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The other day I received an email from a person who asked me if I have been long with my current MLM company and how I am doing, as he was researching business opportunities in the Network Marketing industry. So, if you are in the same shoes of this person and are looking for a good home-based business, then this article will help you to know what you need to look out for.

Are MLMs An Honest Business Opportunity?

The downside of the internet is that it seems to have generated more scams than legitimate business opportunities; and this is partly due to the fact that the internet has opened a whole new opportunity to the individual person to have easy access to all information. However, if you are equipped with the right knowledge, it is easy to spot a legitimate business from an illegitimate one almost instantly.

In addition, it doesn’t seem to help that the most common scams seem to involve an MLM company. However, as has been the case for centuries, even long before the internet era, the few individuals who try to scam people, manage to taint the whole industry. The same goes with regards to the Network Marketing Industry, where the few scams manage to smother the many success stories of those MLM companies that offer a legitimate way to work from home.

How Do I Spot A Scam?

 Check why you are paid. If you are paid just for recruiting – getting more people to join the organization, and the whole business runs purely on this principle, then it is a scam and also illegal. All MLMs are based on both recruiting and retailing.
 Do your homework. There are organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission whose purpose is to prevent unfair methods of competition, to protect the consumer and small businesses. Through their database of frauds, you can research any company before joining. This organization is mainly for the American population, however most countries would definitely have something to this – it might be listed under a different name, such as Fair Trading.
 Your initial investment. Be wary of those companies that ask you for a large investment. Usually you would be asked to pay thousands of dollars, in return for a huge stock of products, which is extremely difficult to move especially if you are new to the market. The ideal company would only need you to buy a distributor kit or a kit with demonstration goods for you to sample out for yourself. This would only require a minimal investment, and normally you would be paying the equivalent of a ‘wholesale’ price for the kit, with no ridiculous mark up.
 The retail price of the product. Check at what price you will be retailing the product, and how it compares with other products in price and quality. Most scams work on the principle of over charging for the service or product. So, it is advisable to research the products of any competitors, both other MLM companies and also the products that you would buy in stores and shops. One thing to take into consideration though is, that research has proved that most often the products (including nutritional products) retailed by an MLM company are of an extremely high quality, especially when compared with some cheaper products that you can buy off the shelf from a retail store. (Will write a future article on this concept and the research.)
 Training provided. If the company won’t provide any training, then it is most likely a scam; and anyway you don’t want to be involved in a company that doesn’t invest in training their members, and to give them an equal opportunity to succeed.
Click Here If You Would Like To Learn More About My Company

More Information That You Need To Know

 There are some websites which are dedicated solely to the home based business. You can check what they are saying about the company you are researching, and other companies in general. MLM Watchdog, NPROS and MLM Rankings.

 Choosing your mentor. This is a very important step, which sometimes tends to be overlooked. Once you join a business, it is essential to learn how to market effectively yourself and your business. The majority of people who fail do so, because they realize that succeeding in the home business arena is not as easy as is painted, or because they find it hard to generate leads, or because they don’t seem to breakthrough to achieve the success that they have envisioned.

Unfortunately, through my experience, most members are still using strategies that at this-day-and-age do not make the most of technology. I have learnt to work mainly smart and not hard, and have embraced the power of the internet, together with attraction marketing strategies that brand me as an expert, where I get leads chasing me, instead of me chasing cold leads. Hence, I am able to train my team in the latest strategies that are effective, ensuring them success along the way and benefiting from the lucrative home based business.

Choose Wisely

The home based business is an extremely rewarding career, especially for those who want to work from home, and in the process enjoy their families, their freedom and their career success. However, this same career can be very frustrating if you don’t do your research properly, and end up with a company and/or a mentor who leads you to a dead wall.

P.S. Click Here If You Want To Look At The Company I Work With.

