Melaleuca
The highest grade any legacy direct seller has received on this site, and it is earned on structure rather than on outcomes: no pack, no inventory, no resale, an explicit cap on commissionable volume - attached to a base where 82% of members earn nothing at all against roughly $837 a year.
Melaleuca has removed almost every mechanism by which this industry actually hurts people - no starter pack, no wholesale purchase, no garage full of stock, and a written cap that stops commissions above 150 Product Points a customer a month - and 82% of its members still earn nothing while committing to about $837 a year.
Can you actually make money with Melaleuca?
Yes, under conditions. Melaleuca has removed most of the mechanisms that actually hurt people in this industry, and that should be said first and without hedging. No starter pack. No wholesale purchase. No inventory at all, because resale is prohibited and product ships from Idaho Falls direct to the customer's door. And a written cap: no commissions are paid above the first 150 Product Points a customer buys in a month, which is a rare brake on loading a downline.
The cost is a commitment rather than a fee. Membership is $19 a year, and then 35 Product Points every calendar month, about $58 of product, plus $10.42 of flat shipping. That is roughly $837 for a year, and it applies to plain customers rather than only to people building a business. It is enforced by an automatic Backup Order that ships and charges the card on file if the member does not order, on a consent given once at signup.
Now the outcome side, from the company's own 2022 Annual Income Statistics. 82% of members are strictly customers who receive no compensation at all. The 8% who become Product Advocates average $110 to $510 a year, well under their own outlay, and the same table shows people sitting at those levels with up to 393 months in business, which means somebody has averaged $232 a year for thirty-two years. About 10% reach Director.
For the ones who get there the money is real, and this is where the file differs from most. Director 1-2, where 91.2% of all Directors sit, averages $2,073 gross against roughly $837 of cost, an actual surplus of about $1,236 in cash. Break-even sits at roughly ten to fifteen active personally enrolled customers. One caution about every figure in that document: it is computed only on members who stayed active for seven to twelve consecutive months, so everybody who tried for four months and quit is invisible, and attrition is not published.
membership fee only - then a committed 35 Product Points every calendar month, about $58 of product, plus $10.42 flat shipping. No starter pack, no kit, no inventory.
- You would buy about $58 of these products every month whether or not you ever earned a cent. The commitment applies to plain customers, it is enforced by an automatic Backup Order, and it is the largest single cost in this decision.
- You can get to ten to fifteen active personally enrolled customers, because that is where the arithmetic turns. Below that, the 7% entry tier cannot cover an $837 year at any customer count that makes sense.
- You want a customer base rather than a fast start. The largest per-customer payment in the plan is the 50% Product Introduction Commission on a new customer's first month, and advancement bonuses are gated on a five-month retention index that forfeits the money when people churn.
- You are prepared for cancellation to be harder than joining. Billing and cancellation dominate the complaint record, 68 closed with the Better Business Bureau in three years, and the same theme ran through 120 complaints to the Idaho Attorney General between 1991 and 2004.
That call is computed, not chosen - the rule reads three of the nine published dimension scores and is printed on the methodology page. It describes this company's plan and the figures it publishes about the people already in it. It is not a prediction about you, and nothing on this site is advice.
Legal status
LEGAL - and the file is notably quiet for 41 years of trading. No court and no regulator has ever found Melaleuca to be a pyramid scheme. There is no FTC complaint, no FTC consent order, no injunction, no SEC action of any kind, no criminal proceeding, no receivership, no bankruptcy and no state pyramid prosecution since 1992. What the file does contain, in date order: a 1991 Michigan Attorney General cease-and-desist order over alleged pyramid-law violations and a 1992 Michigan and Idaho consent decree in which the company agreed not to engage in pyramid marketing - both reported by secondary sources only, the primary documents could not be obtained; a 1991 Idaho Attorney General investigation closed by an assurance of voluntary compliance after field members falsely claimed the state had approved the company; FDA warning letters in 1997 and around 2014, the second over a cartilage claim on a supplement; a Federal Trade Commission warning letter dated 5 June 2020 over field earnings representations, which is not a complaint, not a finding and carries no penalty; Notices of Penalty Offenses in 2021 and 2023, which are notification devices sent to long lists of companies and are not allegations that this company did anything; and Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council Case #256-2026, administratively closed on 2 April 2026 - a private, industry-funded self-regulatory body, closing in the company’s favor.
Confidence: Medium-High
Primary sources fetched directly where possible. Everything we could not verify is listed at the bottom of this page by name.
Follow the money
An Idaho household-products and supplements manufacturer, founded in 1985 and still controlled by its founder, selling around 450 self-made SKUs direct to members through a seven-generation unilevel plan. The field are called Marketing Executives - not "Direct Marketing Executives," a term that appears nowhere in any edition of the compensation plan and which this report corrects. The company’s own trademarked name for its model is "Consumer Direct Marketing," and it denies being an MLM.
This is the highest grade a legacy direct seller has been given on this site, and the reason has to be argued rather than asserted, so here it is in one paragraph. Melaleuca has removed almost every mechanism by which this industry actually damages people. There is no starter pack and no kit to buy. There is no wholesale purchase and no resale - the plan prohibits it, every order ships direct from Idaho Falls to the end user, and a Marketing Executive never touches product. That means inventory loading is not merely discouraged, it is structurally impossible: there is no garage full of boxes to be stuck with, because there is no way to acquire one. The plan contains an explicit written cap on it anyway - "Commissions are paid on the first 150 Product Points that a customer purchases each month. No commissions are paid on amounts exceeding 150 Product Points" - which is a control very few plans in this category impose on themselves. Advancement bonuses are gated on a five-month retention index, so churning people through the door forfeits the money. No capital is handed over against a return of any kind. There is a 90-day any-reason refund. The company manufactures what it sells, has been solvent for 41 years, and publishes an income disclosure more granular than the category norm. Take those facts together and the structural harm this site normally grades for is largely absent.
Now what keeps it out of the B bands, and it is not close. On the company’s own 2022 Annual Income Statistics, 82% of members are strictly customers who receive no compensation at all. Those members pay $19 a year and, in the company’s own words, "commit to ordering a minimum of 35 Product Points (your choice) every calendar month" - enforced by an automatic Backup Order that ships and charges the card if they forget. A Product Point is the commission base of one dollar but costs a member roughly $1.31 to $2.00, clustering near $1.65, so 35 points is about $46 to $70 of product, most plausibly about $58. Add the $19 fee and $10.42 of flat shipping twelve times and the true annual cost is about $837. Against that: the 8% who become Product Advocates average $110 to $510 a year on the company’s own table, and the same table records people at those levels with up to 393 months in business. Only the roughly 10% who reach Director clear their costs. The modal Director does clear them - Director 1–2, where 91.2% of all Directors sit, averages $2,073 gross - and that is a genuine, unusual credit. But about one member in ten gets there, and the disclosure counts only people who stayed active seven to twelve consecutive months, so everyone who tried and quit is missing from every average on the page.
