Is Beachbody Worth It? – Team Beachbody MLM Review

What caught your attention about Beachbody? Did a friend recommend it to you? Were you researching it online? Are the products or services of interest to you? Or are you more interested in joining their MLM program as a coach to create your own business? I will be answering the overriding question, is Beachbody worth it?

Are the training programs good value for money? Can you also make money with the Beachbody MLM program?

I’ve done some detailed research on Beachbody that will help answer these questions and help you make an informed decision. A side benefit for reading this report is it will save you time researching all this information yourself.

I’m going to cover the following 10 areas:

1. Beachbiody Company Details
2. What is their business about?
3. What are the cost of their products?
4. What is the cost to become a coach?
5. How does their MLM program work?
6. Can you make money with their program?
7. Pros & Cons
8. Is it a scam?
9. My conclusion on this company
10. My #1 Recommendation

Beachbody Company Details

• Founders were Carl Daaikeler, CEO, and Jon Congdon
• Founded in 1998 – Privately held
• Headquarters in Santa Monica, CA.
• Beachbody is operational in the US, Canada and the UK
• Beachbody over the years have had 28 Million members and currently 400,000 coaches.
• Revenue in 2019 was $1.3 Billion

What Is The Business About

Beachbody markets a wide range of fitness, weight loss and body building routines to meet the needs of almost anyone. They also market customizable meal plans and nutritional supplements to compliment your workout plan.

Target Market

Almost anyone who wants to keep fit, loose weight, build muscle, or train for specific activities there is a program for you. Beachbody tries to embody the element of fun into their programs. When you purchase a program you do that from one of their enrolled and trained coaches. Beachbody also operates a member community forum where you can get peer support in your efforts.

Selection of Fitness Programs

The following picture from the Beachbody website shows a small selection of the workout plans available. As of writing Beachbody offers 85 different programs that will meet the needs of their target market. They are called Beachbody On Demand

Click the image below to access information and videos directly from the Beachbody website:

Weight Loss Program

As with most fitness programs, weight loss is usually top of the list. There are programs for that. Here are some pictures of claimed results:

Read the small print. The results you get will depend on how rigorously you follow the weight loss program. Not everyone who begins a weight loss program will get the results they desire.

If you do not have much time to exercise, there is a program for you. If you wish to focus on just staying fit, you can do that too. Or if your main goal is to build up muscles in your body, you can find a regimen to do that.

Want to work out without weights? There are programs for that. Weights? You bet. List of Programs are in:

1. Weight Loss
2. Strength and Muscle
3. Lean and Sculpted
4. Cardio
5. Low Impact
6. Yoga
7. Dance
8. Pre and Post Natal Workouts
9. Kids
10. Short Workouts (Under 30 minutes)
11. Rest and Recovery
12. Exercise with No Equipment
13. Most Popular Exercises Group
14. Nutrition Center

As I mentioned before, their is something for everybody. Beachbody’s secret sauce to achieving results is a system to make you accountable to your chosen plan. It includes support from your coach and peer support in a Beachbody members forum. You can find out more about the programs via Beachbody On Demand.

A 14-Day Free Trial Membership is offered.

Beachbody recognizes that what you eat can directly impact the success of any exercise plan. Hence, they help their members with recipes suitable for the workout plan they choose.

One of their most popular offerings is their Shakeology nutritional protein shake program. One shake is intended as a daily meal replacement. There are 9 different flavors including berries, chocolate and vegan shake options. Some of the shakes available are shown below: They come in powder form and can be mixed with various kinds of milk or water.

They cost $129.95 for one months supply. A coach can purchase them at a discount at $97.46. If you don’t like the shakes, you can return what is left within 30 days for your money back. Note that these are not approved by the FDA.

What Is The Cost Of Their Training Plans

Beachbody have created two cost structures. The first is subscription based that gives you access to their large library of training programs. The following graphic shows the three options available.

As you can see they offer a 14-Day trial at no cost. At the end of that two weeks you will be charged $13 a month. In my opinion, the most cost effective option is the first. You are billed $99 annually that works out to $8.25 a month. You have unlimited access to their large library of programs. You can cancel at any time.

Once you’re in, you can tailor your workout sessions to meet whatever fitness goals you have. The video training is accessible on many of your favorite devices shown below.

This YouTube Video shows you how to set up and sync your workout programs with your chosen devices and favorite music of your choice selected from your personal music library.

