Love it or hate it, network marketing is a huge industry. Do you know what are some of the biggest niches in the MLM industry?
Cosmetic and skincare.
And many of those MLM companies have grown as big as commercial brands, to the point that they’ve become household names as well. Companies like Avon and Mary Kay are household names and paved the way for the new generation of MLM companies.
Today, we’re taking a look at one of the relatively newcomers called Bellame and see how it holds its own against the others.
In this review, we’ll focus more on the “business opportunity” part of Bellame. For those of you who have been following my website, you’ll know that I always go deep below the surface to get you everything you need to know about any online money-making opportunity.
Honest, unbiased reviews – that is what you will find here.
And if you’d like to see an alternative, honest, and legitimate platform to start earning money online, then please click here.
Bellame Summary
Product Name: Bellame
Website: bellame.com
Founder: Scott & Melissa Thompson in 2017
Product Type: MLM
Price: $49- $500 for the starter kit
Best For: MLM marketer
Summary: Bellame is a network marketing company that sells skincare and cosmetic products. They are a relatively new company but with strong leadership. Minimum sales are required only if you want to earn a commission from your downline. To earn a base commission from personal sales there are no minimum sales required.
Overall Ranking: 4/10
Recommend: No
What Is Bellame
Bellame is a direct selling company specialising in beauty and skincare products.
It all started in 2017 when the company was founded by Melissa & Scott Thompson (husband & wife), with the vision of empowering women from the inside out.
Mellisa gained profound experience in network marketing from Avon, Shaklee and Belcorp before setting up Bellame. She also held the position of Chief Marketing Officer of Astoria Company, a company founded by her husband. In 2015, Astoria Company was ranked #119 on the Inc. 5000.
Together, Melissa & Scott have more than 45 years of experience in beauty and digital marketing, which is a really good sign. No major complaints were found towards the couple either. Despite Bellame being a relatively new company, with strong leadership and a good track record we can be assured that the company is in good hands and not likely to fail easily.
Within the first year of business, Bellame claims to have gathered more than 10K distributors working together with them.
Overall, this company works the same way as these MLM companies:
How To Join Bellame
Just like any typical MLM company, you cannot sign up Bellame on your own. You have to sign up under another Bellame consultant by providing the membership number of the person who is referring you. Else, Bellame will allocate one for you. You will be someone else’s recruit and be part of someone else’s team.
Product Line
Before we take the plunge, it’s important to familiarise ourselves with the product line Bellame has to offer.
Bellame has a decent product line, their primary products categories are Skincare and Makeup
Skincare: Eye masks, clay masks, toner, cleanser, serum etc.
Cosmetic: Eye shadows, lipstick, lip gloss, concealer, etc
Others: Mask brush, facial roller, collagen stick etc.
There are many other products under the Bellame brand, if you are interested in the full product range you can find them on their product page.
How To Make Money With Bellame
Like many other MLM companies, you can make money with Bellame by:
1. Selling their products and earning commissions. You get a personal Bellame website once you sign up to be their sales rep, You can refer your customers to your Bellame website, and Bellame will take care of the rest.
2. Recruiting people to access bonuses and higher commission
Cost To Join Bellame
To become a member you will have to purchase a starter kit, and you are given 2 options to do this:
1. Build your own kit (>$49)
Begin with a Base Kit ($49), you can add on other products of your choice.
Features included in the base kit are:
1. Personal Bellame boutique website
2. Full access to training portal and support page
3. Up to 40% savings on personal orders
4. Unlimited earning and bonus potential
5. Get the chance to sell without stocking up inventory. Bellame will ship to your customers on your behalf
6. Bellame magnetic box (if you add on products to your kit).
It is important to note that the base kit itself doesn’t include any products. If you plan to become a Bellame distributor, it only makes sense that you are using their products yourself, so there is no way you can get away with a $49 start-up cost. The range of add-on products can be found here.
2. Choose from one of the three Pre-bundled packs
Pre-bundled packs made up of products plus the base kit. There are 3 types to choose from:
1. Brand Pack ($150)
2. Influencer Pack ($300)
3. Legacy Pack ($500)
Each Starter Kits comes with a flat $12.95 shipping fee.
Monthly Fee
There is no minimum sales requirement to receive base profit from personal sales. However, in order to earn a commission from your downline, you will need 250 Personal Sales Volume (PSV) per month. More about this in the next section – Compensation Plan.
On top of that monthly cost, just remember that we still have to factor in additional costs such as ad placement, marketing cost etc.
Bellame Compensation Plan
Like many other MLM companies, Bellame has a complicated compensation plan.
I will try to lay it out as simple as possible.
