Is Paparazzi Accessories A Scam (A Pyramid Scheme In Disguise!?)

It’s likely that you have come across Paparazzi Accessories through an email list, on social media or got it recommended by a friend or family member.

Is Paparazzi Accessories 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 Paparazzi Accessories review.

First and foremost I must commend you for actually doing a bit of extra research before committing to joining Paparazzi Accessories. For all you could have known, the product could be a major scam so the fact you’re here right now, researching whether or not that’s the case is a pretty smart move on your part.

To be fully transparent with you, I am personally not a member of Paparazzi Accessories so I can assure you that I will not attempt to sell you it unless of course it’s worth investing in.

What I will aim to do is provide you with an unbiased 3rd party look at Paparazzi Accessories that will hopefully help you to make the best decision you can in the end.


PRODUCT NAME: Paparazzi Accessories (PA)

OWNER/S: Misty Kirby, Trent Kirby, Chani and Ryan Reeve in 2010.

TYPE OF PRODUCT: Jewellery based MLM

PRICE: $99 + autoship ($75+)

SUMMARY: The good news is that PA isn’t a scam or a pyramid scheme, it’s a legitimate MLM company however, whether or not it’s a good business opportunity to pursue, that’ll depend on a number of factors.

The heavy emphasis on recruitment or holding parties to make money, the really low profits per sale, the annoying aspect of only being able to sell the products within a specific area and the lack of any transparency regarding their income disclosure statement are a few reasons why I wouldn’t suggest joining the company.

I do like the companies longevity and the cheaper products (although this does come at the price of lower profits per sale) nevertheless, unless you have some kind of online lead generation methods to bring in tons of warm leads into your unilevel team, I’d probably look into other businesses (like affiliate marketing) or even MLM’s that have the potential for larger profit margins.

FINAL RATING: 2/5

RECOMMENDED: NO


WHAT IS PAPARAZZI ACCESSORIES?

Paparazzi Accessories logo

PA is a MLM company that focuses on the jewellery market and was founded by Misty Kirby, Trent Kirby, Chani and Ryan Reeve in 2010. The company specialises in selling affordable jewellery to customers, with most of the costing only $5

The reason PA was found was so that the company could help women find accessories that fit their personalities and empower them. So, the premise behind PA was and is to help women find themselves, in fact the founders claim that “Paparazzi is really about change!”

The message behind the company is quit basic in my opinion but it’s definitely not a bad goal to have. If you want a to know a little more about PA’s story, just check out the video below.

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PAPARAZZI ACCESSORIES’ PRODUCT LINE

PA have a very large assortment of jewellery with the majority of the line up costing around the $5, which of course is very cheap.

The type of products they sell include :

Paparazzi Accessories products

 

  • Necklaces
  • Earrings
  • Rings
  • Braclets etc.

And they have a very large assortment of each one of these accessories. They have a slightly more expensive jewellery collection within their shop called the zi collection 2018, where each item is worth $25 however, for the most part the shop consists of very cheap and affordable items so I can’t really knock PA on that.

If you want to check PA’s products out, click here. 


HOW GOOD ARE PAPARAZZI ACCESSORIES’ PRODUCTS?

As for how good the jewellery is, it’s kind of a mixed bag. Within bbb some people really like the products whilst others claim they always tend to get broken items whenever they order, calling the accessories “crap”.

Paparazzi Accessories bad

Paparazzi Accessories good

There are a lot of consultants who praise the quality of the products and they may be right even if slightly biased (as you can see above) however, there does seem to be quite few issues regarding the business opportunity as a whole. Check out of a few complaints below

Paparazzi Accessories bad

Paparazzi Accessories bad

Of course I’ll get into that in more detail later but, for the most part the products are positively recieved.


HOW DO YOU MAKE MONEY WITH PAPARAZZI ACCESSORIES?

