Modere was founded in 1992 out of Springville Utah. It was formerly known as ‘Neways’. Modere products include a range of personal care, health / wellness, and home care stuff. Their point of difference is that they tell us they are ‘safer, stylish, smart’. Nice sounding words.

Rather than using traditional sales avenues, Modere has chosen to sell their products through Multi-Level Marketing. They now have a growing network of ‘Social Marketing Consultants’. Here at The Finance Guy, we believe’ you can’t make money with MLM, but we’ll give Modere a chance to prove us wrong. Our review of the Modere business opporutnity will find out if this is a real self employment gig, or a just another MLM money trap..

How Do You Make Money With Modere

To find out how we’re going to make money, we looked at a copy of the Modere compensation plan. This explains all the ways you can earn commission from Modere, and what you need to do to qualify for it.

Like all MLMs, there are many ways to potentially make money with Modere. The first thing we learn, is that there are 2 basic ways to make money with Modere. You can promote the products and you can share the business opportunity. This concept is exactly the same in every MLM we’ve looked at so far.

If you do decide to become a Modere ‘Social Marketing Consultant’, you can earn from their many commissions. But first you need to qualify for all the commission. The only way to do that is to climb the ranks. Modere explains their hierarchy in the diagram below:

The activity points are obtained by spending money on Modere products. If people you recruit also buy products, then they will contribute to your ‘org points’. So if you join Modere, the person who recruited you will benefit from any products you buy. The compensation plan explains that there are many ways to earn commission with Modere. We’ll go through quickly here:

Breakout Bonus
This is only applicable for 30 days after you join Modere as a social marketing consultant. You will get a 25% rebate on your spending, plus the person who sponsored you will get 25% commission, and the person above them will get 10%. This is designed to encourage you to spend as much as possible as soon as possible.

The breakout bonus is also meant to keep you focused on recruiting. After all you can earn better commission from new recruits who buy Modere in their first 30 days. MLMs call this ‘taprooting’ they believe that once you have recruited people to the opportunity, you yourself become less likely to quit. This is why they want you to recruit as much as possible as soon as possible.

Unilevel Commissions
If you recruit other social marketers to join your Modere ‘downline’, then you can make money from their activity. It doesn’t end there though! You can also make money from anyone they recruit. Over time, this will theoretically become a source of residual income.

The amount of Unilevel commission you can earn depends on your rank with Modere. The amount and number of levels you can earn on at each rank are shown in the image below:

Modere Unilevel Commission — Source: Modere Compensation Plan

When you first join Modere as a ‘C1’ Social Marketing Consultant, you can only earn 3% commission from your direct referrals. If you climb the ranks and reach Modere Elite Social Marketer 3 ‘E3’, you can earn all the unilevel commission. At this rank you can earn from 8 levels in your downline with total commission adding up to 37%.

it’s important to remember that this commission is included in the price Modere charges to their consultants. So when you join 37% of what you spend with Modere goes to your upline as commission. So the people 8 levels above you have motivation to tell you to buy more Modere.A

Rank Advancement Bonus
As the name suggests, this is a one off bonus you can earn if you reach certain ranks with Modere. There is also a ‘Rank Advancement Matching Bonus’. This is a bonus you can earn if someone below you in the Modere system climbs the ranks. Your downline will get an advancement bonus, and you will get a matching bonus. For a more comprehensive explanation, check out the Modere compensation plan

Dynamic Team Leader and Director Bonus
This is an extra 5% you can earn on your top 3 levels in your downline. As the name suggests, you can only earn this if you reach one of the director ranks. It doesn’t end there! You can also earn an extra 2%-4% on your 4th team with the Modere 4 or more bonus.

These director bonuses are all well and good, but you need to make it toward the top of the pyramid to earn them, and if you' aren’t up there, these bonuses are included in the price you pay to Modere.

Customer Unilevel Commissions
These are very much like the Unilevel commissions we looked at earlier. The only difference is that this is the commission you get if you, or someone in your downline sells Modere to a retail customer. The amount you can earn on each level and Modere rank, is shown below:

There is also a ‘Modere sharing bonus’. With this, you can earn up to 20% more commission in addition to the customer commissions. The amount you earn depends on the total volume of sales generated by you and your downline. The important thing to remember is that all this commission is included in the price. So if you buy any products, then 42% of your money is going to pay commission to 5 layers of the Modere system.

Along with these commissions, you might also be able to earn cash bonuses such as the ‘Monthly selling reward’, or the ‘Consistency Selling reward’. These are both payable if you qualify at the right rank with the right volume in Modere. And of course these bonuses are included in the price you pay for Modere products.

Leadership Management Bonus
This is a matching bonus. If you reach the top management ranks within the Modere system, you can qualify to earn this bonus. The matching amount is paid on what Modere calls a ‘generation’ in your downline. If you reach the top ranks, you can earn up to 22% from 2 generations.

Are Modere Marketers Making Money

Before you decide to become a Modere Social Marketer, this is perhaps the most important question you should ask. If you were offered a job as a sales representative for any given brand, you would want to know how many sales and how much the average salesperson makes.

