Sunday, February 27, 2011

Home Business MLM - What does it take to be successful? What questions should you be asking?

  You want to make extra money, and you hear the buzz about home business MLM and wonder if it is for you?  What do you have to do to make money?  So much information out there, how do you know what to believe and what to look for in a company?

I bet you have asked yourself all these questions and more. There are so many choices it can be hard to choose what to do.  Think about it, if you are going to open a hardware store. would you not want to investigate how to run the store?  Would you find out what you have to invest and what your chances for success are before you buy the store?

It is the same with starting a home business MLM.  There are hundreds even thousands of companies out there to choose from and you need to get some education before you invest in one.  Yes, it is an investment just like any other business.  If someone is telling you can make money without investing in the business, they are a scam.  By the same token, you shouldn't have to put up thousands of dollars up front just to join.  There are plenty of opportunities out there where you can start at minimal cost if you need to.  Most legitimate companies offer several ways to join and make money. Here are some tips to keep you from losing instead of making money.

    •  Get some education.  There are plenty of places that will make you pay for the information but it is readily available for free.  A group called Mentoring for Free will help you to learn the ropes. They have helped many people to be successful in a home business MLM.  Read and think about what you read, take a look at the source of the article or website. Does this person want you to buy his cd that will tell you just what to do... and has he or she built a MLM business, or do they make their money selling the cd's and workshops?  A very good question!

   •  Make sure they have a legitimate product.  If the only money made comes from sponsoring someone, it is not legal.  You may be able to make money for a while, but sooner or later the government will shut it down and you run the risk of  going to jail.  YES JAIL!   Gifting programs are never legal no matter what they say.  If you give money to someone, that is fine, but if you expect and/or get money back as a result, it is illegal.  RUN, DON"T WALK AWAY!

   •  The product needs to be value priced, that is it should be something you would buy even if there were no business attached to it. If you are paying a hundreds of dollars for a product you can get for a few dollars anywhere else, how can you make money from the product? If the company can't make money from selling the product, your only customers will be the people you sponsor.  Check on ebay and or Craigs list, see what it costs there. If you can get it for pennies on the dollar compared to the MLM companies price, you will have a problem.  Would you be a customer if you weren't supposed to make money from this company?  Money needs to come from products, not from someone signing up.  Retail sales will give you a good foundation and this will make residual income, one of the really great perks that only home based MLM businesses can offer.  Customers and business partners alike will purchase over and over, this will build a stable business for you.

   •  Don't fall into the easy money trap.  Lots of offers out them appeal to the person that want instant gratification.  Join this company, we will build your down line for you!  No product to sell, no recruiting, make money the easy way!   So where does the money come from if no one is selling a product, no one is paying to sign up, and no one is recruiting a down line?  What good does it do you to have a hundred people that have signed up for your 'free' mall if no one buys anything. (and few do since it is easier to go straight to the stores website and buy there)  And when they do you make so little that to have any income at all, you have to have hundred of people buying at the same time to get a check.

   •  Most of the MLM's that fail do so in the first 3 years.  According to MLM Watchdog,  Less than a year old the survival rate is less than 10%.  One year to two the survival rate is 30%.  Year two to three the rate is 50%.  Over three years the survival rate jumps up to over 70%.  If  a company is new, a 'ground floor' opportunity, it hasn't proved itself in the market yet.  You run the very real risk of building an income that will be pulled out from under you and not be the company you can literally retire from and keep your checks coming.  You want the company to have time to work the bugs out before you invest your time and money into it.

   •  Who are the founders, the people running the show.  Do they have a track record in the industry... have they started other companies and every couple of years fold up and start new?  Have they EVER built an MLM business down line and worked a network marketing business before, or did they just want to jump on the bandwagon and make themselves a quick buck.  Even someone who it sincere, without the experience in MLM.  Find ceo's with integrity and experience.

   •  Expect to invest some time working the business.  You should be able to make money working part time, an hour or two a day.  Granted the more hours you put in the faster your business will grow but most people that do this are starting part time while working their full time job.  Anyone that tells you you can just sponsor 1 or 2 people then sit back and wait for the profits are just in it for the sign up, they are recruiting and once you sign up, you will never get help from them again and you will do just that, wait for the money that never comes.  A true opportunity will require a sustained effort at first. The idea is to work in the beginning building a solid foundation so that once you build it big enough, you can walk away and still make money.  In this day of pensions going broke, a solid built MLM business can be your retirement and your legacy, something you can pass off to your kids and they to their kids.

