Discussion
Yep, it was the first of two MLM businesses I've tried, the second being Herbalife.
Kleeneze is probably one of the better ones, seeing as the products are mostly everyday consumables (although they started doing all sorts of things just before I quit), so in that sense they do pretty much sell themselves. There's no 'selling' involved as such as you just drop the catalogue one day and pick it up a few days later (providing it's not been chucked in the bin). Sort out the order, take it round, get your money, job done.
The down side? (From my experience and in my opinion, for all you Kleeneze lawyers out there
) Many people will tell you these things don't make money....I know of people who tried and didn't, so be warned. However, I'd prefer to say they don't make money any time soon. Seriously, unless you get an area where there's no-one else doing it (there are no boundaries), there are few shops, or everyone is just too bone idle to go out and such stuff, you're unlikely see much (or any) real profit for what could be quite a while. Do it for a few years (maybe), wait for all the half-hearted to give up and disappear, build up a good customer base and a big enough downline and then you might. But don't go expecting to put a deposit on a Merc within 6 months.....probably not even 6 years, scaling up from my experiences.
Also, forget the "with just a few hours per week", it never worked like that for me at all. It'll take a few hours per day to just set up for a basic round. Going hell-for-leather it took me 2-3 hours just to make up the catalogue packs for my street alone. Then I had to drop them off before work, so up at 5.30am to do the legwork. Then the same after work a few days later, then collate all the orders and get the stock in. Another night you'll need to do the paperwork and packaging, and you'll need to do all the same for other rounds inbetween/staggered.
You'll also need to advertise, so you'll be ordering hundred of little flyers, stickers, etc. to put absolutely everywhere. You'll be asked to decorate your car with adverts, so give up any pride you had in your vehicle (I didn't, I said there was no way any stickers were touching my car). All that is in aid of recruitment, so you'll need to send info packs out to people and phone them to talk them into joining.
Then don't forget the meetings (used to be called ROMs) which you'll be expected to go to every fortnight or so, be it weeknights or weekends. Also expect to be asked why you didn't turn up if you don't show your face, dependent upon your upline.
So.....your 'few hours' will more than likely need to be a whole week's worth of work if you want it to get you more than the smallest distance, unless you're damn lucky. My Kleeneze verdict - if you have the spare time (lots), someone to help you, have a desire to go full time with it and you REALLY need to do it, give it a shot. It's probably one of the better ones. Otherwise, don't bother, you can get more money in the short term doing a part time job or finding a way to buy other stuff cheap and flog it on eBay.
Kleeneze is probably one of the better ones, seeing as the products are mostly everyday consumables (although they started doing all sorts of things just before I quit), so in that sense they do pretty much sell themselves. There's no 'selling' involved as such as you just drop the catalogue one day and pick it up a few days later (providing it's not been chucked in the bin). Sort out the order, take it round, get your money, job done.
The down side? (From my experience and in my opinion, for all you Kleeneze lawyers out there
) Many people will tell you these things don't make money....I know of people who tried and didn't, so be warned. However, I'd prefer to say they don't make money any time soon. Seriously, unless you get an area where there's no-one else doing it (there are no boundaries), there are few shops, or everyone is just too bone idle to go out and such stuff, you're unlikely see much (or any) real profit for what could be quite a while. Do it for a few years (maybe), wait for all the half-hearted to give up and disappear, build up a good customer base and a big enough downline and then you might. But don't go expecting to put a deposit on a Merc within 6 months.....probably not even 6 years, scaling up from my experiences. Also, forget the "with just a few hours per week", it never worked like that for me at all. It'll take a few hours per day to just set up for a basic round. Going hell-for-leather it took me 2-3 hours just to make up the catalogue packs for my street alone. Then I had to drop them off before work, so up at 5.30am to do the legwork. Then the same after work a few days later, then collate all the orders and get the stock in. Another night you'll need to do the paperwork and packaging, and you'll need to do all the same for other rounds inbetween/staggered.
You'll also need to advertise, so you'll be ordering hundred of little flyers, stickers, etc. to put absolutely everywhere. You'll be asked to decorate your car with adverts, so give up any pride you had in your vehicle (I didn't, I said there was no way any stickers were touching my car). All that is in aid of recruitment, so you'll need to send info packs out to people and phone them to talk them into joining.
Then don't forget the meetings (used to be called ROMs) which you'll be expected to go to every fortnight or so, be it weeknights or weekends. Also expect to be asked why you didn't turn up if you don't show your face, dependent upon your upline.