Workout Program And Nutritional Package Options

The following is a selection of the 21-Day Challenge Program designers for beginners. They all include unlimited access to all their workout programs for a year but bundled with nutritional and food products designed to optimize these workout programs.

This following 21-Day Fix is one of many workout Challenge programs, Click the image below to get more details.

As you can see, these costs range from $160 t0 $230. They include the nutritional shakes that I discussed earlier.

The other Challenge programs can range from a low of $140 to a high of almost $300. It all depends on the combination of products and the duration in days of the workout programs.

Details about all the Challenge Programs are available through clicking this PDF Document.

You do not have to renew these programs after you complete their terms. However, you will have unlimited access to the plethora of workout programs for one year. These are renewable at $99 a year.

Purchases of these programs are made through Beachbody coaches.

What Is The Cost To Become A Coach?

Besides being a customer, you can also market the Beachbody Products and Programs as a Coach. A Coach can participate in the MLM business program.

Anyone can sign up to be a Coach online for a one-time $39.95 sign-up fee plus a $15.95 recurring monthly fee. This covers ongoing access to their Beachbody business website, training, reporting, and personal development content. All the back-end operations of warehousing and shipping products to their customers from Beachbody is included in this cost.

How Does The MLM Program Work

There are two ways that a Coach can make money.

1. Earn commissions from sales
2. In addition to 1, earn a percentage of purchases and sales from the coaches you recruit

No earnings are paid on sign up fees and the monthly business subscription of Coaches. The earnings generated from one’s recruits and their recruits are called Team Bonuses.

Commissions On Sales Alone

The following chart shows the commission structure based on making retail sales alone. These are categorized as Challenge Pack Bonuses and Commissions. The following diagram will provide further explanation:

Binary Compensation Plan

This is one of many compensation plans that MLM companies use. It is called BINARY because each Coach has two legs of recruits. Bonuses are earned when sales are made by every coach on each side and they conform to a balanced structure.

Some programs require that both legs must have a minimum sales volume that are equal. While others have requirements that they must meet unequal ratios.

Team Beachbody team bonus cycles are based on a 1/2/ ratio. Whenever a cycle on 300 points is reached with 200 on one side and 100 on the other, no matter how deep in their organization these sales occur, bonuses are paid out the amount varying from $14 to $18 depending on one’s rank. The maximum a Coach can earn each week is also dependent on one’s rank. The higher the coaches rank, the higher the earning limit.

A diagram showing the requirements to advance in rank will be shown later.

Matching Bonuses

Another way to earn commissions is through matching bonuses shown in the diagram below.

Star Diamond Bonuses

The further you advance, there are additional bonuses to be earned. Beachbody, as do most MLM companies, have programs that reward their associates to advance higher. In every case, more organization sales are necessary to advance. The diagram below shows how Beachbody system pays out:

Team Beachbody Rank Requirements

The following chart clearly shows what actions a Coach needs to make to advance their rank and qualify for higher earnings:

Definitions

The following definitions provides added clarity to the Team Beachbody Compensation Plan.

Can You Make Money With The Program

This is the million dollar questions. Yes you can. But very few make anything worthwhile. A very small percentage of Coaches actually earn hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars in earnings.

These are the folks who got in early and were able to build large organizations under them. The following table explains very clearly why this MLM program just like every other MLM programs are not your best option to base your business on. This was created within the year 2016.

An updated earnings table for 2019 is shown below.

Please note the following statement in Italics from Team Beachbody as related to earnings:

¹Information based on Coaches enrolled for the entire period. Of these Coaches, 51.05% received a bonus or commission check from Team Beachbody

²Coach ranks are determined based on rank achieved as of December 29, 2016¹

The figures stated above are not a guarantee and are not a projection of a typical Coach’s earnings through participation in the Team Beachbody compensation plan. As in any independent business, the level of success or achievement of each Team Beachbody Coach is dependent upon the commitment, skill level, drive, and desire to succeed of the individual Coach. Success with Team Beachbody results only from effective product and program sales efforts, which require hard work, diligence, and leadership.

I will highlight some key numbers to help justify my statement above. But first, did you notice that about 49% of the Coaches earned nothing at all.

In fact, they lost money because they had to pay their monthly fees and other business expenses like buying a minimum of product in order to qualify to participate in the compensation plan.

Coaches Earnings Statement For Year 2019

Out of those who did get a check, 77.3% in the Coach rank earned an average of $427 a year. The maximum annual earning was $37,201. Well, if the average was $427, what do you think the minimum was? Notice the entries of low earnings of $12 a year?

