It’s likely that you have come across American Income Life through an email list, on social media or got it recommended by a friend or family member.
Is American Income Life a scam? The reasons why you’re here is because you have want answers right so, that’s what I’m going to provide for you within this American Income Life review.
First and foremost I must commend you for actually doing a bit of extra research before committing to purchasing or joining American Income Life. For all you could have known, American Income Life may very well be a scam and rob you of your money so this review could help you find anything peculiar about it.
To be totally transparent with you I haven’t used American Income Life so I can assure you that I will not attempt to sell you on it unless of course it’s worth investing in.
What I will aim to do is provide you with an unbiased 3rd party review of American Income Life that will hopefully help you to make the correct decision in the end.
PRODUCT NAME: American Income Life (AIL)
OWNER/S: Harold Goodman and Bernard Rapoport
TYPE OF PRODUCT: insurance MLM
PRICE: $300+
SUMMARY: The good news is that AIL isn’t a scam, I’m certain that it’s a legitimate MLM company that you can get involved with if you want to but, there are quite a few issues with it.
The fact that you will need to be good at recruiting or sales to succeed, the misleading information about how it’s structured like a job opportunity that pays you salary as opposed to results based, the high turnover rate and the likelihood that you’ll fail if you join the company are the main reasons as to why I’d suggest you skip it.
FINAL RATING: 1.5/5
RECOMMENDED: NO
Table of Contents
WHAT IS AMERICAN INCOME LIFE?
American Income Life is a MLM company founded by Harold Goodman and Bernard Rapoport 1951 and is a company that sells insurance policies to customers.
So it’s obviously a very old company thats come a long way from its meager background of starting with $25k to now being owned by Torchmark Corporation, which is a company actually present in the New York Stock exchange. The fact AIL is a publicly traded company definitely adds to its legitimacy.
Anyway, at the current moment the company has its headquarters located within Waco, Texas.
One thing that has gotten a lot of people confused regarding the “job” that AIL offers is that if they join they’ll actually be paid a salary, unfortunately that is not the case.
Instead, if you go to one of their interviews and manage to be “accepted”, which’ll probably be super easy, you’ll need to pay for a few licences and what not (I’ll get into the details a little later) and you will also be told that you need to recruit new members and that all of the income you make will truly be based on your ability to make sales.
So, what this means is that when you join, you won’t be an employee but an independent contractor whose success will purely be based on their results
Just so you know that I know what I’m talking about, I’ve reviewed a lot of MLM companies on this site such as :
So I do have a pretty solid idea on how most MLM’s tend to operate.
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AMERICAN INCOME LIFE’S INSURANCE OFFERINGS
As AIL associates itself as an a company that sells insurance, of course its line of services reflect this.
As for what their offerings are, they include :
- Whole Life Insurance : This policy covers you for your entire lifetime. The price on this never increases.
- Term Life Insurance : This policy is designed to cover buyers for a specific period of time. The Pricings in this policy increase after the initial cover period.
- Accident and Supplemental Health Insurance : A policy that covers its members against accidents and illnesses.
- Final Expensive Plan : This is a whole life policy that covers the funeral expenses of the person who bought it.
- Terminal Illness Rider : This policy gives people who are diagnosed with terminal illness along with their riders an accelerated benefit payment of half the policy’s value if their life expectancy is within a year of diagnosis.
- Accident Protection : This policy provides cash benefits when the insured is either killed or injured accidentally.
- Hospital indemnity : This covers other expenses that come into fruition for long hospital stays caused by illness or injury.
- Cancer protection : This policy aids individuals with medical expenses and/or lost work due to cancer treatment.
- Critical illness : The critical illness policy provides financial assistance in paying for medical expenses for patients who experience critical illnesses such as stroke or heart attacks.
It does seem like AIL offers quite an extensive number of insurance policies, as for if they’re good, well I can’t speak from experience so I’m not too sure..
WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK OF AMERICAN INCOME LIFE?
As I’ve never actually applied for any of AIL’s insurance plans, I can’t really speak for their reliability (although being in business for nearly 70 years should mean something) that’s why I did a bit of research to see what actual consumers thought and this is what I found.
In BBB it seems like a lot of people are having a problem with the customer service that’s delivered by AIL’s consulants.
There are also issues regarding the implementation of the insurance policy from certain people.
So in short the services provided are a very mixed bag with a lot of the main issues being with the unprofessionalism of some of the sales representatives.
HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY THROUGH AMERICAN INCOME LIFE?
As is the case with pretty much all MLM businesses there are 2 ways to make money with them, AIL being no exception.
1. The first method is by directly selling the product to other individuals and in return make a commission for the sales
2. You make money through your recruits and downline, by getting residual income by following and meeting certain criteria as well as make money through bonuses and incentives due to meeting company set goals.
HOW TO GET STARTED
In order to get started as a consultant for AIL, you will be first required to attend a few of their interviews before being required to spend some money on mandatory licences and what not.