The "we are not an MLM" claim deserves its own test, because the whole public positioning rests on it. The company argues that no compensation is paid for recruiting, that resale is prohibited, that it owns the customer relationship and that there are no downline overrides on internal volume. The first three are broadly supportable. The fourth is not: the plan pays 7% organization commission across seven generations at Director status and above, and Leadership Points - awarded for enrolling customers and for your enrollees advancing in rank - are a required input to every senior status. An attorney who practices in this field and has no stake in defending the company put it plainly: if there is an opportunity for an override commission from downline productivity, it is an MLM. An Idaho court, granting summary judgment against the founder in his 2013 defamation suit, held that a journalist’s "pyramid-like company" characterisation was non-actionable as truth, substantial truth or protected opinion. The related field folklore that "95%+ of members are customers" traces to nothing: the company’s own published number is 82%, and those 82% are fee-paying subscribers with an enforced monthly purchase commitment, not walk-in retail buyers. That distinction is the difference between a supermarket’s customer count and a loyalty club’s, and the marketing invites the first comparison while the plan document describes the second.
The last thing to hold in mind is that nobody, including this report, can tell you which way the business is going. Melaleuca is private and files nothing. A trade estimator models 2025 revenue at $1.9bn, a 14% fall from $2.2bn. The company has said "more than $2 billion" continuously since at least 2017 and repeated it at its May 2026 convention. Both readings are unaudited and there is no primary source that would settle it. That is not an academic point for someone weighing a seven-generation residual: it is the difference between buying an annuity on a flat base and buying one on a shrinking base.
Where Melaleuca members sat in 2022
Melaleuca’s own Annual Income Statistics, the most recent edition this review could extract in full. The 2021 edition gave 81/9/10, so the shape is stable year on year. Compensation figures are gross and exclude business expenses, and the tables count only members active for seven or more consecutive months.
| Product | Price | Pays |
|---|---|---|
| Membership Buys a 30–40% discount against regular prices and nothing else. A Non-Member customer pays no fee but forfeits the discount, which makes the catalog materially uncompetitive. No starter pack, no kit, no position - and that absence is the single biggest structural credit in this file. |
$19.00 + tax annual, auto-renewing |
— |
| 35 Product Point monthly commitment The company’s own FAQ: members "commit to ordering a minimum of 35 Product Points (your choice) every calendar month." If no order is placed, an automatic Backup Order ships and the card on file is charged. A Product Point pays $1 of commission but costs about $1.65 at member prices - the most important arithmetic fact in this report. |
~$58 (range $46–$70) every calendar month |
— |
| Flat shipping Non-refundable. $12.46 to PO boxes, $15.14 Hawaii and the Pacific Islands, $16.54 Alaska. Relief starts at 39 points (50% back) and reaches 100% at 44 points - 26% above the stated commitment - and arrives as Loyalty Shopping Dollars that expire three months after the month the order was placed. |
$10.42 standard US ground per order |
— |
| MelaPower 6x laundry concentrate, 48 fl oz A 6x concentrate. Per load this is competitive with premium supermarket detergent, and the concentrate format genuinely cuts plastic and freight weight. This is the part of the catalog a participant can defend honestly. |
$17.49 preferred ($25.00 regular) per unit |
10 points - $0.70 at 7%, $2.00 at 20% |
| Tough & Tender 12x all-purpose cleaner, 8 fl oz Diluted as directed, plausibly around $0.03 per ready-to-use ounce against roughly $0.125 for a $4 supermarket spray. Note the commission: referring a friend who buys one bottle earns twenty-one cents at the entry tier. Nobody is selling products here; they are enrolling a subscription and taking a slice of it. |
$5.69 preferred ($8.50 regular) per unit |
3 points - $0.21 at 7%, $0.60 at 20% |
| Vitality Women multivitamin, 60 ct (30 days) Roughly a 3.7-times premium against a mass-market multivitamin at about $4.50 for thirty days. Thirteen points from one bottle is also more than a third of the monthly commitment, which is exactly why the incentives point here. |
$16.99 preferred ($24.50 regular) per unit |
13 points - $0.91 at 7%, $2.60 at 20% |
| ProvexCV cardiovascular supplement, 60 ct Eighteen points in one bottle. ProvexCV plus a probiotic plus a vitamin D3 reaches 35 points for $57.47 in three items - against twelve bottles of cleaner to reach the same figure. The path of least resistance runs through the worst-value shelf. |
$29.99 preferred ($43.00 regular) per unit |
18 points - $1.26 at 7%, $3.60 at 20% |
| Sei Bella Luxury Creme Concentrate, 1.7 fl oz Department-store pricing, openly so, and not obviously worse value than the counter products it is positioned against. Listed here because one jar is more than twice the monthly commitment and shows how quickly the points requirement can be satisfied by the highest-priced end of the catalog. |
$130.00 preferred ($300.00 regular) per unit |
80 points - $5.60 at 7%, $16.00 at 20%; $40.00 as a first-month introduction commission |
Who runs it, and what they ran before
Built the company from $0.3m in 1985 to a roughly $2bn business over 41 years with no outside capital and no solvency event, and did so having personally shut down the predecessor entity. That record is real and it is rare. Two things sit against it. He retains personal control of the Marketing and Legal departments - so the same person sets the message and the litigation strategy toward people who question it. And he is politically prominent, with a long record of large political donations across several campaigns and ballot measures. This report takes no position on any of that in either direction and does not treat it as evidence about how participants are treated, because it is not. It is recorded only because a reader will encounter it and should encounter it accurately.
Promoted from President of Melaleuca International. Joined the company in 2009 as senior vice-president of sales after seventeen years of executive experience at a global logistics carrier. The 2022 handover was orderly and well telegraphed - the founder framed it as "the navigator charts the destination... and the pilot flies the plane" - and is the kind of succession most founder-controlled operators in this category never manage. No further leadership change was found through July 2026.
The predecessor is not a footnote and it cuts both ways. According to the published corporate history it required distributors to buy expensive starter kits, sold products that caused adverse side effects and were withdrawn, published unsubstantiated health claims contrary to FDA standards, and relied on a supply story that was false - the Australian rancher held about five percent of the world’s tea trees, not the eighty percent claimed. That entity was shut down and rebuilt in 1985 without a starter kit and without resale. Deliberately removing the harmful features is genuinely to the design’s credit. It also means the founder knew precisely which features of the 1984 model were the dangerous ones, which raises rather than lowers the bar for judging what he chose to keep: the seven-generation override and the monthly purchase commitment.
