Welcome to my review of doTERRA. Today were going to be asking the question “Is doTERRA a scam?” Or a legitimate way to make money from home.
I’ve got to be honest I have been known to use the odd essential oil now and again. The trouble is can be very expensive or fairly cheap and with no governing body as such you really don’t know what the difference is.
There are all sorts of claims about essential oils doing the rounds and they all based around having positive health effects and because of this these oils are very very popular.
doTERRA is one such company that is cashing in on its popularity by using a multilevel marketing system that creates a very powerful totally independent sales force.
But is doTerra just a scam? Can you actually make money with it? In this article we’ll be looking answering those questions so without further ado let’s jump straight in.
NAME: doTERRA
OWNERS: David Stirling, Emily Wright
& David Hill
PRICE: $35
WEBSITE: https://www.doterra.com
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What Is doTERRA About?
doTERRA is a MLM company specializing in essential oils, and as I’ve already said the market potential is huge. doTERRA was founded in 2008 with its name coming from the Latin word for “gift of the earth”.
It has its headquarters in Pleasant Grove Utah and sells its products through independent distributors which it calls wellness advocates.
Having initially started with 25 single oils and 10 oil blends they now have over 150 products including supplements and personal care items.
doTERRA did run into a bit of trouble while back when it was the subject of a lawsuit by company called Young living which Interestingly enough was founded by some of the people who now run doTERRA. The lawsuit alleged theft of trade secrets but the claim against doTERRA was dismissed in 2014[su_divider top=”no”]
doTERRA Product Line
Although doTERRA started out as an essential oil supplier they have now branched out into other areas such as personal care products, supplements and weight loss, but essential oils stays central to their main product line.
- Essential oils which include single oils and also their own blends
- Diffusers for diffusing the oils
- Personal care such as hair care products, skincare and body care
- Weight management such as shakes metabolic gum which I’ve never heard of to be fair and soft gels
- doTERRA DigestZen these aid with digestive issues and detoxing
- doTERRA Breathe which include vapor sticks and respiratory drops
- doTERRA On Guard Range includes things like mouthwash, hand wash, laundry detergent and toothpaste
- doTERRA Deep Blue is their range of rubbing oil
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it does give you some idea what they do.[su_divider top=”no”]
doTERRA & The FDA
In 2014 doTERRA was amongst three companies that was warned by the FDA about the medical claims distributors had made about their products.
Claims were being made that these oils could be used for inflammation, to fight viruses and could be used for conditions such as Cramps, reducing high cholesterol, treating asthma, treating anxiety and depression, as well as treating arthritis.
There were even cases where some distributors included Ebola, cancer, brain injury, autism, Alzheimer’s disease and tumour reduction in their ads.[su_divider top=”no”]
Making Money With doTERRA
Perhaps the most important part for a lot of people ….. making money. In order to be able to earn money with doTERRA you’ll need to sign up as an independent product consultant which will cost you $35.
Seeing as this is based on the MLM model you’ll have 2 ways to earn money:
- Become a salesperson and sell the products to family, friends and acquaintances
- To get people to join you to create your downline
Wen you sell the products you will receive 25% commission whereas when you get people to join you will get commissions from them as well when they sell products.
This diagram probably explains it best:
Thar’s you in the blue and all those others are earning you commission when they sell anything and of course they can recruit people as well and so your team grows.
But is it really that easy? No, unfortunately because even if you successfully get a couple of people to join you’ll soon run out of potential recruits to target.
It seems that models like this it is only the ones at the very top that earns any real money out of it and they tend to be the kind of person that can naturally inspire other people to go and get others to sign up and sell.
76% are entry level Wellness Advocates and only earn on average $375 for the whole year!
As well as the 25% commission there are also 3 other ways to make money with doTERRA, they are:
- Fast Start Bonus – paid monthly – Paid on a new enrollee’s PV for their first 60 days. Each enroller must have a 100 PV Loyalty Rewards order template to participate.
- Power of 3 – paid monthly
- Unilevel Organizational Bonus – paid monthly
This short video explains the differences:
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Essential Oils Competition
The competition in essential oils is …… well, competitive. You will have to compete with product that retail at a much lower price point than doTERRA product
Take a bottle of lavender for example:
- doTERRA price – $30.67
- Competition price – below $10
So, you can see that because doTERRA use the MLM to market their products that in turn means their prices are going to be higher what with having to pay their advocates.
Selling these products is going to be a tough ask, you may sell a few to friends who may feel obliged to buy from you, but they certainly won’t keep doing that when they can get the same type of oil for much less.[su_divider top=”no”]
doTERRA’s Own Product Certification
It’s always comforting in the minds of a potential customer when they see some sort of certification to a product. But there seems to be some confusion over doTERRA’s certificate with some people misconstruing it as meaning their products are FDA or other governing body approved.
The fact is they aren’t, the CPTG Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade is a doTERRA practice and not recognized by any authorities.
They even have this disclaimer on their sales pages:
CPTG are just terms that doTERRA have trademarked.
Mark Wolfert, general counsel for doTERRA states that “There are no regulatory standards for the use of the descriptor “therapeutic grade” in the industry. Anyone can use the term t describe their essential oils regardless of their purity or potency“[su_divider top=”no”]
doTERRA Wellness Advocate
Once you’ve paid your $35 registration fee you’ll be officially known as a Wellness Advocate, but to continue as one you’ll need to renew every year for $25 on top of that to stand more of a chance of making money you need to purchase at least $100 each month to ensure you can actually qualify to get paid the bonuses.
The trouble with that is if you’re not selling it all you’re going to very quickly start building up stock which is the last thing you want.
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Will doTERRA Work For You?
MLM has been around for a long time and has a bit of a bad reputation for sucking people in before they realise they’re not going to make the sort of money they imagined.
