Welcome to our Touchstone Essentials Review!
Have you been looking at ways of earning an additional income, and you came across Touchstone Essentials as a potential option. Is Touchstone Essentials a scam, a legitimate MLM business or even worthwhile?
That’s what we are going to reveal to you within our review.
First off, it’s great to see that you’re doing your research before buying into any “seemingly good” product.
That is how you avoid scams and find only legitimate ways to make money online!
To be completely transparent with you, we’re not associated with Touchstone Essentials in any form. We’re not here to pitch or sell you anything.
Instead, we want to show you what this company has to offer, the pros and cons, and whether it is a good opportunity for you to make money with it. This will help you make an informed decision as to whether this is the right move for you or not…
Touchstone Essentials Review Summary
Product Name: Touchstone Essentials
Founder: Norwood “Eddie” Stone
Product Type: CBD Health and Wellness MLM company
Price: $20 subscription + $130 – $660 starter kits + $100 monthly autoship
Best For: No One
Pros
- Positive Product Reviews
- Established Reputation
Cons
- Expensive Products
- Saturated Market
- No Income Disclosure
- Hidden Monthly Expenses
- Pyramid Scheme in Disguise?
Summary: Touchstone Essentials is a health and wellness MLM company that sells CBD products. The company itself is pretty decent and legitimate.
But as for their business opportunity, it is sorely disappointing. The monthly autoship and annual fees just keep you from making serious money.
Rating: 35/100
Recommended? No
Table of Contents
What is Touchstone Essentials?
Touchstone Essentials is an MLM or Multi-Level Marketing company that markets a range of health and wellness products, including CBD-infused products.
The company was founded in 2012 by Norwood “Eddie” Stone. Eddie has been involved in numerous MLM companies before Touchstone Essentials.
Eddie is a successful entrepreneur and he believes the key to health living is by tapping into natural resources, such as CBD.
Norwood was working with Nu Skin, Rexall International, and Unicity International.
He was also the founder of another company, called Waiora. But this was hit with several class action lawsuits. One of them being consumer fraud.
Allegedly, the products sold by Waiora were nothing more than water. An independent lab tested the Waiora products and discovered that they only contained 10% of the ingredients that were claimed to be in them…
Touchstone Essentials is a completely different company, but it is a concern that Norwood has been involved in a company that has committed fraud before.
There is very little information about the background and history of Touchstone Essentials. But we do know that their main goal is to use natural resources in the best way possible, to help with peoples’ health.
They achieve this by producing CBD-infused products that target various common health conditions.
Touchstone Essentials have become one of the most established CBD MLM companies that are on the market. They also plan on expanding their operations in the future.
You can learn more about the company with this 2-minute video…
As the line between MLM and a pyramid scheme is fine at times, let’s discuss that now…
Is Touchstone Essentials A Pyramid Scheme?
No, Touchstone Essentials is not a pyramid scheme.
They have a legitimate range of CBD products that they produce themselves, and they also pay their members on time when you sell their products.
But even though they are not a true pyramid scheme, it is definitely worth exploring whether they could be operating as a pyramid scheme in disguise…
What’s A Pyramid Scheme?
A pyramid scheme is a company where it promises to pay its members for recruiting people into the company rather than selling any products or services.
They do not have any products or services to speak or, or have them as a smokescreen to try to appear legit.
But pyramid schemes are illegal in most countries around the world. The reason for this, is that it is actually impossible for everyone to make money within a pyramid scheme.
This diagram from Wikipedia shows you why…
The people who are able to make the most money are those who aggressively recruit as many people as possible.
Often a company that has a high monthly sales quota (which Touchstone Essentials does) means that the only real way of making money online is to recruit. Otherwise you are stuck buying products every month with little chance of earning money.
If you take another look at the image above, you will see that there is not enough people to around to make the decent money that is possible.
Here’s a 5-minute video that helps you spot a pyramid scheme in disguise…
So, if Touchstone Essentials are not a pyramid scheme, why is success so rare?
Success is Rare with Touchstone Essentials
It’s really hard to find success with an MLM company operating like Touchstone Essentials does…
Did you know that between 72.5% and 99.9% of MLM members lose money as a distributor?
The main reason behind this is the monthly sales quota that is placed onto distributors to remain active. If you’re unable to sell enough products to achieve that quota, you have to buy the products yourself.