As is the case with pretty much all MLM businesses there are 2 ways to make money with them, PA 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

To join PA you’ll need to first find a consultant to sign up under and secondly you’ll need to purchase a starter kit. There are 3 different starter kits you can purchase and they include the following :

  • Preview Pack ($99)
  • Small Home Part Kit ($299)
  • Large Home Party Kit ($499)

So the initial starting costs aren’t necessarily all that bad but, do keep in mind that your comsultant will ask you to purchase a more expensive kit and PA will obviously want you to buy the more expensive kits too.

The main difference between each kit is the number of products you get within. The large home party kit will just have more products in it and also be better value for your money as the price of each accessory will be cheaper resulting in a larger profit margin in the end.

Moreover, in order to remain as an active distributor for PA, you’ll need to purchase 50PV worth of items every month which, according to the compensation plan, translates to buying atleast $125 worth of products (2PV = $5 retail price). In terms of wholesale price I reckon a $5 item will be about $3 so ultimately you’d need to invest around $75 per month.

This is where the business model becomes expensive. Even if you get the cheapest packet out of the lot, you’d still need to spend around $1k-$1.2k per year to maintain your active status and when you take into account how cheap the jewellery PA sell is, you’d need to sell a lot of items just to breakeven.

This means PA is around the average start up price when it comes to the start up and maintaining costs for any MLM out there on a yearly basis.

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COMPENSATION STRUCTURE

There are 8 main ways to make money with PA’s compensation plan but before that I want to let you know of the “14” different ranks you can achieve as a PA consulatant and what you need to do in order to qualify for the them :

  1. Consultant
  2. Star Consultant
  3. Director
  4. Premier Director
  5. Executive Director
  6. Producer
  7. Premier Producer
  8. Executive Producer
  9. Fashionista
  10. A-Lister
  11. Maven A-Lister
  12. Jetsetter
  13. Luxe Jetsetter
  14. Impressionista

Paparazzi Accessories compensation plan

The image above basically shows how much you’d be required to peronsally spend (PV) and how much your team (OV) would need to spend in order to maintain a rank within the company.

So as a consultant you’d only need to spend 50 PV, which as I explained is equivalent to roughly $75 per month. Now if you were somehow able to achieve an impressionista rank you’d need to buy 250PV of products which is roughly equivalent to $300 and requires an OV worth 1.5 million.

The monthly PV is not so drastically increased but, it’s still a hefty amount simply to maintain active status don’t you think?

I’ll now move onto the compensation plan.

Retail Sales

This is the process of selling the product in person through either parties specifically designed for making sales or maybe through a stall in a market. The commissions for each sale are around 40% meaning once you’ve purchased some jewellery at the wholesale price, you should be able to make $2 per sale.

This looks great when you look purely at the commission rate however, to make $1000 in profit through just direct sales, you’d need to move at least 500 items. This is obviously going to be very difficult to do in person but, it’s also possible to sell through the website too which may help you achieve this number.

Show Rebate

If a consultant purchases 1000 PV or more in a single order, PA rewards them by giving a processed 10% show rebate for that months commission check.

Business Builder Bonus

Whenever you personaly enrol a consultant into your team (level 1), you’ll be eligible to earn a 15% commission on their starter kit as long as you’re still an active consultant.

The commissions you’d receive for each pack are as such :

  • Preview Pack a $14.85 commission
  • Small Home Part Kit a $44.85 commission
  • Large Home Party Kit a $74.85 commission

Unilevel Residual Commission

PA pays its consultants residual commissions through a unilevel structure. A unilevel structure, simply put, is a system where you can recruit infinitely horizontally but the depth of the structure is capped. In this case PA caps the depth of the structure at the 3rd level.

You can earn a 5% – 10% from all of your teams purchases and earnings depending on how highly you rank. The unilevel commissions for each level is fully unlocked as soon as you achieve the Premier Director rank where you’d earn the following commissions rates per rank :

  1. Level 1 : 10%
  2. Level 2 : 5%
  3. Level 3 : 5%

Generation Bonus

You can also receive a commission from a generation bonus provided you reach the executive director or higher. You can have upto 3 generations where you’ll be able to earn an extra 1% – 3% in commissions. A generation begins when you have an Executive Director or higher in any level within the unilevel structure.

