Friday, October 19, 2007

SFI is a Multilevel Marketing Scam!


SFI, or Strong Future International, is just another MLM scam. If you look at their claims and numbers, you'll see that things don't add up.

Before the following link went defunct, I managed to get a quote:

http://www.miragebbs.co.uk/info/faq.htm

"Over $10 million has been paid to SFI affiliates in the last two years alone."

The copyright date ends at 2006. Here's a simple way to see that they're an MLM scam.

Lets say SFI has 10,000 affiliates arranged in an MLM pyramid. (There's actually more affiliates than that). Since each affiliate brings more in, that number's going up exponentially. For this scenario, let's say each earns $4,000.00. Four thousand dollars is almost half of what you need to clear six figures.

SFI implies that you could make a 6 figure income through them. SFI used to stand for "Six Figure Income" before it changed to "Strong Future International."

Back to the scenario.

We have SFI disbursing four thousand dollars a month to ten thousand affiliates. This totals $40,000,000.00 a month; which comes to $480,000,000.00 a year; which comes to $960,000,000.00 over two years.

Already, we could see that their ten million dollars over two years raises red flags. These numbers show that this is a scam, people could see one of two things.

The first possibility is that SFI is paying scant amounts to its affiliates. The second possibility is that very few people get paid well, while the majority gets little to nothing.

Let's work this backwards.

Divide $10,000,000.00 by 24 (monthly over 2 years). We get $416,666.67 a month. SFI pays $416,666.67 a month to 10,000 people.

SFI has more than 10,000 affiliates--8 million according to one claim.

So split that $416,666.67 among, say, one million people. You don't get much per person when you divide $416,666.67 among a million people. Now, in this scenario, let's say that more and more people are getting $5,000.00 and higher checks. This is per month.

Remember, this is happening within $416,666.67. So, the more people we get, making more than $5,000.00, the less remains to be dividing among the rest. No matter the breakdown, SFI pays out an average of $416,666.67 a month in this scenario.

What if SFI affiliates managed to easily achieve six figure incomes?

Say 10,000 SFI affiliates drew $4,000.00 monthly. SFI would have to disburse $40,000,000.00 a month just for payroll. Since they imply that you could make six figures, double that $4,000.00 monthly number.

In order to remain with the $416,666.67 a month figure, less people will have to get paid.

If people are making six figures with SFI, they'll be breaking SFI's bank. SFI would have to disburse over 80 million dollars each month to back their claims.

Realistically, they won't be able to afford that. They'd have no choice but to adjust their compensation fees:

http://www.businessprogramreviews.com/sixfigureincome.html

The link's dead. But it contained an article where someone saw his compensation go from $2,700.00 to $230.00 a month. He ended up killing his girlfriend before committing suicide in jail.

Here is another reality -- you can't gain affiliates in your MLM downline forever.

Sooner or later, you'll run out of people to recruit. Once you reach that limit, the market is completely saturated. The whole system falls apart. The majority loses out and a small minority at the top make out like bandits.

What business, in its right mind, would saturate the market with its own stores? What company would set its stores up to compete against each other at each other's expense? Employers, or people looking for independent contractors, hire just enough, then stop.

Here's how the SFI MLM scam takes place.

Each EA is a customer. SFI rewards EA's for being repeat customers. If you stop buying, you lose your EA status. SFI promotes you to leader status if you bring more repeat customers in. In this case, anybody in your down-line, that achieves EA status, is a repeat customer that you captured for SFI.

The real objective is to get people to remain Executive Affiliates status or higher. These people are SFI's repeat customers.

When SFI rewards an Executive Affiliate, by promoting them to one of the leadership positions, they're not doing it for their leadership abilities. SFI is rewarding them for bringing more repeat customers in.

SFI is one big MLM scam. It's designed to fool people into doing a couple things.

First, it fools them into thinking that they're "running a business." In reality, these people are SFI's repeat customers. Second, SFI tricks people into marketing for them in order to bring more customers in.

Not only are SFI affiliates buying from SFI, they're saving SFI on marketing costs.

It's like having people do all your marketing legwork, to include marketing expenses, just so that they could remain your customer.