Nu Skin was founded in 1984 in Provo Utah. There are a wide range of cosmetic and skincare products made by Nu Skin. Since inception the company has grown and products are now available in more than 50 markets worldwide.

Rather than using traditional avenues to sell their products, Nu Skin has a network of over 1 million independent distributors. Nu Skin distributors earn money through a mulit-level marketing system. Here at The Finance Guy, we believe that you can’t make money with MLM, but we’ll take a closer look at Nu Skin to see if they are any different.

What is the Nu Skin Opportunity

We found a short video which explains the opportunity, we also looked at the Nu Skin Success Formula, they both explain that all you need to do is follow their 5 steps.

Dream - This is exactly what it sounds like. Nu Skin want you to think about your dreams. In particular your financial dreams. Where do you want to travel, what car do you want to own, where will you live. Focusing on dreams is supposed to motivate you

Set Goals - If dreams are the end result, then goals are the steps along the way. It’s important that goals are measurable. They should aim to achieve a specific result within a set time.

Believe - By this, they mean believe in your goals. If you believe you can achieve them, then you are more likely to push yourself toward them. We think it’s also important to set realistic goals

Take Action - It should be no surprise that success requires action. The only way to achieve your goals and your dreams, is to take the daily action required to get you there.

Lead - Nu Skin explains that your success, depends on the success of your downline. In other words, it doesn’t end with your goals and dreams. You have to help the people you recruit stay focused on their daily action too.

We agree that setting goals and working toward them is a good idea. It’s a success formula that can be applied to anything. We’ve seen similar goal setting strategies before. This is not unique to Nu Skin. We want to know how the Nu Skin opportunity works.

How do Nu Skin Distributors Make Money

To find out how you can make money as a distributor, we looked at the Nu Skin compensation plan. This document explains how much commission you can earn with Nu Skin, and what you need to do to earn it.

The system is summarised in three words, Share, Build, Lead. This could describe any MLM we’ve ever looked at. All you need to do to make money, is ‘share’ their range of products and services. Then you ‘build’ a downline of new recruits under yourself. Then ‘Lead’ them to do the same. Theoretically this should result in your team growing to huge numbers as everyone keeps recruiting new members.

Sharing
If you share Nu Skin, you can earn a retail profit. This is a simple as finding customers who are willing to pay full retail price for Nu Skin products. If customer want to order online, and get a discount, they can become ‘registered customers’. You can still earn 5% - 25% in sharing bonuses for any orders made by registered customers

Building
You can also earn money by building with Nu Skin. To do this you need to accumulate ‘blocks’. For every 500 worth of sales points, you get one Nu Skin block. If the sales come directly from customers or members who you have personally recruited, then you get a ‘sharing block’. If the volume comes from people recruited by someone else in your downline, then you can earn building block. All blocks reset every month.

If you accumulate enough blocks over 6 months, then you could qualify to be a ‘brand representative’. Once you’ve reached this rank, you can earn ‘building bonus’. This bonus is measured against the ‘Commissionable Sales Volume’ (CSV).

Your building bonus can range from 5% - 40% of you CSV. The amount you earn depends on how many building blocks are in your downline, as shown below:

As we can see, you can earn a 5% bonus for your first 2 building blocks. You then earn 10% on the 3rd block, 15% on the 4th etc. By the time you’r organization is 16 blocks worth of CSV, you can earn the full 40%. The building bonus is paid weekly on any new blocks you’ve accumulated. The amount you earn each week is based on the number of blocks you’ve built for the calendar month

Leading
If you build a big enough team, you may be able to lead with Nu Skin. If people you sponsor become Nu Skin brand representatives, then you may be eligible to earn the ‘leading bonus’.

You can earn from 2.5% - 10% on the commissionable sales of your team as a leading bonus. If you continue to build your Nu Skin business, then you could have ‘leadership teams’ in your downline.

If this all sounds a little confusing, you’re not alone. To us the Nu Skin compensation plan doesn’t make sense. Why would anyone sign up to a business that they don’t fully understand? I guess it comes down to the $$

How Much are Nu Skin Distributors Earning

To find out how much you can earn, we looked at the 2018 Nu Skin Distributor Compensation Summary. One of the first things we notice is that they claim ‘many people become Nu Skin distributors just to buy the products’. Call us skeptical but to us this sounds like an excuse for why most distributors lose money.

We read along and see that of the ‘active distributors’, in 2017, the average annual commission was $1,806.36. In other words on average Nu Skin Distributors earn less than $35 per week.

To make things even worse, they tell us that only 15.42% of distributors earn commission every month. In other words in any given month, 84.58% of Nu Skin distributors get no commission at all.

We then look at the table of Nu Skin Distributors who did earn commission in 2017. The highlights are shown below:

NuSkin Income Disclosure — Source: Nu Skin Distributor Compensation Summary

If we look at the 2017 annual commissions, we see that the ‘Ruby Executives’ averaged $33,576. That’s less than a full time job! Only 0.44% of distributors made more than this. Doing a little math, we see that in 2017, 99.56% of Nu Skin distributors earned less than a full time income

We checked back again and did a seperate write up for the 2019 Nu Skin Income Distribution. Unfortunately for Nu Skin Affiliates, things did not get any better. In fact our research found that 25% of ‘leaders’ quit Nu Skin in 2019.

Why is it Difficult to Make Money With Nu Skin

We think it’s hard to make money with Nu Skin because they use MLM. If you sign up with any network marketing company, their goal is to make money selling you products, they aren’t trying to make you a business partner.

We applied Dr Jon Tayolors 5 Step MLM evaluation to Nu Skin, and found that it raises all 5 flags. According to his research, if a MLM raises 4 flags then your chances of making money are less than 1%.

If you are looking for a money making opportunity, then we suggest that you look at all your options before signing with Nu Skin!

Is Nu Skin an Illegal Pyramid Scam

Even though MLMs closely resemble pyramids, they are not illegal. The technicalities date back to a 1979 Amway ruling. To the best of our understanding, Amway managed to word their documentation in a way that bypassed the pyramid scheme laws. This opened the doors for other MLMs to do the same.

While the paperwork may make them legal, that doesn’t mean that Nu Skin and other MLMs are ethical. If you join any MLM, you have to realize that the only way to make money is if people below you are losing money

We looked at the 2018 FTC Business Guidance for MLMs. This explains when MLM participants are acting in a way that is misleading or unlawful. Examples of breaches include pressuring downlines to purchase products, and making unsubstantiated claims about earnings potential. Based on what we’ve seen, it appears some Nu Skin distributors are in breach of the FTC guidance.

Should You Join Nu Skin

If you are already paying full retail for Nu Skin products and are happy to recommend them to others, then maybe you should join. If you are looking for a way to earn a little extra money, then we suggest you look at other options. It’s quite likely that a regular job will pay you more than you’d make with Nu Skin

As always, we’d love to hear what you think in the comments section below, especially if you an share your experiences with Nu Skin.

Are you wondering if you can make money with MLM? Check our our list of mlm reviews before you join. If you find one that’s not on the list, let us know and we’ll do our best to write a review