I did! Marlo recently brought to my attention, an article featured on the New York Times almost 10 years ago. You can read it for yourself here. In a nutshell, Regina (my partner for WAHMCart) who was a rep for a large [tag]direct selling[/tag] company, decided to use the Internet to build her business.

The company didn’t like that at all and just felt the Internet was no place to sell. By putting her business online Regina violated the company’s policies. But Regina has grown her business tremendously since and I can’t help but say, “She showed them”.

Looking back it’s kinda silly. True, hind sight is 20-20. However, I think it is quite sad that many [tag]direct sales[/tag] companies – even today, severely limit their members’ use of the Internet. If they do allow promoting via the Internet, they require members to jump through hoops or force them to use a replicated web site that may not always appeal to the market segment the member is targeting.

I am a member of one who actually has an excellent product at good decent prices. While they are more lax than most I know, the feeling I get is they don’t like you using the Internet to promote their business.