I guess I need to explain more why I was attracted to this. After selling things many times and never having it work out, I was ready to try something else to make a little extra money. And you are right, Erica and Amy, – it is more about getting people “under you” than it is about the actual products. But you can easily get your $5 a month back in savings if you go out to eat just once a month. When you join and you sign on to the restaurant coupon benefit, you can put in your zip code to find participating restaurants near you. We found quite a few within driving distance – none in Chetek, of course, but that is no surprise. The benefits across the board seemed to be the same, which is that you could purchase a $10 gift certificate for $4. So, for instance, if we wanted to go to this really nice place near Cumberland that we’ve only been able to go to once and that was with a gift certificate, we could buy $50 worth of gift certificates for $20. It isn’t something we would do often, but when we do, we will have saved $30, or 6 month’s worth of our $5 memberships. (If you want more information about what restaurants are included from your area, let me know. )

There is a lot you honestly can’t find out about the benefits until you actually join, which made me quite nervous, but I kept telling myself it was only $15 (that is including the yearly admin. fee). But once I joined and got on the member’s site, I found that there is at least enough savings available that it is definitely worth the $5 a month.

The other thing that attracted me is that it is a “limited matrix.” In other words, you can only go so far with it. What this means to me is that there isn’t a small group of people at the very top making a lot of money and the rest of us at the bottom making only a little. We all have the opportunity to make the same amount, but, by the same token, we all have the same ceiling on what we can make. This is how the money works. (Bear with me  – it’s a lengthy explanation.) I pay $5 a month. Where does that $5 go? $1 goes to the person one level up – presumably the person who I signed up under, but not necessarily (I’ll explain that later). $.25 goes to the person above that person, or two levels up. $.75 goes to the person three levels up. $1 goes to the person 4 levels up. $1 goes to the person 5 levels up. And $1 goes to other costs involved, such as the benefits I am eligible for and to paying the staff that writes out the checks and keeps the web sites running and so on. The beauty of it is that you can start getting your $5 back very quickly, because $1 comes up to you from each of the 5 people directly below you. But then, your earnings kind of level off a little until you get people 4 levels and 5 levels below you, at which time they again go up to $1 from each person. (And these are very large levels – 5x5x5x5 = 625 and 5x5x5x5x5 = 3,125 – so when they are full, that is a lot of money each month.) So this is a big incentive for me to help the 5 people I sign up get people under them.  I can’t get more than 5 people under me (that is the “limited” part). The 6th person I “recruit” will actually become the first recruit under my first recruit.  So if I recruited 30 people, the 5 people I recruited first wouldn’t  have to recruit anyone. So it is okay if you don’t want to recruit people. I don’t mind doing it. (This is all explained with a chart on my site, which is actually www.edensedge.freewaytosuccess.net.)

Of course, something like this can’t go on forever. Once every single person who wants to participate is recruited, the money will stop increasing. (There are a lot of people in the world, so I’m not going to lose any sleep over that!) But, because the company is so new, I am going to end up way closer to the top than the bottom when this happens, so it will take a really, really long time for my source of money (my limited matrix of 5 levels) to disappear as people below me stop making the money they want to make. And, when it ends, it ends. I still won’t be out any money, and I may have made some money along the way. And I may have helped other people make some money, too.

You are right that there is some work involved, but the only thing you have to do is explain the system to people until you get your first level full (and I can help with that), then encourage those five people until they get their first level full. I think that once we get to the level where we are making serious money each month, it will be pretty easy for us to tell people, but I know it isn’t that easy to tell people when you haven’t actually seen it work for you yet. And that is why I don’t mind helping you recruit people for your first level. It  goes back to all my bad experience selling things. Because when I was selling things I was asking people to part with a lot more than $5, and hoping they would do it because they liked me and wanted to help me out. There wasn’t anything in it for them, really, because the products were so darn expensive. Good products, but definitely expensive!  Even if they agreed to be a hostess, it was a lot of work to invite people and remind them, clean the house, make food, etc., etc. I never really felt it was worth the money they spent. This I honestly can say is worth the money.

And, like I said the other day (or I think I did), it isn’t illegal, it doesn’t hurt anyone, and it isn’t going to financially ruin me as long as I don’t spend more than $5 a month on it. (As a word of caution, though, you could be lured into spending more, but you don’t have to. I checked that out carefully, and you can do the whole thing and end up making several thousand extra dollars a month, only spending $5 a month.)

I look at it sort of like playing the stock market, only with a really small amount of money. I’m investing my $5 a month in a company and hoping to get good returns on that money, just like someone does when they buy stocks. Of course, part of that money goes to running the company. It would have to, or it wouldn’t work! But a full 80% of the money goes to other stockholders – other members. And when I do my little bit to help the company grow (which is why companies sell stocks), I begin to get more and more of the 80% that is going to stockholders.  Unlike stocks, though, I can’t lose my shirt doing this, but I also don’t have unlimited potential to make money. My portion will eventually top out, but believe me, it is at an amount I would be more than happy to receive every month (over $3,000).

I didn’t write all this to push anyone into this. I just wanted to explain it, because I get the feeling you think I’m doing something that isn’t what it seems to be. It really is what it seems to be – a way to make money only spending $5 a month and a little time talking to people. And when you finally really believe in it, it isn’t hard to tell people about it. When I tell people about it, I honestly feel that I am offering them an opportunity to make money, because I honestly believe I will make money doing it, and if I can, then they can.