4life is a well-established multilevel marketing network that provides advanced nutrition supplements focused on improving your “internal health”—strengthening your immune system, fighting aging, and improving your cardiovascular health.
They have a dizzying array of products, so this network is designed for people who become believers in the supplement designers behind their suite of products who are looking for a total solution for their health.
Did I get on board? This explains everything:
Given its long history, 4life is a strong, consistent, and popular performer in the MLM world. It’s trending neither up nor down in popularity, so it’s a safe, stable bet. However, this also means that it could be hard to crack into the top performers, since the hierarchy is well-established and there isn’t a tremendous amount of growth.
Regardless, if you know you can deliver a constant stream of sales, the reward structure can be pretty enticing. As with many MLM setups, though, it’s vastly advantageous to be able to have this framework ready to go before starting the program.
Products
As mentioned earlier, the range of products offered by 4life is impressive. They offer everything from antioxidant drinks to fiber supplements to immune system boosters.
Their flagship products, however, are based around their core innovation: the 4life transfer factor. In biology, transfer factors are small messenger molecules that help the immune system regulate its responses and its ability to fight off infections. 4life claims it has isolated a transfer factor from cow colostrum and chicken yolk that has powerful effects on the human immune system.
Products like 4life’s Transfer Factor Plus make use of this transfer factor compound. While the formulation includes a few other elements, like a polysaccharide mix from several different natural sources, the core is the cow colostrum transfer factor compound.
4life’s own marketing material claims that this product can increase the circulating levels of several blood factors related to the immune system. Levels of killer cell activity, for example, are claimed to increase by over 400%. Killer cells are special structures that seek out and help destroy invasive cells, like viruses and bacteria, that get inside your body.
In support of this, 4life cites research conducted on behalf of the company by a private clinical research firm in Russia. However, these findings were never published in a peer-reviewed journal, and as such, have not been vetted by the broader scientific community.
This is a point worth looking at in more depth: Because there’s only been one study of 4life’s transfer factor formulation, and because the results were never reviewed by independent scientists, you have to trust the company’s own marketing material to know whether the product actually works or not.
Other scientists and supplement experts have pointed out that there could be substantial differences between the transfer factors isolated from cow colostrum and chicken yolk versus the kinds of transfer factors used in the human body by your own immune system.
Given the complexity of the biochemical reactions going on behind the scenes to boost your immune system (or not), it’s a hard sell to trust only one study done by the company selling the product, and never vetted by independent researchers.
The potential of the transfer factor isolate from cow colostrum and chicken egg yolk when it comes to boosting the immune system are described in the patent application made by the founders of 4life, but this suffers from the same peer review problem—the claims in a patent aren’t necessarily reviewed independently for scientific accuracy.
Compensation plan
To actually make money from 4life, you need to become a distributor. This involves a $40 distributor kit, which is your subscription fee for the entire first year. There are minimum volume requirements for sales per month, so this kind of setup strongly rewards those who move a large amount of products and can sell a large volume of products consistently.
You’ll lose your ability to earn commission from your distributor sales if you fall below the minimum sales requirements. As you increase your monthly sales, you become entitled to higher levels of compensation, and deeper cascades of earning commission–the first level (associate) earns you only two levels of commission compensation, but as you advance upward, this increases to up to 10 levels deep.
Recap
Though it’s quite popular and a well-established MLM industry, 4life has some issues that prevent it from being a good recommendation. Most pertinent of these is the simple question of whether you’d want to buy their products if it was just a regular retail offering.
Given how heavily their flagship products depend on the function of their patented cow colostrum and chicken yolk transfer factor, it would seem tremendously important that the functioning of this core ingredient be tested, proven, and reliable. Unfortunately, it is none of these.
While 4life cites one study which found an increase in the circulating levels of some immune system markers of activity, like killer cell activity, it was conducted under the supervision of the company making the supplement. Further, the results were never independently verified, so it’s very hard to verify the efficacy of their transfer factor formulation.
If you are interested in MLM networks, you might want to do your homework and choose another marketing network that’s more suited to your ability.
The sole exception would be if you can deliver a strong, reliable stream of orders of 4life products on a recurring monthly basis. In this case, the rewards structure of 4life is fairly promising, but you’d need to get that framework set up before you jump in head-first.
If you’re just doing it for the money, there are better ways to kill your day job. You might like our coaching because it shows you the good life without peddling products to your family and friends.
http://bodynutrition.org/4life-review/
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