Founder control with no outside capital removes the classic failure mode in this sector - an owner stripping a distributor base to service acquisition debt. It also means there is no board answerable to outside investors, no audit committee with independent members and no external check on how the compensation plan is set. Separately, and stated with its stage labels: the company sued a magazine and two of its journalists in 2013 and lost at summary judgment in October 2015, an Idaho court holding the "pyramid-like company" characterisation to be non-actionable as truth, substantial truth or protected opinion; it sued a former newspaper reporter in 2014 and settled in October 2015 after he signed an affidavit, with no finding of liability; it sued a YouTube reviewer with roughly 475,000 subscribers in July 2024 and voluntarily dismissed with prejudice on 19 September 2024, five days after she posted a correction video, terms undisclosed; and it sued a former Marketing Executive and a competing venture on five counts in August 2024, voluntarily dismissing with prejudice on 29 September 2025. None of that is a finding of wrongdoing by anyone. All of it describes an operating environment in which a participant who leaves and builds elsewhere from their Melaleuca contact list should expect the company to notice.
Registered address
Idaho Falls, Idaho, USA
Privately held, founder-controlled, and it files nothing. Frank VanderSloot holds 55% of the voting stock and 44% of the non-voting stock; no private equity, no venture capital and no debt syndication could be identified. There are no audited accounts in any jurisdiction this review could locate, which is why the revenue trend in this report is published as an unresolved conflict rather than a number. A trade estimator that models the sector puts 2025 revenue at $1.9bn, down about 14% from $2.2bn in 2024. The company has described itself as a "more than $2 billion" business continuously - in June 2022, in a company-aligned account of crossing $2bn in 2017, and again at its 41st-anniversary convention in May 2026, where the founder said "things are getting better." A round number that does not move is not evidence that revenue did not move; it is evidence that the round number was not updated. Nobody outside the company can tell which reading is right, and that matters to a participant because Melaleuca income is overwhelmingly residual - a percentage of what an organization of customers buys every month. Verified operating facts: roughly 4,500 employees, 19 countries, around 450 self-manufactured SKUs, own plants in eastern Idaho, and "more than 2 million households shopping monthly" as stated in 2022.
The veteran's checklist
Eight questions that decide whether this is a business or a transfer mechanism. Same eight, every review.
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| Who legally owns it? |
WATCH
Melaleuca, Inc. of Idaho Falls, Idaho, incorporated 19 August 1985. Frank VanderSloot holds 55% of the voting stock and 44% of the non-voting stock; there is no outside capital and no independent board check. It files nothing anywhere, so no audited revenue figure exists in any year.
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| What does it really cost? |
WATCH
$19 a year for membership plus a committed 35 Product Points every calendar month - about $58 of product - plus $10.42 flat shipping. About $837 a year all-in before tax, or about $890 if you order the 44 points needed for full shipping relief. There is no starter pack and no kit.
|
| Published income disclosure? |
CONCERN
Yes, and more granular than the category norm. The 2022 edition shows 82% of members strictly customers earning nothing, 8% Product Advocates averaging $110–$510, and 10% at Director or above, of whom 91.2% sit at Director 1–2 averaging $2,073 gross. It counts only members active seven or more consecutive months.
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| Regulatory action against the company, ever? |
WATCH
No FTC complaint, no consent order, no injunction, no SEC action, no criminal proceeding, no state pyramid prosecution since 1992. The file holds a 1991 Michigan cease-and-desist and a 1992 Michigan and Idaho consent decree (secondary sources only), a 1991 Idaho assurance of voluntary compliance, FDA warning letters in 1997 and around 2014, and an FTC warning letter dated 5 June 2020 - a warning letter, not a finding.
|
| Can you be stuck with inventory? |
OK
No. Resale is prohibited by the plan and every order ships direct from Idaho Falls to the end user, so no participant ever buys wholesale or holds stock. The plan also caps commissionable volume at 150 Product Points per customer per month, expressly to remove the incentive to load anyone up.
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| Is your money at risk against a promised return? |
OK
No. There is no pack, position, unit, token, staking, yield or withdrawal gate anywhere in the model. The $19 is a membership fee and the 35 points buy household goods that arrive at your door. This is a purchase, not an investment contract.
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| Can you get your money back? |
WATCH
Yes - a genuine 90-day any-reason guarantee on product, for exchange, refund or account credit, with shipping and handling excluded. Returning more than half a rolling three months of points drops you to exchange-only. Against that, the Better Business Bureau - a private ratings body - records 68 complaints in three years dominated by cancellation difficulty and post-cancellation charges.
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| Merchant play or miner play? |
WATCH
Both, honestly. Real goods genuinely move to end users who mostly earn nothing and therefore mostly want them - that is merchant behavior. But the plan pays 7% overrides seven generations deep, Leadership Points for enrolling gate every senior rank, and the biggest single per-customer payment is 50% of a new customer’s first month. Enrollment is what pays.
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What has to be true for you to get paid
| To cover | You need |
|---|---|
| Simply hold a membership for a year | ~$837 $19 fee + twelve 35-point orders at about $58 + twelve flat shipping charges at $10.42 |
| Cover that cost at the 7% entry tier | 28.5 personal customers $837 ÷ (35 pts × 7% × 12). Arithmetically self-defeating - 20 customers moves you to the 20% tier long before you get there |
| Cover it at the 14% tier | 10–15 active personal customers $70/month ÷ (35 × 14%) = 14.3, or about 10–12 counting a modest organization commission from generation two |
| Reach the modal Director’s $2,073 gross | 8–17 personal customers and an active organization of 8–77 Melaleuca’s own 2022 table for Director 1–2, where 91.2% of all Directors sit - and Directors are about 10% of members |
Read this twice
Two numbers do all the work here and both come from the company. The cost side: $19 a year for the membership, a committed 35 Product Points every calendar month, and $10.42 of flat shipping per order. A Product Point is the base for one dollar of commission but costs a member roughly $1.31 to $2.00 depending on the product, clustering near $1.65 - so 35 points is about $46 to $70 of goods, most plausibly $58. Twelve of those, plus the fee, plus the shipping, is about $837 a year before tax. If a member orders 44 points to trigger full shipping relief, the total is about $890 and the relief arrives as store credit that expires in three months. The income side: 82% of members earn nothing at all, the 8% who become Product Advocates average $110 to $510, and the 10% who reach Director sit overwhelmingly at Director 1–2, averaging $2,073 gross. Break-even sits at roughly 10 to 15 active personally enrolled customers. Below that line a participant is paying for the privilege; the company’s own disclosure says about nine members in ten never cross it. Now the fairness note, and it is a large one that most reports in this category never have to write. The $837 is not lost. The participant receives roughly $700 of usable consumer goods - detergent, shampoo, toothpaste, vitamins - that a household buys anyway. The correct comparison is therefore not "$837 gone" but "$837 spent against roughly $480 for the same basket at the supermarket," which puts the real economic cost of a customer-only membership at roughly $215 to $360 a year, narrowing further for a household that leans on the concentrated cleaning line and widening for one that leans on supplements. That is a completely different order of harm from a plan that sells inventory into a garage, and it is the main reason this file grades where it does. Three caveats sit on top. The disclosure counts only members active for seven to twelve consecutive months, so everyone who tried for four months and quit is missing from every average - the published figures are over-estimates of a new joiner’s expected outcome by an unknowable margin. Product Advocate averages are gross and exclude business expenses, so a Product Advocate 2 averaging $232 against an $837 outlay is behind on cash even before counting anything. And the table’s own "months in business" column runs to 393 - someone has been earning about $232 a year for thirty-two years, which is the quietest and most damning number in the file.
