Company examples: MonaVie, Agel, Usana, Vemma, Exfuse.

History and definitions: Binary plans are built with two legs or teams and your ability to balance those two teams in order to be paid all of your volume. Some of the first Binary plans were 50/50 balanced so that you would only get paid on your volume when it matched exactly in each leg. When it matched up, you got what is called a "cycle" or a small amount of money based on the volume accumulated and matched up in each team.

Later companies moved to a 1/3 – 2/3 cycling binary plan where you would be able to cycle even though your team was balanced 1/3 in one leg and 2/3 in the other leg.

The newer binary plans do not cycle, but pay 10% on the smaller of your two legs, many times leaving large amounts of volume unpaid in one of your legs.

Commentary: In a binary plan company that had over 40,000 distributors, I set a record with the fasting growing team, top recruiter and fastest to diamond in the company history. So I know how to build a Binary plan. The problem was not my income, the problem was the income of the several thousand people on my team. It was laughable.

The smoke and mirrors of a binary plan is that in some cases, you have people on your team. Sometimes hundreds of people, yet those people rarely equate to actual income. This provides a new person with a false sense of success. The newest person sees people coming into their team, but no financial gain from those people. Companies are able to create momentum as a result of distributors getting a false hope by seeing one team grow even though they aren’t making any money.

Some companies also have high product purchase requirements (up to $250) that many times leads to bottles stacking up in the garage as they hope for the future.

The good thing about the binary is the ability to create momentum and excitement over a short period of time. The bad thing about the binary is the reality of so many people losing money each month with a false sense of success.

Binary plans are also very back end weighted. They pay a handful of people really well and leave the vast majority of the distributors starving.