This often results in you signing up to a monthly autoship that fills your house with products that you will probably never use.
The most likely outcome is that you end up buying a lot of products before you are able to recruit your first member.
This statistic might be even worse for Touchstone Essentials, as they don’t provide an income disclosure statement to help you understand if their members are making money or not. What are they hiding? We don’t know, but it doesn’t sound good…
How Does Touchstone Essentials Work?
Touchstone Essentials products and sells a range of CBD products that include vitamins, nutritional capsules, and dietary supplements.
The company also offers an opportunity for everyday people to work from home by selling these products to consumers. These members are in turn, able to earn commissions and bonuses.
The theory is a win-win deal. But the reality, is not very often like that at all…
This is because Touchstone Essentials does this just to save themselves a lot of money on expensive marketing campaigns. Passing all the hard work onto their members who do all the marketing and advertising of the products themselves.
This is very hard to do in a competitive and saturated market like the health and wellness market. Especially as you’ll be trying to sell overpriced products.
Talking of products, let’s get into the details now…
Touchstone Essentials Product Line
If you’re considering joining an MLM, you need to get a good handle on the product line they are offering. Any potential customers are looking at you to know all there is to know about these products.
Taking a look at their website, there is a lot of products on their official catalog on their website. As a distributor you’ll get access to these at wholesale costs…
Here are some of their best selling products:
- Green Energy ($47) – A nutritional supplement that comes in the form of a capsule. It claims to boost your energy levels with the help of proteolytic enzymes and organic green tea. It also helps to relieve body and joint aches. A container contains 60 capsules, which covers 30 days
- Organic Super Protein ($59) – This is a protein shake, designed to help built muscle mass. It contains complete superfoods, essential vitamins and minerals, and organic plant protens that are rich in BCAA
- Detox Super Pack ($166) – A detox supplement packed with Vitamin D that helps flush out toxins and chemicals from your body. It is also claimed to boost your immune system
When distributors choose the auto-ship option, you automatically get a discount.
Here’s what you need to now about their products:
- Their products are 100% natural, GM-free, Vegetarian, and healthy for long-term use
- They contain a mineral called Zeolite, which is supposed to clear toxins from your system and skin. Zeolite is a category of minerals which has more than 200 types within it
- There are other companies in the market that markets products that are infused with Zeolite. Most of them are a lot cheaper than Touchstone Essentials
It is also important for you to know that the CBD MLM market is already really saturated. There are many companies all offering a very similar product line. Examples include:
This will make it harder for you to sell these products, as you are trying to convince people to buy products that are very similar to everything else on the market. And as they are more expensive, than many retail products out there, you have another hurdle to overcome…
So, is there anything that makes Touchstone Essentials stand out from the crowd?
Touchstone Essentials Flagship Product
Their flagship product would be their Transform Pack, which is $179.
This is a product bundle that includes their Organic Super Protein, Super Green Juice, and Boost Focus products. The bundle is meant to provide an all-round nutritional supplement, claimed to improve your immune system, energy levels, and muscle and bone buildup.
You can learn a little more about their products by watching this short vieo…
Now, let’s get to the important stuff… can you make money with their business opportunity…
Can You Make Money with Touchstone Essentials?
Yes, you can make money with Touchstone Essentials. But it is going to be really difficult!
First off, the very few people who are able to make money will have done it by doing a lot of recruitment. Building a huge downline is the only real way of making money here.
Secondly, those who are making money are not making anywhere near what you would be hoping to.
Selling overpriced products with a monthly sales quota is really difficult, and the chances of making money are going to be really low.
What’s a big problem with Touchstone Essentials is that they don’t provide an income disclosure statement. So, we cannot even see if anyone is making money here.
Haven't Made Your First $1 Yet?
How to Make Money with Touchstone Essentials
Touchstone Essentials is your typical MLM company, so that brings with it the usual routes to making money:
- Sell their CBD products an earn retail commissions
- Recruit members into your downline and earn residual commissions
- Bonuses associated with team sales, promotions, etc.
To avoid being labelled a pyramid scheme, the commissions relating to recruitment is only from any sales they make, and not from the recruitment itself.
Getting Started with Touchstone Essentials
There are starter kits that you can purchase from Touchstone Essentials. You can choose to skip over this step and just go for their annual membership pass, which is called their VBO pass. This will cost you $19.95 a year.
This VBO pass is not included within all of the starter kits. Here’s what you can expect to get from the sets.