Run your own numbers
Drag the sliders. Nothing here is stored or sent.
7% of a customer’s 35 Product Points is $2.45 a month, and a Product Point is a one-dollar commission base. The rate is a cliff function of how many active customers you personally enrolled - 7% at one to seven, 14% at eight to nineteen, 20% at twenty or more - so the slider is conservative above seven and the real curve steepens sharply. The Product Introduction Commission, worth 50% of a new customer’s first month or about $17.50 on a 35-point order, is one-off and excluded. Cost is your own $19 annual membership plus the 35-point monthly commitment, which costs roughly $58 of product at member prices and is enforced by an automatic Backup Order if you do not place one yourself. For calibration: 82% of members earn nothing at all. Your own subscription cost of $60/mo is included.
What it costs to replace this yourself
A plausible 35-point monthly basket at Melaleuca preferred prices, set against ordinary supermarket and mass-retail equivalents - supermarket own-brand and mainstream household cleaners, shop-bought personal care, and a mass-market multivitamin of the kind sold in any pharmacy or on general e-commerce. Melaleuca prices are from the company’s own US price list; the comparator prices are typical US mass-retail ranges rather than sourced receipts and are treated as order-of-magnitude only. Read the verdict before the total: this is the one exercise on the site where the company has a real answer.
| What they sell you | What you'd use instead | Your cost |
|---|---|---|
| MelaPower 6x laundry, 48 fl oz - $17.49 (10 pts) | Premium supermarket laundry detergent, 92 fl oz / 64 loads | ~$13 |
| Tough & Tender 12x all-purpose, 8 fl oz - $5.69 (3 pts) | Mainstream all-purpose spray, 32 oz ready-to-use | ~$4 |
| Tub & Tile 12x, 8 fl oz - $5.69 (3 pts) | Supermarket bathroom cleaner, 32 oz | ~$4 |
| Diamond Brite dishwasher packs, 20 loads - $5.79 (3 pts) | Mass-retail dishwasher pacs, 25 ct | ~$7 |
| Affinia shampoo, 12 fl oz - $4.99 (3 pts) | Mainstream shop shampoo, 12 oz | ~$4–6 |
| Gold Bar bath bar, 4.5 oz - $3.99 (3 pts) | Mass-market beauty bar, single | ~$1.80 |
| Whitening tooth polish, 3.8 oz - $3.89 (2 pts) | Mainstream whitening toothpaste, 3.8 oz | ~$4 |
| Vitality Women multivitamin, 60 ct / 30 days - $16.99 (13 pts) | Mass-market women’s multivitamin, 100 ct - about $4.50 per 30 days | ~$4.50 |
| Flat shipping on the order | Walking into a shop, or free delivery on a supermarket subscription order | $0 |
| $19 annual membership to access the prices at all | No membership, no commitment, no minimum | $0 |
| Total as sold $64.52 for a 40-point basket, plus $10.42 shipping - about $75, and about $837 across a year |
Total, built yourself ≈ $38–$42 a month, about $480 a year |
Price-to-value
On the face of it the Melaleuca basket costs roughly 55–70% more before shipping and roughly 80–95% more after it. But the honest answer is a split verdict and the company deserves the good half of it. The cleaners are concentrates - 12x and 6x - and diluted as directed they are plausibly around four times cheaper per use than a ready-to-use supermarket spray, which would flip the cleaning line from a premium into a genuine saving. That dilution calculation is inferred from the product naming and the general design of concentrates rather than from retrieved label directions, so it is presented as the strongest version of the company’s case, not as an established fact. Laundry is competitive per load. Personal care is at or slightly above shop prices. The supplements are the problem: about 3.7 times mass retail on the multivitamin alone, with the cardiovascular, probiotic and antioxidant lines all sitting well above shop-bought equivalents. And the structural point that decides this dimension is not any single price. Three supplement bottles satisfy the 35-point commitment for $57.47; twelve bottles of cleaner are needed to do the same. The plan pushes the member toward the shelf where the value is worst, because that is the shelf where the points are. A household that genuinely wants concentrated cleaners and buys nothing else is close to break-even against the supermarket. A household that hits its points through the Wellness aisle is paying two to four times over - and cannot check, because Melaleuca publishes no retail prices publicly and the eleven-product public cleaning guide carries no prices at all.
Three operators, five horizons
Probability of cumulative net profit
Hover any point for median, top decile and bottom quartile.
Member customer
the 82% - joined because a relative or colleague asked, never refers anyone
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 8% | −$90 |
| 6 mo | 9% | −$180 |
| 1 yr | 10% | −$357 |
| 3 yr | 10% | −$1,070 |
| 5 yr | 10% | −$1,790 |
Product Advocate
the 8% - referred a handful of people, stayed at the 7% tier
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 10% | −$60 |
| 6 mo | 14% | −$115 |
| 1 yr | 18% | −$217 |
| 3 yr | 22% | −$755 |
| 5 yr | 23% | −$1,290 |
Director-track builder
10–20 hrs/wk enrolling and holding customers, aiming at Director and above
| Horizon | P(profit) | Median |
|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | 10% | −$150 |
| 6 mo | 18% | −$260 |
| 1 yr | 27% | −$300 |
| 3 yr | 38% | −$600 |
| 5 yr | 45% | −$300 |
Methodology note. These are modeled outcome ranges, not claims, and not predictions about any individual. They are measured on an unusual basis that this company earns: cumulative net cash after crediting the household the roughly $480 a year it would have spent on the same categories of goods at the supermarket anyway. On that basis a member customer who never refers anyone is out about $357 a year rather than $837, which is the honest number and the one the company is entitled to be judged on. ANCHORED to Melaleuca’s own 2022 Annual Income Statistics - 82% strictly customers earning nothing, 8% Product Advocates averaging $110, $232 and $510 across the three sub-statuses, 10% at Director and above, 91.2% of those Directors at Director 1–2 averaging $2,073 gross with 8–17 personal customers, Senior Director at $63,239, Executive Director at $174,595, and under 0.1% of Directors at Corporate or Presidential averaging $1,086,047 - and to the published cost side: the $19 fee, the 35-point commitment at roughly $1.65 a point, $10.42 flat shipping, the 7%/14%/20% personal customer tiers, the 7% seven-generation override and the 50% first-month Product Introduction Commission. MODELED by us: the split of each cohort between profit and loss at each horizon, the cohort definitions, which the company does not segment, and the $480 supermarket offset. Two calibration notes cut in opposite directions and both belong here. In the company’s favor: the modal Director genuinely does clear their costs - $2,073 gross against $837 out is about $1,236 of real cash surplus, or roughly $1,716 once the goods offset is counted - and that is a legitimate part-time supplement that most plans on this site cannot produce for anybody. Against: the builder cohort’s median stays negative at every horizon anyway, because most people who set out to build never reach Director, and because Melaleuca’s disclosure counts only members who stayed active for seven to twelve consecutive months. Nobody who joined, tried for four months and quit appears anywhere in the source data, and the company does not publish attrition, so the size of that gap is unknowable from outside.
