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Recruiting For Your Network Marketing Organization is a Responsibility Not to Be Taken Lightly

The previous 2 articles in this series talked at some length about the person to person nature of network marketing and carefully selecting your potential business sponsor. In this installment, we’ll examine the importance of choosing the right people for your business organization.

MLM is not a business about “my product is better than yours” or “my comp plan is the best in the industry” or “my company has been around the longest”. You’ll find that all of that stuff is secondary to what YOU bring to the table. Remember, network marketing is first and foremost a people business and what you have to offer your prospective business building partners will make all the difference to your success.

Look at it this way: those who traditionally get involved in network marketing are people who lack real world business skills. These are people who have good intentions but, unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there with good intentions who struggle financially. Good intentions do not put money in the bank; good business skills do. Therefore, people want leadership, they need leadership and that is the most important thing you can offer others in building your own network marketing business.

There is a rule that applies to all areas in life which says: if you want to achieve more, than you must become more. This is especially true in network marketing. Being recognized as a leader and a resource to others who lack business skills, will make you a person they will want to follow and work with. The good news is all skills are learnable. Nobody was born a business leader – you become a leader by learning leadership skills. And, you have no excuse for not developing yourself as a valuable resource to others. We’re living in the information age; anything you need to learn is a mouse click away.

OK, let’s move on. A real leader never has an open door policy for his or her business organization and neither should you. You’ll never get anywhere in business if you’re not selective about who you choose to work with. How do you determine who would be a good fit for your organization? Easy, interview your prospects. The people you choose to work with will need your assistance in building a business of their own. Translation: you will have to give them your time. DO NOT give away your time freely to just anyone. Asking the right questions up front will help you determine if a prospect is worthy of your time and expertise. If you miss this very important point you will spend a lot of time spinning your wheels.

Here are some questions you’d want to ask of your prospects:

Why do you want to build a business of your own? The answer to this question is very important. You want to know what motivates somebody else. If a person’s motivation is strong enough, it will provide the fuel necessary to keep them going forward when the going gets tough. And yes, of course the going will be tough from time to time. If it were that easy, everybody would be a wealthy entrepreneur.

Have you ever had a business of your own and if so, tell me about your experiences with it? Asking this question will help you determine what business skills the person may already posses. Even if their past business had failed, chances are real good they’ve learned some valuable lessons and skills from it.

Do you have the financial resources and commitment to build a business? It’s no secret; starting a business requires capital and running a business requires capital. ALL new businesses will experience losses in the beginning. Does the prospect have the stomach and the resources to forge ahead through the lean times? If the person hems and haws at this question, chances are pretty good they’re not a serious business builder – they’re a tire kicker.

Are you coachable and open to learning new business building skills? This question is pretty self explanatory; nobody was born an expert, they become an expert through learning and applied knowledge. If you do not receive a solid affirmative answer to this question then you’re probably talking with a know-it-all. How far do you think you’ll get working with a know-it-all?

How much time will you be able to dedicate to building a business? It’s OK to start a business working on a part time basis. What would be required is that the person is able to carve out a specific block of time each and every week with consistency. Weak efforts will always bring about weak results. Their answer to this question will give you a great idea of what effort they’re prepared to put forth.

You may have additional questions you’d want to ask of a prospect depending on your business building goals. What I’ve given you here is just a start. What you’d really want to do is try to weed out the tire kickers as best you can lest they’d only take up your valuable time.

One last thought I’ll offer you on this front. If part of your business building strategy is to advertise your opportunity, try to write your ads in such a way that they will attract the types of prospects you’d want to find. For example, have you ever seen this type of an ad: “Join our team, we do all the prospecting and recruiting for you” or “Make ,000 a month within the next 60 days working only an hour a day”? Will either of these ads attract a quality prospect? Would a real entrepreneurial business builder take either of these ads seriously? The answer to both these questions, of course, is no. Put yourself into the shoes of the person you’d want to attract into your business and write an ad which your ideal prospect would find appealing.

