Are MLM essential oils worth it? There are lots of places to buy essential oils. They’re sold in stores, online, and also through direct sales/MLM (multi-level marketing) companies. Some say that the higher priced oils from the direct sales companies are better quality, but are they?
I’ve worked with a number of essential oils MLMs over the years. Let’s look at the essential oil direct sales companies up close to see the pros and cons of buying from and working with them.
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MLM / Direct Sales Essential Oils Companies
The 2 “Heavy Hitters” in the MLM essential oils business are Young Living and doTERRA. Be Young was another company but it’s not around any longer.
There are a number of other MLM companies that offer essential oils, but the oils aren’t the main product line. One example of this is Poofy Organics, but they only have a small number of blends for sale.
There are a number of other companies mentioned on other sites as selling essential oils in the direct sales world, but quite a few of them are either closed or they aren’t offering products via direct selling any longer.
I’m all about saving money. So of course when I can either buy something at retail, or get the same things for 25-35% off (typical discount for an MLM representative), then you can bet I’m going to check into it.
I worked with both doTERRA and Young Living briefly, as well as with a few other Direct Sales companies that sell/sold essential oils including:
- NYR Organics/Neal’s Yard Remedies
- Poofy Organics
- Heart and Body Naturals
- Kannaway (a CBD company that sells only 3 blends of essential oils. I definitely do not recommend this company.)
Some other MLM companies that offer essential oils that I didn’t work with include:
- Essante Organics
- Melaleuca
- LiveGood
I don’t have much knowledge about LiveGood but I don’t recommend Melaleuca or Essante Organics. Hopefully I can address why in the future in more detail.
My time with Young Living and doTERRA was kind of short, but I researched them a lot both during and after I was involved with them.
I actually don’t really consider the other companies on the list above to be essential oil companies. The vast majority of what they sell isn’t essential oils, which are really a sideline for them. In addition, I really don’t recommend most of the above companies for various reasons, some of them worse than others. LiveGood might be alright and Neal’s Yard has quality products as does Poofy Organics. But the rest I would steer clear of. Perhaps I will share down the road why that is.
Also note that although I talk mostly about Young Living and doTERRA in this post, most of my concerns go for all of the MLM companies that sell oils.
Benefits of Essential Oil MLMs
Education and Support
When you buy essential oils from a store, you typically can’t get much support unless a salesperson in the store has a strong knowledge base about essential oils. And in today’s work, that’s typically not the case.
Shopping online more support, but it still might not be as much as the typical person needs. Any given website might have a bit of information about how to use any particular oil, and possibly some articles about oils usage.
If you work with one of the heavy hitters in the oils industry (Young Living or doTERRA), there is a lot more support via the community of sellers as well as training classes, and more.
That being said, there are some negatives even to these resources and their recommendations (see below for more information about this).
Money Saving/Making Opportunity
Of course, you can save money by becoming a representative and getting a discount, but you can also make money when you share the products and selling opportunity with others.
When you buy something in a store or online, there’s no such opportunity, unless there’s a rewards or sharing program available.
So when done ethically, there is the option to perhaps at least get your oils paid for, and maybe make some additional income by buying from and working with one of these companies.
However, if you see the “Overpriced” section below, the savings might not really matter if you’re already paying too much. In addition, there are hidden costs like annual fees, fees to access your loyalty rewards, and even to get your commissions. So the savings are not completely what they seem to be.
Negatives of Essential Oil Direct Sales Companies
Misleading and/or Unethical Marketing Practices
Much of doTERRA and Young Living representatives have been under the microscope for recommending their oils as being treatments for medical conditions. However, the concerns that I have about their marketing focus more on their purity claims.
Both companies claim that they have super high-quality oils that are “therapeutic grade,”
– Young Living calls their oils “Young Living Therapeutic Grade”
– doTERRA calls theirs “CPTG”
Each company has standards for what these things mean, but basically these “certifications” are made up by them.
It’s also common practice for representatives from both companies to make claims about the purity of their oils that are simply false. For example, claiming that if the label on a bottle says that it’s safe for internal use, that the oils are pure.
That doesn’t make any sense since there are plenty of things that are meant to be used internally that many people would call “unsafe” like certain pharmaceutical of over the counter drugs, artificial colors, pesticides, and more.
You can read about more of the myths spread around in the essential oils industry in this post about Essential Oil Myths.
Pressure to Buy More Than You Need
Both companies have requirements for purchasing oils in order to get the most savings. Saving money is great, but reps typically end up purchasing more and more oils, eventually ending up with more than they can use.
At that point, you’re really not saving money any longer if you keep buying oils just to “stay active” to earn commissions or to get a loyalty discount.
Dangerous Recommendations
Both YL and doTERRA have a heavy emphasis on internal and neat (undiluted) use of essential oils. I wasn’t too concerned about these things when I first started using essential oils, but I’ve completely changed my mind.