Bellame compensation plan rewards people for selling (up to 40% profit on Retail Customer Sales and up to 35% profit on Beauty Passport Customer Sales), building downline, and mentoring the team to success.
Here are the types of commission/ bonuses offered by Bellame:
Retail Sales
Elite Sales Bonuses
Beauty Passport Sales
Elite Sales Bonuses
Unilevel Bonuses
Generation Bonuses
Personal Generation Bonuses
1st Generation Bonuses
2nd Generation Bonuses
3rd Generation Bonuses
4th Generation Bonuses
Title Bonuses
Introduction Bonuses
Quarterly Leadership Bonuses
Enroller Pool
Personally Enroll
Help your sponsored Brand Partners Enrol
Milestone Bonuses
The following chart provides a summary of all the commissions and bonuses:
Basically, you can earn a base commission of 25% on products that are sold at retail prices. And if your customers join the Beauty Passport program from Bellame, you will get a 20% base commission instead.
The more you sell, the higher the commission rate you get. For example, if you hit more than $3,000 in sales a month, you will get an Elite Sales Bonus of an additional 15% commission on top of your base commission.
To earn a commission from the sales of your downline, you need to work your way up the rank.
The first rank is Brand Partner, where you can only earn commissions from your own sales. To earn from your team, you have to hit a minimum of 250 Personal Sales Volume (PSV) plus 250 Personal Generation Sales (PGS) every month. That allows you to earn a 4% commission from your first downline. The more sales you and your team achieve, the higher the commission rate and further down the levels (up to 4 levels) you can earn.
Don’t worry if you cannot figure out how does the compensation works, such structures are common among MLM companies. They cannot reward members directly for recruitment, as this will give rise to suspicion for pyramid schemes (more about this later). So instead, they offer rewards when your downlines achieve a certain sales volume. That’s to encourage you to recruit and build up your team.
The various levels of rewards and dealerships also serve as a way to make the whole scheme look enticing and exciting. They make it looks like career advancement is great with many ways for you to make money.
To make things easy, just remember, the two most important thing to keep in mind when joining an MLM company is :
1. Sell the products
2. Recruit downline
Here is a walkthrough video of the compensation plan if you want to understand it in more detail
Is Bellame Pyramid Scheme
Despite some critics labelling Bellame as a pyramid scheme, personally, I see it as a legit MLM opportunity as Bellame does offer products that work.
What Is A Pyramid Scheme?
According to Wikipedia, a pyramid scheme is a business model that recruits members via a promise of payments or services for enrolling others into the scheme, rather than supplying investments or sale of products.
As the recruitment progress, the structure soon becomes unsustainable due to the sheer amount of new recruitments needed to take place. There simply aren’t enough people to maintain the structure of the pyramid. As such, pyramid schemes are doomed to collapse and are deemed illegal by many countries around the world.
Due to the nature of MLM, there is a fuzzy line between MLM and pyramid scheme. Avoid any MLM that overemphasise on recruitment rather than selling the actual product. Legitimate MLM is focused on the product itself, not recruitment.
What I Like About Bellame
1. Higher Chance For You To Work Yourself To The Top
Founded in 2017, Bellame is a relatively new company.
There are many advantages of joining an MLM early on. For example, during the early stage, there is a mystique surrounding the opportunity because not many people have come to know about it yet. It is an exciting time to get involved!
Timing is also crucial to your success in MLM. To really flourish in the MLM industry, you need to join the right company at the right time. Too late and you will miss the opportunities for growth that the early adopters have.
You have the chance to get in early before the momentum hits, and then ride the wave through the company’s growth, which is really good for you.
While it is still possible for you to make it big later on, you will have to work much harder than you would have if you had joined early on.
2. Experienced Leadership
One of the main reasons that an MLM fail is poor leadership.
Let’s take a look at Bellame’s leadership team – Melissa has more than 20 years of experience in other MLM companies like Avon and Belcorp, while Scott brings 25 years of digital marketing experience to the table. Together they form a strong foundation for leadership in the company.
3. Free Website
Included in the base kit/ starter kit is a personal Bellame boutique website. It looks pretty awesome actually – exactly like the original website of Bellame’s but with your personal affiliate link embedded.
This makes it easy for you to promote Bellame products, simply refer the prospects to your site and the rest are taken care of. Bellame will handle the payment and product shipment.
For each sale that you make you can earn up to 40% commissions. And if anyone stumbled upon your page and signs up as a partner for Bellame, congratulations! You get yourself a downline just like that.
What I Don’t Like About Bellamy
1. Recruit, Recruit, Recruit…
Now, I am not saying that they’re a pyramid scheme. The difference between this company and a pyramid scheme is that Bellame has products to sell.
However, their compensation plan has you recruiting a lot of people to get higher bonuses and commissions as opposed to just generating retail sales.
