Depending on who you ask, some will say Kangen water machines and businesses are totally legitimate, while others will say they are a total scam and even a pyramid scheme. But what’s the truth?
Well as someone who has been sort of involved with some Enagic and Kangen water business opportunities, I can tell you 2 things off my opinions and experiences:
- You get very mixed views on Kangen water machines being a legitimate thing.
- I have however, been involved (briefly) with multiple companies that promote them. In the best of cases, they were in the grey area of legitimacy, and at worst (more often), they have been scams or pyramid schemes.
The problem I have often found is that the debate on Kangen Water machines and Kangen Water businesses are 2 separate topics and it’s important to distinguish them, because too often, in my experience, people will mix this up and draw the following conclusions:
- Because you can make a lot of money selling Kangen Water Machines, it means the business is legit.
- Kangen water machines are a scam, and therefore so is the business selling them.
- The business selling Kangen water machines is a pyramid scheme, therefore Kangen water machines are a scam.
I’ve found that these 3 opinions are the general things you’ll find when you research this stuff and in this post, I want to give you my objective take on the subject.
And most of my post isn’t about the legitimacy of the water machines themselves, but mostly the business opportunities that sprout around them (I’m going to be pretty critical of it, so be aware of that).
Some quick info about Kangen water machines and businesses (in case you’re new to this):
Kangen water machines have been a huge thing for years, both on the health end and business opportunity end.
Kangen water machines and businesses on that topic have 2 main selling points (the best case scenario):
1) There are people who “swear by them” in that they are considered amazing machines for helping ionize water, make it healthy for you and help you live a healthier life.
2) Then there’s the add on that, which is companies have sprouted which are promoters of these machines. For every sale they, or individuals make of them, they can earn high ticket commissions.
Now for the controversy on Kengen water machines/businesses:
Very often (at least in my experience), the same companies (affiliates) that promote these machines and make a huge commissions also create their own recruitment schemes on top of this to make more money in the process.
This is where a lot of scam and affiliate marketing pyramid scheme rumors arise. There are even some MLM and high ticket programs selling this.
To this day, Enagic and Kangen water machines, businesses and opportunities carry a ton of controversy to say the least, and the 2 biggest arguments against them are:
- The whole Kangen water machine thing is a scam.
- Companies that sell you this stuff are also scams and pyramid schemes.
I’m not saying either the good or bad stuff is true, but in my personal opinion, if you want to build an online business selling stuff, I would avoid getting into this (I’ll explain why that is shortly).
Kangen water business questions:
How much do you make selling Kangen water?
Typically selling one Kangen water machine can net you $1,000 per sale or more.
Can I sell my Kangen water?
If you are an affiliate for a Kangen water distributor, then yes you can sell one of their machines. As for actually selling the water, that is unknown.
What kind of business is Kangen?
It is a mix of either an MLM business opportunity or a high ticket affiliate marketing opportunity.
Is Enagic Kangen water an MLM?
It can be. There are a lot of business opportunities that are connected to Enagic Kangen Water distributors which function as MLM programs.
Is Kangen water business legit?
It depends. The Kangen water business itself may be legitimate, but there are many questionable MLM programs that are involved with these businesses that make it suspicious.
Here are my experiences with Kangen water business opportunities:
1) I’ve joined at least 2 companies over the years that promoted Kangen water machines to me and gave me the whole “make money online selling them while making the world a healthier place” sch-peel.
2) They also charged me a pretty high up front fee to be a member of their organization and this is before they up sold me a Kangen water machine and in doing so, I had the opportunity to make money off 2 things:
- Being a member of the program and promoting it to others.
- Buying an Enagic Kangen water machine and promoting them too as an affiliate marketer (up front price was usually around $4,000).
Of course, it wasn’t just the opportunity provided to me as “value”, as they also provided training (online marketing) to do this, which typically revolved around using Facebook Ads to drive traffic to the said company i joined, through the same online sales funnel, to also buy the same Kangen water machines (but I’d get a high ticket commission).
3) I never did buy any of the Kangen water filters and left both of the companies promoting them, because I didn’t believe in either the opportunity or the actual product. And to give you details on why I did that:
Here’s my 5 positions on Kangen water businesses and if they are a scam:
1) My overall opinion of Kangen water machines is this:
I think they MAY work (maybe 40% of me believes that), you can make money promoting them, and I am a health advocate of drinking purified water (I even have a water filter in my sink that I pay $25 a month for and I love it).
But I do not believe the $1,000’s charged for the machines is warranted.