So, the starter kits are:
- Detox Super Pack – $129.95
- Transform Pack – $149.00
- Advantage Pack – $659.00
Your sponsor will typically encourage you to go with the Advantage pack, claiming it has the most products with it, but it also helps them achieve their sales quota too (keep that in mind).
Touchstone Essentials Monthly Costs
There are other requirements to remain an active member. You’ll need a monthly auto-ship of about 100 CV worth of products. The CV values depend on the product and the price, but usually you’ll find that 1 CV is equal to $1. So, you will basically need to spend at least $100 a month to remain active.
So, you need to consider that you will need to spend at least $1,200 on products a year, plus all the other expenses that go with running a direct selling business.
P.S. This program enabled us to Create a 4-Figure Monthly Passive Income Stream. It’s Free to get started and costs only $49/month to go full-time!
Touchstone Essentials Compensation Plan
MLM companies always have really complicated compensation plans, that confuses everyone and that seems to be the purpose of them…
Touchstone Essentials is no different… We’ll try to keep it simple for you.
There are 5 main ways for members to make money with Touchstone Essentials:
- Retail Sales – buy the products at wholesale prices, and sell at retail prices. You keep the difference (10%-20%)
- Residual Commissions – Earn 5% to 7% commission from your downline sales. The percentage depends on your rank and level
- Referral Bonus – Members get commissions for referring people into the program. You can also get a bonus based on he PV they generate, ranging between 5% to 20%
- Team Builder Bonus – Get $150, $300, or $600 if you get promoted to the rank of regional manager, national manager, director, etc.
- Star Bonus Program – Earn a $500 to $75,000, or even a Tesla Model S if you reach massive quotas. But this only applies to an executive levels
Don’t worry if you’re still confused, as I think that is the general idea. MLM use this kind of talk to appear legit, and for new members to not look into too much detail into how their plans work.
The main two things you need to know is this…
- Sell their CBD products
- Recruit members to sell their CBD products
If you want to dig deeper into their compensation plan, you can check out this 11-minute video…
Or, you can find their full compensation plan here…
Is Touchstone Essentials A Scam?
Touchstone Essentials is not a scam. The company products and sells a range of CBD health and wellness products. They also pay their members as they claim they do too.
So, why do people end up calling these things an MLM?
Well, that is often because people are sold on a dream that never transpires once they are inside an MLM. On average, 92% of distributors lose money and when they realise they are spending a lot more than they ever make, they leave and call it a scam.
When, really it is often the sponsor who introduced them to the business weren’t fully transparent about the opportunity in the first place.
The rest of our review will give you all the important details you need to know about this business opportunity, so that you can make an informed decision.
Just to be completely transparent with you, I’m not a distributor of Touchstone Essentials, nor do I endorse Touchstone Essentials in any way. I have researched the website, testimonials, and information available on the internet to get the details about what this program genuinely does. I do this, as I have been caught out by a scam in the past, and am trying to help others avoid a similar fate…
Tired of MLMs? Check Out How We Make Money Online!
What We Liked About Touchstone Essentials
Here’s what we liked about Touchstone Essentials:
#1 Positive Product Reviews
One of the good things about the product line at Touchstone Essentials is that they do get positive comments about their products…
This shows that some people are happy with their products and believe the products are effective.
#2 Established Reputation
Most MLM’s don’t make it past the 5 year mark, so as Touchstone Essentials have been in operating since 2021, it means the chances of it getting closed down is slim.
What We Didn't Like About Touchstone Essentials
Here’s what we didn’t like about Touchstone Essentials:
#1 Expensive Products
Touchstone Essentials sells expensive and overpriced CBD products.
This will make it really difficult for you to convince people why the products you’ll be promoting are so much more expensive.
There are much cheaper alternatives online, and this will mean that you are going to find it really hard.
#2 Saturated Market
The CBD health and wellness market is already saturated with many different MLM companies all out there trying to sell similar CBD products.
So, coupled with the expensive products you’ll be selling, you need to then compete with everyone else trying to sell very similar products.
#3 No Income Disclosure Statement
MLM companies must have an income disclosure statement to prove that their members make money.
But there are no income disclosure statements at Touchstone Essentials. There are also no reports where people are showing what they earned either.
This either points at the fact that no one is making any money, but they are not earning enough and the company wants to hide that from you.