So.....your 'few hours' will more than likely need to be a whole week's worth of work if you want it to get you more than the smallest distance, unless you're damn lucky. My Kleeneze verdict - if you have the spare time (lots), someone to help you, have a desire to go full time with it and you REALLY need to do it, give it a shot. It's probably one of the better ones. Otherwise, don't bother, you can get more money in the short term doing a part time job or finding a way to buy other stuff cheap and flog it on eBay.
Hmm... They are owned by European Home Retail. News from there website
Correct. I didn't find it easy to fit around a normal job/spare time and I was in my early twenties, living with parents and had no kids to worry about. Others manage, but I can't speak for them.
And yes, it's rubbish when it gets to winter. Also, 150 catalogues weigh a lot more than you think!
And yes, it's rubbish when it gets to winter. Also, 150 catalogues weigh a lot more than you think!
Edited by MarkoTVR on Sunday 1st October 20:24
if you need any info then email me and I can talk you through it that way (if ya want to that is! Piglet said:
Has anyone ever sold Kleeneze products? Any thoughts, experiences?
Ok, I can advise on this one.
I USED to be a Kleeneze representative but have since quit. This might mean I'll give a bias judgement but I'll try and be as partial as I can.
I got into the business through curiosity. I replied to an advert that I saw stuck all around town. I was sent a pack which I read through then got a few phone calls. Invited the guy from the advert who then explained the whole concept to me. By this time I was captivated. To me it seemed that everything he said made perfect sense. The concept, the idea behind the project, the mentality that was needed to make this work was perfectly suited to me. I ofcourse signed up and paid the joining fee, and also paid for X amount of catalogues. Basically, the concept is that Kleeneze agents, hand out catalogues to houses through a consistent and lengthy process of dropping off catalogues, collecting, then delivering orders etc, etc. It really is a long winded process and it is this part where sales are generated by each Kleeneze agent. Of the sales, the agent gets a cut. But it isn't simply you who gets paid. The person who recruited you into the process also gets paid.This is because other than handing out catalogues to generate sales, the other side of the business to make money is the recruitment side. This is the side of the business which appealed to me because it generates what is known as residual income. I thought everything about residual incomes was great because you could stop working, yet still get paid. The more people you recruit into what is known as your team, and the more sales they generate, the higher your residual income. You then teach these people to recruit their own teams and teach them how to generate sales etc etc. All this is in the hope that the team keeps on growing and keeps on generating sales.
What I began to discover was that generating sales was hard enough for yourself. You follow a process which they teach you to find 'customers'. You basically hand out catalogues to a whole street and then collect the catalogues. Anyone who leaves an order in the bag becomes one of your customers. The people who tell you to f-off are not customers and they get crossed off. Over a period of 4 months, you hand your catalogues to the full street, each time crossing off people who throw the catalogues out and slowly building up a number of customers. Then eventually, you build up what is known as a customer base and you then only hand out catalogues to customers. What is amazing is that some customers order things from Kleeneze every single month. Now for my experience of this. Kleeneze normally quotes an average of how many people become customers from X amount of houses etc. It is these averages which they base their potential earnings table on. What I personally found was that these averages were very varied. The spectrum was vast and somehow I was always at the bottom of the spectrum. This meant the effort I put into the business equated to something stupid like £2 per hour of work, handing out and collecting catalogues in the cold. I actually developed frost bite on both of my hands but still I persisted. From day one you are filled with encouragement from your sponser who promises this and that etc, etc. I fell for the trap and continued. I still did not get close to the average. For about 6 months I persisted with no decent results. I slowly started to develop my own theories about the whole Kleeneze business. For example, its true that once someone unofficially becomes one distributors customer, they then are loyal to that distributor. Therefore no matter how many catalogues you give them, the response will be NO. Surely, when Kleeneze was new, it was far easier to generate sales, but now with distributors on every single street corner, its a lot harder. I have to admit though, I ended up recruiting one of my friends into my team who was at uni in liverpool. Somehow liverpool of all places in the country is really good at generating sales. my friend averages as much as £10 per hour for his work putting out catalogues.
Beyond all this, the business is also like a small community. Workshops are held with inspirational speakers showing you the potential of the business. being a car nut, one guy who particularly caught my attention was a guy called Bobb Webb whos notorious in the whole kleenze network. This guy is REAL and he drives a 360 stradale and a new m5 last time I heard. He doesn't work and makes something stupid like £50grand a week. I'm not sure of the figure but its along the lines of what Footballers make. The guy doesn't work, and earns a residual income. Plus his income slowly grows as his team increases. I actually went to what Kleeneze calls the company conference at the Birmingham NIC. It was an orchestrated farm of a few very rich and sucessful Kleeneze agents getting congratulated by a bunch of wannabes. A lot of it was confidence building and it all builds into the experience which just eats you up.
