It’s likely that you have come across Lyoness through an email list, on social media or got it recommended by a friend or family member.
Is Lyoness 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 Lyoness review.
First and foremost I must commend you for actually doing a bit of extra research before committing to purchasing or joining Lyoness. For all you could have known, Lyoness 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 Lyoness 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 Lyoness that will hopefully help you to make the correct decision in the end.
PRODUCT NAME: Lyoness
OWNER/S: Iwan J. Ackermann, Max Meienberg, Uwe Proch & Hubert Freidl
TYPE OF PRODUCT: Global Shopping Market MLM
PRICE: Free to join
SUMMARY: At its current state, I don’t think that Lyoness is a pyramid scheme or a scam, it’s a legit online shopping community that may be worth checking out if you’re interested in the cashback perks. When you take into account that it’s free to join and a 15 year old company, I don’t think you’d be taking to much of a risk in joining.
Nevertheless, there are few problems with the company such as recruitment essentially being the only way to succeed with the company, the lack of training, the issues in the past of it operating like a pyramid scheme and last but not least, the really really low earning potential.
I don’t consider it too bad a company to join but, the earning potential that it has makes it far from being a good business opportunity to pursue. If you actually want to delve into a business that has genuine potential, check out my #1 recommendation instead.
FINAL RATING: 3/5
RECOMMENDED: Sure
Table of Contents
WHAT IS LYONESS?
Lyoness is a global shopping market that happens to use the MLM model as its core business structure. It was founded by Iwan J. Ackermann, Max Meienberg, Uwe Proch & Hubert Freidl in 2003 so, it’s not necessarily a young company either.
The company has a self proclaimed 8 million members and it also is active within 47 countries across the world, making it a global entity.
Something else that’s probably important to know about the company is that the name Lyoness is just the name of the brand, the name is a trademark or parent company that governs multiple different branches under the Lyoness brand, these branches include :
- Cashback World : This is Lyonesses main brand & platform that has an aim to connect shoppers and merchants along with offering some benefits to shoppers such, as cash back etc.
- Lyconet : This is the entity that deals with all of the network marketing activities associated with the company.
- Cashback Solutions : This is where merchants can sign up and join Lyoness to of course, start selling their line up.
The way in which this company works is that it targets 3 different groups of people, consumers, merchants and to some extent, entrepreneurs.
The consumers benefit on two different ways, they can benefit from the cashback system where they can receive anywhere from 1% – 5% in cashback when they shop within Lyonesses store.
The other thing they receive for shopping is shopping points. These points are earned for items you buy from partnered merchants within the store and can later be redeemed for cash bonuses or discounts.
The merchants need to pay an up front fee to be able to sell within the store to cover the administration and equipment expenses as well as pay a further 1% – 2% in transaction fees.
Entrepreneurs on the other hand, will probably be aiming to benefit from the companies compensation plan which I’ll get into a little later
Before we continue, if you want to know why it’s worth trusting my opinion, it’s because I’ve reviewed a lot og MLM’s on this website such as :
Which is why I do believe I’ve got a pretty good grasp on what makes a decent or a bad MLM.
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LYONESSES PRODUCT LINE
Lyoness doesn’t really have a product line per say, they just have a bunch of products that differnet merchants sell, like amazon for example although, they do have a few merchants that they partner with.
Lyoness claim that they have over 90k merchants who they work with which means that there are probably hundreds of thousands of products, at the very least, within the store.
The only product that you could argue that Lyoness technically has is their cashback card which basically stores the points you eaen from shopping but besides that, all the other products are from the merchants who paid their way in to sell their own merchandise.
HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY THROUGH LYONESS?
Lyoness is a somewhat unique MLM company that doesn’t really have a very in depth compensation plan or anything of the sort.
Unlike other MLM’s where you can make money from both recruitment and making retail sales, Lyoness is different in the sense that, unless you’re a merchant who’s paid their way in, you won’t be making much money at all through the plan.
As the company is essentially an Ecommerce market place like amazon, it’s not run like a traditional MLM company, there aren’t any ranks or anything, you simply get 0.5% in commission from the purchases made from your personal refferal and a further 0.5% from your direct refferals refferal.
This is what Lyoness refers to as their “Friendship Bonus”
The other ways you can make money is through the cashback and points system or you could decide to set up your own store as a merchant within Lyonesses marketplace.
