doTERRA Review: Essential Oils Pyramid Scheme Scam?

This post is an unbiased review of doTerra MLM company, which promotes natural essential oils via its direct sellers.

doTerra was launched in 2008 and claims to push away the toxic loads of people with its fragrances and aroma essentials collections.

We are here with a detailed review of doTerra followed by the doTerra Compensation Plan and lastly, a quick answer to the question, Should I join doTerra?

What is doTerra?

doTerra is a direct selling company working in the essential oils niche and claims to bring oils from all over the world.

The company partners with multiple people and tends to develop the purest, and most high-quality essential oil.

David Stirling is the CEO and President of doTerra. The company headquarters is located in Utah, US.

Stirling has his roots in Young Living, which was a rival essential oils MLM company.

Young Living also alleged doTerra of stealing their secret formulas and other important business assets.

As per Alexa statistics, most of the traffic to www.doterra.com is from the United States (26.5%), Brazil (14.5%) and Mexico (11.7%).

People have to join doTerra as a direct sellers and sell products to earn retail commissions. Moreover, direct sellers are motivated to recruit more people to earn other commissions.

Being an MLM Company, doTerra has always remained controversial and during the covid-19 pandemic, its distributors were blamed for using deceptive recruitment tactics.

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doTerra Products

doTerra markets a wide range of oil products for different necessities. At the time this post is written, doTerra has 42 essential oils that are claimed to be natural, pure and effective by the company.

The price of doTerra products ranges from $13.33 for Lemongrass to $153 for Melissa.

The company also deals in other products such as essential oil proprietary blends, on guard essential oils, breathe respiratory drops, breathe vapor stick, and deep blue essential oils.

Along with oil products, the official site also includes a few essential oil accessories.

For most people, these essential oils are overpriced.

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Joining doTerra

It is easy to join doTerra as one only needs to register and later purchase one of the affiliate kits.

The enrollment fee of doTerra is $35.

The affiliate kits range from lower to higher prices. Depending on the customer requirements there are various types of kits such as digestion kit, kid’s kit, introductory kit, and luxury kit with around 80 more such kit types.

In this post, PV stands for the Personal Volume that is generated through the affiliate’s purchase and retail orders.

GV stands for the Group Volume that is PV of the affiliate and his entire downline.

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doTerra Affiliate Ranks

As soon as one registers and purchases the affiliate kit, one of the affiliate ranks is given depending on their qualification criteria:

Affiliate Rank	Rank Requirements (monthly)
Wellness Advocate	Signup and maintain at least 50 PV.
Manager	Generate at least 100 PV and have 500 GV.
Director	Generate at least 100 PV and have 1000 GV
Executive	Generate at least 100 PV and have 2000 GV
Elite	Generate at least 100 PV and have 3000 GV
Premier	Generate at least 100 PV and have 5000 GV with at least 2 Executive ranked personally recruited affiliates.
Silver	Generate at least 100 PV and at least 3 Elite ranked personally recruited affiliates.
Gold	Generate at least 100 PV and at least 3 Premier ranked personally recruited affiliates.
Platinum	Generate at least 100 PV and at least 3 Silver ranked personally recruited affiliates.
Diamond	Generate at least 100 PV and at least 4 Silver ranked personally recruited affiliates.
Blue Diamond	Generate at least 100 PV and at least 5 Gold-ranked personally recruited affiliates.
Presidential Diamond	Generate at least 100 PV and at least 6 Platinum ranked personally recruited affiliates.

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doTerra Compensation Plan

The main aim behind the doTerra Compensation Plan is to let affiliates sell essential oils to retail customers.

The major income generation is through Retail Commissions, Fast Start Bonus and Power of 3 Team Bonus.

Apart from this, the affiliates earn Residual Commissions based on seven-level teams and additional bonuses as per their performance.

1. Retail Commissions

A 25% commission is paid on all retail orders. An Extra 9% commission is paid to the preferred customer orders (the ones signing for the monthly auto-ship order).