P.S. To Learn How To Market Online And Promote You (And Not Your Company), Irrelevant Of The Company You Are Involved In, Lessons Are Being Given At mlm.BrandingYouandCo.com

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A lot of people shun away from Social Media and Social Marketing, because many associate Social Marketing with just sites such as Facebook and often consider this a ‘waste’ of time spent chit chatting. The majority are not aware of how effective Social Marketing is to build a fan base, to brand yourself as an expert in your niche and to generate more traffic to your business. But this is only guaranteed if one knows how to use Social Marketing the right way.

In this article I am going to go over the several different types of sites that make up Social Media, and categorize them in 5 sections.

1. Social Networking (Community Sites):-
These sites are where one enters to network with different kinds of people. Each site is usually for a specific group of people.
 Facebook – student communities
 LinkedIn – manage and share your resume (CV)
 MySpace – friend site
 MeetUp – find common interests and organize meetings
 Twitter – update your followers what you are up to

2. Social Bookmarking (Social News Sites):-
These are the user-submitted and voted news sites where anyone can post stories and take advantage of the traffic flowing through the sites to get targeted visitors. Communities can share their favourite bookmarks, articles, videos, etc – anything that is news.
 Digg – submit links and stories; vote and comment on the content
 Technorati – find what people are saying
 Del.icio.us – store, share and discover web bookmarks
 Reddit – submit, rate and rank news
 StumbleUpon – discover great websites that match your interests

3. Content Sharing Sites:-
Websites where you can generate your own content and share it with the community.
 Wikipedia – contribute and get smart (can create a Wiki for your site)
 Squidoo – create pages (called lenses) for subjects of interest
 HubPages – submit magazine-style articles which are posted as individual webpages (referred to as Hubs)
 Gather – share, earn and gather information
 EzineArticles – expert authors share their best quality original articles

4. MultiMedia Sharing Sites:-
Websites which specialize in all kinds of media sharing and creation.
 YouTube – upload and share your video
 Flickr – manage and share your photos
 SlideShare – upload and share publicly or privately PowerPoint presentations
 JamGlue – create and personalize audio. Upload, record music and remix it.

5. Blogging Sites:-
Blogging platforms allow you publish content directly onto your blog, to communicate and share your knowledge with your customers.
 Blogger – a free blog publishing tool from Google for easily sharing your thoughts with the world.
 WordPress.com – another free blog publishing tool
 Movable Type – build websites, blogs and communities on a single platform
 WordPress.org – own your blog and install on a domain name of your choice

In future articles I will be showing you the different ways of how I use the above multi-faceted marketing strategies to promote my businesses (internet marketing business, service provider offline business, and service provider online business). In the meantime start contributing to the places and get links. Just do it responsibly and the way the other members of each community do it to keep from getting banned. You do NOT want to spam these places.

Be aware – this Social Media trend is HUGE and is extremely under utilized by the majority of online business owners, offline business owners and network marketers. However, be warned… there is a right way and a wrong way to use Social Media and Social Marketing to get massive levels of exposure – including more traffic and more leads – for your business.

If, on the other hand, you are aching to learn immediately the correct way of how to use Social Marketing Strategies, so as to start implementing the strategies ASAP to market your business, then Click Here if you would like to generate leads for your MLM business or Click Here if you would like to generate traffic for your Online, Offline or Small Business, especially if it is service related. You would need to input your e-mail to get access to some phenomenal training, and a chance to have a coaching session with me where I will personally show you the ropes and how to specifically use Social Media Marketing for your particular business.

To Your Success

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Whether you are involved in a Network Marketing Company (MLM) or you are a service professional or you are a small business owner, internet marketing can help you explode your business. However, one has to have a strategy in place for the marketing to be effective.

