In this Young Living review we’ll find out if Young Living is worth your time and effort. We will answer the question ‘What is Young Living Essential Oils About”?
Young Living is a multi level marketing (MLM) company in the essential oils niche.
In most MLMs, there are two main ways you can earn money:
- By selling a product that is not sold in retail stores. In order to obtain the product you must order through a consultant, or on a consultant’s website, and
- By receiving commissions from the sales of your downline (i.e. people you recruit into your network)
What this means is you need to able to sell products to people. If you genuinely want to be successful in a MLM company, you need recruit new distributors who are also selling a lot of products. In the latter scenario, as well as selling products, you need to be able to sell the ‘lifestyle opportunity’ as well.
Let’s take a look at Young Living.
Some basic information about Young Living:
- Website: https://www.youngliving.com
- Founded by: D. Gary Young
- In operation since: 1993
- Recommended: Yes, but only if you like MLMs and have previously made money within the MLM model
My Young Living review will take you through the following sections:
- What is Young Living and how does Young Living work?
- How do you get paid with Young Living?
- Is Young Living legit?
- My recommended way of making money online
What is Young Living and how does Young Living Work?
Young Living has quite a fascinating history. In 1983, the founder, D. Gary Young, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for practicing medicine without a license and received a suspended sentence and was placed on probation for one year. He then began practicing as a naturopathic doctor in Mexico, offering cancer treatments with a claimed success rate of 90%. In the early 1990s he went on to purchase a farm in Idaho, after he had traveled to France to learn distillery of essential oils. And then Young Living was born.
In 2008, ex-senior executives from Young Living founded rival essential oils MLM company doTerra. After a lengthy court battle commencing in 2013 against doTerra for theft of trade secrets, Young Living lost the case in 2017 and were ordered to pay doTerra’s legal fees of $1.8 million.
Young Living is a direct selling company (an MLM), selling essential oils, supplements, and other lifestyle products, Young Living offers opportunities for our members to build a business or simply receive discounts on products. There are in excess of 3 million Young Living members worldwide.
Their product line covers:
- Essential oil products – essential oil singles and blends, roll-ons, massage oils
- Diffusers and accessories
- Home products – natural cleaning, oral care, animal care
- Bath, body and beauty products – bath and body, facial care, hair care, kids and babies, men’s care, mineral cosmetics
- Healthy and fit – nutritional products such as healthy snacking, inner cleanse, and energy and stamina
The Young Living Compensation Plan
With Young Living, there are a few different ways you can earn.
The Silver Bound Bonus rewards you for how you build your Young Living business during the initial ranks of the compensation plan. Earn any of the one-time bonuses by meeting the corresponding rank’s time, leg and volume requirements.
There are other bonuses including the fast start bonus, ER enroller bonus, starter kit bonus, and retail earnings.
Honestly I find these plans hideously confusing so I’m not even going to try to explain legs and volumes… For more information, here is the full compensation plan for Australia and New Zealand. I believe they all follow the same or similar pattern globally, with the bonus amounts varying for each location.
Is Young Living Legit? It’s LEGIT! But…
MLM is a legitimate business model and Young Living is no different. Whilst it isn’t for everyone, you can earn money if you know what you’re doing and are OK with the model. It is all about moving as much product as possible for maximum income, and recruiting others to do the same.
Young Living is not accredited with the Better Business Bureau (BBB), although has an average customer review rating and several complaints:
After reading up on Young Living I’m surprised that the customer reviews are on the positive side.
Perhaps a better question is …
Is Young Living Worth It?
The 2019 Young Living Income disclosure statement is very telling. It’s a worldwide statement, and it reflects the proportion of distributors within each member level rank, together with the lowest, highest and average annual income for each level; and the months to achieve the rank showing the average, the lowest and the highest.
It’s an interesting read. The income statistics in the statement are for incomes earned by all active members in 2019. An active member is a member who made at least one product purchase in the previous 12 months. The average annual income for all members in 2019 was $236.
Just take that in for a moment. Whilst there are a handful of people earning millions, the average across the entire member network is $236. Annual income. Not weekly, or even monthly. Over the course of the year.
Note that the income paid to members summarized in the disclosure does not include expenses incurred by members in the operation or promotion of their business, which can vary widely and might include product purchases, advertising or promotional expenses, product samples, training, rent, travel, telephone and internet costs, and miscellaneous expenses.
If you look closely at the statement you will note that the vast majority of Young Living distributors are in the lowest rank of “Distributor”. This rank represents 89.6% of all distributors. This group made an average annual income of $3.
The next highest rank is the “star”, comprising 7.4% of all distributors. It took this group an average of 11 months to reach this rank, and they earn an average of $242 annually.
The third rank is the “senior staff”, and this group only represents 1.8% of all distributors. It took them an average of 18 months to reach that ranking, and they earn an average of $1,395 per annum.
It’s nothing to write home about, is it?
The ranks higher than that start to have even fewer members, with the “executive” rank consisting of less than 1%, and still only earning an average of $3,411 per annum. It took this group an average of almost 2 years to achieve this prestigious rank.
I do believe this is fairly commonplace amongst MLMs. During recruitment, you are sold a ‘lifestyle opportunity’ where you are told about Suzy who is a triple diamond star executive royal boss babe who is making millions. And the thing about Suzy is that she started out just like you. And you start to think that if Suzy can do it, you can too. But the reality is, that for every Suzy, there are probably a hundred thousand people who don’t make any money. In fact, not only do they NOT make any money, they lose money buying products.
Jon Taylor PhD, in “The Case For (and Against) Multi-level Marketing” published by the FTC, researched MLMs and his research found:
- In the first year of operation, a minimum of 50% of representatives drop-out.
- After five years of operation, a minimum of 90% of representatives have left the company.
- By year 10, only those at or near the top have not dropped out – approximately 95% of representatives have dropped out by then.
It appears that Young Living follows this same pattern.
The answer to our question “Is Young Living Worth It” is a resounding NO for the vast majority of people.
Don’t want to sell Essential Oils to your friends and family?
If you don’t want to hassle your family and friends with products that they don’t want or need, there is a much better way to start a new career from home.
My preferred way to make money from home is via the affiliate marketing model. The basic premise with affiliate marketing 
is that you:
- Choose an interest
- Build a website
- Attract visitors to your website
- Earn revenue when they make purchases from your site (via affiliate links)
Once you have built your own niche website and learnt how to attract visitors (using free methods), you can repeat this with as many of your own websites as you like.
You don’t need to buy products. You can forget about auto shipping forever.
You don’t need experience, and you don’t need to be technical.
You will be taught everything you need to know.
One of the best things about it – you don’t need to sell anything to your friends and family!
Read about how you can get started, for free, here.
Have you had any experience with Young Living or with other MLMs? What did you think?
If you have any comments or questions please leave them below, and I’m always happy to help you out.