The thing is the essential oils market is expected to grow to $11.19 billion by 2022 according to some research and that is a market that is booming.
If you like the idea of having to recruit people to make this pay then you stand a chance because that is the only way you can make something like this work.
And I’m not just talking about a couple of friends, I’m talking about a serious campaign of recruiting and that is where the problem is.
Not everybody can do that, in fact I would say the majority of people can’t do that and that is why there are so few people earning a lot of money with this, the rest are stuck at the bottom fighting for scraps.[su_divider top=”no”]
doTERRA Complaints
Most of the complaints i’ve uncovered don’t really have anything to do with the products themselves apart from them being grossly overpriced. No, the main complaint is the fact the way it’s run is too damn complicated.
For example the numerous programs you can sign up to so you can get more deals. Like the ‘Product Of The Month’ loyalty program that requires you to sign up for monthly purchases with a minimum order quantity which you then have shipped before a specified date.
Once you’ve done that you qualify for a free product each month, but you don’t choose that product, they send you whatever they want which could be anything and probably something you don’t want.
- Other complaints range from your orders becoming default and being shipped month after month until you stop them.
- Inability to move from one upline to another (if your upline isn’t doing what they are supposed to do)
- Presidential Diamonds undermining leaders on their team by telling people to cancel their orders and the PD will send them any orders they need.
- Inability to cancel orders even though they’ve just been placed
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Some Reasons For Failure with doTERRA
one of the most common reasons is a lot of the time people will join companies like this with a total misconception about how much money they can earn and how easily they can make it.
As a result of not seeing the expected results they end up leaving.
And let’s not be shy about this, their products are expensive so like I said earlier on when you’re competing with similar products that are a third of the price you’re going to struggle to sell, simple as that.
If you’re not selling you ain’t making any commissions.
Bringing in new people to your new business so they can sell for you might not be your strong point, if it’s not then you’re going to be relying solely on what you can sell.
If you can get people to join you then you have to make sure they are happy and can earn otherwise they too will leave.[su_divider top=”no”]
Is doTERRA a Pyramid Scheme?
Let’s clear this up as some people are mistakenly calling this a pyramid scheme. No, this isn’t a pyramid scheme, although there are similarities to a pyramid scheme.
According to the FTC a legitimate MLM company will have a real product to sell and the money you make based on your sales not based on the number of people you recruit and your sales to them.
So’ it’s easy to see why this could be seen as a pyramid scheme because of recruiting people to increase your income.[su_divider top=”no”]
doTERRA Is a MLM Company
Even though this is a MLM company and not a pyramid scheme that doesn’t mean this type of business model doesn’t have a bad rap.
The majority of people who are looking to make some money from home will be wary of MLM opportunities mainly because they’ve heard the stories of others having negative experiences with firms that other either inferior products or have terrible reps like the complaints outlined above.[su_divider top=”no”]
The doTERRA compensation Package
let’s get into the nitty gritty of it all, how much money are you going to make? Well obviously that’s going to depend on how much work you put into it what with recruiting others and selling yourself, we touched on this subject a bit earlier, but to give you a better idea let’s take a deeper look at the ways to earn money:
Power of 3: As we know this is paid monthly, but what the hell does it mean? Well to qualify for it in the first place you need a qualified LRP Order which basically means you need to sign up to an auto shipment each month which is going to cost you $100, only then may you take part in this.
The Power of 3 goes 3 levels deep and is has certain criteria you need to meet in order to qualify for each bonus, for example the first level which is a $50 bonus requires the Wellness Advocate to have 3 personally sponsored Wellness Advocates also with qualified LRP orders plus a minimum team volume of 600.
It’s all very in depth and requires a lot of moving parts to come together to actually make the bonus.
Now, the Unilevel Organizational Bonus is even more complex. So much so I struggled to make heads or tails of it all and I think that’s what a lot of the complaints were about.
From what I could gather the bonus is based on the monthly volume of sales to the Organization of the Wellness Advocate which depends on their monthly rank to which they’ve qualified?????
I think it’s fair to say it’s just too damn complicated.[su_divider top=”no”]
Final Thoughts
The thing that stands out for me the most is the fact that it all sounds great, make easy money selling essential oils, but how many ordinary people like you and me are actual salespeople that can persuade people to join them in a venture that requires them to spend money?
And I’m not talking about work colleagues even though that would be hard enough, no, I’m talking about complete strangers cause no matter how many friends you have when you start trying to pitch to them 1. they will start to stay away from you and 2. Very few will take you up on your ‘offer’.
Is doTERRA a scam? no, absolutely not. Is it a legitimate way to make money? Legitimate, yes, make money? That’s questionable.
If you look at their own statistics then you’d have to no. Only a very few actually make any worthwhile money.
Like most MLM companies I’m not going to approve this as a way to make money
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So What Can You Do Now?
I like to make my money without the need to pester family and friends, I have the freedom to promote anything I want, I’m not tied to just one product.
Affiliate Marketing gives me the freedom to pick and choose, not only that, but you don’t need to hold any inventory.
Remember when I spoke about the competition for essential oils, well you can cash in on that competition. Those oils were being sold on Amazon and they have their own affiliate program called Amazon Associates.
Basically you can promote anything on Amazons website including essential oils, but you need a couple of things to be able to do that.
You need a website and you need the right training.
Right now you can join the same place as where I learnt for FREE. If you want to know exactly how it’s done then just copy me, I’m serious, copy what I’ve done.
If you want to read a detailed review of Wealthy Affiliate then click here.
Alternatively if you’re feeling adventurous you can click the banner below to go straight to the sign up page, you only need your email and you’re good to go, no credit card, the starter membership is free.
I’ll meet you on the inside and help YOU every step of the way :)[su_divider top=”no”]