Branding YOU as the Expert

The NUMBER ONE rule of thumb is that you have to Brand You and Your Company as a leading thought in your industry, to succeed on the internet. You have to respect the ‘law’ that first you help people before asking for their business. It is human nature that when people start viewing you as an expert in your field, they automatically do what you tell them to do – as they have come to respect your opinion and trust you that you are advising them for their own benefit. You have become a source of authority in their life – so they buy from you, they ‘hire’ you as their service professional, they follow your guidance, …

To become known as an expert in your niche, you mainly start by helping people. You have to earn their trust, by showing them that you are a leader in your industry and you know what you are talking about. But first they have to experience first hand that you know what you are talking about and that they can trust you. Hence, a complete no-no is pitching your sales talk at first sight. Rather at the first meeting offer some tips on how they can better their situation.

Let me give you an example for all this to be clear. Let’s say you are a florist by profession and have a store (can be online or offline). You are in an online forum when someone complains that they bought these flowers and after just 1 day they died. So you would write in the forum about tips how to make your flowers survive longer than 1 day – you would go into how to choose flowers when buying, if to cut the stem or not, how often to change the water, what room temperature should the flowers be and so on. At the end of your comment, you would write your name and your website address. This would position you as an expert, and people would come to visit your website and then your store. Compare the above to instead leaving a comment and writing something like this: ‘Buy your flowers from www.FxLxOxWxExRxS.com – guaranteed to last you for 10 days.’ I am sure you realize which comment will generate more traffic.

Who can Market Online?

Anyone who is alive and breathing can use the power of the internet to market and brand oneself and one’s company.

If you are a Service Professional or a Solo Entrepreneur, you can use the internet to brand yourself as an expert in your field. Set up a blog and market yourself as a thought leader in your niche, by writing articles and giving free knowledge to your readers. For example if you are an accountant you can write articles on how to calculate your yearly income tax, how to save on your taxes, simple tips for business owners, and so on.

Same goes if you are a Small Business Owner – use the internet to brand your business as the leading company in your niche. If you are an owner of a hairdressing salon – write articles on how to have a hair cut that suits your features, the latest trends, 5 easy tips on how to ensure healthy hair, and more.

Let’s now look at someone who is involved in an MLM company. You were given a generic company website, you were not taught how to market effectively, and hence you are suffering from a lack of leads. So you turn to the internet to brand yourself as an expert in your niche, and hence start generating endless leads. Let us say that you are involved in a company selling vitamins. So you create a blog where you market yourself as an expert in vitamins – you write articles on why vitamins are important, how many vitamins a day is needed, what vitamins to avoid if you are breast feeding, and on and on. This will brand you as an expert in vitamins, and people would automatically follow your advice and buy vitamins from you. Now in Network Marketing, one makes a living from selling but also from recruiting. So it is also important to brand yourself as an expert in recruiting. You can do this by targeting those individuals who are aspiring entrepreneurs. (Note: not your friends and family, nor the strangers at the mall, nor the leads that you call off a list, but aspiring entrepreneurs who have always dreamt of being their own boss). You would write articles to teach them on how to start their own business, how to market online, how you recruit people, and so on.

One thing I have to emphasize is that the information that you supply to people has to be the truth – as otherwise if someone finds out that you have been tricking them, then your reputation and business takes a quick downhill turn.

How to Market Online

Your next question must be how do I market online and brand myself as an expert?! You have to use marketing strategies to generate traffic to your website – some of them are free and others are paid strategies. An easy-to-understand example, which many of you are familiar with, is offline marketing – stores and other businesses use different mediums, such as newspapers, magazines, press releases, postcards, radio, TV to advertise and generate traffic to their store or business. Exactly the same goes on in the internet. There are different marketing strategies that you can make use of to advertise you and your business, to generate traffic to your online store (your website) and / or your offline business.

One of my favourite marketing strategy is blogging, and hence article marketing. I am sure that you have realized that having an online presence is a must nowadays for any business. If you don’t have an online presence, you are invisible to the world, and generating business would be harder. Some businesses choose to have a static website, however I strongly prefer a self-hosted blog where you are constantly updating information and constantly communicating with your clients. (Note: creating a self-hosted blog is easy to setup – no knowledge of HTML needed, and you can set up your own self-hosted blog with one 90 minute training webinar. You can Click Here for the free training) With blogging comes article writing, where you can even submit your articles to different directories – this marketing strategy will help to continue branding yourself as the person-to-go-to in your niche, and will help to promote your blog as a platform to your business.