And I also don’t believe promoting that is warranted either (why promote something you don’t believe in?). I just think there are cheaper and already proven to work alternatives for getting purified water and I’m someone who actually does this.
2) I think a lot of people (not all) who promote Kangen water filters and their business opportunities, don’t really believe in them:
Call me a skeptic, but I have seen time and time again how people who get involved in business opportunities (whether it be this or something else) develop a passion for the idea of making a lot of money, and not really believing in the product.
As an example (not related to Kangen water machines), I could take absolute trash of a product and easily convince people that it’s trash. But once I slap a $5,000 sticker on it, and tell people that if they buy it, and sell it that they can make $2,500 off it, watch the opinions change immediately.
And with Kangen water machines, I see a lot of people who don’t really do any independent thinking fall into this mindset of “if I can make money, then I’ll promote it and say whatever I have to”.
Press people who promote this stuff even a little bit, and you’ll often find they either ignore you or say ridiculous anecdotal stuff. But research this topic from people who have no financial gain to be made from it, and you’ll find a lot of controversy.
I’m just not one of these people and I can very often tell the difference between someone who is truly passionate about a product because they really use it and love, vs someone who convinced themselves they love it because they can make a lot of money off it (that’s 2 different things).
And if you think I’m being a hypocrite because I promote different products as an affiliate, keep in mind, I hardly ever promote anything high ticket and often promote products that I get paid less for, and this is for 2 reasons:
- I believe in it (like Wealthy Affiliate).
- I know it’s the best product/service for the customer (forget my wallet, the customer needs the best option and it’s my job to give that to them).
3) I do believe most (not all) Kangen water business opportunities are a scam:
I wrote a post about a week ago on if affiliate marketing is a pyramid scheme, and in it, I detail how promotional opportunities that are high priced, whose value is not really that high in reality, may be pyramid schemes (not all the time though).
In this case, I somewhat believe in Kangen water machines, but I do not believe in many of the companies that sell them to you.
I’m talking about the ones which are affiliates of these machines and form their own recruitment schemes to get people in, while offering them little value. This is something you have to be able to tell apart.
If I join a company that then sells me the Kangen water machine, you MAY be able to justify me paying $1,000’s for the machine, but the company itself, if it offers nothing of value but an opportunity to promote it, might be a pyramid scheme and I do believe that is the case for most (not all) companies that do this.
4) You can do high ticket affiliate marketing successfully (without all the controversy):
Again, when you look at the mindset of a lot of people who get into these Kangen business opportunities, it’s about the money, not the passion.
If you’re really passionate about selling stuff you love, then guess what? You can promote high ticket products as an affiliate that aren’t Kangen water filters. Don’t force yourself to promote something you are not 100% in love with.
- For example, did you know you can promote mountain bikes as an affiliate marketer?
- Or how about these other high ticket products?
- Or how about that you can make good money online as an affiliate selling low ticket products vs high ticket products?
- It’s all true and I literally do this (and teach/help you to do the same). See my affiliate income reports.
- Did you also know that you don’t even have to purchase these products and don’t have to get involved with scheme programs that try to force sell you this stuff as a Trojan horse tactic so they can make money?
It’s all true!
5) Don’t force yourself to join/promote something you don’t believe in (you’ll fail). You can succeed as an affiliate promoting stuff you truly love:
I constantly teach, blog and make YouTube videos on affiliate marketing and helping people achieve success. A lot of people come to me for help and advice and I often preach what point 5 says.
This is because I’ve been in this business a long time and know that it’s one of the best ways to reach success.
Point 1: If you’re someone struggling to succeed online and don’t have a lot of money, let alone passion for Enagic water business opportunities, I would honestly advise staying away from them.
Point 2: If you’re truly interested in starting an affiliate business and making money online, use a program like Wealthy Affiliate (which you can try free) to help you find a niche you love and turn that into a profitable site.
Believe me when I say this approach is much better than investing a ton of money into products/services you don’t even believe in, but still buy because you think they’ll make you money (it doesn’t work out well that way).
Conclusions:
Now that you know my positions on Kangen water machines (and specifically the businesses surrounding them), I’d love to hear your take on this subject and if you agree or disagree with me.
Keep in mind that I encourage healthy (and friendly) debate, so please be polite (if you disagree with me of course).
I have mixed feelings about your comments. I do agree with your main premise about the business part of it and the high cost. However, I have owned a virtually trouble free SD-501 unit for 12 years, given away approximately 25,900 gals of water and seen amazing health benefits for lots of people – especially in eliminating pain of kidney stones within 20 minutes and the stones in as little as 2 hours.
