If you are here you are probably looking up the best ways to earn with direct selling through MLM. Or maybe received a message on Facebook from your friend back in high school telling you about a huge business opportunity.
MLM or Multi-Level Marketing is a business model where your income includes your own sales and a percentage of the sales group that you will be able to recruit. The people you recruit are called a ‘downline.’
Making money is tough, and it is essential that you research first before getting yourself into investing your hard-earned money. In this post, I will walk you through the important things you need to know about 4Life – Is it a scam?
4Life Review Summary
Company/Product name: 4Life Research®
Product Type: Health and Wellness Network Marketing/Multi-Level Marketing (MLM)
Price: $25 for an enrollment kit + $120 AutoShip order 100LP worth of products
Founder: Founded by David Lisonbee, Bianca Lisonbee
Best For: Anyone with a flair for building a network of people and face to face sales
Summary:4Life Research, provides a wide selection of 4Life products. Operating as an MLM, 4Life works in the health, wellness, and nutritional supplements industry.
When it comes to making money with their MLM system, the 4Life income distribution report presents a very small number of individuals who achieve success or even earn. As a recommendation, you can first try the products as what they call a Preferred Customer, learn about 4Life products, the company, and the compensation plan and weigh up whether the business is the right fit for you.
Rating: 63/100
Recommended: Products: YES, Business: No. The extremely low potential for income is not worth the huge amount of time or money you have to invest to keep your level status.
What is 4Life About?
4Life LLC, also known as 4Life Research, provides a wide selection of 4Life products. They are an MLM company that operates in the health, wellness, and nutritional supplements industry.
4Life offers high-quality, patented, health support products. Their main product is the Transfer Factor Plus which teaches your immune cells and supports your immune system’s ability to recognize, respond to, and remember potential threats.
According to their Website, they are a prime network marketing company with a Life Rewards Plan™. 4Life claims that this offers some of the highest compensation in the industry which pays up both part-time and full-time distributors alike.
According to them, distributors can collect monthly commissions, endless bonuses, “Builder Bonus” payments, and extravagant vacations.
Founded David and Bianca Lisonbee in 1998. David discovered Transfer Factors that are claimed to help you achieve better health by strengthening and supporting your body’s immune system.
After persuading his wife that there was something special about Transfer Factors pills they remortgaged their own home, and with the help of family started sharing the benefits of the pills to everyone they know. They established 4Life Research and conducted meetings in their very own home.
Is 4Life a Pyramid Scheme?
4Life grants you the alternative to earn money by selling 4Life products to retail customers, instead of just recruiting other people to receive cash. Because of this, 4Life LLC technically can’t be accused of being a pyramid scheme.
What is a Pyramid Scheme
First and foremost, a Pyramid Scheme is ILLEGAL. If a business is found out to be working as a Pyramid scheme they will be litigated and shut down.
A Pyramid Scheme is a black hole that sucks up your hard-earned money. Since a pyramid scheme relies heavily on the recruitment of new members to bring in money, it most frequently collapses because of market saturation.
MLM’s and pyramid schemes are alike in a way that they both make use of recruitment as part of their compensation plan. However, a pyramid scheme is illegal and is only focused on recruitment while MLM provides income opportunities by directly selling products and services.
Imagine, if a program begins with one person who recruits two people. The two people recruited in turn recruit two more people, and so on.
This means that in less than 30 levels, almost every person living in the United States – your aunt, grandma, and probably even her nurse – would have already been recruited.
But that’s not the worst thing about pyramid schemes. The most unfavorable thing about it is how they would entice you to join with the promise of a quick success which usually requires paying a big fat sign up. It’s a robbery in broad daylight.
Success is Rare With 4Life
When you join 4Life, you have to hit a monthly sales quota and you have to score this every month or else you lose your standing in the company. Not being consistent will cost you your income opportunity.
Because of this a lot of members are pressured to purchase products themselves to keep an active status in the company.
This indicates that most members spend more and more money. The only way to make a decent income is by enlisting more of your friends into the business so that you can earn bonuses from the additional sales you worked SO hard to make.
