There is a little confusion out there when it comes to network marketing. Some may view a network marketing business opportunity as a potentially lucrative venture. Then, others may look at such an opportunity as a potential scam.

The reason some individuals will be skeptical of a network marketing opportunity is because they often confuse network marketing with pyramid schemes. These two entities, however, are extremely dissimilar.

In a pyramid scheme, the people at the top few levels make all the money while everyone at the bottom gets taken advantage of. The money they invest is going towards making the distributors at the top wealthy. Also, a pyramid involves a person investing money into something with no value, which means there is no product. This can be a chain letter or even some of the cash gifting schemes which are so popular these days.

A network marketing business opportunity actually involves the sale of a product, whether it is from a distributor to an outside customer or from the network marketing company to the distributor. If someone is earning money selling something, there is no reason why any referrals the salesman enlists to sell the product can not do the same as well. Of course, those with varying levels of skill will yield different levels of success, but the deck is never stacked against anyone to the point where no matter what they do they will never make their money back.

In short, a network marketing business opportunity is a reliable and valid business model. Pyramid schemes have no legitimacy to them whatsoever.