If you want a better look at how company’s plan works, check out the video below.
THE NOT SO GOOD THINGS
The Only Way To Make Money Is By Recruiting
This isn’t very surprising but it is true, the only way you can make money with Lyoness, unless you want to become a merchant, is to recruit people into your downline.
I’m pretty sure that Lyoness also will ask you to recruit family members or friends, which normally I would say is not a very good thing but, as you’re not actually selling Lyoness branded products but, just offering your family members an opportunity to get cash back, it’s not really the worst thing in the world.
The bottom line here is that if you don’t recruit a lot of people into your team, succeeding isn’t going to be very easy, hell, if your recruits decide to not buy items from the store you probably won’t make anything either. I’ll show you how little you’ll make in a bit.
No Real Training
You’re not provided with any training on how you can go about recruiting new members and in turn you’ve got to figure out how to do things yourself.
Then again what do you expect from a company that has a very basic refferal program, I don’t think it would be worth it for Lyoness to provide training on how to recruit for a business that’s free to join.
You may not like that there isn’t any training so, I do consider it somewhat of a bad thing although, I also do acknowledge that Lyoness isn’t a traditional MLM where you’re actually put in a position that you genuinely need to make sales.
It’s Actually A Pyramid Scheme??
As you don’t really sell products and all you’re asked to do is recruitment, some countries out there have actually labelled it a pyramid scheme.
It’s home country, Austria, has actually labelled it a pyramid in 4 differnet civil courts, even criminal courts within Austria have classed it as an illegal pyramid scheme.
Norway and its lottery authority actually banned Lyoness as an illegal pyramid scheme.
There are also multiple other countries that suspect Lyoness to be a pyramid scheme too such as Sweden, Poland, France, Hungary, Lithuania and Greece.
However, in order to combat these claims, Lyoness decided to change up the way that their company operated by separating the MLM sector and the marketplace into 2 differnet establishments with Lyconet taking over the MLM sector of the company and essentially making it free to join the company as member for the network marketing side of things.
Because of these changes the Federal Court officially came to the conclusion that it isn’t a pyramid scheme because it does not force it’s members to pay to join.
This obviously shows that Lyoness does have a pretty shady past and can also mean that there’s still potential that it may be exposed as pyramid scheme later down the road.
The Earning Potential Is Really Low
The earning potential is probably the main reason that you were looking into Lyoness right? Well if you thought that it may have actually been good, think again.
The company’s 2017 income disclosure statement shows how less than 1% of all members are making anything half decent in the $1k/month range, with 97% of all members making on average $73. These results would be horrible results if you actually had to pay to join the scheme but, because it’s free, I don’t consider these facts all that bad.
Nevertheless, what it does show is that the vast majority make little to no money with Lyoness so, If you do join don’t get your hopes up on it being a solution to your money problems.
THE GOOD THINGS
It’s Free To Join
Its free to join making it a risk free MLM opportunity to delve into. When you consider how pretty much all other MLM’s can cost you around $1k+ to run for the year, Lyoness being free gives it quite a big boost in my perspective.
Nice Cashback Perks
The cashback and the points are also a nice touch meaning you can essentially get paid for doing the shopping you would do anyways. It’s not a bad trade off to shop in Lyonesses store if the prices are reasonable, especially if you can save a bit money in the long run.
It’s Been Around a While
Since starting up in 2003 Lyoness still remains an active company although it has dealt with a few bumps down the road. When you consider how most businesses fail within 10 years, Lyoness being around 15+ years adds a fair bit of credibility to it.
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IS LYONESS A PYRAMID SCHEME/SCAM?
At its current state, I don’t think that Lyoness is a pyramid scheme or a scam, it’s a legit online shopping community that may be worth checking out if you’re interested in the cashback perks. When you take into that it’s free to join and a 15 year old company, I don’t think you’d be taking to much of a risk in joining.
Nevertheless, there are few problems with the company such as recruitment essentially being the only way to succeed with it, the lack of training, the issues in the past of Lyoness operating like a pyramid scheme and last but not least, the really really low earning potential.
I don’t consider it too bad a company to join but, the earning potential that it has makes it far from being a good business opportunity to pursue. If you actually want to delve into a business that has genuine potential, check out my #1 recommendation instead.
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 Lyoness, 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 Lyoness and would like to talk about it, again feel free to do so in the comments below!
Thanks
Amhil