In joining 4Life, you can choose between two membership levels. The first is the Associate Level which you can join by purchasing a “Compass” system for $29.95. This level includes a minimum amount of materials for you to commence your 4Life business.
As shown in the above image, you will earn 25% commission on the first LP (Life Point) order of every freshly recruited friend you brought in. They call it Preferred Customer, but we all now that person is your new downline. After this, you now get to pocket 12% on the first LP order of every downline on your second level, and 5% on the first LP order of each new downline on your third level.
But if you’ve just signed up this year make sure to read the fine print because effective January 1, 2020 there are changes with the first, second, and fourth level payouts for the first LP orders.
You will still receive 25% and your direct upline will get 12%. Respectively, the two direct qualified upline distributors who are next in line receive 5% and 2%. To qualify to receive a Rapid Rewards commission the very next day, you should make sure to have 100 PV in the current month.
4Life Products
4Life Research Flagship Product
4LIFE® TRANSFER FACTOR PLUS®TRI-FACTOR® FORMULA
It primarily supports the immune system and provides overall wellness.
It strengthens the immune system’s natural ability to
recognize, respond to, and remember potential health threats.
This flagship product combines the intelligence of Transfer Factor E-XF™, the intuition of NanoFactor™ extract, and the added maintenance of the Cordyvant™ blend to produce the latest in immune system support for your body.
In all fairness, aside from the Transfer Factor Plus, 4Life Research has a wide variety of products.
Other 4Life Products
4Life Products as grouped according to the following:
- Immune system
- Antioxidant support
- Brain Health
- Cleansing and Detox
- Dental Health
- Digestive Health
- Energy
- Essential Oils
- Eye Health
- Female Health
- Glucose Metabolism
- and many more
This means that it also has a fair amount of items you can sell if the girl from your yoga class isn’t interested in the flagship product. Essential oils, anyone?
Overall, the products from 4Life in comparison with the thousands of competing companies are not as unique as the company implies. The marketing of their whole product range is around this ”immune support”. But they have stiff competition even on their key selling point. I have reviewed health and wellness companies like this in-depth for many years.
USANA Health Sciences produces pharmaceutical grade nutritional supplements that are rated the number 1 multivitamin/antioxidant supplement by the independent study “Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements” by Nutrisearch, making it the leading company in the health and wellness industry.
Are 4Life Products Worth the Money?
Are the 4Life Products a scam? To be honest, 4Life products work.
However, there are other similar alternatives to 4Life products that cost much less. Transfer factors are utilized to manage infectious conditions in people with weak immune systems. This makes it a very enticing food supplement to keep yourself in tip-top shape. However, the 4Life transfer factor, its flagship, can be quite a heavy hole in the pocket to keep as part of your healthy living routine.
This could mean that the product is difficult to sustain for a lot of people. Even if it works, if you don’t have the money to keep buying it you’ll eventually have to stop taking it or find a similar product elsewhere for half the price.
Like any other products though, 4Life has its shares of supporters and haters.
Were not sure though if this person really got sick after taking 4Life products or maybe has an underlying illness, but accordion to the BBB website 4Life gave this person a refund and apologized for taking too long. Well, that’s a point for them for good customer service,
Here is another couple of reviews you will surely find interesting.
Apparently, it doesn’t only work for puppies.
I’m not sure if veterinary drugs are more expensive for these pet-loving humans but as long as it did their fur babies good I’m not throwing any shade. I guess just make sure to consult your dog, cat–or ferret’s friendly veterinarian first.
Can You Really Make Money Selling 4Life?
Both Preferred Customers and distributors of 4Life obtain a 25% discount on all personal volume over 100 Life Point (LP). In every 4Life product, an assigned LP value is applied and used to calculate distributor commissions.
Only 1 out of 149 distributors earned more than $33k (according to their income disclosure). Joining the 4 life opportunity has a low-income potential for you, much like most other MLM’s out there.