This is the seventh in a series of articles on the MLM / social marketing / network marketing industry. In the next and final article I’ll give you some final thoughts on business building strategies and the future of network marketing. MLM has created more financially free individuals and families than other industry. It has the potential to do the same for you – that is for you to determine.

If you’d like to ensure that you don’t miss out on any installments in this series, I’d be happy to send past and future articles directly to you. Just shoot me an email and I’ll include you on my direct distribution list.

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Tags: Lightly, Marketing, Network, Organization, Recruiting, Responsibility, Taken

An Insiders Guide To Starting an Online Business

There are many advantages of doing business online that you can start from scratch without investing much money. I have outlined a 27 Step Action Plan to help you get started.

1. List 5 hobbies, interests or areas of expertise. If you want to start a new business, you’d better choose a subject that you like and a subject where you can show expertise. You will have more fun and you will be more competitive.

2. Brainstorm a list of keywords and phrases related to those hobbies and interests. For example, if you are going to sell small airplane collectibles, some possible keywords could be: airplanes, aeronautics, war airplanes, etc. Yahoo Search has an excellent keyword tool that you can use for free

3. Research those keywords in Wordtracker.com to locate problem statements that have high search results and low competition. Wordtracker.com is a web page that helps you find out how many times your keywords are searched online, how popular your keywords on search engines are. Those keywords may represent problem statements. Wordtracker shows you how many people are buying traffic on those keywords and how much are they paying. You need to find popular statements with low competition.

4. Research those problem statements further to determine if you can develop a product to solve the problem stated. You may use search engines to see how many people are offering products that can help to solve those problems. If you find a popular problem and there are not many people offering solutions online, you’ve got it!

5. Find or create a product based on previous research for you to sell. Once you found a hungry market, you just need to find the food that your customers want and they will eat from your hands. You may find companies online that can manufacture the products for you or you may find a different way to create the product yourself.If the product is an ebook, you may write it yourself or you may hire someone else to do it.

6. Write a long copy sales letter for that product. The experience of the most important internet marketing gurus reveals that long copies sell much more than short copies. It is also recommendable that you try to sell only one product on your web site. Focus on one product unless the solution you are providing is the offer of a wide catalogue.

7. Register a domain and set up a hosting account. There are many places online where you can register a domain and set up a website hosting account in minutes. Check to make sure the hosting company offers all the tools you need to market your new business and allows you room to grow. There are many hosting companies that also include website building tools. You may pay a little more but the benefits will outweigh the costs many times over.

8. Register for a merchant account (to set up quickly use PayPal.com). If you don’t want to register a merchant account that will allow you to take credit card payments online, go to PayPal.com and sign in. PayPal is very easy to use and takes all the hassle out of processing credit cards. 2checkout.com is another very popular Credit card processor.

9. Set up a simple web site using an automatic site builder or pay to have someone set it up for you. Do not try to design your own web site unless you are educated on html. Do not waste your time. Hire someone else to do it or buy automatic web site builder software. There are many of these you can buy online. There are many but I have found that Microsoft’s FrontPage and Dreamweaver are excellent, easy to use programs and you don’t need HTML experience.

10. Set up an opt-in form on your web site to collect e-mail addresses. You need to start collecting e-mail addresses for your newsletter. The major part of your business will come from the emails that you will send to your customer list. A good hosting company can provide many ways to collect email addresses and a newsletter is an excellent way to not only collect email addresses but to keep your list of prospects informed with your products and new information about your niche market.

11. Build an extensive keyword list based on the initial list of keywords you developed. Use Yahoosearch.com for each keyword on the initial list. Yahoo Search can help you find different combinations with other words that you may find interesting. Check the popularity of each term and write down on a spread sheet your final keyword list.

12. Submit those keywords to Yahoosearch.com to start driving traffic right away. You need to start driving some traffic immediately in order to test your web site. The best way to do that is to buy this traffic at yahoosearch.com. Google Adwords and go click.com are also good PPC’s. There are many others but these are the top three.