Where you are actually allowed to promote this
Platform policy reads, not verifications. Check every one before you spend a dollar - enforcement changes faster than the written policy does.
Red flags and green flags
Red flags
151A mandatory monthly purchase commitment applies to plain customers, not just business builders
2The commitment is enforced by an automatic Backup Order
382% of members earn exactly nothing
4The income disclosure is survivorship-filtered
5Someone has averaged $232 a year for 393 months
6The largest per-customer payment in the plan is triggered by enrollment, not by ongoing sale
7Leadership Points, a required input to every senior rank, are awarded for enrolling people
8Seven generations of 7% overrides, on a base of committed subscribers
9The "we are not an MLM" positioning does not survive the plan document
10The path of least resistance to the 35-point commitment runs through the worst-value shelf
11No public retail pricing at all
12Shipping relief is set above the commitment and paid in expiring credit
13Cancellation friction is the dominant complaint theme and it is thirty years old
14The company litigates against critics and against departing participants
15The revenue direction is unknowable and may be sharply negative
Green flags
101No capital is at risk against a promised return
2Resale is prohibited and inventory loading is structurally impossible
3An explicit written cap on commissionable volume per customer
4Advancement bonuses are gated on a five-month retention index
5A published income disclosure more granular than the category norm
6A genuine 90-day any-reason money-back guarantee
7Real manufacturing, real products, real repeat demand
8Field advertising rules stricter than any comparable operator reviewed here, and enforced
941 years of solvency, founder ownership, and an orderly 2022 succession
10The founder deliberately removed the predecessor’s harmful features
We would like to be wrong about this
Upward
- Making the 35-point monthly commitment genuinely optional for customers who are not building a business. A $19 discount club that lets people buy when they want would remove the enforced commitment, the automatic Backup Order and most of the thirty-year cancellation-complaint pattern in one move, and would make the "our members are customers" claim unanswerable rather than definitional. It is the single highest-leverage change available and it would lift comp, participant economics and terms together.
- Publishing audited or third-party-verified revenue, and extending the income disclosure to everyone who was active at any point in the year - including those who quit - with a stated attrition figure. The first resolves the largest unknown in the file; the second would turn a disclosure that is good-for-the-category into a genuinely best-in-class document and would move participant economics materially.
- Publishing retail prices on the public website so a prospect can comparison-shop before signing, repricing the supplement line toward market or ceasing to position it as the fast route to the monthly minimum, and confirming in the Statement of Policies that the 29-point personal production requirement can be met entirely by referred customers’ purchases.
Downward
- Any FTC complaint, consent order or civil-penalty action following the 2021 and 2023 Notices of Penalty Offenses - the company is on notice, so a penalty-offense action would be a step change and would cap the grade - or a state attorney general action on the automatic-Backup-Order and cancellation theories, which the thirty-year complaint record makes the likelier shape than a pyramid theory.
- Introduction of any pack, position, tool subscription or capital-in product, which would move the securities score off 10 immediately; or confirmation that the 29-point personal production requirement is in fact a mandatory personal purchase, which would move comp down.
- Corroboration of a sustained multi-year revenue decline. If the estimated 14% fall in 2025 is confirmed and continues, residual income shrinks across the whole field without anyone doing anything wrong, the senior ranks become unreachable for new entrants, and both payout sustainability and participant economics fall together.
Grade is C+ - 6.55 - and it is the highest any legacy direct seller has been given on this site. The structure is the cleanest in the category. The outcomes are still that 82% of members earn nothing against roughly $837 a year.
Take the credits seriously first, because they are the reason for the grade and they are not rhetorical. There is no starter pack and no kit. There is no wholesale purchase and no resale, so no Marketing Executive ever holds stock - every order ships from Idaho Falls straight to the person who will use it, which makes inventory loading not merely discouraged but impossible. The plan caps commissionable volume anyway, in writing: "Commissions are paid on the first 150 Product Points that a customer purchases each month. No commissions are paid on amounts exceeding 150 Product Points." Advancement bonuses are gated on a five-month retention index, so churning recruits through the door forfeits the money. No capital is handed over against any return, which is why the securities score is 10 and why that score says nothing at all about the company being private. There is a 90-day any-reason refund. The company manufactures around 450 of its own SKUs in eastern Idaho, employs roughly 4,500 people across 19 countries, has been solvent for 41 years, and publishes an income disclosure with highs, lows, averages, sub-rank distributions and time-in-business ranges. And the field advertising rules are the strictest this research found anywhere: public income claims banned outright, paid influencers prohibited, and a Marketing Executive forbidden from even saying the company’s name in a public post. Those rules are enforced, not decorative - the April 2026 self-regulatory file shows posts removed, contractors contacted, accounts suspended and platform takedowns filed.
Then the arithmetic, all of it from the company’s own documents. A Product Point is the base for one dollar of commission and costs a member roughly $1.31 to $2.00, clustering near $1.65. A 35-point monthly commitment is therefore about $58 of product; add the $19 annual fee and $10.42 of flat shipping twelve times and a year costs about $837. On the 2022 Annual Income Statistics, 82% of members are strictly customers who receive no compensation at all. The 8% who become Product Advocates average $110, $232 and $510 across the three sub-statuses - all below their own outlay - and the same table records people at those levels with up to 393 months in business. Only the roughly 10% who reach Director clear their costs. The modal Director genuinely does: Director 1–2, where 91.2% of all Directors sit, averages $2,073 gross for a real cash surplus of about $1,236. That is a legitimate part-time supplement and most plans on this site cannot produce one for anybody, which is precisely why the participant-economics score is 4 rather than 1. But nine members in ten never get there, and every average in that document counts only people who stayed active for seven to twelve consecutive months, so everyone who tried and quit is missing from the numbers entirely.