This is by no means something that doesn;t work. A lot of people call it a scam and I am not going to dispute with the way that some Kleeneze agetns go about things. However, I'm going to say that for some people it works and for some people it simply doesn't. I really think it also depends on being at the right place at the right time. If you hit an area of the country which has never recieved a Klenneze catalogue, you have a potential gold mine but if you live inner city where the streets have lots of distributors who have already got customers in, you won't see the potential of the business.
Another thing I realised, and I'm probably being controversial in saying this, but I've noticed a trend in the people who actually work in the business. I myself am not from a wealthy background, but I'm well (ish) eduacted kid with a good work ethic. When I was doing Kleeneze, I was at fulltime at uni, worked 6 nights a week answering telephones and fitted in Kleeneze in every spare hour I had. I stuck with this for over 6 months and quit because I wasn't seeing results. Not only was I not seeing results, but I could not see it going anywhere for myself. I had joined Kleeneze, to work my bollox off and build up a small residual income for myself so that I could concentrate on other commitments. This was the wrong attitude to go about the business. I found that even like this I was working twice as hard as other agents and getting half as far. For those that persist with Kleeneze, they give it a lot of time to see real results. Back to my controversial profiling of Kleeneze agents. What I found with a lot of agents is that they are working class couples. These are people who work long hours each week for an employer and are probably in long terms jobs that don;t make that much money. They can't increase this income because they are working as many hours as their work will allow. therefore the only way is to find another job. However, life comittements such as kids etc, means that they can't work another proper job or even part time. Kleeneze allows they to slowly work a few flexible hours each week and make £20-40 which might ease of some bills or get saved to allow them to go on holiday. These people are happy making this amount of money alongside their full time jobs, and very very gradually, they work their way up. To me, the amount of time and effort, these people eventually put into the business, they could very easily have started their own little sucessful business and in the same time be making £70grand a year. However, these people are not business people. They do not have the mentality of an entrepreneur and are average joe who work under other peoples instructions. They aren't innovative, and instead prefer monotnous work. They find fulfilment from being told that they are doing well. You will see these people become clones of the mroe sucessful people in Kleeneze. Eventually, even if these agents do not become big time, they will still have built up an easy method to make a small amount of money from little effort. However, I believe that these people ahve been over influenced by Kleeneze themselves. Throughout the time that they have been making £20 for themselves they have been making Kleeneze a lot more money. You see Kleeneze is in a win win situation where they will NEVER lose. The fact that people join and quit is simply another means for them to make more money. To them, people joining and generating a small amount of sales, is better than that person to never have joined. Each month, hundreds of people join and quit Kleeneze and this is making the company lots of money. My theory is that the market is becoming diluted in a lot of areas. I was too stupid to see it earlier that I was in one of those areas. My reasoning was tricking myself into thinking that making £2 per hour now would result in me making a higher residual income in the future. I found that targets which my sponser had convinced me were acheivable in 6 months and a year, were more like 3-4 years off at the rate I was going.
This is my rant on kleeneze. Make your own oppinion but Kleeneze was simply not for me but the concept does work (in the right area) and I have physically met people who are making stupid amounts of residual income off starting off handing out catalogues.
I have been doing it for nearly two years, I chose it because it meant I could work from home, yes I have had some brilliant months when the orders have been outstanding, and I have also had some terrible months. Collecting catalogue in the piffing rain can be a pain. But on the other side you are out getting a suntan when the weather is good.
At the moment, for two days a week my living room lokks like Santa's grotto due to my customers starting early for Christmas.
So far I am only concentrating on the retail side, though am trying a bit with the team building.
What you have to realise is that it isn't a job, it's a business and it's your business, and as such you won't make fantastic amounts of money straight away, but you have to spend a couple of years building it up.... like you have to with any business.
My upline (the guy that introduced me) has just left full time work to concentrate on Kleeneze, our Senior Exec Distributor (he's about 5 up from me) consistantly earns about 4k a month, during the summer he went on a sponsored climb up Kilamanjaro, and then the week later went to Rio for the international conference, during that time his income did not drop even though he personally wasn't out with catalogues.
It has taken me till now to amass a customer base of 400 customers, some put big orders in every 4 months or so, some order every single time. And I am managing this with 3 other distributors in the area.