Even at the rank of Diamond, the average annual earnings was $17,174 with a low of $394. And this category accounts for only 2.3% of ALL paid Coaches.

Even the top 1.2% at the Star Diamond rank has a low earning of only $1,650. The average earning shown for Star Diamond is $117,130. I wonder how many Coaches earn that high of $3,032,540 annually?

I feel you could count them on the fingers of one hand, if that. Who knows?

As all MLM companies keep saying, one’s earnings are based on how hard a person works. Really? I am sure that those 77% who got paid an average of $427 a year must have worked pretty darned hard.

And what about those Emerald ranks who averaged only $3,086 annually? To me that is less than minimum wage income, even if it is based on part-time effort.

If you think you can achieve your dream in any MLM program who are you kidding? Of course some make it. But I bet you they must work 50 to 60 hour weeks training and communicating with their team. If they stopped, their sales would drop.

One of the fallacies is that when you build a winning team you can take off for exotic vacations and the money will keep coming in. Perhaps it will. But if they did nothing to help their team, how long would that level of earnings remain?

Pros & Cons

There are always Pros and Cons. Let’s look at them.

Pros

1. The Fitness Program offers a workout regimen for almost everyone.
2. The $99 a year fee is very reasonable. Even if you used free workouts shown on YouTube, the chances are you will not persevere because you have no financial investment in your outcome. Paying something yourself goes a long way to hold you accountable.
3. They have far more customers, 23 million, than Coaches, 400,000. This is not typical of MLM programs where the business associates, called coaches here, usually are the vast majority of customers.
4. You have access to a coach and other fitness experts to help you pick the Workout Program right for you.
5. If you become a Coach you can have customers assigned to you as long as you meet the qualification requirements. But you will only earn commissions on new products and services they purchase.
6. When you see results personally you can use your own body as a marketing tool to get customers
7. The commission on the Beachbody On Demand $99 a year program is 40% ($40). Hence, you can make good money marketing the program yourself in person as well as through a blogging website using affiliate marketing techniques.
8. You have a back office and good marketing tools to help you sell the program.

Cons

1. The Beachbody Workout Library is so large it can be confusing to figure out what Challenge is best for you.
2. You can join Beachbody On Demand through their website. They will assign a coach to you. If you don’t like that coach it can be a hassle to get a different one.
3. The cost for the meals, shakes and nutritional supplements are very expensive.
4. The nutritional products are not approved by the FDA.
5. There have been instances of poor customer service. Make sure you stay on top to get your money back if you cancel anything.
6. The MLM business as the data shows is not easy to make money in. Very few do. If you do become a Coach, I wish you well.
7. In order to be assigned customers who join directly via the Beachbody Company website you must be at the Emerald Rank and earning commissions and bonuses at that level. If you fail to meet the qualifications, your customers will be taken away from you and assigned to someone else. This is known as Lead Grab Back. Not cool!
8. There are expenses to run your business that for most is more than they earn in a year.

Is The Team Beachbody Business A Scam?

I don’t think so. It is possible to earn money as a Coach without recruiting others into your team. You simply make a commission on all your sales. In fact, it is possible to do this using Affiliate Marketing strategies. If you do become a Coach, do so primarily for the following reasons:

1. You can use the fitness program to develop a healthy lifestyle and purchase the products at a discount
2. Build your business primarily through marketing the Team Beachbody On Demand Program and the foods, shakes and nutritional supplements via your personal blogging website.
3. Document your progress with pictures, especially if it is in Weight Loss. This will give you added credibility when you market the products and may even help you get your friends and family who want to loose weight to become your customers.

My Conclusion On Beachbody

Beachbody has been in business for decades. It has over 23 million customers and over 400,000 coaches in the US, Canada and the UK. The programs so appear to work, otherwise they wouldn’t be in business this long.

Sure, they have had their fair share of customer complaints, but the ratio is small compared to the total number of customers. Beachbody also has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau.

My main concern is with their MLM program. If you sign your own recruits as customers and coaches, they stay with you regardless of your earnings record.

However, if you have customers assigned to you, if you fail to meet certain requirements you can loose them at a moments notice.

By all means use this company to help you meet your fitness goals. However, I do not recommend using them as a base for your business.

My #1 Recommendation

I actually have two. My #1 recommendation happens to be the second. Read on!

