Nobody ever looks at affiliate marketing as a pyramid scheme. Ever. The problem is that many companies these days are portraying themselves as affiliate marketing when in fact they are Multi-Level Marketing. Big difference.

Every job is not a pyramid either, there are layers to a company and there is hierarchy based on experience, based on qualifications, and based on tenure at a company. It has nothing to do with who signed up who.

That is a moot argument and something that people involved in pyramid like schemes tend to spread. It is apples to oranges and you can get 'hired' directly into a CEO position and you get paid, regardless of company performance with a job.

Affiliate marketing is an ethical way for companies to allow others to "market" for them. It literally allows one company to have 1,000's of people promoting their service on a performance based scale, unlike hiring a sales or marketing team which is much more expensive without the results orientation of affiliate marketing.

Several years ago, I bought a distributorship in a well known MLM organization. After a while I had realized what I had bought into.

So at one of our weekly meetings I asked the host, he was probably three or four rungs up from me, what made this organization different from any other pyramid?

It was the best money I ever spent watching this man's face go beat red while he spit and sputtered about it NOT being a pyramid :-)

Welcome to Wealthy Affiliate! You've come to the right place because I haven't seen word one of this being a pyramid!