You have to work much harder to earn anything while you are in 4Life. And you have to make recruitment part of your business strategy if you want a shot at the big bucks.
How Much Does It Cost to Join 4Life?
To start being a 4Life distributor, you only need to take out $25 for an enrollment kit. However, when your signup, the 4Life distributor who invited you will offer the option to purchase one of the 3 following Enrollment Packs:
- Immune IQ Starter Pack: $146
- Preferred Customer Basic Enrollment Pack: $250
- Preferred Customer Premium Enrollment Pack: $525
Of course, you are going to buy one of those Enrollment Packs since this will rewards you with access to several discounted 4Life products + LP. The more costly the Enrollment Pack, the more products and LP you’ll receive. If you’re low in cash you’ll probably decide on the middle one.
But you don’t have to worry about that, right? Because, if you buy the Basic or Premium Enrollment Pack, they will waive the fee for the $25 Enrollment Kit. Now you just have to worry about qualifying for the Builder Bonus. You have to remember setting up a personal monthly AutoShip order of 100LP worth of products. This could cost you around $120 monthly.
Uhhh. How much did that really leave in my bank account, now?
4Life Compensation Plan
The compensation plan 4Life displays pretty much has some pyramid-like characteristics.
The image below is taken from a PDF file you can find from the 4Life website itself.
Basically, for retail profit, you can earn around 33.3% in commission. However, they encourage to not settle for just that.
Subtly, this shows and encourages distributors to recruit a lot of friends and family to the business so they can earn more. If you have been encouraged to join, being shown this diagram will most definitely drill an idea to your head that more downlines mean more money.
With Rapid rewards, you are looking at an additional 5-25% commission on the first order from your downlines up to 3 levels deep. The Builder bonus as you can see in the diagram will get you $50-$800 monthly bonus if you have multiple “teams of 3” while team commission will earn you 2-25% cut of your downline sales.
The compensation plan is so convoluted and complex it takes a whole 39 minutes for 4Life to even explain it.
They say that they have one of the highest payouts in the industry, up to 64% of company volume, so this could suit you if you are a mega recruiter.
You can also find the full 16 page 4Life compensation plan here.
Is 4Life a Scam?
So, is 4Life a scam or is it a legit business opportunity for you?
Well, to be completely fair. I am not a 4Life Preferred customer nor am I one of their distributors. Furthermore, I do not endorse the 4Life business or 4Life products in any way.
I have spent a good amount of time researching the website, reading testimonials, and studying information on the Internet to get to the bottom of what 4Life really does. This is because programs just like this have tricked me in the past, and I want to keep others from going down the same path I did. If you’d like to learn “How to Detect an Online Marketing Scam” then click the highlighted text.
4Life is a BBB Accredited Business since February of 2014. Besides, it hasn’t been labeled a pyramid scheme either. To be honest, it is VERY hard to earn a sustainable income by selling 4Life products alone.
But speaking of their product you can find tons and tons of great reviews, especially for their flagship product. So far, most bad reviews have something to do with the price rather than product quality.
4Life Pros and Cons
Pros of 4Life
- Free Replicated Website
- Established Company
- Provides Training
Cons of 4Life
- Complicated Compensation Plan
- Expensive Enrollment Packs
- Very Low Opportunity for Income
What I like about 4Life
4Life Products work. To be honest, I never expected the number of customers satisfied with the products of 4Life. In fact, they have received awards for them.
Another thing is that they seem to be a really established company and has a good rating with BBB. This can build quite some trust with anyone who plans to join the business. So if I ever need to invite a skeptical acquaintance to join me in this business venture, it won’t be as hard as it usually is in MLM.
Free Replicated Website. 4Life acknowledges the power of the internet. In a way, this makes it easier for distributors who otherwise would need to be involved with face to face selling.
What I don’t like about 4Life
4Life is still an MLM. And because of that, I know that I should be ready to put in a LOT of work. Not to mention, with MLM you will earn so much less.
Complicated Compensation Plan. Not only is selling expensive products difficult, but the complicated compensation plan seems to rob you with the opportunity for income when the opportunity is already very small to start with.