The fair way to hold the whole thing is this. Unlike almost every operator graded here, the money is not lost - it is spent, on detergent, shampoo, toothpaste and vitamins that a household buys anyway. Against roughly $480 for the same categories at the supermarket, the real economic cost of a customer-only membership is more like $215 to $360 a year, and a household that leans on the concentrated cleaners rather than the supplements narrows it further or closes it entirely. That is a different order of harm from a plan that sells inventory into a garage, and it is why this file grades a full band above the legacy norm. What it does not do is make the opportunity a good trade. The plan’s biggest single per-customer payment is the 50% first-month introduction commission - $17.50 on a 35-point order, more than eight months of 7% residual - so enrollment is what pays. Leadership Points, awarded for enrolling people and for your enrollees advancing, gate every senior rank. The fastest route to 35 points runs through supplements priced at two to four times mass retail. And the public-mention ban means ten years of work produces no audience, no channel and nothing transferable: leave, and you leave with nothing but a contact list the company has demonstrated it will litigate over. The correct summary is that Melaleuca is a fairly-run subscription club with a referral program attached, and that the referral program pays about one member in ten.
Be a member customer, and only if you want the cleaners
The $19 membership with no referral ambitions is a defensible purchase for a household that will actually use 12x and 6x concentrates, where the per-use economics are genuinely competitive with the supermarket and the packaging argument is real. Go in knowing three things the enrolling friend may not mention: the 35-point commitment is monthly and contractual, an automatic Backup Order ships and charges if you forget, and the shipping refund does not start until 39 points and is not full until 44. Build your basket out of the cleaning and laundry line, not the Wellness aisle, and the economics roughly work. Build it out of supplements and you are paying two to four times over.
Do the $837-against-$2,073 sum before you sign anything
Both numbers come from the company. The cost of a year is about $837. The average gross for the modal Director - the rank where 91.2% of all Directors sit - is $2,073, and Directors are about 10% of members. So the question is not whether anyone makes money here; some plainly do, and unusually for this category the typical one who gets there clears their costs properly. The question is what specific reason you have to believe you will be in the 10% rather than the 82%. Write that reason down. If it is "I know a lot of people," count them, because the public-mention ban means that list is your entire addressable market.
Get the 29-point personal production rule answered in writing before you enrol as a Marketing Executive
The plan says failure to personally produce at least 29 Product Points a month for two consecutive months is a deemed voluntary resignation. The company’s own help center says that requirement can be met through household purchases or referred customers’ purchases. If the second reading is right, there is effectively no pay-to-play gate and one 35-point customer covers it. If it is wrong, you are on a mandatory roughly $48-a-month personal purchase to stay paid. This report could not resolve it because the governing policy document is closed to automated retrieval. Ask your sponsor for the clause, in writing, and treat a vague answer as the answer.
If the appeal is the products, sell that expertise where you own it
The demand for honest comparison of concentrated cleaners, dilution maths, cost-per-use and ingredient claims is genuine, large and searchable - and it is a subject this field is contractually forbidden from writing about publicly, because they cannot name the brand. A merchant business built on supermarket and mass-retail own-brand comparisons, subscription delivery services and shop-bought supplements requires no membership, no monthly points commitment, no rank and no permission to speak. It also produces the one thing ten years inside this plan cannot: an audience that is yours and that you can take with you.
Nine dimensions, weighted
Dimension profile
Further from center is better. Hover any point.
Hard caps that bind here
The lowest binding cap wins, regardless of the weighted arithmetic.
What we read
Every source below links to the document itself. Tier 1 is a primary record - the company’s own plan, policy or disclosure, a court filing, a regulator’s decision or an SEC filing. Tier 2 is a self-regulatory or secondary regulator record, tier 3 reporting or academic work, tier 4 an open-market price comparison. Where a document can be moved or withdrawn, an archived copy is linked beside it. If a link is dead when you try it, that is a correction we want.
- Melaleuca 2022 Annual Income Statistics (PDF, archived by Truth in Advertising, Inc.)
Melaleuca 2022 Annual Income Statistics (archived by a consumer advocacy organization) and the 2021 edition from the company’s own help-center CDN - the 82/8/10 and 81/9/10 population splits, Product Advocate averages of $110/$232/$510, Director 1–2 at 91.2% of all Directors averaging $2,073 gross, Senior Director $63,239, Executive Director $174,595, Corporate–Presidential $1,086,047, and the active-status definitions of twelve and seven consecutive months
- Melaleuca 2021 Annual Income Statistics (PDF, company help-center CDN)
- Melaleuca Help Center - Income Statistics landing page
- Melaleuca Annual Income Statistics - current live US PDF (robots-disallowed to crawlers; 2023 edition served at time of retrieval)
- The Melaleuca Compensation Plan - US edition (mirrored PDF)
The Melaleuca Compensation Plan - US mirrored PDF, official EN 2023 flipbook edition, official 2021 flipbook edition and the official Australian "Ways to Earn" edition - Product Point definition, the 7%/14%/20% personal customer tiers, 7% organization commission across 2/3/4/7 generations by status, the 50% Product Introduction Commission, the 150-point commissionable cap, Leadership Points, the 29-point and 70-point personal production requirements, and the status qualification thresholds through Presidential Director. The company’s live US compensation book is disallowed to automated retrieval by its own robots file
Not established by this document: The official 2021 flipbook edition of the Compensation Plan could not be located as a distinct URL; the 2021 figures survive in the company's own 'Melaleuca: An Overview' presentation PDF and in the 2023 flipbook edition cited here.