DoTERRA even has a Slim and Sassy blend that they recommend taking internally numerous times per day for a long period of time, in order to assist with weight loss. And during my short stint with Young Living, I noticed reps recommending using grapefruit oil internally for the same reason
Essential oils are super potent. It takes about 16 pounds of peppermint leaves to make 1 ounce of peppermint oil. That’s a lot of plants. (source). So that’s about half a pound of peppermint in one drop of essential oil. That equates to half a pound of peppermint (about 5 cups of leaves) in one drop of essential oil!
That kind of concentrated amount of plants is incredibly strong.
So strong, in fact, that some oils experts say that if you do use essential oils internally, especially “hot oils” like oregano, cinnamon, clove, and citrus oils, that you need make sure to supplement with probiotics because the hot oils destroy not only bad bacteria but also the good. That may or may not be true, but better safe than sorry.
It’s simply not safe to ingest essential oils on their own. The only way it is considered to be safe is if they are well-diluted with a carrier oil or emulsified as in this adrenal cocktail.
Similarly, using undiluted essential oils on your skin is considered to be unsafe by many experts. This can lead to sensitization and believe me, you don’t want that to happen to you
I’ve heard it said that the reason Young Living and doTERRA (and other companies as well) recommend so much internal and undiluted usage of oils is to increase their sales. I don’t know if that is their motivation, but it’s a logical conclusion.
Overpriced
Let’s face it, oils that you buy from a direct selling company are typically very expensive. Even if they are pure essential oils, they definitely aren’t the only pure, quality oils on the market.
Everyone knows that a good bit of the pricing of MLM products goes toward rewarding representatives with cash, trips, and more. A manager at one retail company, told me that his understanding was that in the Direct Sales industry, the percentage of pricing that goes toward commissions and rewards for representatives is 40%.
Yes, retail selling costs money too, but in general, direct sales companies are known to pay out too much to representatives, especially when their company starts out.
Here’s an example of the high prices:
Young Living’s peppermint costs retail $32.57 (not sure why they have such unusual pricing) and $24.75 for members. DoTERRA’s peppermint oil costs $34.67 retail and $26.00 wholesale/for members.
Meanwhile, Rocky Mountain Oil’s Peppermint costs $16.75 and Plant Therapy’s would likely cost $12 for a 15-ml bottle since their 10-ml bottle costs $7.99 (it’s a bit more on Amazon).
Blind Devotion
Having intense loyalty to the point that one ignores problems with the brand makes all direct sales companies look bad. This isn’t a problem that is only in the direct sales industry, but it’s a well known problem in that arena.
Once MLM sales people start making a decent paycheck, it becomes very difficult for them to admit that anything with their company or products could be wrong.
This is definitely the case with both Young Living and doTERRA as you can see in the comments on this post, the post comparing doTERRA and Young Living, on Facebook, and more.
I was accused of:
– seeking to tear down doTERRA
– profit-seeking (some said the motive behind this series will be clear when I share the “winner.”)
– having analysis totally lacking in science, is based only on “smell tests”
I was even accused by a Young Living rep of being a fake persona who set out to game Google to make affiliate income.
I assure you, the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) was pretty rotten for my posts in this series. No one would have written what I did in order to game the system.
This just shows how many reps from MLM companies are unable to accept criticism or concerns as being possibly true.
Most Companies Have the Same Sources for Oils
Many essential oils companies claim to have the best oils on the market, but that tends to be the case even more so for companies in the direct selling industry. However, for the most part, there are only about a handful or so suppliers for most of the essential oil companies out there.
Granted, there are some smaller sources, but my understanding is that what typically happens is that almost all essential oils companies are buying from the same sources, and then some of the “bad actors” either sell lower quality oils while marketing them as more valuable varieties, or they add things to the oils or adulterate them in some other way to save money.
No Certified Organic Oils
This may or may not be a negative, depending on your perspective. If organic certification is something that’s important to you, you’ll have a hard time finding organically certified oils with most direct sales companies. They typically claim that their oils are of stellar quality, that’s even better than organic. doTERRA , for example, claims that their CPTG “certification” is better than organic, and Young Living leans on its “Seed to Seal®” claim, which isn’t completely true, as I explained in my post comparing Young Living and doTERRA.
While there are loopholes in the USDA organic certification process, some people do want that certification to lean on. For the prices that these companies charge, you can go to other companies and get certified organic oils for less.
To be fair, I personally think that wild-crafted indigenously grown oils can be higher quality than organic, but you would have to trust the company on the details about that sourcing without having the USDA’s certification process to lean on.
More Posts On Essential Oils
– Which Essential Oils Company is Best?
– Qualities of a Good Oils Company Should Have
– Troubles with the Oils Industry
– Young Living vs. doTERRA
– Distillation, Bias, Vomit and More
– Is It Safe to Use Expired Essential Oils?
– Why You Need to Emulsify Essential Oils
Final Thoughts
For me, I think the negative outweigh the positives. And if you read my post on Young Living vs. doTERRA, you can see even more reasons why I personally choose to avoid the direct sales arena for essential oils.
There are just too many other good options out there and a lot of other places to get education. Hopefully you can find a lot of good information here with more to come in the future.
So–what do you think? Are MLM Essential Oils Worth It Or Are They a Scam?