Their policies changed a few years ago; and they didn’t pay me my commission for a sale due to lengthy inactivity and then also cancelled my lifetime distributorship for the same reason. I’ve read the engineering review of the Kangen technology and it’s obvious that they have a reliable product with superior performance but in my opinion, their business ethics have declined.
As in any network marketing program, prices are inherently high due to multiple levels of commission that must be paid and as in all such programs, the folks at the top get all the gravy while the ones on the bottom needing it most get peanuts.
As to your “pyramid” comment, can you name any business that is not a pyramid structurally? If there are only 3 people in a business, you have a pyramid structure. At least with Enagic, there was no inventory requirement and the only paperwork needed was an order form to fill out and fax in for a purchase when making a sale. You cannot find those characteristics in any network marketing programs that I know of.
I have a friend who would like to purchase a Kangen machine from me right now but I cannot sell them one because it’s been too long since I sold my last one and I am disqualified despite the fact my original distributor status was lifetime. Now, all I can do is tell my friend to go somewhere else. Can you tell me of another machine that is comparable to a Kangen in performance and reliability?
Hi Kenneth, I appreciate your opinion, comment and even differing points of views, but I’d like to give a point by point response to it:
1) I’m really glad you were/are getting results with your machine, but the problem I personally find with them is how they are hyped and sold not primarily through their perceived benefits, but through the money you can make selling/promoting them. In my opinion, this tarnishes and devalues a product and like I said in my article above, when you add a LARGE financial incentive to promoting something, people all of a sudden come out of the woodwork and claim the product is amazing with it’s benefits.
Some call that placebo, some say it’s legit. And like I said, I use a simple water filter I pay $25/month for and I love it, definitely huge savings and better quality than I’d get for tap water, anything sold in stores, ect…
I’m just trying to point out that perhaps the results you say you are experiencing may not be from the kangen machine itself, but perhaps because you are drinking better quality water in general. I’m no doctor, but I just question health benefits when huge money sums are in the equation (which they are with Kangen water).
2) The company you mention that isn’t paying out or is being flaky/questionable with their policies is a perfect example of why I do NOT like dealing with these places or network marketing companies in general. The premise behind many of these places is to recruit people, sell them a bunch of hype, get them to buy their expensive stuff which is often over hyped and trash, and then incentivize the recruits to recruit others, focusing less on the quality of the services and tools offered in the company and almost solely focused on selling, selling selling. Again, this goes back to what I said about tarnishing reputations of the enagic water machines. When huge money is involved, I question if it’s really that amazing and more so when the person trying to sell it to me has a huge financial incentive to do that.
3) About the pyramid scheme question, there’s different types of pyramid businesses in this world and online, and there is a BIG difference between a pyramid structure/hierarchy and a pyramid SCHEME.
Any normal business has a pyramid structure (boss, employees, distributor, ect…) but what determines if the company is legit is the value offered and for what price, meaning if you have a company offering incredible services that are worth $1,000s but selling them for WAY less, it is a legitimate business.
Pyramid schemes on the other hand are very different business models where (most of the time) the main focus is selling the business opportunity and there’s no product, no real value other than the opportunity to promote it. It’s basically hot air with a financial incentive to promote that hot air and the only way to make money in the scheme is by promoting that same scheme.
Few people understand these differences and I’m someone who has studied this stuff for many years.
With these high ticket water machines, the main argument people have for calling it a pyramid scheme is that they believe the value of the machine is nowhere near it’s real world value, and that’s just a gimmick or scheme to get people to buy and recruit others to do it too, which is why you often hear that association.
4) I am not sure about any machine or company that is as you say comparable or reliable to work with and promote, but as long as the fundamental flaws in the business model exist, so too will the controversies and I stay away from that. For example, I recently reviews a company called Build Your Empire University which is focused a lot on this model, but I left because of it. In many ways, if the enagic machines weren’t part of their promotional model, my thoughts on it’s value would be way higher and it is a legit company too in my opinion.
5) I stick to models of online business where I can offer and promote things of massive value for low prices so the customer gets the best deal and value and it’s why I like Wealthy Affiliate above all the other options.
This program basically reflects the same main points I’ve made in this comment about offering a lot of value in teaching people to build a legitimate online business, and offering that for very little money every month so people don’t have to spend insane amounts of money to capitalize on the opportunity. If you’re looking to promote whatever it is you truly love in life, even if it is an enagic machine, I think that program would go a long way in helping you do that.