To answer this, we found a copy of the Modere Income Disclosure Statement. This simplified 1 page document, explains how much commission was paid to all Modere marketers in 2018.

Something interesting we notice is that Modere tells us that their focus is on growing retail customers. This is refreshing because we believe retail sales is the best way to make money in any MLM. While they have said this is their focus, and they claim to have 7 customers for every marketer, we were unable to find any proof of these claims

Modere goes on to explain that the there are 2 ways to make money with them.. put simply they are;
1. Selling product
2. Recruiting Modere Social Marketers

Credit where credit is due, the Modere Income Disclosure, has succeeded in telling us as little as possible. While specific numbers aren’t shared, the do tell us that anyone who made an order in 2017, was considered active. Based on this vague qualification, they provide the table shown below:

There’s no way to put this table in a positive light. If we assume that $50,000 is an acceptable income for hard work, then based on this table, 99.15% of Modere Marketers earned less than a full time income

In other words less than 1 in 117 active Modere marketers earns a full time income. Keep in mind, we are only basing this on the numbers provided by Modere. This is there best version of their business opporunity

Unfortunately Modere has not provide full access to their real data. For example if we included all the Modere Marketers who quit in 2017, or purchased no product, then we’d probably find that more than 99% of Modere marketers lost money in 2017

It’s possible that 2018 was just a bad year for Modere Social Marketers, so we also had a look at the 2019 Modere Income Disclosure Statement Once again, they have provided a similar one page document with the most relevant information being in a table which we’ve shown below:

An interesting difference here, is that we see an extra column, and they have changed how they calculate their figures. They’ve made our job easier because we can see from their own numbers that 99.94% of Modere Social Marketers earned less than a full time income in 2019.

Based on their own results we’d have to say it’s very unlikely that you will make money as a Modere Social Marketer

Why Is It Hard To Make Money With Modere

We looked at Modere with Dr Jon Tayolors 5 Step MLM evaluation, and we found that it raised several flags. According to Dr Taylor, if any MLM raises more than 4 flags then your chances of turning a profit are less then 1 in 1,000, let’s take a closer look:

Red Flag 1 - Constant Recruitment of New Members
You can not climb the ranks of Modere unless you aggressively recruit. It doesn’t end there, you need the people below you to also recruit.

Red Flag 2 - Promotion Through Recruit
In order to climb the Modere ranks, you need to build a dowline. Your advancement in the Modere ranks depends upon you recruiting enough victims to qualify for each rank.

Red Flag 3 - Pay to Play
Even though they've skirted around this in their documentation, if you don’t buy Modere, you will become inactive

Red Flag 4 - Most of the Rewards go to your upline
As we already found, if you are a Modere marketer, then 42% of what you spend on Modere products, goes to your upline as commission. After production and shipping costs, and company profit margins, this doesn’t leave much for you.

Red Flag 5 - More than 5 levels in the payout plan
As we saw, Modere pays unilevel commissions on up to 8 levels in your downline. Dr Taylor says 'Excessive levels in a downline is another sign participants are expected to sell primarily to their downline, rather than to the general public. This makes it an exploitative money transfer scheme, or product-based pyramid scheme'.

According to Dr Taylor, if a business opportunity raises four or more of the flags, then 99.7% of participants will lose money. In other words, this study suggests that only 0.3% of Modere marketers will turn any profit.

Is Modere An Illegal Pyramid Scam

Even though MLMs closely resemble pyramid schemes, they are not illegal. The reason dates back to the 1979 case of Amway vs the FTC. After 4 years in court Amway was found to be offering a business opportunity, rather than a pyramid scam. The technicalities came down to wording in their paperwork. One example requires consultants to make retail sales.

The Amway ruling effectively opened the doors for all other MLMs to operate within the law. However we should remember that being legal doesn’t make it ethical. If you knew that less than 1% of people had a chance of generating a real income, would you feel comfortable recruiting new consultants?

Another issue, is that even though these rules may be in the paperwork, they are difficult to enforce. For example, several people in MLMs have said that they have cupboards full of product. This is because of the minimum monthly purchases they need to make to remain active in the system. Even though stockpiling is against the rules, there is no way for the company to monitor it.

Should You Join Modere

Before you join the business opportunity, we think you should have a good look at the Modere product catalogue It is a good idea to try some products as a customer and see how you feel about them. It’s important to believe in the products yourself. After all you won’t make money with Modere unless you sell their products.

If you are looking for a business opportunity, then keep in mind that in 2018, less than 1% of active Modere marketers earned a full time income. If you were offered a job where 99% of people were underpaid, would you accept it? We think that you should consider all your options before joining Modere or any other MLM.

As always we welcome your feedback in the comments section below. We'd love to hear what you think about Modere, especially if you can share your personal experiences with the company

For more posts like this, look at our list of mlm reviews. If you know of an MLM that isn’t on the list, let us know so we can add it to our list.