doTERRA is one of the most famous essential oil MLMs out there, with products that continue to be popular. The oils are promoted as being high quality, to the point that they may offer health benefits, while also smelling nice.
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While I’m not personally convinced about the benefits of essential oils, I do enjoy the scents myself. It’s also true that some smells do have the potential to help people relax and de-stress, or to energize them, depending on the smell that is chosen.
Regardless of my own opinion, many people buy essential oils regularly. There’s certainly a market there that you can target. The question is whether you can make money. More specifically, is doTERRA a good way to take advantage of this field. After all, the oils from doTERRA aren’t cheap.
Two Ways To Make Money With doTERRA
There are two distinct ways to earn with doTERRA. The first, and most obvious, is to sell the products. While you’re unlikely to make a lot of money this way, product sales can be a way to earn a little extra income or to offset your own purchases.
The other angle is to recruit others and build a team. Team building is a more complex process, especially as you need to recruit people, manage your team, and still make sales. Still, the income potential is higher.
In this post, I examine both of these areas in-depth, then consider whether doTERRA is realistic as a regular source of income.
Make Money From Product Sales
doTERRA’s main product angle is essential oils. This includes single oils and a variety of blends. The price varies considerably depending on the specific oil or blend. The list below highlights just a handful of examples.
- Citrus Bliss: $24.00 retail
- AromaTouch: $37.33 retail
- Deep Blue: $44.00 retail
- Deep Blue Roll On: $78.67 retail
- TerraShield: $14.00 retail
- Blue Tansy: $133.33 retail
- Lavender: $30.67
- Lemon: $14.67
The variation seems to be linked to the specific essential oils used. This isn’t too surprising, as some plants will be rarer or more expensive than others. There may also be complexities in sourcing them or in the extraction process.
Even so, doTERRA oils do tend to be more expensive than similar oils that don’t come from an MLM. I’ll come back to the significance of the price difference a little later on.
The selection doesn’t stop there. DoTERRA has various other items, including personal care products, supplements, accessories, and diffusers. Most are linked to essential oils in some way or another. The variety may help sales, but honestly, most of the products will only appeal to people who are already interested in essential oils.
Essential Oils Sell!
Despite the fact that I don’t personally believe in the ‘healing power’ of essential oils, I do actually use them in my house! Surprising, right?
I enjoy the different smells and prefer them to using candles which can be a fire hazard and often have too strong of a smell. I don’t use this particular company’s products, but I do see how they can be useful, and actually fun to collect and try. My favorites so far are lavender and peppermint, but some of the blends sound really interesting!
Blending oils? Sounds super fun too!
What that means is that if I, a skeptic, actually buy this stuff, that there’s going to be a pretty good size market out there to potentially purchase your products. “Natural healing” is a highly debated and popular topic online as well. What’s more, interest in essential oils has remained fairly consistent for the last few years
Another thing I like about doTerra’s products is that people really understand and can make use of them. So many times with ‘health and wellness’ MLMs, you find that the products themselves are hard to understand. I just reviewed another product with a healing patch that clearly had no health benefits other than a placebo.
These oils are easy to understand for the average consumer. They smell good. Some help you relax, some help you focus, and others have other things they do.
I also know that some people are making money with this program. Of course, these folks tend to be very dynamic sellers and natural leaders. They have large teams that they motivate to go out and recruit and sell.
So there are people actually earning good money with doTerra, but I personally believe they are in the minority. I also believe that the majority of people earning with this company are not earning full-time incomes – and are either breaking even or barely turning a profit.
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The Challenge of Becoming A Seller
Actually selling products is one of the most challenging aspects of any company like this and with doTERRA, it’s harder than most other companies. For example, companies like Avon and Amway sell a range of different products that appeal to a wide audience, but that’s not the case with doTERRA.
Instead, the majority of doTERRA’s product line is related to essential oils in some way or another. This really limits the potential audience to only people that currently use the oils or are interested in trying.
To make matters worse, you still have to contend with competition from other distributors and from other places that sell essential oils (and there are a lot of companies doing this).
When comparing the same type of oil, it’s clear that you can get similar products on Amazon at a deep discount. Some of this price difference is due to the MLM model. Companies like DoTERRA have to pay their consultants and this cost gets passed onto their customers.
Is there a product-based reason for the difference? That depends on who you ask. DoTERRA representatives would say that doTERRA oils are of higher quality, but doTERRA provides little proof that this is the case.
Besides, the difference between the retail and the wholesale price is a good indication that doTERRA has a high-profit margin (it isn’t really a wholesale price anyway, as distributors don’t purchase in wholesale quantities).
Even if you aren’t impressed with the oils on Amazon, I would argue that there are other high-quality brands out there that don’t charge nearly as much as doTERRA. Simply looking for ones that aren’t MLMs would be a good place to start.
In the end, it doesn’t matter whether or not doTERRA oils are better than the competition. What matters is whether your customers think that they are. You will need to provide very good reasons for why they should pay such high prices for small containers of oil.
Making Sales
DoTERRA primarily uses a reselling model for sales. Under this approach, distributors purchase products first and then sell them to customers. Their income is the difference between the wholesale price and what they sell the oils for.
Distributors are able to choose the price that they sell the oils at, so the commission rate can vary. For distributors that sell at the suggested retail price, the commission rate will often end up at around 25%
One limitation here is that customers can see the retail and wholesale prices on the doTERRA website. Because of this, some may be resistant to paying the full retail price from a distributor.
Make Money Building A Team
The team building idea sounds simple. You’re getting other people to join the company and you then earn from the sales that they make. Of course, there’s much more to it than that.
For doTERRA, the team aspect uses a system called Power of 3. This is based on the idea of each person recruiting three others.
