So my brother-in-law got into this 'Mila' stuff because a student in the 
class my sister teaches brought in a sample bag.  Skeptic that I am, I'd 
tried some of it and was all 'fine, I'll have a go at a longer-term 
trial' and bought a pound-bag and started consuming 1 serving per day.

One pound (456.6 g) is $55, and a serving is 2 tbsp (13 g).  For myself, 
that one serving gives me all the energy I need to be clearheaded and 
awake for a standard day-period (had been having major problems with 
that for a long time).  Also has a fair amount of nutrients, Omega-3s, 
proteins, etc.  It has a lot of fiber, both soluble and insoluble, the 
upshot being that it makes me feel full, but has the stuff to compensate 
nutritionally, so I've been needing to eat a lot less (and am likely 
quite a lot healthier, now).  This, in turn, has saved me...noticeably 
more on groceries than the $55 it cost in the first place.  (And the 
pound bag I bought on the 7th of January isn't empty yet, when it should 
be just about getting that way.  Not sure if I'm skimping on my serving 
sizes or what.)

It has a shelf-life of 2-3 years, so that's not a concern...(could be 
used as a viable emergency-shelter food, since you can put it in water 
and drink that).

Signing up with the company that sells this lets me buy it for cheaper 
than that, so...ok.  Saving myself even more money.

I desperately need an income source, and signing up with the company 
makes me a distributor (classified as an independent contractor, which 
lets the company wash their hands of having to do silly things like 
provide employee benefits and such).  The website my membership fee pays 
for ( http://www.lifemax.net/TimCook ) handles all the stuff so that 
people can buy from it, I get paid $10 per pound sold, and I don't have 
to muck about with figuring out all the details of a retail web site.

Well and good.

Here's the punchline, though:  the company selling this stuff has 
decided to go with network marketing as their sales approach.  While 
distributors are not /required/ to sign up other people to become 
distributors and so on, it /is/ *strongly encouraged*.  Their practices 
and policies document *does* strictly prohibit unethical or illegal 
business practices on the part of distributors, but the tendency of the 
cynical people that populate the wilds of the internet is to look at 
this, say 'aha!  that's just a pyramid scheme, after my wallet any up to 
no good!'.  Except...as far as I can tell, they're completely legit, 
utterly lacking in some of the distinguishing properties that define a 
pyramid scheme.  For instance, I don't have to sign anybody up as a 
distributor.  At all.  I don't have to actually sell any of the product, 
let alone an absurd quota (though I do kind of /need/ to, from a 
financial standpoint).  Their membership fee?  $50 or $60 for a year, 
$30 of that being for running and maintaining the web site that people 
can use to buy the product in a way that I get paid.  Last I checked, 
that was reasonable for any sort of 'real' web serverness, or 
memberships in general.

My dilemma is:  overcoming the perception people have of MLM, to get 
across the idea that the Mila itself, as a product, is really quite 
great, and to find people on the internet that actually have any kind of 
money at all in this day and age because hardly anybody I communicate 
with has a stable job.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.sjcook.com
http://www.lifemax.net/TimCook

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