You’d need to have been living under a rock to not have heard about essential oils. They’re sweeping the world by storm, and it’s fair to say that this is one health craze that isn’t a fad.
But while essential oils can be a powerful health tool in the right hands, they can also pose their own risks when used incorrectly. Because essential oils provide a super-concentrated elixir of any given therapeutic plant, you really need to do your homework before using them on yourself and your loved ones.
With this in mind, I’ve constructed a series of FAQs that will hopefully answer all the burning questions you have about essential oils. If you’re already feeling confident about them and want to take the next step, we’ve drawn up a series of easy steps to get started with doTERRA essential oils. We’ve been using these oils for years, and continue to love the crap out of them!
Section 1 – all about essential oils
You may have heard about essential oils and perhaps even used them from time to time, but have you ever thought about what an essential oil really is? Here’s the quick and dirty.
What are essential oils?
The giveaway here is “essential” – which literally means the essence of a particular thing. Essential oils are the essence of certain therapeutic plants and herbs, and embody a highly potent form of that plant. For example, when you use lavender essential oil, each drop contains all the therapeutic oils that have been extracted from the physical lavender flowers. It takes 30 pounds of lavender flowers to make one 15 ml bottle of doTERRA lavender essential oil!
How are essential oils made?
There are two main ways in which essential oils are produced: steam distillation and expression. Steam distillation is by far the most common of the two methods, and simply involves passing steam through the plant to extract it’s essential oils from protective microscopic sacs. As the steam vapor, which now carries a dilute form of essential oil, rises, it cools and condenses. The oil is then separated from the water, and the pure essential oil is ready to go. Expression, otherwise known as “cold pressing”, is often used to extract oils from citrus fruits and certain other plants. Mechanical pressure is exerted on the citrus rind to “expel” the essential oil contained within. Pretty straightforward, really!
What’s with all the fuss over essential oils?
In a world filled to bursting with artificial compounds, harmful chemicals, side-effect ridden drugs and questionable prescriptions, many people are beginning to make a shift back towards a simpler existence. Essential oils provide an excellent way of doing this, as they’re the same oils that are found in nature, conveniently concentrated and put into bottles for your use! With essential oils, you can get rid of a lot of things in and around your home that are doing you harm – things like nasty cleaning products, air fresheners, prescription meds, antibacterial creams and lotions, chemical-based shampoos and conditioners, deodorants…the list goes on. Essential oils are amazingly versatile, and provide natural solutions to many of life’s problems.
Section 2 – all about doTERRA
doTERRA is perhaps the fastest-growing essential oil company in the world. Mostly, this is due to the excellent quality of their therapeutic-grade essential oils. We’ve shopped around and tried different companies, but in our opinion doTERRA continues to produce some of the best oils we’ve come across.
Some of doTERRA’s growth, however, is due to their marketing strategy, and it’s this which confuses many people. Here’s a few things you need to know about how doTERRA works.
What kind of company is doTERRA?
doTERRA is a multi-level marketing company. What this means is that they rely on different levels of affiliates (non-company members who promote their products in exchange for a commission) to market their essential oils for them. It sounds perhaps a bit more “pyramid-schemeish” than it is – it’s simply a commission-based system. doTERRA rewards those people who successfully promote their products, but there’s nothing backhand about it! One thing that doTERRA does to ensure this is to require it’s affiliates to spend a certain amount on their oils each month – this ensures that the products affiliates promote are something that they’d be happy to use themselves, and that their knowledge of those oils is sufficient.
What is a doTERRA wellness advocate?
This is where it starts to get a little head-scratching. doTERRA offers a wholesale membership to all new customers, in which they pay an initial fee of $35 in the initial year, and $25 for every year thereafter. In return, they become a wellness advocate, which means they can purchase essential oils and other doTERRA products at wholesale (25 percent below retail) prices. So if you buy $150 worth of essential oils, you’ll only have to pay $112.50. This way, you’ve already paid off your membership fee and stand to save a whole lot more over the course of the year. If they spend a certain amount each month, this new wellness advocate also gets the chance to earn commissions under the LRP. More on that below.
