As any savvy business person can tell you, the success of any venture is measured in terms of return on investment. While the “investment” is most often considered in dollar terms, time poured into an unprofitable business must also be considered. After all, as the old adage says, “time is money”!

With this thought firmly in mind, let us take a look at one of the more firmly established network marketing companies, Melaleuca. Melaleuca markets a line of health-related and/or environmentally friendly products focused around the efficacies of tea tree oil. I have used some of the products myself, and to good effect. So this business review is not about the effectiveness, pricing or value of Melaleuca products. I believe that Melaleuca does market quality products, although they may be overpriced by some standards.

The real question we are considering in this article, however, is how does being an independent Melaleuca distributor measure up as a business opportunity. It doesn’t cost much to get started in Melaleuca, only about . After that, a regular monthly order of about is required in order to remain as an active distributor. So the total investment in sign-up and products would be about 0 per year. Some individuals, who see great value in Melaleuca products, may choose not to count the monthly product cost, because they feel they would have purchased such products from some other vendor anyway, so there is no additional cost to themselves.

In any case, the first-year cost would be either , 5 or somewhere in between—depending on how you look at it. The real cost to be accounted for, however, if this is to be a truly profitable business, is time. To continue with this little calculation, you really need some estimate of what your time is worth. Perhaps you could get a job for , , or per hour elsewhere. Whatever it is, that is the cost of spending time building your Melaleuca business instead.

If you plan to spend 10 hours per week building your Melaleuca business, and could have earned per hour by working at the local grocery store instead, you are investing 0 of your time each week into building your Melaleuca business. And that adds up to the fairly substantial investment of 00 per year.

With this type of time sunk into the business, you could justifiably wonder just what to expect in terms of return on investment. Following are some interesting statistics you may want to consider:

• For every 10,000 Melaleuca distributors, 82 people received over ? of the total company payout (the other half was divided among 9,918 others). This is pretty good for the 82, not so good for the rest.

• The 30 top distributors accounted for 35% of the total payout, each one receiving over 00 per week.

• The mean average payout of the 99% of Melaleuca distributors who remained active for a full year was .66 per week, or about 0 for the year.*

You don’t have to be a statistical wizard to figure this out. Your chances of soaring to the top as a Melaleuca distributor are not very good, and the vast majority of Melaleuca distributors do not make enough money over the course of the year to make even one month’s house payment.

The bottom line: if you love Melaleuca products and don’t mind dropping the cash, be a customer. If you are looking at Melaleuca as a viable business opportunity, however, you had better be a gifted networker, motivator, and salesperson (and if you are also a realist, you may realize that even with those stellar characteristics, anything remotely resembling substantial residual income may well be out of reach).

* Statistics from the report “The Myth of Income Opportunity in Multi-level Marketing” by Robert L. FitzPatrick