The Difference Between Multi Level And Affiliate Marketing

There are significant differences between the multi tiered network marketing compensation plan and the affiliate marketing model.

These two models are very important and you must understand the way it works in order to make the most money out of it.

Let’s talk about multi tiered paid structure first.

Multi Level Marketing is a method of receiving compensation through different tiers of overriding commissions. The advantage of using multi tier compensation is that you get to leverage on thousands and thousands of downlines. Your direct downlines will be taking good care of the rest of the network if you play your cards right. But of course, it isn’t as straightforward as it seems. Building a structure like this takes a lot of time.

On the other hand, affiliate marketing and joint venture promotions are very straight forward and you can get paid a huge commission – about 40% to 80% if you were to give sales to someone else. A ‘super affiliate’ is able to generate thousands of commissions by himself. You can build a list of thousands of subscribers and with a single email blast; you can get the word out to all these people and make thousands of dollars in a couple of days.

Let’s look at the disadvantages of each structure now.

The problem with the multi level structure is that if all the downlines are not generating sales, you will be the one doing all the work – you might even need to do extra work and give ‘spillover’ for your downlines. On the other side of the coin, you do not get to leverage on your own team of affiliates if you are in affiliate marketing.

So the best way to get the best of both worlds is to combine the two models and create the ultimate Internet network marketing synergy!

Firstly, you can promote an online MLM program. People still get the benefits of making money from a multi tiered structure. But when you (as an upline) start training your affiliates to build a mailing list, everyone will be your joint venture or JV partner. When one releases a product, everyone else will come running and they will promote your product as an affiliate! And because everybody are in the same network, the loyalty is stronger as everyone is more willing to help one another because they are in the same company.

Using this method, even ‘sidelines’ in a network will be able to benefit each other and promote each other’s info products – cross network. Making money in MLM has never been more fun!

To your success, www.shopgbgcm/timeless

Are Home Parties Still Relevant?

What is a home party? A home party or a party plan is a network marketing gathering at the home of a distributor (known as the host).

This business model is made popular many decades ago by a company called Tupperware. It works by having a party host organize a Tupperware party and they invite their friends and neighbors to their homes to see their product line. According to the company’s policy, the host who organizes the home party is given lots of free products based on the number of orders taken or the level of sales made during the party. These parties also take place in offices, schools/colleges and even in community groups such as country clubs and churches as well.

In fact, these home parties have extended (but are not limited) to product lines such as lingerie, computer and video games and even sex toys!

Today, the biggest concern for the 21st century is – are home parties still relevant in the Google era? With the introduction of YouTube, you can virtually see an entire product demo unfold right before your eyes. In fact you do not even need to drive out of your house (to the host’s home) to watch the product demo there.

So are home parties still relevant? In my opinion, the answer is yes and no.

You have to learn to be savvier when it comes to organizing home parties. Simply just sending out to invitation cards and pestering your friends and neighbors to come to your home party isn’t as easy anymore because people are getting wiser. They are aware of your ‘schemes’ and they know more and more about MLM.

When you want to pitch your product, you have to be able to engage it in such a way that doesn’t look like you are hard selling or obliging others to buy your product.

On the other hand, when you consider that the Internet is a place that is devoid of the persona, face to face interaction, you will begin to wonder if being virtual is the best way to go or not? There are some things that only the personal touch can achieve, like giving prospects the comfort for them to make a decision. Sometimes, the prospect needs to see and touch the actual product in order to decide if that is the thing that they want to buy.

The best solution is to combine both elements for your home party. You can try running an online ad to gather leads, use record your own YouTube video to show people how the product benefits and finally invite them to your house in order to do the product demo, right after the autoresponder has helped you to build a relationship.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

How Badly Do You Want Freedom

There are three kinds of people in the world – those who make things happen, those who watch things happen and those who wonder what the heck has just happened!

Most of the time, people who want to achieve freedom badly enough will fall into the first category of ‘happening’ people.

Freedom can come in many forms – time freedom, financial freedom or the freedom to spend time with your friends, relatives, church members and other community services. But there is one very important thing about freedom…

Freedom isn’t free! You have to fight for it. The American colonists fought for their independence in a bloody war just because they wanted to be free. But in network marketing, we are fighting a very different kind of war… it is a war of freedom.

The American economy hasn’t been stable as of late. If you do not fight hard for your cash, you will wind up being swept away by the tide. After all, getting more money isn’t an easy affair anymore. Investors are starting to save money. Customers are no longer willing to spend. Banks are tightening their credit and rising oil prices are making lives harder and harder for people.

When you consider time freedom, you must also remember that this is the 21st century. We have microwaves, cable ‘on-demand’ TV, faster downloads, more convenient transport and instant email. However, our lives are not getting easier. People are expecting more and more. Working hours are no longer 9-5 as employees work late into the night for the same pay. For the first time since the history of the industrial revolution, people are actually working more and more for the same or less pay.

Lastly, when you consider the stress of the world and the strain it takes on relationships, you must fight for your loved ones more and more! Being buried in the office isn’t a productive way to live your life. After all, no one lies on their deathbed wondering if they should have spent more time in the office.

When you consider all the facts above, one striking fact remains… Are you working hard enough in your network marketing business? Are you giving your very best for your downlines? Are you working hard to be a good ambassador of your great business opportunity? At the end of the day, are you working hard enough to attain your freedom? Only you can answer this question – how badly do you want your freedom?


To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

Dealing With Whiny Downlines

Did you know that you need to be very selective with the right kind of downlines in your team?