Legacy Bonus

This bonus is only for a A-Lister or higher rank. You’ll be able to earn a further 1% – 2% in commissions for upto 3 legacies.  A Legacy is created when you have an A-Lister rank member on any of the 3 given Levels.

There is also an infinity bonus and cash bonus element to the compensation plan however, you don’t really need to learn about these right now because they’re mainly designed for the highest ranks in the company.

If you want a more detailed look at the plan, watch the video below.


THE NOT SO GOOD THINGS

Recruitment Is The Most Important Way To Succeed

As you can see from the plethora of ranks as well as the multiple different ways to make real residual commissions with PA, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the main way to succeed with the company is through recruitment and not through house parties trying to sell $5 items to friends and family directly.

So, if you’re not great at recruiting people whether it be online or offline and if you’re just not bothered to learn how to do so, I’d highly recommend looking elsewhere, for a better business opportunity (check out my #1 reccomendation for my preferred self-employed business).

You Can Only Sell Products Physically In One Location

One thing that may be annoying is that PA actually restricts where you can make sales to only a single location. This can become a huge hindrance to your business if you manage to do really well but, are unable to scale properly because of the company’s restriction.

I guess you could bypass this through the use of a website and selling online but, if you don’t know how to do that, it may become really annoying later down the line if you somehow are able to become profitable as a consultant.

The Income You Can Make Is Really Small Per Sale

When you take into account how all of the products (minus the Zi collection) are $5, you’d need to sell a helluva lot to make a solid income of around $2k – $3k a month. When you calculate the profit per sale to be $2, you’d need to sell around 1000 – 1500 a month to make a good income…

So yeah, the smaller prices are great for customers but, as a consultant you’re better of recruiting tons of people into your downline team instead if you want to make being a PA consultant worth it.

Most People Will Fail

I tried to find a income disclosure statement to see how well PA consultants did on a yearly basis but, I couldn’t find it nevertheless, I have reviewed and seen my fair share of income disclosure statements from other MLM’s like xyngular, ariix, kyani, worldventures and going off of those stats I wouldn’t think most people are succeeding with PA.

On top of that, the really low profit per sale also adds to how low the success rate is likely to be for PA. Generally only around 5% of all members tend to make $1k/month whilst only the top 1% tend to average making a full time income of $2k+/month.

There’s every chance that you might become a successful consultant however, the stats and figures are definitely not going to be in your favour.


THE GOOD THINGS

The Products Are Super Cheap

On the flip side, the smaller price tag is also better for customers so being able to sell them to others shouldn’t be very hard either although selling around a thousand a month is going to be far from easy.

It’s Been Around A While

Having been around since 2010 it’s about 10 years old at this point which is a verg admirable number of years to reamain an active business from the research I’ve done. Normally 50%+ of all businesses tend to collapse within 10 years so PA still being around does add a fair bit of credibility to the company.

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IS PAPARAZZI ACCESSORIES A PYRAMID SCHEME/SCAM?

The good news is that PA isn’t a scam or a pyramid scheme, it’s a legitimate MLM company however, whether or not it’s a good business opportunity to pursue, that’ll depend on a number of factors.

The heavy emphasis on recruitment or holding parties to make money, the really low profits per sale, the annoying aspect of only being able to sell the products within a specific area and the lack of any transparency regarding their income disclosure statement are a few reasons why I wouldn’t suggest joining the company.

I do like the companies longevity and the cheaper products (although this does come at the price of lower profits per sale) nevertheless, unless you have some kind of online lead generation methods to bring in tons of warm leads into your unilevel team, I’d probably look into other businesses (like affiliate marketing) or even MLM’s that have the potential for larger profit margins.


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 PA , 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 PA and would like to talk about it, again feel free to do so in the comments below!

Thanks

Amhil

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