This means it’s impossible to know how much people are making, even if they are making any.
#4 Hidden Monthly Expenses
The monthly auto-ship and the sales requirement is the worst thing about this business opportunity.
You are basically committed to spending at least $100 a month, which is going to be a lot more than you will be making. At least at the beginning.
If you are unable to sell through your auto-ship in a month, they roll this over towards your next month as a loss.
This will snowball from there… You will end up losing a lot of money here, and end up with a house full of stock!
#5 Is Touchstone Essentials A Pyramid Scheme in Disguise?
Members will be stuck in a system where they will be expected to spend $100 a month to remain active. the only way you can work towards avoiding this requirement, is to start recruiting people.
But this is what the system will look like:
By recruiting a team, they pass the burden of buying stock every month onto their downline. Which is probably what your sponsor is hoping to do, when they tried to recruit you.
Basically, the only way to remain active and not buy tons of products, is to recruit and keep on recruiting.
Therefore, Touchstone Essentials is surely a pyramid scheme in disguise…
Haven't Made Your First $1 Yet?
My Touchstone Essentials Review - Final Conclusion
Touchstone Essentials is a legitimate and reliable MLM company, but it’s not particularly a company that is able to provide you with a source of income.
Here’s the main points as to why it’s not a good business opportunity:
- The monthly auto-ship and expensive startup costs are going to hinder you from making money. Every time you don’t sell something from the previous month, it just keeps stacking upon itself and so you have to be really aggressive at selling your products
- There is no income disclosure statement so it’s quite hard to tell if anyone is actually making any money.
Whilst the products are well received, it is just a really competitive market where everyone has the same products, and this will make it even harder for you to make money form it.
How We Make Money Online
We are not fans of MLM, the business model is legit, but the success rate is extremely low (only 1%).
We prefer affiliate marketing, the reasons are simple:
- No need to sell face to face
- No need to recruit other people into your downline
- You are not tied down to one MLM company
- There are endless possibilities
- Affiliate programs are usually free to join
- No monthly quotas
We prefer to help people with their purchasing decisions and not push for sales or go face-to-face, we have found a way of making a passive income online and we would like to help you achieve the same thing.
You can still go with CBD or Hemp Oil as your niche, but with our list of 23 affiliate programs you can join, you can promote products for free and still make money.
If you don’t want to promote CBD, then you can still make money. Why not choose something that you are passionate about, why not find out how you could turn a hobby into a money-making business opportunity.
If you want to make money online or from home, without all the MLM stuff, then we highly recommend you read our Wealthy Affiliate review. Find out how with the right training, you can turn your hobby into a profitable online business.
If you want to learn more, click the button below and read how we did it…
Thanks for checking out our Touchstone Essentials Review! If you have any questions or comments to add, then please write them in the comments section below. 😉
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Touchstone Essentials
$20 subscription + $130 - $660 starter kits + $100 monthly autoship Pros
- Positive Product Reviews
- Established Reputation
Cons
- Expensive Products
- Saturated Market
- No Income Disclosure
- Hidden Monthly Expenses
- Pyramid Scheme in Disguise?
After reading this post and exploring your website i really liked the pages on avoiding scams, there is nothing more annoying in this day and age. i seem to be rang by scammers on a daily basis but everyone is trying to sell something these days. Can i actually make money with pyramid schemes? I’ve always been hesitant but if i found the right one for me then i would consider it
Hey Tom,
there are a lot of scams out there, and it’s important that you remain vigilant to be able to spot the signs… But to clarify, a pyramid scheme is illegal and you will loose money with them.
MLM is a legitimate opportunity, but most do operate like a pyramid scheme where recruitment is the main way to make good money.
All the best
John
Thank you for your review on touchstone-essentials. I personally respect people who make it in any form of MLM program. I have tried few and I can say it is very difficult but I should mention that it is possible. I have tasted my own form of success in that field. Consistency is key when doing MLM. I am glad to know that their products have good reviews and they have an established reputation. I think those are good points to consider when you go for any form an MLM COMPANY.
Hey Bogadi,
thanks for checking out our review! I agree, there are examples of people who have made it in MLM. But that is often because they knew what they were getting into, and are great at sales and building an effective team.
But they need to put a lot of effort in, and yet many people believe this is something you can do as a part-time gig.
Picking the right MLM is half the battle, and then getting effective training from a good sponsor is the other.
Thanks again
John