That graphic looks really sweet, but most people grossly underestimate how difficult it is to pitch a ‘business opportunity’ to people. Most folks are happy with their 9-5 job, or if they are not happy, they are too scared (or lazy) to do anything different. It takes a very unique and motivated individual to seek out and try business opportunities.
Because of this, the hard truth is that most of your friends, family, and coworkers are simply not going to want to join your team. Some might – but of those that actually do bite, only a small percentage will contribute to your monthly income.
What’s more, you’re not just trying to get people on your team. Making a decent income with doTERRA means that you need to progress through the company’s ranks. Doing so is where you get most bonuses.
The image below shows the beginnings of this system (the first five ranks). There are another seven ranks after this point.
New ranks give you the chance to earn from deeper levels in your downline. The percentages that you earn increase too. Of course, the requirements to progress up the ranks also grow. These get difficult fast.
You might notice something else interesting about the system. With doTERRA, you get higher percentage payments for the deeper levels in your downline. This is another reason for ensuring that the people in your downline recruit others.
But, as we’ve already discussed, recruitment is no easy feat. Most MLM members struggle to get the team size, performance, and structure that they need to progress very far at all.
Can You Generate Reliable Income With doTERRA?
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Theoretically, multi-level earning possibilities are great and can produce a reliable income. This is certainly true for doTERRA, as the oils do sell and the company has been going strong for many years now.
But practically speaking, such approaches rarely pan out to be ideal.
The vast majority of doTERRA members just do straight selling of the oils (no recruiting) and do not make full-time incomes doing it. If that sounds fine to you, then this may be a good opportunity for you to try! However, for me and for many others, we will only settle for a full time, reliable income.
So how do you become a 'super seller' or top recruiter within the company? You need to look beyond your closest connections and stop looking at family/friends as potential sales targets.
One of the most critical approaches is finding ways to expand the people that you're marketing to. This includes finding people who are actually interested in essential oils, rather than trying to get newbies on the bandwagon. There are tools for doing so and the online environment can be a powerful approach. Even so, you need to take the time to plan and consider whether doTERRA is right for you.
MLM Critic & Author: Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. I have to be honest though. I'm not a big fan of MLM. Tried it. Hated it.
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Nathaniell
Does the live chat help you with the business or just with how to purchase products? Just because there’s live chat doesn’t mean it’s actually useful for building your business!
julie brown
When I log in to my account the live chat button is to the right, my impression is that they can help with anything. I have used the live chat. I do feel there should be more support for new members. After enjoying the oils for 6 months I decided to host a party in April. I enrolled 2 people so earned a little money, however I nearly lost out. I had to contact DoTerra to find out why I had not been paid and they said i was not eligible because when my members signed up, my template shopping cart did not have an order of 100LRP even though the final order did. I had to fight it because at no point was it explained that the template had to stay at 100, even my upline didnt know. I read all the info I had received and it didn’t say that. After I kept asking where this was explained, doterra sent me a policy guide which I couldnt open! I guess It’s in that, and they should send it to all new members right away. The check is on its way now. Also i learned that you actually don’t have to place your 100 LRP order monthly in order to earn commission. Just keep the template at 100, then keeping pushing the date out until you are ready to order. Thats what I have doing, and i have another check because my new enrolee placed a second order. It is possible to make a little money, not sure it will ever replace my income though!
Kim Noreen Anderson
Not only do very few people make money selling doTerra but there is a complete lack of transparency about the quality and sourcing of their oils – calling them “therapeutic” which actually means nothing. The people I have seen selling for this company often have NO background/education in aromatherapy and consistently promote ways of using the oils that are NOT true. I know several women that have tried to challenge this company on their websites and they end up being attacked to the point of having to remove the ability to post comments from their sites. I agree that doTerra is NOT a good company – especially being that their wholesale prices are often three times as expensive as other excellent companies (that provide sourcing and organic certifications) retail prices. RUN don’t walk away from anybody trying to sell you doTerra.
Nathaniell
That’s very much the mentality of MLM people. Do not take criticism at any cost! Attack anyone that questions your company! Good point about the folks distributing and marketing these products not being certified aromatherapists.
Courtney
As a doTERRA wellness advocate myself, I have to say that they do give you a website….Linked to theirs. It is NOT easy to get help. I’ve been an advocate for a few months, and have yet to make one sale. Or to even get someone to try a sample. I’ve never heard of a live chat, or speaking to the owners. The only thing I could call private coaching is the help you might get from the person who signed you up. But that’s sort of sketchy, in my case.
For the record, I absolutely love my oils. Selling them is another story. The person who signed me up has been quite successful with her business, but she has a TON of contacts. Nobody I know is even remotely interested. It is possible to make money in the company, but unless you have a lot of friends, or are really good at marketing, it’s less likely.
Nathaniell
Pretty much how I saw it. I’ll update the chart to reflect that you get a free website. I wonder if they teach you how to get traffic to it!
Sonna
Perhaps time to redo your check list. In you check list, there are places you have x’s that should be check-marked:
It is easy to get help.
Private coaching is available.
You can contact the owners – I’ve met and chatted with them as a newbie in the business.
There is live chat.
There is step by step training … Lots of videos, etc.
There is a free web-site included.
You can sample products from wellness advocates like me.
There is keyword research available.
Nathaniell
Oh Really? Maybe I do need to redo it. Just a couple questions, because they didn’t make this clear on their website.
Is the private coaching going to cost you more money?
Where is the live chat and do they deal with more than billing issues?
What’s an example of the free website they give you?
What keyword research tool do they use?
It’s too bad they didn’t make these things more clear from the beginning!