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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Jamie
Nathaniell, it doesn’t seem like you are familiar with some of the basic differences between DoTerra oils and Whole Foods or New Seasons, or perhaps what you’re finding on Amazon.
Many of DoTerra’s oils are ingestable. The ones i have from other places are definitely not allowed to be ingested.
DoTerra’s are, in fact different.
I know 3 women who cured themselves from Lyme Disease with a combination of DoTerra Oils that they ingest. Pretty Amazing.
One of the same friends had migraines all of her life that have been cured by a combination of 2 oils. She no longer gets them. It’s incredible. She had been taking drugs all her life which had eroded her stomach lining, but now it’s healed and her headaches have stopped.
I know a handful of naturopaths in Portland, who use the entire line of DoTerra products and prescribe many of their products including the enzymes that they sell, which are supposedly the most effective. I think it’s TerraZyme.
Anyway, it just seems like you are under informed about how they are being used and how those oils you get at Whole Foods, etc, could not be used in the same capacity for select oils and treatments.
Nathaniell
Duh, I realize some oils can’t be ingested. But like any product, there are alternative brands, and there’s no distinguishing qualities to say that DoTerra oils are better than others (that are also able to be ingested).
Gina
MLM is such a scam!!! I wish people would do more research before getting sucked in. I hope more people come across your article.
A friend of mine (pregnant and with financial problems) was pulled into the Doterra web and, ugh, it breaks my heart. I am so worried about her. Her extremely limited energy and money are going into this MLM pit!
Karen
I just came across this article and it’s very helpful. I’ve been selling oils for almost 3 years and no one every wants to talk about how hard it actually is! Great products, but compensation plan is soooo hard. I’ve pushed and pushed through having hundreds of customers and still making under $100 a month. Doterra needs to spend less money on ads and marketing and help out Wellness Advocates financially.
I personal know amazing teachers and educators, but it’s them that makes the company shine and not the earnings. Doterra needs to make it easier for new people or overall they probably going to start having a big dip in retention of builders. I’m super sad my business didn’t grow as I was promised, trust me I worked my butt off.
Mike
I would like to add I came across this page looking into these oils because I’m watching a friend waste more time in this business. She is 2 years deep. Sells the business and is making chicken scratch with a very good amount of people under her. She can tell me all about the beliefs there in house scientist flame tho.
Esma
Ive got a friend who has been doing doterra for 3 years.. She has over 500 members under her and she’s earning close to AU$1,000 per week.. But that’s still nothing. Doterra points system is so confusing, the sign up fee yearly membership fee compulsory monthly buys and the high cost of the products are just insane.
i hated all MLM companies until Forever Living. I’m actually a pharmacist but now working on forever living full time. It’s free to join products are amazing. And we have a wide range of products including everyday necesseties that contain aloe vera. The products cost less than supermarket and pharmacy lines of similar items. And the commission rates and payment plan,. Oh boy! It’s super great. I’m in my fourth month into iy.. And just last month (in my third month) made just over $1,000. And this was through 45 members in total. And mind you I only have 4 people connected directly to me. Rest of them are my downlines.
If your friend is looking for something to do from home that has an amazing income with quality products at extremely decent prices and products that appeal to all ages, contact me through my instagram page tugrulesmaforever.
I’m happy to answer any questions and guide to success. I already helped my 4 members move up to supervisor level within their two months in to it and they’re all earning over $500 at the moment. And for us.. This is only the beginning 🙂
Mike
I don’t understand why people still join mlm companys. I would never. I work for a major courier who delivers this crap. They come and go every few years or when one gets week they might re brand under a different name. All of these company’s are based off of a pyramid scheme. There models are changed enugh to make it somewhat leagal. Verry few make a living off of one and its usualy the ones who can pressure the gullible into buying in. You need to sell your business that’s it. And sell it alott. You don’t need to sell the product. I use essential oils. But I certnly don’t pay there redicules prices. Buy the cheapest stuff you can. It’s all just as good smelling in your defuser. Anybody herd of the plasibo affect. Yah. Show me real proof of these oils working. EG. The reason pot has went from a street drug to a real prescribed Medicean is because there is tons of science backing it. No science behind these or any other company’s magic potions. Herbalife goji Juice and so many others. Came and went. Very few have staying power. Don’t wast your money people.
Princess
Please! Before you respond and weigh in with your two cents, use a dictionary!! Or spell check! It’s really hard to take anyone seriously that doesn’t know how to spell diffuser, ridiculous, or medicine!!