1 – Start An Online Business In Affiliate Marketing

Why don’t you start a business in Affiliate Marketing? You can get a brief overview on how this works on my website’s home page: https://www.affiliatemarketingforleaders.com

There are thousands of products and services you can market with no cost to you. If fitness is your passion, do your research and select the company who offers programs and products that are of a high standard and offer value for money.

One of the many advantages of Affiliate Marketing, you do not have to buy any of the products you recommend. This means you can offer far more products to your potential customers than what you can with Beachbody.

There is one important factor. In order to succeed you must create a website that will rank your blog posts high on the search engines as well as attract traffic large enough to result in conversions (Sales).

How do you do that?

2 – You Choose A One Stop Company That Provides Everything

Here is a summary of what you will need and that is provided at a very low cost by my #1 Recommendation

Wealthy Affiliate.

• TRAINING
  • How to build your own website using the WordPress Platform
  • How to select a niche you can enjoy helping others solve problems while you earn money in the process
  • How to write effective content on your website
  • How to use Keyword Research to be ranked high in search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo
  • How to grow traffic to your website using organic means using Eearch Engine Optimization (SEO)
  • How to use Social Media, like Facebook, PInterest, Instagram, LInkedin etc. to promote your website
  • How to use free online tools to monitor and measure progress on your website
  • How to create and promote your own YouTube Channel
  • How to use Google Adsense to add income to your websites
  • How to use ads to scale up your business after it starts to generate income
  • Training from successful members who are already making a full time income and more
• WEBSITE HOSTING
  • Piurchase your domain names directly from Wealthy Affiliate at low prices, typically $13.99 for a year, compared to $25 from Go Daddy and others
  • Host up to 10 Domains with no added cost
  • Security Package
  • Automatic website backup using a backup server
  • Extremely fast server that is also used by Amazon
  • 365/24/7 Website Support
• AFFILIATE PROGRAM
  • Dashboard Search System
  • Program Management
  • Earn Affiliate Commissions promoting Wealthy Affiliate
• KEYWORD RESEARCH
  • Guide To High Ranking Keywords
  • Site Rank Tracking
  • Comoetition Analysis
  • Brainstorm Engine
  • Smart Alphabet Soup Option To Find High Ranking Keywords
  • Keyword Management List
• EARN WHILE YOU LEARN
  • Get Paid To Create Training
  • Get Paid To Give Site Comments
  • Super Affiliate Incentives
• COACHING AND MENTORING
  • Access to your personal mentor
  • Access to the founders Kyle and Carson
  • Access to other members who are experts in many fields of online marketing
  • Real time access to assistance in Live Chat

The main takeaway is when you join Weathy Affiliate, you do not have to go searching elsewhere for anything to build your business. It has taken over 15 years for the founders, Kyle and Carson to build this amazing One Stop Shop platform.

There is no other company in the world that offers everything you see listed above. They may offer some pieces, but not all. If you were to set up a system and program by yourself to create a successful online business it would cost you thousands of dollars if you got a bunch of package deals.

What Does All Of This Cost?

Or if you found services that were subscription based, it would cost you several hundreds of dollars a month to get a fraction of what Wealthy Affiliate offers.

So what would it cost you to have access to everything you see here? Write down what you think that monthly cost would be? How about $299?

Nah, maybe $199?

I’m toying with you now. OK would you say that $99 a month would be something you would pay for all of this?

The actual cost to you would be just a low $49 A MONTH. That is much less that a cup of coffee a day at Denny’s.

I’m going to do one better than this. Just to make sure you do not get into something that may not be right for you, Wealthy Affiliate will let you try this all out with no cost to you for a week. No credit card is necessary.

If you decide after that week this is not for you, we part as friends. Since you will not have provided your credit card, you can be sure you cannot be charged.

On the other hand, if you decide this is for you before the week is over, I will offer you the option of going Premium for $19 for the first month subscription. And after that first month is over, you will pay the $49 monthly fee.

So how to you join with no cost to you? Click the banner below and fill out a valid Email address. That is all you have to do.

When you started reading this post you probably didn’t expect to see this program and offer. What do you think about it? Do you feel it is worth checking out to see if Wealthy Affiliate can help you build a Team Beachbody business online without having to recruit family and friends?

Alternatively, your mind may now be open to other possibilities that doesn’t involve remaining a coach in Team Beachbody.

I’d love to hear any questions or comments you may have in the comments window below.

I wish you well no matter what decision you make.

Cheers!

Edwin