The license that you will be required to pay for includes the state insurance license exam which will set you back around $100. After that you will need to register for your state license which varies for each state but can also cost around $80 – $100. You will then need to pay for a background check once you’ve passed which will cost you $47.
The last thing you’ll need to pay is for the state to register your license which will cost another $75.
This means you’ll need to pay around 300 bucks to become an official consultant for AIL. it’s definitely not the most expensive of MLM’s to get involved in but, it does require you do to quite a bit of work before you can consider becoming a member.
All in all the start up costs aren’t too bad.
COMPENSATION STRUCTURE
It was pretty tough to find out all the details regarding the compensation plan that AIL offers but, I do know that it is an MLM company as there is emphasis of recruitment as stated by some of AIL’s sales consultants.
Sales Commission’s
For every insurance policy that you manage to sell you’ll make a 50% commission although when you do get paid, you’ll make 65% of the commission immediately whilst you’ll be paid out the remaining 35% in 6 months.
This means if say your commission is $100, you’ll immediately be paid out $65 and will get the remaining $35 6 months afterwards
Residual Commissions
As I said, I couldn’t really find anything out about this but, if it’s anything like the majority of MLM companies out there, you will be encouraged to recruit as much as you can as will your downline members so that you can make as much residual income from them as possible.
THE NOT SO GOOD THINGS
Success Will Be Dependent On How Much You Can Recruit And Sell
What I mean by this is that you will not be able to get anywhere as an AIL consultant if you do not know how to talk to people or know how to convince them buy into the company’s opportunities.
Recruitment will be the biggest reason as to why someone may or may not succeed. This is how it is with other MLM’s so it’s very unlikely to be any different for AIL.
It’s amongst the biggest issues that most people will have on being a consultant so I think it’s worth a mention here.
It’s Marketed As A Normal Job Opportunity
This is a problem because AIL is marketed as a job opportunity but, the reality is that there is no fixed salary associated with it. Yes you do have to go through an interview, twice even but, the job isn’t a normal job.
It’s a commission and more so results based company so all the money you’ll earn will be dependent on how good you are at making sales. If you’ve been called up or emailed regarding the opportunity, you should at the very least know that success will be dependent on the recruitment and sales that you manage to make and not through a monthly salary.
High Turnover Rate
Tons and tons of members seem to leave AIL on a regular basis claiming that they’ve been treated unfairly or how bad their experience was as a sales representative.
If you want to see all the complaints they’ve received, you can check out some of the reviews on glassdoor.
No Income Disclosure Statement
The lack of an income disclosure statement makes it hard for me to judge how well most consultants are doing but, taking into account the high turnover rate and the income statements from other MLM’s I’ve reviewed like xyngular, Arbonne and Nucerity, it’s quite likely that the success rate isn’t very good.
Usually only around 5% tend to make around $1k/month whilst less than1% make a full time income. Although there is a chance you could potentially creep into the top 1%, it will take a lot of dedication and hard work on your part to see it through.
THE GOOD THINGS
It’s Been Around A While
The fact that AIL has been around for nearly 70 years is quite an outrageous period of time which of course adds a lot of credibility to it. When you take into account how so many companies fail within 10 years, AIL being around for 68 years is a massive positive for it.
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IS AMERICAN INCOME LIFE A PYRAMID SCHEME/SCAM?
The good news is that AIL isn’t a scam or a pyramid scheme, I’m certain that it’s a legitimate MLM company that you can get involved in if you want to but, there are quite a few issues with it.
The fact that you will need to be good at recruiting or sales to succeed, the misleading information about how it’s structured like a job opportunity that pays you salary as opposed to results based business, the high turnover rate and the likelihood that you’ll fail if you join the company are the main reasons as to why I’d suggest you skip it.
Of course it’s not necessarily the worst company to get involved in if you actually know what you’re getting into nonetheless, I still suggest skipping it.
MY PERSONAL RECOMMENDATION
I personally will always recommend against using a MLM business model to make money, not because you can’t make money through it (you totally can) but, the system has always seemed shady to myself and is kinda synonymous with the likes of a pyramid scheme or scams (MOBE and Digital altitude).
Instead I prefer working with something created through ones own means and is ultimately dependent on yourself and your work ethic alone.
This method I’m talking about is affiliate marketing.
The reasons as to why I recommend it over MLM based structures are because
– there is no need to recruit constantly
– it is a legitimate method that has been working consistently and continues to grow as more businesses want individuals to promote products
– and because it is free to start up, no unnecessarily large start up funds needed.
The service I recommend is Wealthy Affiliate. It’s free to sign up to and will get you set up and ready to start your affiliate marketing journey within minutes, as it did for me when I begun my journey.
If you have any questions that you would like to ask me regarding AIL , feel free to do so in the comments section below and I will get back to you as soon as I can. If you have your own thoughts about AIL and would like to talk about it, again feel free to do so in the comments below!
Thanks
Amhil