2. Fast Start Bonus

Fast Start Bonus is paid on purchase by newly recruited affiliates within their first 60 days.

3. Power of 3 Team Bonus

When an affiliate having 100 PV of auto-ship order personally recruits 3 affiliates in his downline, each having 100 PV of auto-ship order, the affiliate receives $50 as Power of 3 Team Bonus. At this, a downline volume of at least 600 PV is necessary.

When these three personally recruited affiliates bring 3 more affiliates each, the bonus increase to $250.

Lastly, when every second-level affiliate brings 3 more affiliates to the company, the lead affiliate receives a bonus of $1500.

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4. Residual Commission

doTerra follows a uni-level compensation structure to calculate Residual Commissions. The commission is capped at 7 levels as follows:

Rank	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3	Level 4	Level 5	Level 6	Level 7
Wellness Advocate	2%	–	–	–	–	–	–
Manager	2%	3%	–	–	–	–	–
Director	2%	3%	5%	–	–	–	–
Executive	2%	3%	5%	5%	–	–	–
Elite	2%	3%	5%	5%	6%	–	–
Premier	2%	3%	5%	5%	6%	6%	–
Silver or higher	2%	3%	5%	5%	6%	6%	7%

5. Other Bonuses

Fixed shares are distributed to the affiliates who qualify at top ranks.

The pools offer shares every month till when the requirements are fulfilled or maintained.

• Empowerment Pool: the Silver and Premier ranked affiliates receive one share for enrolling wholesale members with 100 PV. The Gold ranked affiliate receives 1 share for one wholesale member and 2 shares for two or more.
• Leadership Pool: Here, a Silver ranked affiliate earns one share, Gold receives 5 shares and Platinum gets 10 shares.
• Diamond Performance Pool: the Diamond ranked affiliate earns 1 share, Blue Diamond earns two shares and Presidential Diamond earns 3 shares.
• Diamond Pool: Every Diamond-ranked affiliate earns 3 shares.
• Blue Diamond Pool: Blue Diamond ranked affiliate receives 3 shares.
• Presidential Pool: Every Presidential Diamond affiliate receives 3 shares.

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DoTerra Review

So it was all about the doTerra company, its products, and the MLM compensation plan.

Now let’s move to some main questions.

Is doTerra a pyramid scheme?

No, doTerra is not a pyramid scheme. Many companies result in MLM scams, but doTerra is not one of them. It is a product-based direct selling company operating since 2008 and has annual revenue of millions of dollars.

The commission is based on sales of Essential Oils and other products.

Essential Oils products claims are real or fake?

Like most MLM companies and their distributors do, doTerra has also made extraordinary claims about its products.

As per Healthline.com, Essential Oils have their own benefits but quality and extraction source is important.

Essential Oils are used in aromatherapy to successfully treat some conditions. Meanwhile, the health benefits of all Essential Oils are not scientifically proven.

So that 10ml fluid which costs you hundreds of dollars can be a natural useless formulation.

Moreover, Essential Oils can have some side effects. Therefore before using or recommending these products, direct sellers should be aware of what they are doing.

Can I become a millionaire with doTerra?

There are a small fraction of people in every MLM company who become millionaires by grabbing 90% of the commission share and as per past data most people fail in MLM.

To reach such a level, Individuals need to create a network of thousands of active people who purchase and recruit other people. Also, they need to acquire essential skills to succeed in MLM.

You will need to sell overpriced products operating on the controversial business model for at least 2 to 5 years. Then only they can be some chance of earning a regular income.

Should I Join doTerra?

It completely depends on the individual. If you find MLM as an attractive career opportunity, you can sell overpriced products and recruit hundreds of people to work the same as you do, then the answer for you can be yes.

Moreover, I will recommend using doTerra Essential Oils first and understand its compensation plan deeply, then decide to become part of it.

Don’t blindly follow random promises and investigate before you invest.

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