What is the doTERRA LRP and how do I earn commissions?
LRP literally means “loyalty rewards program.” Anyone who is a wellness advocate can be part of the loyalty rewards program, provided they spend at least $50 per month. But to really get all of the different forms of commission under the LRP, you need to spend at least $100 per month.
Here’s all of the different forms of commissions under the doTERRA LRP:
- Unilevel bonus: this is a monthly bonus that is determined by the number of wellness advocates who sign up using your “Wellness ID”. If you spend $50 PV (personal volume) on doTERRA products each month, you earn 2 percent on every amount spent each month by those signed up directly below you. If you spend $100/month, you can earn as much as 7 percent commission on ALL the wellness advocates below you (even those you don’t directly sign up). It’s super confusing, I know! All you really need to know is that the more wellness advocates you help to sign up, the larger your monthly commission will be (provided they themselves buy products each month). If you need to visualize this, I’d advise checking out this infographic and scrolling to the second page.
- Retail profit: this one is fairly simple, at least. If someone buys oils through your retail page (you provide a link to the page, they save and you earn), you earn 25 percent profit on anything they buy. Considering the likes of Amazon only pays up to 7 percent commission on affiliate products, this is waaayyyy better. You get this commission whether you spend $100/month or not, and it’s paid monthly.
- Fast start bonus: This commission is essentially the same as the Unilevel bonus, but only counts for the first 60 days of each enrollee’s membership. If a first level (direct) enrollee spends $100 in their first 60 days of being a wellness advocate, you earn $20 (20 percent) of that spend. If a second level enrollee (enrolled by someone directly under you) spends $100 in their first 60 days, you earn $10 (10 percent). And so on. You need to be spending $100 PV per month yourself to qualify for this bonus.
- Power of 3 bonus: this is where it gets super tricky, and you’re best to check out this explanation page. Essentially, this bonus supports groups of 3 in your enrollees. If you enroll 3 wellness advocates, and you all spend at least $100 PV per month, and your collective team spend adds up to $600 (it usually does), you personally can earn $50. If each of the 3 directly under you enroll another team of 3 that also spend $100 PV/month, you’ll get $250 per month. This organizational structure can continue until you get as much as $1500 per month. This bonus requires you to think about your enrollees, talk to them, and arrange your “organization” so that the Power of 3 layout is maximized for profit.
Confused? I’m not surprised. Suffice to say that the best approach is simply to get promoting, and you’ll see the commissions start to rack up. Once you get more members enrolled, you can start thinking about approaching your signups in a more organized fashion.
How do I get paid?
This depends on where you live. If you live in the US, you can choose to either get paid by check or direct to your bank account (direct debit). If you live in Canada, payment is by check only. If you live in Australia, you can also get paid by direct debit, but if you’re like me, and live in New Zealand, you can only get paid via something called ProPay (similar to PayPal). You pay a $20 yearly fee, doTERRA transfers your earnings into your ProPay account on a weekly basis, and you can then transfer it to your bank account.
How do I sign up as a wellness advocate?
We’ve compiled a series of easy-to-follow steps for signing up with doTERRA in this article. But, if you’re like me and like to minimize effort, here’s what you need to do:
- Simply sign up here with my Sponsor ID, 3182115, and choose ‘Wholesale’.
- Next, decide whether you want to buy a starter kit (I bought the Home Essentials Kit, as it has a good range of oils and their excellent petal diffuser), which waives the $35 membership fee, or simply pay the $35 fee and begin buying oils at your own pace.
- Contact us at inquiry@thriveprimal.com for guidance and to talk about next steps as a wellness advocate! Only if you want, of course.
Easy as that! Otherwise, if you just want to buy a few essential oils at regular prices, click here to go straight to the store.
Be sure to check out Part 2 of this two-part series here.
That’s it for now! I’ll be posting another article soon on all the different uses for essential oils…it’ll be pretty mind-blowing! If you’ve got any questions, please get in contact or leave a comment below and I’ll get to it when I can. Thanks for stopping by, folks.