These are just a few of the considerations that you need to think about.  Getting that education will show you just what you need to watch out for.  Find a mentor and a mastermind group of like minded people to talk with and learn from.  They have been there already and you can learn from their mistakes.  Don't buy leads or invest without doing the homework.  Operating a home based MLM business is the greatest adventure and the best chance for most of us to be financially free.  The personal growth and the camaraderie you get from joining with the right group of like minded people all working towards the same goal is the biggest rush you can ever have.   I wouldn't trade the experience for anything.  You can be successful with the right tools and the right support. I believe in you!

Thursday, February 24, 2011

MLM Networking - How to make your business from home flourish and last

MLM Networking is a fun and lucrative way to make money from home, and anyone can be successful in it once you understand how it works. It is one of the only business models where everyone is on a level playing field, doctors, lawyers, schoolteachers, housewives, even students all start in the same place, learning the same principals and with the same chances of success.

Consider this quote...

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
                                             - Anais Nin

What a great idea! Just think, network marketing is a relationship business and each person you sponsor in your business is a new world (their own business center), yet part of the group ( part of your group volume so part of your business)! If you think of it without the money, they really are adding a whole new world to yours, expanding your universe in ways you can't yet see. What a great present... If you think of it like this, you really do take yourself out of the equation and will be able to help them more effectively.

So want to see your business really shine, want to have a retention rate of 50% or more... don't sponsor people, make friends, find out how to help them, and in doing that you will be helping yourself.

Network marketing is a great business but so many treat it like a sales business, and once someone is sold, they become a customer, a number. Make sure you aren't selling, develop relationships instead.

I have heard the saying 'a stranger is just a friend I haven't met yet', think of your leads the same way. Find people with something in common, that being the desire to start a home business, and ideally someone wanting to do network marketing. They are your optimized targeted leads. They will become your best friends.

If you utilize this philosophy, you will successful in more ways than one. You will be a great leader, and a great friend.  You will be financially free and a role model for your children, you will truly own your life.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

MLM Work From Home - Network Marketing instead of a second job

The biggest challenge in working a MLM business from home for me is being able to devote a block of time without interruptions to concentrate on my business.  Working from home has a unique set of challenges.  Family and friends sometimes don't seem to treat this as a real 'job' and your time is fair game.  They will interrupt you while working at home where they wouldn't dream of disturbing you if you were in another place working for someone else.  You have to make them understand and be determined to make this time as important to you and everyone else as it would be if you were going off to work.  After all you are working for yourself, isn't your business worth as much as someone esle's business?   Maybe more?

Working an MLM business can provide much more financial security than any other kind of job or brick and mortar business in a much shorter time, if it is worked correctly.  Luck has nothing to do with it, knowledge does. Make yourself a student of the industry. If you wanted to be a brain surgeon, wouldn't you go to school to learn the trade?  Even McDonalds has it's Hamburger University!

MLM is a business that can be marketed in several ways.  The old model says make a list of friends and family and get as many people in your living room or a hotel room as you can.  Talk to your warm market, and go back in your memory and look up as many people as you can to fill those rooms.  How many of you have tried this, only to have friends and family reject and sometimes laugh at your efforts, until you quit out of frustration. These days we have the Internet and if you learn how to use it, it can be a great source of finding optimized targeted leads that already want to work an MLM business.

There are many strategies both online and offline that will allow us to work from home and make the dream come true.  When you start your MLM don't just concentrate on the company and its products. Think about the  marketing system you will use because the process you apply for attracting and enrolling future partners needs to allow your personality to come out and be duplicatable for your clients joining you in your business. There are many different ways, and they are forever changing and evolving, so you will never run out of ways to advertise online. These new and improved strategies have only just started and will continue to generate fortunes for people that can understand and are able to use the power of the Internet.

What happens invariably with offline strategies is that unless you are a heavy hitter with a great influential circle, you will struggle with the friends and family because when you have exhausted your circle of friends and acquaintances, which for 90% of people out there is very limited, you are left with a cold market.  You first have to convince most of these people that a home business is a good idea, and then sell them on MLM.  No wonder it is called a cold market! What happens most with this kind of lead source is you have to have thousands of them to find one, and spend hundreds of dollars doing it.  A very expensive way to find people to talk to.

A good marketing system be easily duplicated and easy to implement. It should be inexpensive or free and give you a way to track your results.  It should be one that finds people that ALREADY WANT TO DO MLM.  It should make them want to talk to you. This in my book, is a whole lot better and easier than the old fashioned way of trying to convince others that don't have a clue about what we are trying to do!



 A Note:  Mentoring for Free is a free service that will help you learn how to advertize and find the system that fits you. Some MLM's have something already in place talored to the company, sometimes they will work well for you.  At Mentoring for Free there are experiences network marketers volunteering their time to help you out, and show you how to do things without getting caught spending money on worthless lead sources, and show you how to find your own optimized, targeted leads.  


