As an expert in online sales who has vast experience in it, I generally avoid both trying and recommending MLM programs for numerous reasons, and in Nikken’s case, most of the same arguments apply.
Now without wasting your time, let me straight out say in this review that I don’t think it’s a scam (nor is it a pyramid scheme).
But beyond all that jazz they show you, about how there’s young, happy people making good money promoting their products and living a healthy life through taking their products, thereby making you think that this is a dream type of business to get involved in, lies many HARD realities of reaching that point that you need to know.
I am going to explain these realities (because I know about this business) and show you why there’s honestly better options out there. The better options are how I built my online business personally. But before I get into that, let me give you a…
A brief review of Nikken and what you need to know:
Price: $99 monthly membership. Also you can choose to buy and re-sell their products, for which prices vary from $20-$100’s.
The $99 a month membership is really an entrance fee into their affiliate/recruitment program.
How it works: This is mainly an MLM program which sells health products ranging from water filters to skin products and various other health related products and services.
The “unique” aspect of the products sold there is their magnetic technology which is said to help improve health results and energy.
Additionally, like any other MLM program, it also offers the opportunity to become a recruiter for it, sell it’s products and also have other people enter the recruitment program under you, which gets you paid. In other words:
If you refer people into Nikken’s recruitment program, and they join, that’ll earn you money.
Can you actually make good money with this MLM? Yes, as long as you understand how to sell well. However, selling it’s products and recruiting people into the program require 2 different sales approaches.
Overall Rating: 3 out of 10 stars.
This just so happens to be the rating I give to just about every single MLM program I review and it’s not because if I see an MLM, I just hand out that default rating, it’s because in Nikken’s case, the way it operates, the money it charges and the way the MLM itself is structured, I just think it’s something you need to cautiously enter. I’m about to explain why…
Do I recommend Nikken? For most people, no. Only to those who are experienced sales people and TRULY passionate about the products and services offered by this program (Not beginners. If you are a beginner, then this approach to making money online is for you).
What I do recommend is this:
It is a far more flexible program to make money through that doesn’t force you to only work within it to make money. If you want to have a good, profitable online business, that’s the program I would start with. Let’s get back to reviewing Nikken though:
Pros:
1) This MLM has been around for many decades.
2) The prices of their products vary but overall, most of them are not overpriced. The value of those products however is a different story.
3) This program actually offers decent products in addition to a recruitment opportunity, thereby NOT making it a pyramid scheme.
4) Generally the cost to enter this program and recruit people isn’t that big ($99 for starters). There’s 7 membership levels overall.
Cons:
1) MLM programs are generally hard to sell to people. Recruitment is a difficult thing to pitch to people. If you just want to sell their products, that’s a different story.
2) I personally found their income statement to be annoying to read (I’ll get to it and why I don’t like it in a moment). Basically it doesn’t give you the accurate picture of the odds of succeeding with it.
3) Any MLM program which has products to sell likes to make people think there’s is unique and the best. The fact is, there’s lots of health products, which are cheaper for the consumer to buy and that competition makes it tougher to sell Nikken’s products to people.
Why buy an expensive filter (like Nikken sells), when you get a 5 star rated water filter on Amazon for example? And by the way, you can promote water filters through Amazon too as an affiliate for them.
And in regards to affiliate marketing in general, that I believe is far less constricting than getting involved with an MLM program.
4) I dislike MLM compensation plans, including the one in Nikken. Basically, it’s 7 levels, each offering it’s own increasing number of benefits if you join it such as paying you more for referrals, but this is a complicated web which I dislike seeing in MLM programs, it makes it tougher to promote in my experience.
5) I don’t think there’s enough evidence to suggest that magnetic therapy stuff is workable. I have some experience with that stuff and I personally think this whole thing is a sales pitch.
6) If your niche in life has nothing to do with health or fitness, you are probably not cut out to be in this program, as it’ll be more difficult to sell something you’re not passionate about. There’s other programs out there like Wealthy Affiliate which WILL teach you to find your passion and form a business from it if that is the case. It did for me.
Nikken is not a scam, but at the same time it’s hard to make it work:
Just about every single and successful MLM program out there that sells health products, be it offline or online does a good job of decorating itself in front of people eyes in that as I said above, they like to make it sound like joining them is a one way ticket to success, that you can be healthy buying their things and being part of their recruitment team can help you make a good business of your own.
This is not a new message, as I see it in almost every single MLM program I review. But this is a very difficult outcome to reach. And while Nikken provides a income disclosure of how much their affiliates make, for anyone to view publicly, the problem is that it’s a very complicated thing to read and understand.
Here’s a good way to explain how likely you are to succeed in this program:
Basically what they do is they average out every single level of membership they have with the number of people in it, their earnings and then they give you the average of all of that.
The problem is that this is a bleached number and doesn’t do a good job of showing just how many people succeed in this business, which in my experience is very few.
Example:
- Let’s take 10 people in an MLM program.
- 9 of them make $10 in a month.
- The 10th makes $1,000 in the same month.
- If you put all those numbers together and divide them by 10, you’ll get a conclusion that on average everyone makes $109 (which is just not true).
Through this sort of bleaching method, suddenly those 9 people who made little sound like they made way more, but again, the amount of people who join and try to succeed isn’t listed here, so it’s tough to see the REAL picture.
Now I’m not saying this is deceptive.
A lot of people don’t succeed in MLM programs for personal, and very often irresponsible reasons and it has no impact on the MLM itself, but there should be more transparent ways to showcase how well it works.
In my experience, MOST people will fail at MLM businesses as well as anything outside of it if they don’t go about it the right way. I happen to believe the best way to succeed in making your own online business is through those 3 steps I mentioned above and the program that helps with that outcome (Wealthy Affiliate).
Final Rating: Nikken.
Yellow Flag
3 out of 10 stars. It’s legitimate, that I can say, but like I said, to succeed in it, will take a lot of work. Being that there are a lot of choices for people to buy health products and for less, you may potentially have better success promoting health products outside the realm of Nikken and making good money that way.
My final thoughts (5 reasons to go with the other option):
Obviously, if you are looking into Nikken, you are looking to know if it’s a scam and if it’s not, if it’s worth joining to try and make your own business with it. It’s possible, but it’s very hard, that’s the bottom line.
I personally can tell you that the alternative option I presented in this review is better and the reasons why are simple:
In my personal experience, MLM programs add an extra layer of difficulty (complicated compensations, overpriced products) to succeed through and through programs like my alternative, you can still make sales selling products, but in a less constrictive environment.
I have nothing against Nikken, but as a sales person who has been through a lot of experiences, going a route outside the MLM realm has better chances of success.