Final Thoughts – 4Life
I am very confident with 4Life than with some other products offered in an MLM. Also, $25 is a small amount to start compared to what you need to shell out for other companies.
But on the other hand, the cost of keeping your status and qualifying for all the incentives could cost more than what you actually earn.
Source: 4Life income distribution report.
As you can clearly see, only a tiny 3.3% of distributors who earn, make more than $6,576. If you really think about all the products you bought yourself just to qualify, the incentives —such as the dream vacation— are something you could have gotten yourself much sooner if you had saved the money or invested it somewhere else.
A Better Way to Start a Home-Based Business
Not all Multi-level Marketing businesses are scams or illegal. Nevertheless, I’m not an enthusiast because of the limitations they present and the expensive products you have to promote aggressively.
However, the moment I discovered about affiliate marketing, I uncovered how it is a far superior business model because:
- You can promote anything you want and actually own the business
- You never have to sell to friends and family –and old high school friends
- You can start the business for FREE
The BIG $QUESTION: How to start affiliate marketing for FREE with NO initial cash outlay? After much research I learned this excellent opportunity to make money every month with unlimited income potential. I’ve tried and tested many affiliate marketing platforms and other methods. Glad I eventually found out this pathway that doesn’t have the disadvantages of the other methods. Plus I can work from the comfort of home. And if you want to do this full time, going premium with everything you need is just $49/month.
If you want to discover how I make my lifestyle online and how I can personally help you to also do it – then check out this special video from the link below which explains exactly how. You can also get your free 7-day bootcamp to get started.
Joana is a dedicated content writer. She learned how to search for keywords well and write straightforward perky content writing for EFYL. She loves learning a lot of new things as she writes about them.
Above all, she sees herself as a cool wife, mom, and furmom. She used to be an elementary and college teacher but chose to work from home to have more flexibility with her time and be more connected with her family and rescuing stray and abandoned pets.
4Life is a legit MLM company.
MLM business is good for networking but it’s not my cup of tea – since I hate direct selling.
In my personal opinion, all MLMs have one thing in common – A very low success rate (around 1%). The people above the “pyramid” or the “pioneers” are mostly the ones who earn the most and rest lose money.
I have big respect for people who are very successful with MLM businesses as it really takes a lot of hard work of talking – Which I definitely can’t personally sustain.
Hey Joana,
thanks for sharing this wonderful article about 4Life.
Surprisingly, up until now, I didn’t even know it existed as I had never heard about it. You’ve provided a great depth of insight about their business model & how it functions with a good amount of detail with it’s pros & cons which I think is perfect and essential for any review.
Although I have personally not been good with MLM companies. 🙂
I totally agree! Thank you for stopping by and adding your experiences.
You are not alone in not been good with MLM companies. The chances of making money with 4Life seem to require an unwavering confidence in the products and the rare skill to recruit, recruit and recruit.
Thank you Che,
I agree with your comments, it is hard for many to make it into that 1-3% that makes decent money with MLM. But for those that do, that have success with MLM business, then all credit to them – it does take a lot of hard work. It does not suit everyone, there are those who prefer a more passive work from home, home-based business that doesn’t involve recruiting.
Thanks again for stopping by and adding your opinions 🙂
Thank you for this straightforward and honest review of the 4Life business. I must agree on the fact that it is quite difficult to make money with MLMs and there are other much more efficient ways to do that online and offline.
I do have some experience with MLMs as I am part of doTERRA which has a very similar compensation plan. I joined this network mostly because of their products, but I have never really considered them as an opportunity to earn a full-time living. While some MLMs offer really great products, the “make money” part requires a lot of work and…money (!).
I agree that for some people, with a great following and oratory talent, this may become the right solution. And I find that this post could be very helpful for those who are considering joining 4Life or any other MLM, as it lists all the pros and cons.
Thank you for writing this and making people aware of the company.