13. Optimize and submit your web site to organic search engines (Google, Altavista, etc).Once you have proved that your web site works and sells, you will be ready to make the business bigger. It is then time to start working on building free traffic to your site. It is also a good idea to submit your site to the popular directories like Yahoo and DMOZ.

14. Continue to test and tweak your web site until target conversion rate is met. Your conversion ratio should be that 1-2% of your visitors should buy from your web site, and 11% should subscribe to your newsletter. Continue testing until you get those stats.

15. Set up an affiliate program on your web site. Affiliate programs can double your business with no additional effort. Others will make the job for you. But you cannot set up an affiliate program before you are sure that your web site can produce results. If your site does not work, you will loose your affiliates and they will never come back to you again.

16. Approach complimentary web sites to sign up as affiliates to promote your product. Get in contact with people that can promote your product and ask them to be your affiliates. Just try to find your first 100 affiliates, and your affiliate list will boom alone.

17. Start publishing a monthly newsletter. You have started collecting e-mail addresses much earlier, but it is not the time to start working the newsletter until you can prove that everything else works. Newsletters keep your customers informed and there are many ways to make money with your newsletter, but that is another article.

18. Submit articles to related newsletters and ezines on a regular basis. In the articles you should always have a link to your site, so that you can get more traffic and you can get more people joining to your newsletter. Article marketing is also a great way to get your name out there in front of the masses and builds your reputation as an expert in your target market.

19. Continue the development of a content rich web site to further increase search engine rankings. Search engines love content. You must have many web sites which are rich on your keywords and which have links to your main page. A good way to do this is to add as many articles as you can related to your business and link them to your home page.

20. Once keywords have been tested in Yahoo Search, roll out in Google Adwords. It works similar to yahoo Search, you bid for traffic. But do not go to Google Adwords first. You must first prove your success with Yahoo Search and then go to Google Adwords.

21. Roll out tested keyword list in other major PPC’s. When you are sure about your stats, and you know how much money you collect per visitor, you must buy as much traffic as you can get as far as your income per visitor is higher than your bids.

22. Create a viral e-book to generate more leads. Create a free e-book that you can promote and which sells your product or service. Give it for free, and this will bring more traffic to your web site. Provide links in your ebook so your readers have an easy way of getting to your site. Make sure you get the name of every person that you give your ebook too. This helps build your list.

23. Have an expert review and critique your web site. Even if your site works, you can always improve. Listen to others and learn from their experiences.

24. Survey your existing customers to find out what other products or services they are looking for. Once you have a big list of customers, use it to find out what other problems do they have. Try to find or create a solution for them and you will boost your sales instantaneously.

25. Create and find back-end products and market them through your e-mail list. Continue finding more products that meet your customer demands and promote them via e-mail.

26. Continue to test and tweak your web site and offers. Nothing is perfect the first time and can always be improved. It is very important that you take action, even if you make mistakes. Learn from your errors and improve your skills.

27. Repeat process to create “Multiple Streams of Income”. Once your business is working on automation, then you can start the process again with a new business. Build as many businesses as you can, and reduce your risks. If one business fails, but you have another 5 working businesses, who cares about it?

If you have read up to this point, you are probably asking yourself how much it will cost to get started? The answer is very simple; it depends on how much time and money you have available to invest! If you have a lot of time, you can do everything yourself. On the other hand, if you don’t have time, you will have to pay other people for building your website and/or for optimizing your site on search engines.

However, before jumping in and trying every business opportunity that will flood your email inbox, look into getting some formal training in Internet Marketing. A good Internet Marketing Course will give you the knowledge you will need to start and build any type of internet business or home based business. A good course will also show you how to spot the scams and schemes that prey on those with no experience. Many people who like the idea of working from home try every opportunity they read about or see on late night TV infomercials. It is not as easy as it seem.

Many get themselves deep in debt and they all have the same reason. Lack of training. Working from home can be a very lucrative rewarding life if you learn the correct way of doing business online and can avoid the scams that are all around us. And the feeling you get when you make that first sale is overwhelming.

