Can we copy another MLM company’s compensation plan and use it for our own purposes? Does each individual MLM company need their own unique compensation plan? Are they copyright protected? Why, after all, should we reinvent what successful companies like Amway, Herbalife, or Shaklee have already done? These are valid questions but the answer is no, you cannot copy somebody else’s compensation plan. Let’s explain why.

It is true that companies like Nike copy Adidas and vice versa, Microsoft copies Apple, and Apple copies Microsoft. However, shoes are shoes, sportswear is sportswear, and mobile phones are mobile phones.

Not so with your MLM software suite. Each company has too many compensation plan components like customers, distributors, products, services, commission and discount structures.

Regardless which company whose compensation plan you are looking to emulate, it won’t fit your requirements. You will end up spending more time and money changing the compensation plan you are trying to emulate. You must recognize that each company has spent a lot of time, effort, and energy designing their unique compensation plan.

Legal issues

Unlike engineering designs, a compensation plan cannot gain copyright status. However, if you copy another company’s plan to the letter there is nothing to stop them taking legal action for infringement. This is not something you want to risk.

A Better Approach

You can create your own plan with less time, effort, and cost by starting from scratch designing your own structure and compensation plan requirements. By all means, take ideas from other successful companies but make sure you build a compensation plan unique to your business.

Your plan is of vital importance to your business. It is one of the defining ingredients of your business strategy and your success.

Your plan must incentivize, recognize, and reward your distributors.
Tailor it to suit your company, your business, your customers and your pricing module.

We recommend you start by consulting a compensation plan consultant or allow us to get you started in the right direction.

We have launched over 1,000 MLM companies and watch how 90% of these companies failed and go out of business. In this blog post series, we identify the success factors that caused a mere 10% to survive and grow, and we share the pitfalls that caused so many to fail.

The compensation plan is one of the key business components for MLM Companies and to be successful you need to create and custom fit one to your company rather than trying to build your company around someone else’s compensation plan.

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