Someone might introduce you to the product and the business plan. But, you keep wondering, “Is Optavia A Scam?” Am I right?
In my Optavia review, I’ll cover the below topics to help you make up your mind.
- What Is Optavia?
- Optavia Products
- How To Make Money With Optavia?
- Optavia Compensation Plan
- Optavia 2021 Income Disclosure
- Optavia Pros & Cons
- Is Optavia A Scam?
I am not associated with Optavia, so you won’t see me selling you any Optavia meal replacements in this article. I would only share my findings from its business opportunity and the compensation plan. Let’s dive deep.
Disclaimer: As the owner of Smileaffiliatesuccess.com, I have tracked down special deals for products, tools, and services mentioned herein. When you click my affiliate links on this page to make a purchase, I may get a small commission, and you will definitely get a great bargain. This is a win-win advantage for both of us.
What Is Optavia?
-Summary of Optavia-
Product Name: Optavia
Founders: founded by Wayne Scott Andersen in 2002
Product Type: Weight loss & Health MLM
Price: $199 starter kit + $99 renewal fee
Recommend: No
Wayne Scott Andersen founded Take Shape For Life in 2002, and he renamed it Optavia in July 2017 with new “clean label” food products. Both Take Shape For Life & Optavia are subsidiaries under the mother company – Medifast, that runs business since 1980.
Optavia is an MLM company that sells meal replacements to help control people’s weight issues, costing $378-$423 per month. They also provide a business plan. If you like to control weight and make money at the same time, this is it!
By the end of 2017, Optavia’s revenue resulted in the ninth consecutive quarter of growth with 16,700 active earning coaches. Besides the USA market, Optavia expanded to Singapore and Hong Kong in the first half of 2019.
For similar MLMs that offer weight-control products, you may check my review of Beachbody, Now LifeStyle, or It Works!

What’s inside Optavia?
Besides the meal replacements from Optavia, it also has a coach & community system that helps you succeed in fighting fat and transform you into good health habits. Let’s see what Optavia has to offer.
Optavia Product Lines
Optavia has different programs that suit your needs.
You can choose the 5&1 program, 4&2&1 program, or 3&3 program that mainly includes the items below. It’s similar to another weight loss program like Herbalife.
- Bars
- Shakes
- Brownies
- Chip Cookie
- Smashed Potatoes
- Pancakes
- Cereals
Health Coach
The way to lose weight and get it under control is a lonely journey, and Optavia knows it. You can find an Optavia coach that accompanies you, but they are not REAL coaches.
The term “coach” of Optavia is what they call independent distributors.
Your health coach means the one who enrolls you into Optavia, AKA your sponsor or your upline. You are their downlines.
Habits of Health
There are no quick solutions to controlling your weight, so Optavia creates a “Habits of Health” system that helps you change your eating habits and maintain a better lifestyle for long-term health.
Optavia Community
Besides your coach, Optavia is where the supports are. It provides many forms of support, including live and recorded conference calls, nutrition support, client-focused groups, online help, etc.
Once you succeed in your body transformation(lose weight), you will become an inspiration to other newbies.
Fuelings
Fueling is the term Optavia calls its meal replacements, and you’ll choose from more than 60 fuelings that are essential for burning fat and losing weight.
Each Fueling contains high-quality protein that retains lean muscle mass and probiotic cultures that support digestive health.
Do Optavia Products Work?
I don’t use Optavia meal products myself, so I cannot give you my firsthand experience.
Exercising constantly or working out at the gym frequently are the ways I prefer instead of taking meal replacements. Here are what I found on its consumer affair page:
-The Positive-



-The Negative-



Both positive and negative reviews are essential to help us understand Optavia products or customer services.
We might meet the same problem after becoming Optavia’s business partner, so keep those in mind.
How To Make Money With Optavia?
In any MLMs, they are mainly two ways to make money:
- Sell Optavia products to earn retail commissions
- Recruit people to join under you and make group sales for extra bonuses
Before we go directly to the compensation plan, I would like to discuss how you get started with Optavia.
Getting Started
To become one Health Coach, you need to talk to your coach to refer you to their team.
And then, you can purchase the Optavia Business Kit for $199 to promote your own coaching business. The kit contains tools, plan information, and 12 months of free
access to your personalized Optavia website.

Lastly, participate in Optavia’s supportive community and follow its proven system for success.
Optavia Compensation Plan
Here we come to the most complicated part of this review.
Most MLM likes to create their terms and fancy acronyms to make people see loads of ways to make money. Don’t worry! I’ve made things easier for you today.
- Client Support Commissions: Earn 15% on your Compensation Volume
- Client Support Bonus: Earn an extra 5%-13% when you have 1,200+ Frontline Qualifying Volume(FQV)
- Certification Bonus: Earn an extra 3% on your Compensation Volume
- Coach Consistency Bonus: Earn $250-$1,000 when you have 2,000+ FQV
Feel Sleepy? Me too. Just remember two things: sell the products and recruit people under your team as much as possible.
You will start getting commissions and extra bonuses once you become a recruiting machine and a full-time manager.
Optavia Ranks
There are 15 ranks with Optavia’s commission structure. The higher the ranks, the more requirements you must achieve to maintain the status.

What I Liked About Optavia
TOP#1 A Better Compensation Plan
As I mentioned, you get paid by the orders placed by your level-1 clients and don’t get paid by recruiting people into the system.
It focuses more on guiding others to lose weight by using the products. If you read most of my MLM reviews, it’s easy to find out that the majority emphasize recruitment’s importance.
TOP#2 A 30-day Refund Policy
Optavia offers you a 30-day period to request a refund if you are not 100% satisfied with your order for any reason.
Not everyone likes the taste of meal replacements, so this offers customers the confidence to purchase their products for a try.