Saturday, February 12, 2011

Optimized MLM Leads - Don't get scamed buying leads!

Optimized MLM leads are leads that have shown interest in what you are doing, in Network Marketing they would have expressed interest in making money from home. The more specific the interest the better the online mlm lead. There are lead companies galore that will tell you they generate the best leads, that the people they are selling you are hot on the trail of building a network marketing business and prove it by making you pay top dollar for them. But what are you really getting?

They are giving you garbage and building their lists at the same time. Buying mlm leads from most of them means you will end up on someone else's list and if you call the leads, provided they give you real phone numbers, you will find them very neutral at best to ice cold and uninterested. Buying leads is a scam and totally unnecessary. You can find your own mlm opportunity leads at little or no expense and they WILL BE OPTIMIZED and TARGETED for your business!

First to get your own targeted optimized leads, you need to brand yourself. Put your name out there by starting a blog and learn to write your own articles. There are lots of free places to do this, and when you are more skilled you can get a self hosted site. Google likes Blogger and that is a good place to start. (I don't get anything from saying this!) Just put in a search for articles and blogs and you will see many results, find one that suits you. There are also many places that can give you good advice on how to write them.  You should write about something you are passionate about, use your knowledge to create something of value for the reader so they return to you. You are the expert.

My good friend and mentor Michael Dlouhy, author of "Success in 10 Steps"  is an expert on generating targeted mlm leads. Listen to what he has to say about buying leads...

You will need links to your articles, blogs and websites. Backlinks are important and easy to do. Get your self on facebook, linkedIn, twitter and any other social network you can find. You can use a multiple posting program like Onlywire to post to all of them at once. You don't have to write a book, just what you are thinking, a great saying you came across, good advice from someone (make sure you credit anyone quoted) or a thought for the day that would be uplifting and positive. All of this will help you to be branded, to get your name out there and support your blogs, articles and websites.

Make sure there is a way for readers to leave comments. Getting a conversation going is a great way to keep someone listening and reading. If you are giving them something of value they will want to come back and will want to know more about what you do. Now you have them asking you for information about your business!

Safelists take a little more time but are also effective. They are a way to share by looking at other peoples websites or ads. All are a little different in that some will require you to look at more ads than others but those that are struggling are looking at the ads, you can fly through them to optimize your time. All are free or you can join them, but first try them out for free to see how they work for you. I haven't joined any of them and have success. I track them so I know what I have, and if one is not performing like I want I just replace it with another.

Pay per click can be effective but beware, there is a cost. You will get a first $75 or $100 credit to try it, and by all means take advantage of that but when you start paying you can end up with a large bill if you aren't careful. Get some expert advice before diving in to pay per click so you don't end up emptying your bank account. There you MUST track your results to pay the least amount of money for your leads.

So stop buying mlm leads and start generating your own. There is a ton of information out there. This is called Attraction Marketing and you can do it mostly for free, and get better quality people to talk to as well. If you are looking for a lead generation system to help keep track of them, look into Mentoring for Free. They also have a great library of teaching audios and videos on how to get your own leads.

Be a critical thinker. If you see an opportunity for buying mlm leads, find out something about who is selling them, you may find the very people that are suggesting it are profiting from them as well. Google the name, research the company, and know what you are paying for. You will find it just won't be worth it and you will be happier and a lot less broke if you go get your own targeted mlm leads.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Getting qualified leads for your network marketing business - get a system to help you.

  
Want to be so busy, you
need an extra hand?
  When I ask people what is the biggest  challenge in working their network             marketing business, they almost always say they need to know how to get people to    talk to, and     then what do they say.  This isn't as difficult as it sounds.

  If you are working on your own, no direction, no mentor, and no system for getting   leads you are going to fail.  You need a system to get those qualified leads to talk to   and it needs to provide information and a good auto responder that will make it   sound like you personally sent that message, and a library of responses that are sent   as soon as the client shows interest.

  The best systems will find people that are already interested in network marketing. You don't want to have to convince anyone that the business model is a good one, spend your time with people that are already wanting to find what you have.

First, Promote yourself!  Learn how to brand yourself so when someone sees your name it is one they associate with your business, or with network marketing in general. That way you are looked on as a professional, a real leader.

Use a something free, some free info so when someone comes to you for help, they get something of  VALUE without being asked for money.  People join people and you want them to want to join you in whatever you are doing, because you are successful, and they want to be like you!

If you use these basic guidelines to find a system and a mentor to show you how, you should be looking like the guy in the cartoon, and you will be successful.