Other marketing strategies include using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn to brand you as an expert, and direct people to your blog, and hence to your business (can be online store or offline business). Using paid strategies such as Pay Per Click ads and Paid Press Releases is another form of generating traffic to your business. Leaving comments on other blogs, participating in forums and interacting on the internet is also effective, especially in the beginning. Advertising for free on Craigslist and Backpage is another option. E-mail marketing is another effective way to keep a correspondence with your list of readers and clients.

As you can see, there are many ways one can ‘advertise’ on the internet. But MY ADVICE TO YOU is to choose one marketing strategy, or maximum two, and stick with it till you start seeing results. Keep tweaking and testing till you become an expert in that marketing strategy, and your conversions start pouring in. Always follow the mantra ‘expect to give before expecting anything in return’ – give out free valuable information (not spam and not pitching your sales story) that will brand you as a leader in your niche, and eventually this will earn you big bucks. And also keep in mind that using the internet as a medium to brand yourself as an expert takes time – so be patient but consistent – your determination will eventually pay off big time.

I personally use MLSP as my marketing system – it is my educational platform where I constantly learn effective marketing strategies that brand me as an expert in my niche, strengthens my reputation, and consequently gives me great leverage and power to explode my business. If you would like to test drive the same system, then visit www.BrandingYouandCo.com for more information.

To Your Success

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All of the top achievers I know are life-long learners… looking for new skills, insights, and ideas. If they’re not learning, they’re not growing… not moving toward excellence. ~ Denis Waitley

The attraction marketing system that I personally use: MLM Lead System Pro hosts a valuable training call every Wednesday at 9pm EST (New York Time) to its members and their guests, that will keep you on the cutting-edge in the industry. Clear your schedule now and make time for these very important webinars.

Some of the previous training calls were:

* Retired Cable Guy To Successful Entrepreneur with Larry Beacham
* 7 Habits of Successful People With Erica Combs
* Psychology of Prospecting With Jeffery Combs
* Recruiting Training with Cedrick Harris
* Blogging 101 with Jeff Hoffman
* Facebook Marketing with Jim Chao

As you can see, these are valuable training calls that will definitely take your business to the next level…
… and there is ABSOLUTELY NO REQUIREMENT that you have to be involved in a multi-level marketing (MLM) company to join and benefit, as the training’s main focus is always on how to market effectively and successfully – to BRAND YOU – mainly using the power of the internet, regardless of your company or profession. Hence, any aspiring entrepreneur would definitely benefit…

So make sure to sign up below to be invited to this Wednesday’s training call…

P.S. If for whatever reason you can’t attend any of the webinars, maybe because of time difference, then you might want to try out the trial membership here, where you will find all the training calls archived in the back office.

To Your Success

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If you are involved in an MLM company (also known as network marketing companies) or are interested in joining one, then you must be familiar with the phrase… ‘make a list of friends and family’. If you are anything like me, you must be really frustrated with this phrase, as you are aware that most often than not this strategy simply doesn’t work.

Another frustrating phrase is …‘talk to as many people as you can’. This in other words means pitching your sales-story to strangers, assuming that all their life they were waiting for this moment, and they will jump in the boat too and will make you rich! However, an interesting analogy is, that if you become an accountant you don’t ‘pester’ others to become an accountant too and work for your firm?!

After trying a couple of these strategies, one becomes to realize how frustrating this is and most often than not will lead you nowhere or with just a couple of dollars, which is not much compared to the hard work you put in, or worse off spending more than you are earning.

Why do most people fail?

