Two weeks ago my wife, who is a spreadsheet and numbers whiz sat me down, as only a wife can do, and showed me how “I left $48,255 dollars on the table” by not participating in a MLM program offered by one of my major direct mail marketing suppliers.

I have always had a somewhat vocal, negative attitude about MLM organizations. This was due to my distasteful past experiences with several high profile MLM companies during the late 1980s. A few who nearly hired me as a marketing consultant attempted to barter my services for their products. Trade-outs have never excited me. I cannot feed my family or keep the lights on by bartering my services. Besides, why should I when I have plenty of clients willing to pay me with good old American greenbacks!

After my wife’s lesson, I decided to reconsider MLM since leaving $48,255 dollars on the table disturbed me, to put it mildly.

While the MLM business model has been around for at least 70 years, there are a few new players in the MLM Industry who have very generously skewed their commissions and bonuses in favor of their sales organizations with astonishingly positive results.

One such company www.sendoutcards.com, (SOC) founded in 2004, in Salt Lake City in just 5 years achieved annual revenues of $140 million. This privately-held  company is entirely debt-free and continues to experience double digit growth despite this worsening Recession.

They offer unique, in-demand services in the formerly sleepy $7.5 billion Greeting Cards Industry. Unique because greeting card buyers can (from the convenience of the computers) select a card from an online inventory of over 15,000 postcards, two or three panel glossy stock greeting cards; enter the name and address of the recipient into a contact management system; compose a personalized message online, then transmit that captured information with a single Click on the SEND CARD screen button. It goes to the company’s Salt Lake City Mail Processing Center.

Each night, hundreds of thousands of personalized greeting cards are processed; inserted into envelopes with return and sender addressee direct imprinting on the envelope (no labels) plus a first class stamp is affixed and envelopes are sealed, trayed and delivered to the Salt Lake City Sectional Center for mailing for a mere cost to the sender of between $1.06 – $1.42 each.

While e-mail has negatively impacted US Postal Service profits and a 2 cent First-Class Postage Rate hike is in the works, to offset a $7 billion dollar deficit; the Send Out Cards business is expanding at an exponential growth rate.

I joined SOC in January 2006 and I was issued a 4 digit User ID number. Yesterday, a friend was issued a 6 digit User ID number which is proof of over 106,000 member enrollments in six years.

SOC has built a better MLM Model which has driven this new contender to the forefront of the formerly sleepy $7.5 billion Greeting Cards Industry dominated by Hallmark and American Greeting Cards. SOC, the new kid on the block, is gulping up market share because of their technological innovation and a refreshing simple but effective MLM business model.

In my next blog, I will elaborate on SOC’s success and why I have become a devoted disciple.