If you are a mum with kids and you love essential oils, you might know Young Living and wonder “Is Young Living Essential Oils A Scam?”
In that case, welcome to this post and I would try my best to reveal all my findings of it.
First of all, I am not an affiliate of Young Living although I love essential oils to help my allergic rhinitis and other emotional moments.
So, I would maintain an unbiased perspective to examine how Young Living works, and you could trust me on this. Shall we dive deep into Young Living now? Let’s get started!
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 Young Living?
-Summary of Young Living-
Product Name: Young Living
Founders: Donald Gary Young
Product Type: Essential Oils and other related products(MLM, multi-level marketing)
Price: $165
Rating: 40 / 100
Recommend: No
Young Living was founded in 1993 by Gary Young and was incorporated in 1994. Compared to doTERRA, Young Living has its first farm in Idaho, the second in Utah and many others in oversea countries. Besides its own farms, Young Living also built their own distilleries for essential oils.
For business, Young Living announced its 2017sales surpassed $1.5 billion, but the ugly truth is there are only less than 0,1% of its distributor could make more than over a million dollars. The number should be around 1000 people in the world.

What’s inside Young Living?
The most important parts of Young Living must be the essential oils and the compensation plan. Excepts for these two, the rest is not that worthy knowing I recognize!
Young Living Product Lines
Since 1993, Young Living developed many products on top of essential oils, and I won’t talk about every product line from it. I will only focus on essential oils or products I found interesting.
The whole product lines from Young Living, you are more than welcome to check HERE.
- Essential Oils: including single oils(lavender, peppermint, rosemary, etc) and proprietary blends(awaken, build your dream, Believe, Brain Power, etc.) I love the way they name the blends!
- Dietary Essential Oils: the products you could add in your cooking, especially for soups, much like you may use vanilla or almond extract.
- Thieves: the product line that Gary Young studied the famous 4-thieves recipe and re-created, so Mr. Young named it after “Thieves”. This product line includes soaps, toothpaste, mouthwash, spray, etc.
- Kidscents: the products designed for kids: shampoo, bath gel, lotion.
- AnimalScents: This is interesting! Young Living does provide products for most animals, including your pets.
- NingXia Red: Young Living makes products by NingXia Wolfberry and the benefits include support for energy levels, normal cellular function, and whole-body and normal eye health. We call NingXia Wolfberry “Goji” at home.
The Compensation Plan
Here comes the crucial part of any MLM companies in the world. Knowing better the rules, you get more chances to win the game. Young Living’s compensation plan includes:
- Retail Earnings: when you sell Young Living Products to your customers, you earn 24% difference between the retail and wholesale prices for their orders. For example, you sell $100 value products, you earn $24.
- Fast Start Bonus: You earn a 25% bonus of the PV(product volume) your new & personally enrolled members (up to $200 each) during the first 3 months. When your enrollees bring more people into Young Living, you earn 10% of the PV from all new members.
- Starter Kit Bonus: You earn a $25 cash bonus when your new & personally enrolled member orders the Premium Starter Kit!
- Unilevel Bonus: Unilevel is a term used to define the percentage of commission earned for each level. Once you reach 100 PV each month, you earn 8% on the PV of each member on the first level, 5% on the second level, and 4% on the third through fifth levels.

Young Living Ranking System
There are 10 different ranking levels of Young Living. As you go up to the Royal Crown Diamond, you are eligible to get more bonus opportunities.
Your ranking mainly depends on your organization group volume & personal group volume. If you are interested to know more, please click HERE.
For people who like to know the fast track to succeed in Young Living, take your time to watch the below video.
What I Liked About Young Living
TOP#1 The Product Itself
I like the idea that Gary Young started his own business with a 160-acre farm with his wife in Idaho back in the early 1990s.
I always have allergic rhinitis, and I use essential oils to make my nose feel better and breathe again. Sometimes, I could only use my mouth to breathe, and this is the ugly truth of myself.
So, if people come to me to sell me essential oils, I would welcome them in my house and have a nice talk about the products they bring.
Back to Young Living product itself, they have both domestic & foreign farms and even their own distillery to control the workflow and the purity of its oils.
I believe they do a good job on this, and that’s the main reason why they could grow and last for longer than 26 years till now.
TOP#2 No Recurring Fee
You only spend $165 for the starter kit as a way to embark on your journey of Young Living. If you have ever joined other MLM companies in the past, you should know this is so refreshing in the industry.
But, you must say “There is 100 PV to become eligible for unilevel bonus!” That’s also correct. It only depends on whether you like to be part of unilevel or not, and it means more income opportunities.
TOP#3 Charitable Giving
For every successful company, they always give back to society. Young Living is one of them, and it does lots of charity giving to those who are in need.
Young Living foundation builds schools for children, supports orphans rescued from the street, and tries to solve the problem of Malaria in east Africa.
For more, you can check HERE.