A lot of people are shown a different view of the business model. A lot of people are told that there is no selling involved, and that the products are so good that they sell for themselves. ‘Once people try, they will buy for themselves and their family…’, the pitch goes. This myth is misleading, and brings a false relief to people who don’t like selling. However, people, with no experience of sales and no proper training in marketing and business, struggle desperately, often quitting within a few months. Some people might even join another MLM company, thinking that the problem is the company – but they are wrong.

THE MAIN PROBLEM is that most often than not, people are not taught how to market properly. What you want is people being ‘attracted’ to you and calling you to join your business. And this is done through learning how to market correctly, and through learning how to brand you as the expert. If you haven’t read Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring, then grab a copy now, as it will change your outlook in how business is done.

In addition, people are given false beliefs that by joining an MLM one is going to become rich instantly. You can make money in network marketing, but it takes determination, hard work and patience, plus the PROPER TRAINING. Unfortunately, most of the training of most MLM companies is ‘outdated, offline-only, old-school techniques’, which although might work for a few, there are other cutting-edge marketing strategies (based on science) that can actually guarantee you results if implemented persistently.

Another frustrating problem within an MLM company is the attrition rate. The ratio at which people join your team and the amount of people who quit is horrendous. You find yourself training someone to leave you for another company. This can easily be resolved by giving your team proper ‘modern’ marketing strategies which actually work. Once they see that it’s working, they view you as an expert, and would want to continue being in your team.

So How do People Earn The Big Money in Network Marketing?

From research of different MLM’s brochures and website, in the success stories page, one always finds in small print that the typical annual gross income is much much less than otherwise advertised. A lot of articles state that 97% fail in the network marketing industry with only less than 3% actually live the life that is often the bait to many to enter the network marketing industry. While I won’t go into the exact percentage, it’s a fact that only a few succeed to earn a substantial income from their MLM business. MLM is often compared to a pyramid scheme where the bottom people ‘slave’, so that the few at the top become richer and richer at their expense.

However, it is important to note that those who have made it to the top, have done so through a lot of hard work, maybe luck too. For sure they didn’t do it just through talking to family and friends. A probable answer is that they might have already had a large network of people, which made their list of family and friends much longer than yours. It could also be that they previously came from a sales background. An interesting fact is that if someone sticks to the same company for 10 years, they are in the running of becoming part of the top few – but could this also mean that they were persistent, worked hard towards their goal, had a vision and did not give up easily?

Is There A Future For Me in Network Marketing?

Nowadays, there are different strategies of how to go about your MLM business, and achieve success – dare I say it… guaranteed success. But this is done through proper training, and being determined to put in hard work. The get-rich-quick-and-easy mentality does not work. My favourite strategies that I personally use are:

1. an attraction-marketing based system that teaches me how to market successfully to the target people that I want and who are interested in what I have to say. I don’t waste my time giving meetings to people who are not interested, and only end up buying because they pity me. You can check out the system here.

2. the second strategy is providing free valuable information first, and building a relationship with my readers, while branding myself as an expert and positioning myself as the-person-to-go-to in my industry. And this I do through my own self-hosted blog. Subscribe to Claire Morawski’s free training on how to create a successful blog.

To Your Success

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‘Where a Nobody Prospers’

In this blog… Educational, Inspirational, Empowering training on:

How to Use Internet Attraction Marketing Tactics To Create Your Own Raving Fans!

 Have you been trying to use Internet Attraction Marketing to brand yourself and market your business on the internet?
 Have you tried using Facebook as your marketing strategy, then after a few weeks of not seeing any results, you decided to switch to Twitter?
 Have you been switching from one mentor to another trying to search for answers to succeed like they did?
 Have you been buying one ebook after another, trying to find the secret to breakthrough?
 Have you been wanting to quit, but yet you hang on?

Well, I have the answer for you…. if you have arrived so far, then you are a fighter. Allow me to show you the marketing tactics that I use, and follow my step-by-step training so that you won’t get distracted anymore, and to stay on the right track of your success. Stay updated by subscribing to my blog so that you will immediately be notified of the latest posts.

Click Here to Start Your Step-by-Step Training

To Your Success

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