Please check MA's annual report. For year ending Dec 2008, total revenue is 280M, 4% comes from meetings. So the product sales is only 270M. MA has about 180,000 distributors, who are FORCED to buy $100-300/month. My math tells me that 90+% of revenue comes from "Transfer Buy" (FORCED buying per month). Every little sales to real customers. So people who get in first or who can lure people in under will make money off the people who can not recruit. No matter how their commission plan works, the end result is that very little percentage of the 180K distributors make money off the vast majority of distributors, while MA gets the most as "residual income".
So my conclusion is that if you can bother and cheat people, you might have a chance of making money. Otherwise, stay away from this Ponzi schema. The last one who joins will only pay for the commission for the ones who joined before, unless, he can "recruit" people under.
MA lures people in with the promise of "residual income" or "2-3 year plan". The ultimate goal is to sell products so MA makes a shit load of money. (Profit margin is about 100-200%. Again, look at the annual report). JR has no way to sell his so wonderful products but to take advantage of people's desire to retire, be rich without effort. The whole company is a SHIT!