In other words, success hinges not only on your ability to sell the products but also on the performance and size of your downline.
You see, to get started you need to buy a starter kit. And then in order to remain active as a distributor or to earn from your downline, you need to meet a minimum number of sales. The only way to make these sales is to recruit people under you (and earn a commission off their purchases) or to buy products yourself. Otherwise, you’re left trying to sell your products to your family and friends, or anyone you come into contact with (that is how some of the more aggressive MLM reps get a bad reputation).
We all know the drill – an old friend or acquaintance contacted you out of the blue, before long this person is inviting you to a hosting party or asking you to watch an informative video of some sort. What hit next was the sales pitch – how you can live a carefree life while earning a side income.
Let’s face it!
Once someone gets involved in MLM, they make every social interaction an opportunity to sell and to recruit downline. Friendships have ended and relationships have broken up through this. It is unfortunate when someone pitches their network marketing business at the expense of their friendship.
Do you have what it takes to put your relationship on the line?
2. No Income Disclosures
Any business venture involves risk. Before getting yourself involved, it is always best to exercise caution. Do your research and look for numbers on your odds for success. The hard numbers will show you whether to say yes or run for the hills.
As long as you understand the risk and can afford it, that’s fine. But of course, never start a business where the odds of success are better at a Vegas slot machine – that’s common sense.
So here comes the problem, Bellame is not a public listed company, and they do not release any income disclosure statement. Without income disclosure, we can’t do our math and can only make our wild guesses on the income potential.
3. Inactive For 90 Days And You Are Out Of Business
Thinking of sitting back, enjoying life, leaving the business for a while and rejoining at a later date?
Too bad, that is not possible with Bellame.
If you are inactive for more than 90 days, you are officially out of business. You will lose your downlines and you will have to start all over again.
It is not really a good opportunity for passive income, isn’t it?
Are You Cut Out For Personal Selling? It Is Not For Everyone…
I got my leads every day without hard-selling.
Can You Really Make Money With Bellame?
Bellame is a fairly young and growing MLM that has shown some great potential.
While it is still a little early to determine how well they’ll do against the industry giants, they’re off to a great start.
One important question to ask yourself before joining is whether you think the products are of value and if the company is ethical. How enthusiastic are you about this business? Or, do you feel the products are overpriced, overhyped, or worse?
Those are some essential questions to ponder upon because you want to make sure that you are getting in for the long haul. This way, you can truly establish a source of long-term residual income.
However, to help you make an informed decision, I have to show you some statistics. It’s a sad truth that the odds are definitely stacked against you when it comes to making money through an MLM business. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying Bellame can’t help some people make their dreams come true and be successful, but don’t expect overnight success because chances are slim indeed!
Based on research at the FTC, a vast majority of 99% of MLM marketers are losing money. That left with just 1% that actually turn a profit. And that 1% is basically those at the very top of a recruitment structure.
Due to the pyramid structure of network marketing, recruiters can earn from both their own sales and the sales of their downlines. Naturally, it rewards those at the top.
in order to make money with Bellame, you have to keep on working, otherwise, you will lose the earnings of your current rank, or even the right to sell.
If passive income is what you are looking for, then this is probably not what you are hoping for.
It is easy to see how things can get complicated quickly – juggling between sales, and management of your team. It is by no mean an easy task. Far too often, I have seen many people get involved in MLM thinking that they can just get a few recruits and then sit back collecting money – now we know that it is far from the truth!
How I Make Passive Income Online
In my honest opinion, the best reason for joining any MLM company is when you really love a product, and you want to get your cost covered while making extra money.
If making money is your only reason for joining, forget about it. Losing friends, wasting time and energy is not going to make it worth the money you make. And the worst part, you are still technically ’employed’, you build up nothing for yourself at all. If one day the company get busted, the downline that you have spent so much building will be gone in an instant too.
If you want to create an online business and learn how to make a full-time income, keep on reading because I have good news for you.
All these success stories you have read above come from applying one proven system.
There is no need for inventory, product creation, management of a team, or tapping into your personal network and proposition them to become your prospects. If it sounds good to you, find out more about this system here or click on the blue button below:
Let us hear your opinion – what do you think about Bellame? Share with me your thoughts in the comment section below!
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2 comments on “Is Bellame A Scam Or Legit MLM Opportunity – 2021 New Compensation Plan”
Ann
October 27, 2021 at 12:57 amA friend talked to me for the first time about Bellame. So, I decided to research about it. It seems my friend wanted to make profit from me, LOL. I have been in other MLMs and I have not liked any of them. But this sounded different. Thank you for writing this article about them. It has saved me time and money.
Editor
October 27, 2021 at 1:37 amGlad that it helps!