Otherwise, go to www.ShopToEarth.net/suzyk or contact SuzyKarasik@Specialized-systems.com  learn more (or call her at 209-710-8299).

ShopToEarth (also known as ShopToEarn) is a completely different direct sales model than almost every other company you've heard of. Rather than focusing its business model on a product, ShopToEarth focuses on a portal -- a website through which you purchase products you typically purchase anyway.

When you make these purchases, you get cash back (anywhere from 5% - 20%, depending on the retailer), and you get "points." The list of online retailers is quite impressive: Aquasana, Apple iTunes, Audible.com, eBags, Heartland America, Life Extension, Musician's Friend, Office Max, Sunfood Nutrition (David Wolfe's company) and well over a hundred more. Retailers range the gamut from offering garbage to genuine high-end products (but more high-quality companies are coming on board soon).

Every time YOU get points from your online purchases, all the people above you get the same points (they get duplicated up through the binary tree). When your binary tree "legs" reach 4800 points, at least 1/3 of points must come from the left or the right leg, you "Score!" and that means $550 for YOU! The person who enrolled you also gets another $50 bonus every time you score.

The leadership of the company comes from the world of business, not health. This isn't a group of eco-friendly, super-healthy vegetarians with radiant skin. You're not going to find a bunch of guys wearing hemp. You will, however, see a remarkably capable group of business leaders who are very, very good at bringing together the right retailers with the consuming masses through an affiliate marketing structure that's innovative and unique.

The holistic sub-culture

Underneath the surface, there's something happening within the ShopToEarth company that you may find interesting: There's a growing sub-culture of eco-friendly, health-conscious individuals starting to gain traction within the company, and that's what interests me most about this company. I've watched ShopToEarth gain a lot of market penetration: It's signed over 70,000 distributors in less than six months. That's a huge distribution base, and it has value.

What kind of value? The value of bringing better-quality products to the masses. You see, if we can get more companies like Sunfood, Nutiva and Dr. Bronner's into this network, we can create new direct sales channels for yet more natural health companies that deserve greater recognition.  And as it turns out, my upline (Suzy Karasik) is working hard with the company founders to bring more natural health companies into the ShopToEarth network. I can't tell you their names yet, but they are innovative companies I strongly support. They offer superfoods, vegan protein products, bee pollen, superfoods and many other natural health necessities.                                                                                   

Even now, consider who's in the ShopToEarth system:

Dr. Bronner's, Delicious Greens, Nutiva, Sunfood... these are four big names in the world of natural health. If we can expand this to six or ten names in the next few months, we could see millions of dollars flowing towards these companies through the ShopToEarth network.  And that would help turn ShopToEarth into a genuine holistic shopping portal that's bringing Earth-friendly products to an ever-growing group of consumers.

Thus, I openly admit that one of the reasons I'm involved with ShopToEarth is because I hope to positively influence its future direction and make it more holistic, more natural and a whole lot easier to use.  What ShopToEarth has right now is brilliant: It's a network marketing shopping portal that pays people to shop for the stuff they buy already. That's the brilliance of it, and with that simple foundation, I'm willing to give it time to overcome all its other shortcomings.

Assuming they get all this accomplished sometime in 2009, ShopToEarth could have a downright brilliant future. Think of it as Commission Junction with a never-ending commission. Cool concept. But can ShopToEarth overcome its immediate challenges and emerge as an online retailing powerhouse to compete with the likes of Amazon.com?

I've bet $449 that they can. That's the one-time broker fee. Once you pay that fee, you can then share this shopping portal concept with others, and you can earn points off their points (and the points of the people they enrolled, and so on), potentially making some serious money if enough people get involved.
                                                                                                                                       
The bottom line? ShopToEarth has potential. It's a very smart concept, and if you're already buying products from some of the companies it includes, it doesn't actually cost you anything extra on a month to month basis (you simply shop through your ShopToEarth page instead of shopping somewhere else). The company faces some challenges right now -- mostly stemming from its wildly-successful viral marketing structure -- and if it can overcome them, it could in many ways revolutionize affiliate marketing on the web.

That revolution will, I hope, include an ever-increasing list of impressive natural product companies. In the mean time, I'm already enrolled, and I've started purchasing Dr. Bronner's soap through my ShopToEarth portal. You can also buy Delicious Greens superfoods at a really good price through this system. (I've recommended Delicious Greens for quite some time.)

If you want to enroll under the NaturalNews team and benefit from the distribution tree we may create, go to www.ShopToEarth.net/suzyk then click on my picture at the bottom left of the page, then click on "Join Now" (top right). From there, you can enroll as a broker ($448), which will get you your own website URL, and you can start earning revenues immediately when other people purchase health products or enroll from your website.

If you have questions, contact the NaturalNews team organizer, Suzy Karasik,

at 209-710-8299 or email   suzykarasik@specialized-systems.com

P.S. I've just learned the ShopToEarth company is working hard on a Spanish-language website for 2009. If that's rolled out, it could instantly double the potential audience and set off a whole new wave of enrollment.

*update 2009 - that is also done, over 1000 companies and 10,000+ products just on the EARTH side