Ugly Truth About Optavia
TOP#1 Optavia 2021 Income Disclosure
The Optavia 2021 income disclosure shows us the annual income ranges of all independent Optavia coaches.
- 19.83% of Optavia coaches made no earnings in 2021.
- 40.96% of Optavia coaches made less than $1,000 in 2021.
- Only 2.3% of Optavia coaches made more than $50,000 in 2021.

Ask yourself, can you stand the pain and rejections for the first few years with an annual income of less than $1,000?
Or can you work your butt off on the weekend to recruit people and sell the Optavia products to make commissions? If the answer is yes, go for it!
TOP#2 Expensive Products & Taste Not Good
A meal replacement costs from $378-$423 per month!
I believe the cost per month equals a one-year gym membership. If you go to the gym constantly and work out to keep fit, you will not need to take meal replacements to control your weight.
We all know that a healthy & clean diet and exercise regularly are the answers to keeping your body fit, but people tend to choose to take meal replacements as an easier way out.
Besides, customers mentioned that Optavia’s meal replacements taste weird and that they cannot eat or drink. They just felt yucky about the taste.
TOP#3 Not Really Coaches
I know I’ve mentioned this in the previous paragraphs, but I like to mention it again. The so-called health coaches are not the REAL coaches. They are your uplines or your sponsors.
So, before you join Optavia, you need to consider whether you need a real coach to help you go through your weight-loss challenge. Otherwise, you might feel deceived by Optavia’s term “Health Coach.”
Who Is Optavia For?
People like to lose weight and make money by referring others to the same system. If it’s something you like to achieve, there is no harm in trying Optavia.
But, if you are like me, always keep fit. I don’t think Optavia will be an excellent choice to make extra money. To be honest, people like to see the real example of you using Optavia’s meal replacements to control your weight.
So, if you don’t have experience with Optavia, it gets less persuasive to convince your potential customers, which results in no sales and no commissions.
Can You Make Money Selling Optavia?
Yes, some people made decent money in 2021. But, that’s just 2.3% of all Optavia’s Health Coaches, while the majority fail to make money.
Is Optavia A Scam?
No, Optavia is not a scam. They provide meal replacements to people who want to solve their weight issues and a business plan that health coaches to make money.
But, it won’t be my first choice regarding making money. Check my alternative to make money online right below!
My Alternative Way to Make Money Online
My alternative way to make money online is through affiliate marketing instead of promoting Optavia products in person.
Imagine you sell Optavia products to your friends, family, or anyone you know. Don’t you feel embarrassed or blushed? They might avoid you ever since.
Doing affiliate marketing will save you from that:
- It’s free to start your affiliate marketing business.
- You don’t need to buy physical products and sell them face to face.
- There is no monthly minimum sales quota in affiliate marketing.
- You don’t recruit people to become your downlines to build a team.
- You are not restricted to promoting one product. You can promote anything you like!
- Work on your schedules & you are your OWN BOSS!
You only need to start a blog with quality content. So every time people land on your site to read your product reviews or other articles, they will find insight and value.
If they like it, they may purchase the products or services via your links. Here come your earning potentials.

The platform I am using currently is Wealthy Affiliate. You will find all the proven-to-work training courses, every Friday night LIVE training courses, one keyword research tool called Jaaxy, 24/7 site support, and the most friendly community.

You are more than welcome to check my full Wealthy Affiliate review HERE, or click the button right below to start your online journey with us.
Wealthy Affiliate Income Proof
Here are some of the most active members from Wealthy Affiliate. Each of them did succeed in generating a sustainable income to replace their 9-5 jobs. You are more than welcome to check their stories HERE.
- I Made Over $1 Million With Affiliate Marketing.
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I hope you enjoy this review, and you are more than welcome to share ideas or leave your comments below. I will reply as soon as I can, thanks.
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Hi Matt,
Although their compensation plan looks good and they don’t need you to recruit people in order to get paid, I don’t think I would sign up. First of all, I don’t participate in weight loss programs, I believe in eating healthy 😉 Exercise is also great.
Optavia’s products are also really expensive! The cost per month is very high! I think that there are cheaper programs around. And then, there were complaints about bad tasting food … I think that the company should review their products if their prices are so high. When you offer expensive items, they must be good quality, right?
Hi Christine,
It’s good to see you got my point here. Yes, I believe eating healthy and exercising regularly is the key to keep fit. For people who want to control their weight, I’ve written reviews about Beachbody and Now Lifestyle. They could compare for the perfect one that suits them.
As for the quality issue of Optavia, they should have provided better customer service about the tastes or the replacement. I think this two might could solve some of the concerns.
Matt
Thank you, Matt, for the comprehensive review of Optivia. I am curious does the bars or their losing weight program work?
In general, I don’t think MLM is for me because of the upselling, perhaps the pyramid structure, and only/or promoting a line of product for one company.
However, I can totally agree with being an affiliate marketer with Wealthy Affiliate. You are not limited to promoting only one product or one company. The potential is unlimited with thousands of products. On top of that, we have an amazing and experienced support group with step-by-step training to help us succeed. Keep up the good work with the reviews. They are awesome!
Hi Ha,
The bar from Optavia could be one source of meal replacement, but you still need to exercise regularly and eat clean to better control your weight. Thanks for backing my up for the Wealthy Affiliate part, love to connect with people who are likely-minded.
For those who don’t know Wealthy Affiliate so far, you may check my FULL review HERE. 🙂
Cheers,
Matt