I do it all by foot, and that means that I am getting paid to keep fit.
As to earnings, you get 21% on all sales, and then there is a ladder of bonuses, so if you get £800 worth of sales in 4 week period then you qyalify for a bonus of an extra 6%, paid direct into your bank by Kleeneze, and it goes up like that. Your sales get added to your upline in their group sales and that's where the residual income comes in. So if I have a cracking month with say 1.8k of sales, then I come out with out £500, those sales go into my upline's figures and if it takes his figures over 4.5k (as we did one month) then he came out with approx 1k.
I find it a lot of fun, yes it can be hard work, but you get to meet all sorts of people, for some customers you are the only person they see from week to week. As long as you collect the catalogues when you say you are going to, deliver orders when you say you are going to you can pretty much choose to work when you want.
I do catalogue drops and pick ups in the morning, sometimes have to go back to chase missed catalogues in the evening, and I do customer order deliveries on a friday evening, rest of the time is mine!
If anyone may be interested, then drop me an email and I can give more information (and now is a great time to start due to the increase in sales for Christmas!!)
At the moment, for two days a week my living room lokks like Santa's grotto due to my customers starting early for Christmas.
So far I am only concentrating on the retail side, though am trying a bit with the team building.
What you have to realise is that it isn't a job, it's a business and it's your business, and as such you won't make fantastic amounts of money straight away, but you have to spend a couple of years building it up.... like you have to with any business.
My upline (the guy that introduced me) has just left full time work to concentrate on Kleeneze, our Senior Exec Distributor (he's about 5 up from me) consistantly earns about 4k a month, during the summer he went on a sponsored climb up Kilamanjaro, and then the week later went to Rio for the international conference, during that time his income did not drop even though he personally wasn't out with catalogues.
It has taken me till now to amass a customer base of 400 customers, some put big orders in every 4 months or so, some order every single time. And I am managing this with 3 other distributors in the area.
I do it all by foot, and that means that I am getting paid to keep fit.
As to earnings, you get 21% on all sales, and then there is a ladder of bonuses, so if you get £800 worth of sales in 4 week period then you qyalify for a bonus of an extra 6%, paid direct into your bank by Kleeneze, and it goes up like that. Your sales get added to your upline in their group sales and that's where the residual income comes in. So if I have a cracking month with say 1.8k of sales, then I come out with out £500, those sales go into my upline's figures and if it takes his figures over 4.5k (as we did one month) then he came out with approx 1k.
I find it a lot of fun, yes it can be hard work, but you get to meet all sorts of people, for some customers you are the only person they see from week to week. As long as you collect the catalogues when you say you are going to, deliver orders when you say you are going to you can pretty much choose to work when you want.
I do catalogue drops and pick ups in the morning, sometimes have to go back to chase missed catalogues in the evening, and I do customer order deliveries on a friday evening, rest of the time is mine!
If anyone may be interested, then drop me an email and I can give more information (and now is a great time to start due to the increase in sales for Christmas!!)
It's going well this week, it's only Tuesday, I collected my catalogue drop yesterday and picked up the stragglers this morning and have just put in an order for just over £400, so that's about £84 for what so far has been about 4 hours work! (2 orders this am, one by phone for £30 and one on a doorstep of £54)
This was on a drop of 120 catalogues.
So I only need about 100 and I am in line for the volume bonus and I still have a week and half to do that!
This was on a drop of 120 catalogues.
So I only need about 100 and I am in line for the volume bonus and I still have a week and half to do that!
jamesuk28 said:
Well done QWERTYFORD, you win the "Longest post in Pistonheads history" award.
just expressing myself mate. Didn't know it'd gone on for that long until I actually posted it,
Also, how many people actually bothered to read the whole post.
Edited by qwertyford on Wednesday 11th October 19:09
qwertyford said:
jamesuk28 said:
Well done QWERTYFORD, you win the "Longest post in Pistonheads history" award.
just expressing myself mate. Didn't know it'd gone on for that long until I actually posted it,
Also, how many people actually bothered to read the whole post.
Edited by qwertyford on Wednesday 11th October 19:09
Me...
If you want to go in the MLM business another one to consider is the telecoms / utilities field. One of the better once in the UK is Telecom Plus. The nice thing about these schemes is that you get an on-going revenue stream: convince someone to sign up and you get a % of their usage forever. The utility sales force has gained a rather negative reputation over the years but some of these companies really do provide a good deal and they are worth signing up for so by just convincing friends and family you could earn yourself a nice bit of money.
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