Ambit Energy - Legit?

Ambit Energy has been around since 2006. Its founder is Jere Thompson. Jere, interestingly enough, comes from a business background, as his father started Southland's Tote'm convenience stores, which later changed it's name to 7-Eleven. Jere and his brother took over that business in 1991 and have run this national chain very successfully since then. So, in terms of ownership, this MLM gets a positive rating.Now, the product itself. Ambit Energy is a retail energy provider, with the company stating that it had gross revenue of $200 million in 2008 and nearly doubled that number in 2009. The accuracy of those numbers can be questioned since it is a privately held firm, but the product itself cannot be questioned. Energy, specifically natural gas and electricity, are things people use habitually everyday without thought. Ambit offers a guaranteed savings over the competition of 1% per year. While that number is not huge, in today's economy, most people are looking to save money anywhere they can. In regards to the actual product being offered, Ambit gets a plus there as well.How does one make money when becoming a consultant for Ambit? You can. You can make money on getting individual households to switch their gas or electric over to Ambit Energy. You can also make money recruiting people to become consultants of Ambit Energy. So, is Ambit Energy legitimate in having ways to make money becoming a consultant, the answer is yes.Now, how much money can one make? That is a different story. With 99% of all MLMs, there is a cost to get started. You get your own personal Ambit Energy website, a lead capture site and a back office for a buy in price of $239 (last time I checked). Ambit offers jump start bonuses for signing up certain amounts of customers over the course of the first 12 weeks. You also get bonuses when signing up consultants who then also sign up specific amounts of customers to switch their energy service over to Ambit. The real money comes from signing up other consultants, not from getting people to switch their energy over. Now, one could make a decent $ from switching over consumers, but that income is dependent on energy usage and big incomes cannot be made unless you get thousands of people to switch over.With any MLM, some people will succeed with Ambit. There is no doubt in that. This is a company with a founder with an extremely successful background and a product that is used every single day. However, to earn money as a consultant of Ambit would not be the easiest task. If recruiting people to pay $239 to join is something you find easy to do, then you could make some money. Residual income then becomes dependent on those people hitting numbers.Ambit gets a positive rating from me in the sense that it does offer a good product and an ability to make money with it. The negative side is the amount of people that need to be recruited to have this be a main source of income, especially with the amount of work that would need to be put in.