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Tags: Business, Guide, Insiders, Online, Starting

9 Killer Reasons To Change Your Affiliate Business Thoughts

Well, if the thought run the affiliate business, the attitude run the thoughts, because the thoughts think, what you have entered into your mind.

Do you want to fulfil your mind with positive, encouraging thoughts or with negative, depressing ones?

These are the choices, which lead us to the sweet affiliate business victories or to the motivational losses. This kind of business is the business of all time believers!

1. Think, How A Visitor Would Spend More Time On The Site, Dont Think Of The Hit Amounts.If you think hits, you think technically your marketing. But there is one error: our visitors are human beings, they are not hits.

When your thoughts are concentrated into the wants of the visitor, you are in his trousers, you think your home page more creatively and softer.

You also think that before a visitor lands on your page, it is useful to presell the idea of the landing page and get him into a encouraging state of the mind. This increases the conversion, not the nonrelated hits from whatever source.

2.Think Your Campaigns As A Part Of The Long Term Process, Not As A Separate Ad.

The heart of every successful affiliate business is a thoroughly planned strategy, which sets the guidelines to all actions.

The affiliate business campaign includes several mediums and it is planned to reach certain, specific targets. For instance a well-planned campaign reaches the average people from 5 to 7 times and follows a clear decision making process.

For instance it can contact the same target person by optin email message, home page, forum posts, personal email, search engine optimized pages and by blog. Each medium has it`s own job in the communication mix.

But a separate affiliate business ad, for instance a banner, is like a lonely wolf in the desert. It has not the power of the crowd and it does not build a long term marketing power.

A successful affiliate business campaign is the part of multi year promotions, which work residually, i.e. they build new things on the top of the old ones.

All in all, the secret is not in the ads or in the campaigns, the secret is in the planning, especially in the strategic planning.

3.Think, That Your Message Offers Meaningful Things To The Target Person, Not Hype.

The business strategy sets the guidelines for the communications and gives answers to the questions like: why you are in the busines and how your business is unique?

The most important message is the consumer promise, like Nokia, Connecting People. It tells , where the offer is unique.

4. Think, That You Must Be Unique.

Yes, you MUST BE UNIQUE. The affiliate business strategy tells in which way. The best way to reach the uniqueness is to think by your own brains, not to follow others directly. Of course it is wise to collect ideas from different sources.

The affiliate business uniqueness includes at least two issues: what to offer and how to offer.These both can be reached by your own personality and skills. No one can copy those and no one has the same skills than you have.

5. Think How Your Affiliate Business Is Positioned.

Positioning is not the same as the consumer promise, it is more wider and creative statement. It determines the position of your brand in the minds of the target people. This is important because an average human being can keep in his mind only three brands per product group.

Now these brands in the peoples minds form a short list along which they make their decisions. And guess what, if we want to be successful, we better be on that list.

The only way to get into the list is to become important for these people by offering useful and meaningful information, i.e. to help them.

6. Think Emotionally, Not Rationally.

The emotions run every human being. It is so odd, that this is not publicly admitted, but people try to convince us by rational things. But they do not work anymore, because all products are so equal, that the images matter.

7. Think Your Affiliate Business Identity, Not Logos Or Slogans.

The identity is like personality but in the affiliate business the target persons must recognise the personality, it cannot be hidden.

And you have to choose one strength from your personality, which will be the main message, the first point of the arrow.

8.Think Entertainment, Not Business Jargon.

When you choose emotional, entertaining and encouraging promotional strategy, you are automatically unique and your chances to drill into the deepest emotions of your target person is excellent.

9.Think Communication, Not Copystrategy.

The ultimate target of all affiliate business communication is the reach the level of personal relationships. It doesnt matter, whether we speak about prospects or customers. If we can mail to our good friends, the communication becomes meaningful and supporting.

When affiliate business websites fail, they fail because they do not communicate a meaningful believable, convincing and clear marketing promise.

Tags: Affiliate, Business, Change, Killer, Reasons, Thoughts