- THE MELALEUCA COMPENSATION PLAN - EN 2023 (official flipbook edition)
- Melaleuca "Ways to Earn" - Commissions and Bonuses, Australian edition (PDF, company CDN)
- Melaleuca Business Center - live US Compensation Plan book (disallowed to automated retrieval by melaleuca.com robots.txt)
- Melaleuca Help Center - FAQ: Becoming a Member (membership cost, minimum order, Product Points, Backup Order)
Melaleuca help center - Becoming a Member ($19 fee, annual renewal, the 35 Product Point monthly commitment, the automatic Backup Order, Member versus Non-Member); Enrolling Customers (the 29-point requirement and whether referred customers’ purchases satisfy it); Shipping ($10.42 flat rate, relief at 39 and 44 points, Loyalty Shopping Dollars expiring after three months); Returns, Exchanges and Refunds (the 90-day any-reason guarantee and the 50% return limit); and the $100 Welcome Program ($20 a month across five months)
- Melaleuca - New Member Benefits ($19 annual membership, 35 Product Point monthly commitment, customisable Backup Order, $100 Welcome Program at $20 a month over five months)
- Melaleuca Help Center - FAQ: Shipping (flat rate, relief thresholds, Shipping On Us Loyalty Shopping Dollars)
- Melaleuca Help Center - FAQ: Returns, Exchanges and Refunds
- Melaleuca Help Center - Loyalty Shopping Dollars program details (three-month expiry on Shipping On Us dollars)
- Melaleuca Help Center - FAQ: Orders (Backup Order mechanics and timing)
- Melaleuca U.S. Price List (Jan–Mar 2019 edition; mirrored copy uploaded February 2020) - per-item regular price, Preferred Member price and Product Point value
Melaleuca US price list, mirrored, circa February 2020 - the source of the $1.31–$2.00 per Product Point range and the ~$1.65 cluster, and of every product price and point value in this report. Prices are historical; the points-per-dollar ratio is the durable structural figure
- Melaleuca Statement of Policies: Building Your Business Online (PDF; third-party mirror of the company document)
Melaleuca Statement of Policies: Building Your Business Online - the public-mention prohibition covering "Melaleuca," "mela" and "the Wellness Company," the outright ban on public income claims, the prohibition on paid influencer promotion, the closed-group and first-contact rules, and the product-claims restriction
- Melaleuca Help Center - FAQ: Policies & Terms (where to find the Statement of Policies and the Guidelines for Building Your Business Online)
- FTC Warning Letter to Melaleuca Inc., 5 June 2020 (PDF) - "$400/month income – FOREVER" and income that "will NEVER go away," reply demanded within 48 hours
Federal Trade Commission warning letter to Melaleuca, Inc., 5 June 2020 - field earnings representations including "$400/month income – FOREVER" and income that "will NEVER go away," with a reply demanded within 48 hours; plus the Notices of Penalty Offenses of 30 June and 26 October 2021 (money-making-opportunity claims) and 13 April 2023 (health and safety claims), each sent to broad lists and neither an allegation against this company
Not established by this document: The 13 April 2023 Notice of Penalty Offenses concerning health and safety claims, and its recipient list, could not be located as a distinct retrievable document; only the 2021 money-making-opportunity notice and its 30 June / 26 October 2021 recipient list were found.
- FTC Legal Library - Warning Letter to Melaleuca Inc. (case page)
- "FTC Sends Second Round of Warning Letters to Multi-Level Marketers Regarding Coronavirus-Related Health and Earnings Claims" - press release, 5 June 2020
- FTC Business Blog - "FTC again warns multi-level marketers about unproven health and earnings claims," 5 June 2020
- FTC Notice of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities (PDF, 2021)
- List of October 2021 Recipients of the FTC's Notices of Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities (PDF, updated 25 October 2021) - "The fact that a company is on this list is NOT an indication that it has done anything wrong"
- "FTC Puts Businesses on Notice that False Money-Making Claims Could Lead to Big Penalties" - press release, 26 October 2021
- FTC - Penalty Offenses Concerning Money-Making Opportunities (program page and underlying administrative decisions)
- DSSRC Case #256-2026: Administrative Closure - Melaleuca, Inc. (closed 2 April 2026)
BBB National Programs, Direct Selling Self-Regulatory Council Case #256-2026, administratively closed 2 April 2026 - 6 of 10 flagged earnings posts removed, contractors contacted, non-compliant accounts suspended, platform removal requests filed, and a finding of "genuine, good-faith efforts" on the remaining four; and the Better Business Bureau company profile recording an A+ accredited rating alongside 68 complaints closed in three years
- Better Business Bureau business profile - Melaleuca, Inc., Idaho Falls (A+ rating, accredited since 23 October 1987)
- BBB complaints detail - Melaleuca, Inc. (complaints closed in the last three years)
- "We Were Sued by a Billionaire Political Donor. We Won. Here's What Happened." - Mother Jones account of the 6 October 2015 summary judgment in VanderSloot and Melaleuca v. Mother Jones, Case CV-2013-532
Columbia Global Freedom of Expression and contemporaneous reporting on VanderSloot and Melaleuca v. Mother Jones, Case CV-2013-532 - summary judgment for the defendants on 6 October 2015; the October 2015 settlement of the suit against a former newspaper reporter; industry reporting on the July 2024 suit against a YouTube reviewer, voluntarily dismissed with prejudice on 19 September 2024; and the August 2024 five-count cross-recruitment suit against a former Marketing Executive, voluntarily dismissed with prejudice on 29 September 2025
Not established by this document: No Columbia Global Freedom of Expression case-database entry for VanderSloot / Melaleuca v. Mother Jones could be located; searches of the Global Freedom of Expression case law database returned no matching case page. The contemporaneous reporting and the parties' own accounts are cited instead. The 6 October 2015 memorandum decision itself is not posted at a stable public URL that could be retrieved.
- Associated Press - "Judge tosses conservative activist's suit against magazine" (Fourth District Judge Darla Williamson, 6 October 2015)
- iMediaEthics - "VanderSloot's Libel Lawsuit against Mother Jones Dismissed, Cost Millions to Fight," including the October 2015 correction record and the continuing suit against the former Post Register reporter
- Melaleuca's July 2024 suit against a YouTube reviewer - industry reporting, updated to note the stipulation of dismissal with prejudice filed 19 September 2024
- Melaleuca, Inc. v. Reynoso, et al., No. 4:24-cv-00437 (D. Idaho; removed from Seventh Judicial District, Bonneville County, CV10-24-04589) - docket showing the Notice of Voluntary Dismissal filed 29 September 2025 and the case closed 30 September 2025
- businessforhome.org - Melaleuca company profile (modeled revenue series, estimated 2025 revenue $1,900m against $2,200m for 2024, 35% commission-payout estimate)
businessforhome.org Melaleuca profile - the modeled revenue series from $2,700m in 2020 to $1,900m in 2025, the stated 14% decline in 2025, and the 35% commission-payout estimate for 2025; the 2025 Global 100 direct-selling ranking placing Melaleuca at #12 with $2,200m for fiscal 2024; and a trade profile carrying "corporate sales $2 billion" across consecutive years, which is the mechanical source of the 0% reading
- Direct Selling News Global 100 List (2025 edition, ranking companies on 2024 revenue)
- Happi Top Company Profile - Melaleuca (trade profile carrying "corporate sales $2 billion" across consecutive years)
- East Idaho News - "Melaleuca announces new CEO as VanderSloot is appointed to different role," 13 June 2022
East Idaho News reporting on the June 2022 chief-executive succession and on the May 2026 41st-anniversary convention ("more than $2 billion per year," roughly 4,500 employees, 19 countries, around 450 SKUs); Forbes, October 2004, on the company at $620m with roughly half of annual volume flowing to the field; and the published corporate history of Melaleuca, Inc. and its 1984 predecessor
- East Idaho News - "Melaleuca convention draws thousands as the company celebrates 41 years of growth," 18 May 2026 ("more than $2 billion a year," more than 4,500 employees, 19 countries)
- Forbes - "If You Believe," 11 October 2004 (Melaleuca at $620m expected volume, roughly half paid out to the field)
- "Melaleuca Inc." - International Directory of Company Histories, Vol. 31 (St. James Press, 2000): Oil of Melaleuca, Inc. incorporated in Idaho in 1984 and failed; Melaleuca, Inc. incorporated 19 August 1985
- History of Melaleuca Inc. - FundingUniverse reprint of the International Directory of Company Histories entry
What we could not get
- Melaleuca’s actual revenue, in any year, from any primary source - and therefore the 0% versus −14% trend conflict, which is unresolvable rather than merely unresolved. The company is private and files nothing: no audited statement, no regulatory filing, no franchise disclosure document. The −14% is a trade estimator’s model of calendar 2025 against 2024 ($2.2bn to $1.9bn). The 0% is the mechanical artifact of a trade profile carrying "$2 billion" across consecutive years and of the company’s own repeatedly restated round number, most recently in May 2026. A round number that does not move is not evidence that revenue did not move. This report publishes the conflict rather than picking a winner, because no primary source exists that would let anyone pick one.
