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See this on social media every now and then. Any truth to it? enter image description here

Kevin
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    Can you add a link to an actual post that shows this? It looks like it's probably just an ad for some MLM/pyramid scheme. I'm not sure if that's notable. – Reinstate Monica -- notmaynard Mar 20 '17 at 19:12
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    @iamnotmaynard yeah, it looks very similar to 'I bought my second Ferrari by working 4 hours per day working from home. Click my profile for details'. – Salvador Dali Mar 20 '17 at 19:38
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    While the question has a reasonable answer, which I'll leave, it shows this ad is really not a notable claim. I'll close to prevent further answers. – Sklivvz Mar 21 '17 at 09:23
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    A Google image search shows that this picture (and variations with a different photo and the same text) is used on many places for MLM schemes, but indeed, I could not find a notable claim. –  Mar 23 '18 at 08:42

1 Answers1

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The claim that is posted in the image seems to be an altered version of the claim that

"82% of Women in the U.S. who make $100K+, Did it Through Direct Sales"

I was unable to find a claim that matched your image word for word, but I was able to find [1], [2], [3], and [4] using the very similar phrasing that I quoted.

From searching the internet for a source to either claim, I found myself time and again landing on a Multi-Level-Marketing or Direct Sales company. Note that these terms are usually associated with companies such as Amway, Vector Marketing, Herbalife, and other companies that are borderline, if not outright pyramid schemes.

It seems that some variant of this phrase in the photo is used as marketing for stay-at-home moms/out-of-work women, who may be more vulnerable to offers of high-paying jobs working from home.

While I cannot find definitive proof either for or against the claim, I will say that considering the source of many of these claims, I would be extremely hesitant to trust it, especially if the claim is unsourced.

As another way to look at the claim, let's actually examine the numbers and see if they make sense.

According to this article from the Washington Post, there were approximately 2.4 million women with incomes of over $100K at the time of the 2010 US Census. If we take the claim at face value, that means that a little under 2 million women make $100K+ in direct sales.

Now let us look at total Direct Sales numbers in the United States. According to this page from directsellingnews.com, direct selling in the United States accounted for $28.56 billion in sales in FY2010.

If we take the 28.56 billion (which admittedly is the entire population, and not just women) and divide that number by the 2 million women who supposedly earn $100K+ per year from direct sales, you come up with a value of approximately $15,000/year/woman. This amount is obviously not $100K, as the amount would have to be. Those 2 million women make $200 Billion over the course of the year, significantly more than the total sales of Direct Selling companies that same year.

Judging by those numbers, which come from the US Census and a pro-Direct Selling website, it seems like a mathematical impossibility for the claim in the image to be correct.

DenisS
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  • I am not sure your last part is correct. It stated 82% of women who have a home based income earn over 100K, not all women in the US who earned 100k have a home based income. I would expect the number of women who have a home business be significantly less than 2.4 million. – aqwert Mar 20 '17 at 20:46
  • I believe your second argument is flawed. Direct selling is not the only way for someone to make money working from home, and thus one can not conclude that 82% of all women making more then 100k are is equal to the number of direct sellers making 100K – dsollen Mar 20 '17 at 20:50
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    While I understand both of your arguments regarding the fact that not all women who work from home are direct selling, I was unable to find a source for the quote in the image provided without being directed to some sort of direct selling service. The extreme similarity of the posted claim to the claim that I quoted in part one seems to imply that the image that OP gave us uses a modified version of the quote that I provided. Doing a google image search returns a number of similar images, all in favor of Multi-Level-Marketing/Direct Sales images. – DenisS Mar 20 '17 at 21:21