How the numbers get here

Every factual claim on this site carries a source, and the source is shown on the page rather than kept in a file somewhere. Preferred sources, in order: audited financial statements and regulatory filings, documents published by the company itself, documents published by an authority or a court, and finally reporting by a publication that names its own source.

An article without sources cannot be published. That is enforced in the publishing flow, not left to memory. Archive material from 2017 to 2023 predates this policy and is marked as such on the page until it has been reviewed.

Verified means the figure was checked against an audited or official document, such as an annual report or a regulatory filing.

Reported means a company or an industry list stated the figure and it has not been independently confirmed. Most private company revenue is reported, because that is the only form it exists in.

Estimated means the figure was derived from other figures by a method stated on the page. Income figures are never estimated. Where a company has not published a number, the field stays empty.

Companies publish these in incompatible shapes: different periods, different definitions of who counts as a participant, different tier boundaries, different currencies. Reading two of them side by side without restating them is misleading.

Each statement is normalised into four figures, where the document supports them:

• Median annual earnings
• Share of participants earning under $500 a year
• Share of participants who received nothing
• Share of total payout going to the top one percent

The original table is kept alongside the normalised figures, so anyone can check the restatement. Where a statement does not support a figure, the field is left empty rather than estimated, and the page says which participants the statement excluded. Amounts are shown in the currency of the statement and converted only where the conversion date is stated.

None of these figures subtract the participant's own costs, because the statements do not. Product purchased for personal use, fees, samples and events are not deducted anywhere in this data. Read the figures as gross payments received, not as profit.

Company profiles record founding year, headquarters, markets, category, compensation plan type as stated in the most recent public plan document, revenue history with a source per year, and a timeline of recorded events. Rankings are computed from that data alone.

The ordering formula contains no commercial variable of any kind. There is no field a company can pay to change, and no arrangement that moves a company up a list. If a commercial product is ever added that touches presentation, it will be labelled on the page and it still will not touch ranking, rating or coverage.

Research is gathered with the help of an automated assistant, and nothing it produces publishes on its own. Every item lands in a review queue where an editor checks each claim against its source, and only a human action can publish it. There is no code path that publishes automatically.

Regulatory matters are described the way the authority describes them, with the date and the document. A complaint is an allegation. A settlement is an agreed outcome, usually without admission. A judgment is a finding. This site does not call a named company a pyramid scheme; that is a conclusion for a court.

The person who runs DirectSellingStar is not an active distributor in any direct selling company and receives no commission or downline income from any company covered here.

The site sells no placement, no ranking, no favourable coverage and no advertising to companies it rates, and carries no affiliate links to them. It is funded by readers through subscriptions and paid data work. Nothing in the paragraphs above changes for any commercial reason, and if the funding model changes this page changes first. See about for the fuller statement.

If something here is wrong, send the document that shows it. Corrections are made openly: the page records what changed and when, rather than being edited quietly. Reach the desk at editor@directsellingstar.com.

Journalists, academics and regulators are welcome to reuse the aggregated figures with attribution. Cite the page you used, not the site as a whole, so the reader can check the same number you did.

Aggregated figures published here may be quoted and reproduced with that attribution and a link. The underlying source documents belong to whoever published them, and their terms apply. For a custom export, a historical series or material prepared for use as evidence, write to the address above.