- Whether the 29-Product-Point personal production requirement can genuinely be satisfied entirely by referred customers’ purchases. The company’s own help center says it can. The compensation plan’s wording - "personally produce revenue... in the Personal Production Account" - is consistent with that but does not state it. The Statement of Policies definition of "Personal Production Account" could not be retrieved because the governing US document is disallowed to automated retrieval. This single point decides whether the plan has a pay-to-play gate at all, and it is unresolved.
- The "95%+ of members are customers" figure, which traces to nothing. It appears in no Melaleuca document this review could locate. The company’s own published number is 82%, and those 82% are fee-paying members with a contractual monthly purchase commitment enforced by an automatic Backup Order - subscribers, not retail buyers. If a page or a recruiter cites 95%, that is not the company’s figure.
- The current 2024 or 2025 Annual Income Statistics in full. The live PDF is robots-disallowed; its indexed title begins "82% customers Product Advocates," matching the 2022 headline split and suggesting continuity, but the current tables were not obtained. Every income figure in this report is labeled 2022 or 2021 for that reason.
- The primary Michigan Attorney General documents - the 1991 cease-and-desist order and the 1992 consent decree. Both are sourced to a tertiary reference work; the original reporting was not retrievable and the documents predate the relevant online archive. They are presented as reported by secondary sources, with primary documents not obtained. The Idaho matter is independently corroborated by 2004 journalism.
- The exact dilution ratios for the 12x and 6x concentrates, which decide the entire price-to-value case for the cleaning line. The per-use comparison in this report is inferred from the product naming convention and the general design of concentrated cleaners; the label directions were not retrieved. It is presented as the strongest version of the company’s argument, not as an established fact. Current 2026 product prices are likewise unverified - the price list used is a circa-February-2020 official US edition, and the durable figure is the points-per-dollar ratio rather than any absolute price.
- Whether any fee is charged to become a Marketing Executive. Current plan documents say no investment is required; an industry publication reports a $29 application fee, or $19 bundled with membership. Not confirmed in any current primary document and possibly historical. Also unverified: event ticket pricing for the annual convention and regional events, none of which is published on any public page, and whether any tools, software, replicated-website or training subscription exists - none was found, which is an absence of evidence rather than evidence of absence.
- A widely circulated claim that "the FTC notes fewer than 0.29% of distributors profit," with odds "22 times" worse than roulette, which appears in a tertiary reference source. No FTC statement about this company matching that phrasing could be located. It is not repeated here and should not be repeated anywhere. Similarly unverified: a 2.8/5 aggregate consumer rating taken from search metadata after the page itself returned an access error, a company claim of a 96% monthly reorder rate, and the outcome of a 2020 cross-recruitment case in which Melaleuca was the defendant.
Not advice
This is independent analysis for decision-making, not legal, financial or investment advice. Allegations reported by third parties should be verified against primary court and regulatory records before any decision.
Researched by Claude. Reviewed by an editor.
Every report is researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, from the company’s own plan documents, policies, terms and regulatory file - then reviewed before publication by Rob Fore, who checks the sources and the stage-label on every allegation.
- Nine weighted dimensions, published with their weights
- The editor checks the evidence and cannot change the number - the build rejects any page whose grade does not reconcile to its own arithmetic
- Every affiliate position we hold is disclosed on the report it touches
- No company has paid for a grade, and no report carries an affiliate link
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Melaleuca - frequently asked
QIs Melaleuca a pyramid scheme?
QWhat does Melaleuca actually cost per month?
QHow many Melaleuca members actually make money?
QIs Melaleuca really "not an MLM"?
QCan you advertise Melaleuca on social media?
Author, editor and publisher
This report was researched and written by Claude, Anthropic’s AI assistant, working from primary documents - Melaleuca’s own compensation plan, its policies and procedures, its terms of service, its income disclosure statement where one exists, and its regulatory and self-regulatory file. It was scored against nine weighted dimensions that are published in full, with their weights, on the methodology page.
Before publication it was reviewed by Rob Fore, who checks every source link, every figure against the document it came from, and every allegation against its stage-label - an investigation is not a finding, a warning letter is not an enforcement action, and a filed claim is not a verdict.
The editor does not set the grade. The published score is the weighted composite of the nine dimension scores, and the build refuses to emit a page where the two disagree by more than 0.06. A grade moves when the evidence moves it and not otherwise.
Rob Fore has marketed online since 1996, wrote Online MLM Marketing (2014), and is CEO of Listech Inc, the Nevada corporation that publishes this site. He holds affiliate positions in companies graded here - including LiveGood, which this site grades D, SendOutCards, which it grades C−, and the Home Business Academy, which it grades B−. Those positions are disclosed on the reports they touch, and changed nothing on this page.
About the author and our conflicts · Contact the editor · Corrections: corrections@opportunitygrade.com
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Corrections
Every factual claim on this page is sourced, and the ones we could not stand up are named in the unable to verify list above. If something here is wrong, we want to know, and we would rather hear it from Melaleuca than from a reader.
Write to corrections@opportunitygrade.com. Point at the specific sentence and send the document that contradicts it - a plan document, a filing, an income disclosure, a policy page. We will check it against the primary source, correct the page if it is wrong, and say in the report that it was corrected and when. A grade moves if the evidence moves it.
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