It was very insightful and informative. I have not actually heard of 4Life before, but I will definitely be sharing this with anyone who has questions. I personally have never been a fan of MLM. Having to be in my family and friends faces to buy something or get them to join is not my thing.
I appreciate all the time and research you have put in to this to give people a heads up.
Hi john,
I have been involved with MLM in the past and even though I worked hard I had little success.
In particular, I had a go with MLM three times but it did not work.
Something I would like to note, is that most people I know from back then who were actually doing better than me, they are not involved with the MLM business model anymore. In addition, I remember an MLM company that I was a distributor, who also had a minimum sales quota. The result for me was after I left I had enough of their products stored in my house for the next two years.
MLM is legit as long as there are products involved. Thanks for the great review John.
Nektarios Tsakas
Hi, John,
Thank you for taking the time to put this information together. 4Life is another example that the MLM business model works for just a tiny number of people.
Some of the MLM companies give their distributors replicated websites to use in order to drive more sales and eventually, prospects into the business.
Do you have any idea if these websites are optimized for SEO? Or how they are supposed to drive traffic?
I appreciate your feedback on this!
Best Wishes,
Natalie
Hey nice review you have there.
Your thoughts about 4Life are quite impressive. In my honest opinion, I think if anyone wished to make it big in 4Life, this is the right time, because products that will help strengthening the immune system has been in high demand due to Covid 19, it will be a great deal for anyone who choose to engage in this niche.
Hi Natalia,
Thank you for making your comments.
Yes, I agree in this 4Life Review you can see that they are just another example in the many in the health and wellness space.
From what I have seen, pretty well all the MLM companies give their distributors replicated websites in order to complete transactions.
However these websites are really on the “back end” of the MLM distributors efforts – meaning, they still have to go out and find customers, typically face to face or social media.
The replicated websites are not optimized for SEO and can’t really drive traffic by themselves as such, they require the MLM distributor to promote them.
However, there is enormous opportunity though for MLM distributors who want to grow their business online.
They can create a website in a niche – For example, running a blog around topics such as health, fitness, weight loss or lifestyle can be a vehicle to drive sales online for your health & wellness MLM business or your affiliate marketing business. Your website is your gateway to the world and that’s where I can help you take this to a whole new level. Even if you already have a successful offline or online business and you’re looking to grow it, My Top Free Recommendation can teach you how to grow it. If you choose to promote your health and wellness MLM, you can also learn all about YouTube and social media marketing on the inside. I’d be your personal coach and mentor to help you do thispersonal coach and mentor to help you do this.
Hi Nektarios,
I really appreciate you taking the time to comment and share your experience.
Wow, that is interesting you noticed the high attrition rate in your experience!
Sadly you need up with enough products stored in your house for two years, wow, I don’t like the sound of that sales quota.
Sure it is a legit model and does suit some people, but not all.
If you would rather a more passive work from home strategy and a clear-cut way to make money online you should dive into affiliate marketing. There’s no recruiting and no complex compensation plans that statistically not many people earn from. Also, no downlines and no depending on a team of people to earn consistent revenue. So you don’t have to concern yourself about all that “people” stuff.
Thanks for your comments Vicki,
I’m glad you learned something about 4Life and no, you given you have chosen not to do MLM, you won’t have to push it to your family and friends anymore.
You have chosen another path, wishing you success online
Thank you for your insights and I’m glad you got a lot out of our review.
Yes with the growing demand for products to support the immune system, it would be the better time for skilful distrubutors.
The marketing of their whole product range is around this ”immune support”. But they have stiff competition even on their key selling point. I have reviewed health and wellness companies like this in-depth for many years.
USANA Health Sciences produces pharmaceutical grade nutritional supplements that are rated the number 1 multivitamin/antioxidant supplement by the independent study “Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements” by Nutrisearch, making it the leading company in the health and wellness industry, including products for immunity support.
Thank you Marina,
Its great that you have shared your experience with doTERRA. It sounds like you are a “happy customer” and not bothered to really push and sell to try to earn a decent income and as you say, at the cost of a lot of work and…money.
There are better options.