Seacret started in 2001 out of Scottsdale Arizona. Originally the company sold Dead Sea products out of kiosks at shopping malls.

In 2011, they started selling through ‘social marketing’ with the Seacret Direct opportunity. They now have a network of ‘Seacret Agents’ around the world selling their range of Seacret products, which have grown to include nutrition supplements along with the original dead sea cosmetics.

Here a The Finance Guy, we believe you can’t make money with MLM, but we’ll give them the chance to prove us wrong is this review of Seacret Direct.

What Is The Seacret Opportunity

We had a look at the official Seacret opportunity page. Here we see that if you become a Seacret Agent, you can make your dreams come true in the multi-Billion dollar skin care industry.

They go on to tell us about the immediate and unlimited earning potential with no experience needed. All you need to do is pay the $49 joining fee and you’ll be your own boss.

While dream granting unlimited income sounds all well and good, they still haven’t really told us how it all works.

How Do You Earn Money With Seacret Direct

To find out how we can earn commission from this opportunity, we looked at recent copy of the Seacret direct compensation plan. This document explains all the ways Seacret Agents can earn, as well as what they need to do to qualify.

They tell us that the compensation plan gives agents all the tools they need to build ‘substantial wealth’, and residual income.

Before agents can earn any commission with Seacret, they need to be ‘active’. Like all MLMs being active requires them to buy product

To remain active, Seacret agents need to buy 35 BV worth of products every 4 weeks, or have 4 VIP customers buying enough product to keep you active.

They suggest having an automatic ‘replenishment’ order to make sure you stay active. We think it’s a bad idea because this can lead to overbuying and ending up with a collection of unused Seacret product.

If you are active, you can earn commission from Seacret in all of the following ways:

Retail Commission
As the name suggests, this is the profit you can make if you sell products to retail customers. The official TFG opinion is that retail profit is the best way to make money. At the end of the day selling to customers is what we think business is about.

Seacret tells us that you can make up to 150% commission on retail sales. While this commission sounds enticing, it also makes us worry that maybe Seacret products are overpriced.

WOW Bonus
This is commission paid on your Elite/ViP customers… It’s very similar to retail commission but these customers agree to buy on a regular basis, so they get a discount.

Seacret Agents, can earn 20% - 25% commission on WOW sales. It would appear that there is a severe price discounts for customers who move from retail to WOW. We would wonder why the agent would want to earn so much less commission from the same sale…

Global VIP & Elite Pool
If you have customers who are willing to spend enough to become VIP customers, then you can earn shares in the pool. 2% of their spending is paid out monthly. The more VIP customers you have, the more shares you earn in the pool, as shown below:

Fast Start Bonus
Seacret is offering the common MLM incentive to hurry up an recruit everyone you know and several people you don’t know

After putting in enough effort, all we know about this bonus is that Seacret Agents can earn from $40 to $260 if the new agents they recruit spend money on Seacret products.

You can also earn a ‘Superstar Bonus’ of $100 if one of the Seacret agents you recruit reaches the superstar rank within 28 days of joining. Again this is designed to get you to recruit as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Team Commisssions
Once you start recruiting others to become Seacret Agents, you can earn commission every time they spend money on Seacret products.

Seacret runs a binary compensation plan where each person has a left leg and a right leg, as shown below:

As with all binary MLMs the amount of commission you earn depends on the balance between your legs. With Seacret, you need to have at least 1/3 of the volume on your weak side.

This prevents people from earning excessively because they recruited one good Seacret Agent. Depending on your rank, you can earn between 10% and 15% commission on your monthly Seacret Commissionable Volume (CV).

Rank Advancement Bonus
Every time you climb the Seacret ranks, you will be eligible for a one time bonus. This is like a reward for reaching the new level.

The different Seacret Agent ranks and what you need to do to reach them are shown below:

As we can see the first few steps look easy, but then it takes more and more volume to keep climbing the ranks.

If you happen to climb all the way to the top of the Ancient Egyptian structure, you will reach the rank of Crown Royale. The advancement bonus for this final promotion is listed as $1,000,000.

Leadership Check Match Bonus
This bonus is only available to Seacret Agents who reach the rank of Bronze or higher. If you get to this level, you can earn a matching bonus based on the binary commission earned by those in your downline.

The amount of commission available at each rank is shown below:

The full matching bonus is available to all Seacret Agrents who reach the rank of Diamond or above. At this level you can earn a total of 50% commissions on up to 4 generations in your downline.

It’s nice to know that these commissions are available if you reach the higher part of the ranks. If you are still working your way up, all these commissions are included in the price you pay for Seacret products.

There are other incentives such as the Drive Your Dream Bonus, and other cash incentives which again are mostly only available to those who reach the highest part of the triangle.

How Much Are Seacret Agents Earning

There are many ways to earn with Seacret, and if you get a lot of promotions, you can earn some large bonuses . However we want to know how much Seacret Agents are actually making.

We managed to find a copy of the Seacret Income Disclosure, which is presented as a single image shown below:

It’s interesting that the largest group by far is the ‘entry level’ agents. This shows us that 47.8% of Seacret Agents earn absolutely no commission.

They try and explain that these agents might be earning commission from retail sales, but we find it highly unlikely. What we are seeing is that most Seacret Agents never make it past the bottom rank.

Another 45.7% of agents are only entitled to basic commissions. Seacret tells us that this group earn an average of $171 for the year. Doing some math we see that 93.5% of Seacret Agents earned less than $200 for the year.

The final grouping which they refer to as the ‘Leaders’ group, is the top 6.5% of all Seacret Agents. If we look at the earnings within this group, we see that only the top 1.84% earn over $35,000

Remember that this is a breakdown of the ‘leaders’, so if we apply some more math, we see that only 0.12% of agents earn more than they could in a regular job. In other words, 99.88% of Seacret Agents earn less than minimum wage

Why Is It Difficult To Make Money With Seacret Direct

We believe that the problem is not unique to Seacret. The problem is with the business model. In his book, Multi-level Marketing Unmasked, Jon Taylor found that 99.7% of people who join any MLM end up losing money. Despite what you hear in the sales pitches, it is highly unlikely that you will make money from any of these ‘business opportunities’.

The reason is because MLM is a system designed to sell products to customers. When you sign up as a Consultant, you are in fact a customer buying from Seacret. They have no intention of making you a business partner. The goal is to make profit when you buy accessories from them

Is Seacret Direct 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 Seacret 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.

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

Are you wondering if you can make money in an 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