TOP#4 Financial Freedom to Chase
Yes, I know it sounds empty when I mention this. There is someone who achieved his own financial freedom by the age of 25, he is Adam Green.
He became the royal crown diamond(the highest level) member when he was 25, and he made the history in the 25 years of Young Living.
You will see the average monthly income of royal crown diamond members in the next paragraphs, and it’s more than 1 million!
Ugly Truth About Young Living
TOP#1 Low Income Potential
Yes, the income potential is the first thing came to my mind if I decide to go for any program. Let’s read the 2018 income disclosure from Young Living as a reference!
The average monthly income of a distributor(88.8%) could make $4 dollar, you don’t hear me wrong. ONLY $4!

The highest of all the distributors is $1,022, and I hope it could give you some confidence if you do want to join Young Living.
Even $1,022 is not enough for you to quit your 9-5 jobs, please consider Young Living as a way to make extra bucks at first.
But, yes, there is a but! If you think you are the same type of person just like Adam Green, please feel free to try Young Living.
TOP#2 Warning from FDA
Since making money by only selling Young Living essential oils is close to impossible, the way to promote the products matters.
In September 2014, FDA issued a warning to Young Living for allowing its distributors promoting its own products as possible treatments or cures for Ebola virus, and other conditions, including Parkinson’s disease, autism, diabetes, cancer, insomnia, heart disease. Etc.
Although Young Living subsequently agreed to address the violations cited by the FDA, I believe a company with goodwill shouldn’t allow this happening. Right?
TOP#3 Very Expensive!
Young Living might have its own farm & distillery for the proprietary essential oils, but it’s very pricey. Taking lavender oil for comparison.
If we only compare Young Living & doTERRA, the difference is almost nothing since both are overpriced. 15ml for a lavender oil costs $31-$32 while other brands like Rodha and pura d’or offer the same product with 8x more volume but lower price.

TOP#4 Recruit, Recruit, and Recruit
This seems the basic rule of any MLM companies in the world, you need to recruit more people into the system to maximize your earning. If there is an MLM company not follow this rule, please leave me a comment below.
In order to sell the starter kit you get from Young Living($165), I assume the first kinds of people we go to are our friends, our family members, or our colleagues.
Just imagine what you will feel if you meet someone who always wants to sell you essential oils or related products like every time you meet?
Or you just walk into the office pantry, your colleague comes closer with small talks then cut into the conversation about essential oils?
That must make you feel sad, and you end up buying things you don’t always need and they just earned 24% commissions.
A distributor cannot help but fall into “NFL” club in the end, NLF means “No Friends Left” since they intend to recruit you as one of their own or sell you something.
Who Is Young Living For?
People who love essential oils to take care of physical & mental health, and I think the best suitable type is Mum with kids.
Being a mum isn’t easy, and mum doesn’t purchase things only for herself. Instead, she will choose the best products for her own kids and family.
If a mum who has the excellent skill of sales & presentation & recruiting, I don’t think the reason why not join Young Living.
Young Living vs. doTERRA
I listed out the comparison between Young Living & doTERRA, so you could read carefully before you join any of them. What concerns me a lot is both companies ever got the FDA warning in the same year for allowing its members to promote the products as possible treatments to some diseases.
About health, I prefer 100% true products with the correct information, instead of lying to maximize the sales.

Is Young Living A Scam?
Definitely NO! It’s a legitimate company that sells customers essential oils or through MLM system to recruit people to become their own distributors.
Before you join Young Living, I hope you read the four things I don’t like much about it. Low income potential, you could end up earning $4 once you spend $165 for the starter kit.
The second, it got a warning from FDA in 2014 by promoting its products with incorrect information.
The third, the products are very expensive than those you could find the same on Amazon.
The last, you need to recruit more people into the system to get more bonuses.
My Alternative Way to Make Money Online
But, it takes lots of time and effort to achieve this. If I have to choose an alternative way to replace Young Living, I would say Affiliate Marketing. The best part of affiliate marketing is you don’t even need to buy products from a distributor.
You only need to create a website with quality content that turns your passion or interest into something brings you a more stable and sustainable income source.

The platform I am using at the moment is Wealthy Affiliate. Why I choose it? It has the solid basic and advanced training, LIVE training every Friday night, FREE keyword tool, the world-famous friendly community.
>>>Try Wealthy Affiliate Before Bed Tonight<<<
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.
- Can someone make a full time income promoting WA? You bet they can!
- What Does $1000 Per Day Look Like?$
- 40,000 In One Weekend
- A Very Humbling $12,803.26 Month – August Progress Report
- It’s Getting Better: $500+ in 2 Days
- Newbies Pay Attention! $5,195.20 Affiliate Check for June: Thanks WA!
- Joined the 10K Per Month Club. January Earnings $13,481.39
- New Record: $1,300+ Per DAY! Affiliate Marketing Works & Rocks!
- Made $7,395 in a WEEK: First Black Friday Results!
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.