Lifeplus is a nutritional supplement multilevel marketing company that focuses on health and wellness without any major areas of focus or uniqueness.
In fact, if you could come up with a stereotype of a health and wellness multilevel marketing company, it’d look a lot like Lifeplus. It’s definitely one of the older-modeled MLMs in that it doesn’t exactly have a specific focus, niche, or unique product pitch.
Did I get on board? This explains everything:
Their company philosophy proclaims the value of supplements, vitamins, and healthy living in addition to a healthy diet and activity, and they have plenty of products available, ranging from Chinese herbal remedies to standard vitamins and minerals.
Of this wide range of products available, though, nothing really stands out. Lifeplus comes across as a jack of all trades, but a master of none. Their lack of a unique hook or an interesting spin on their marketing strategy makes it hard to distinguish from an Herbalife clone.
Despite this, interest in Lifeplus has been ticking upwards markedly over the last several years. Search engine traffic has been on the rise since early 2014. Traffic hit a peak in early 2016 and dipped slightly after, but has been rebounding and rising again. This is definitely a good sign if you are looking to get into this company.
So, if there doesn’t appear to be any immediately attractive unique angles that Lifeplus offers, there’s got to be some substance to it, because otherwise there wouldn’t be such an impressive upward search traffic trend. To figure out what that is, we’ll have to look at the products.
Products
One advantage that Lifeplus has is that it offers “winning combinations,” which are prepackaged sets of several supplements to take that address specific needs.
For example, the “Everyday Wellbeing” package, which is one of the top-selling products across all categories, is a two-pack of antioxidants and multivitamins. The multivitamin ingredient, TVM-Plus, looks a lot like many other naturally-derived vitamins.
The product provides 100% of your recommended daily intake for pretty much every vitamin and mineral your body needs, and much of these vitamins and minerals are derived from natural products like fruit and vegetable concentrates.
To be sure, all of the vitamins and minerals aren’t from the fruit and vegetable ingredients; some inorganic ones are present.
Proanthenols, the antioxidant supplement in the Everyday Wellbeing package, contains a select number of fruit and vegetable concentrates that the company literature claims have a substantially stronger antioxidant potential than standard vitamin antioxidants like vitamin C and vitamin E.
Proanthenols features in a number of the other winning combinations, so it’s worth examining the antioxidant benefits in-depth. Oxidative stress, a process by which highly reactive chemical compounds cause damage to cells in your body, is strongly and inextricably linked with both the aging process and chronic disease.
On the aging front, a 2010 article in the Journal of Nephrology discusses the role of oxidative stress on the body. In it, the authors cite several scientific studies showing that oxidative stress damages cells, which in turn causes more oxidative stress. Because cells are damaged, they produce more destructive oxidizing compounds, and the cumulative effect causes aging in the human body.
Similarly, oxidative stress is implicated in chronic disease processes. A 2004 study by Balz Frei at Oregon State University’s Linus Pauling Institute discusses the potential of nutritional supplements when it comes to treating or preventing chronic disease associated with oxidative damage.
The scientific research cited by Frei shows that oxidative damage, and proxy markers for it that can be tracked in the blood, are associated with diseases as diverse as cancer, heart disease, and cirrhosis (a condition characterized by chronic scarring of the liver).
Unfortunately, traditional antioxidant supplements like vitamin C and vitamin E have failed to have a significant impact in clinical trials on their ability to modulate disease outcomes.
If indeed Lifeplus’ antioxidant supplements are more effective than standard vitamins, they could be more efficacious when it comes to treating or preventing the chronic oxidative damage associated with aging and disease. Nevertheless, if this is the case, rigorous studies would be needed to prove it.
Compensation plan
Despite these potential advantages and the rising interest in the company, the compensation plan has a decidedly backwards feel to it.
You need to sign up for a 40 product volume autoship to be eligible for distributor status (earning commission, getting wholesale discounts), and that’s going to cost you about fifty bucks a month.
Their wholesale discounts are okay–about 25%, sometimes less depending on the product. The good news is that the products aren’t outrageously expensive, so you can at least move a decent amount of product.
The bad news is that advancing up the ladder requires a lot of work. To get “bronze” level, you need 3 downline distributors and a monthly volume of 3000. Yikes.
Recap
Lifeplus is a bit of a mystery. While it’s got a convenient strategy in its pre-packaged “winning combinations,” it’s not a particularly strong or different MLM setup, and the compensation plan feels like it’s trying to hold you back and keep you from advancing.
Given all this, it’s hard to pull the trigger and become a distributor. Who knows, maybe the upward trend in interest in Lifeplus is just a bubble that’s going to pop soon? Plenty of other MLMs have had their fifteen minutes of fame, then faded back into obscurity, preventing all but the very early adopters and distributors from ever seeing real money.
If you’re set on MLM, LifePlus is not terrible, but probably not the best, either.
If you’re doing it for the money, there are better ways to kill your day job. You might like our coaching because it shows you the good life without peddling overpriced products to your family and friends.
http://bodynutrition.org/lifeplus-review/ http://bodynutritionorg.tumblr.com/post/159875431529
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