You see, not every downline who gets sponsored into your network might turn out to be good news. Sometimes, you have to be very firm and tell them why you do not want them in your network.

Consider the following scenarios:

You eagerly chase down a friend of yours, even if he isn’t really the driven type; you still insist that he joins your network marketing company. Later on, he tries it for awhile, faces a lot of rejection and at the end of the day, your friendship is strained after you boss him around or motivate him ‘too much’. You lose your friend and all the time you have spent motivating him.

In another scenario, you try your best to convince this stranger to build the business. This stranger cannot be trusted is worried if he would not succeed, yet you work very hard to convince him that it WILL work. After awhile, your downline wears your patience thin with incessant calls… finally, the downline realizes that network marketing isn’t the right business for him and he asks for a refund on all the products, hence wasting your time, effort, and your commissions are deducted.

Lastly, there are destructive downlines who will ‘try’ something and when it doesn’t work out, they will tarnish your good name and call you a scammer.

Here are a couple of ways to deal with those whiny downlines.

The first thing you need to do is to make sure you do not rely on them too much. When you treat that downline as though he or she is your golden goose, you will be very disappointed in the end.

Secondly, if you are working together with one downline, do not spend too much time with him or her because it creates a dependency mentality on one another. Your downline will take advantage of you because they feel that they are too important for you. They will not appreciate your time and they will suck up your all you resources when you should be spending them with the right people.

Thirdly, you must always keep yourself busy. When you are busy with big team players, your whiny downlines will perceive you to be a very important person and they will work harder in order to fight for your time. After all, you are a leader, do not become the follower by following your downlines everywhere.

When all else fails, you have to be frank with your downline that you are looking for solid business builders, not a cry baby.


To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

Traditional Network Marketing Is Still Important

Although many people are starting to build their businesses on the Internet, we must never neglect the personal touch of traditional network marketing.

Most new age lead generation strategies rely on using Internet marketing strategies to generate traffic - methods such as search engine optimization, blogging, forum marketing, press release marketing and many other traffic generation methods are good at getting lots of leads, just like autoresponder messages are useful for building relationships, but at the end of the day, nothing beats the human touch because we are all inherently craving for social interaction.

Think back on how you got involved in network marketing in the first place. Did your friend approach you? Did a stranger call you up because they have a ‘business opportunity’ just for you? Most of the time, people get started in network marketing because someone pushed them into it (so you should thank your good friend if they did ‘force’ you into network marketing…)

Bottom line is, not everyone gets started in their first network marketing opportunity because they searched for it on Google. It takes more than a sales letter to open somebody’s mind to the wonders of network marketing.

The other issue with online network marketing is that people fail to remember that the glue that keeps downlines and uplines together is through the personal touch. It is feasibly possible to sponsor thousands of reps within a single day using email marketing or copywriting, but if you do not train your downlines or help them to sponsor new people without you helping them with the ‘spillover’, you will find yourself the only upline doing all the recruiting as everyone you sponsored drops out (you might as well stick to affiliate marketing!)

Sometimes, it is worthwhile to drive out of your house and organize meetings or training workshops for our downlines. Try and fuse together the best of multi level marketing with affiliate/JV marketing. As long as you develop the camaraderie with your people, there will be a very strong bond between the entire team. Imagine, an entire team of network marketers promoting each other’s Internet marketing or info product on the Internet.

The network marketing industry is now a very dynamic and robust industry. We have to use the best of both worlds in order dominate the entire market.

In other words, you must apply the best of ‘high tech’ and ‘high touch’ marketing in order to get the best results.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

Recycling Your Blog Traffic For Network Marketing

Running a good network marketing blog is essential if you want to dominate in an age where the Internet and Web 2.0 is taking over. As more and more eyeballs are getting glued to the Internet and social lives are transferred to the Blogosphere, it is high time that all network marketing reps start a blog to jump start their home business.

But creating a successful network marketing blog requires you to improvise your traffic wisely.

You may be able to pick up traffic from search engines, blog directories or even other people’s blogs, but if you do not learn how to recycle your traffic, there is no way you will be able to monetize your blog for the long term. After all, a long lasting business definitely thrives on repeat sales, doesn’t it?

But what does recycling traffic mean?

It means that you are redirecting or sending your existing traffic back to your blog again and again through newsletters, email marketing or RSS feed subscriptions.

Here are a few ways to recycle traffic get people coming back to your blog for more:

- You must always build a mailing list. Remember, the money is IN the list. You can place an ‘opt-in’ box and offer them a free report to allow them to opt-in to your mailing list or your newsletter. Whenever you write a new blog post, you can always send an email or have it automated, and get them to come back to your blog. This will keep your blog fresh on people’s mind and it builds a very strong relationship between you and your reader.

- The next way is to get them come back by writing your blog post like an E-zine or a newsletter. Write a series of educational messages – like network marketing tips. Split them into various parts, like “how to recruit more downlines” part 1, part 2, part 3, etc. Tell them when they should come back and read more about it. This will give people a reason to come back even if they do not opt in to your list.

- The third way is to get them to subscribe to your RSS feed. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Basically, people who are too lazy to visit your blog prefer to read your content through a reader. Your blog contents will be sent to their reader automatically when you post a topic. So make sure you write often, consistently and always encourage them to visit your blog in your posts as well. In fact, if your content is good, people might even link to your feed and publish your content on their blogs as well!

These are some methods but always remember that content is king. When you write good content, people will automatically come back to your site without you prompting them to do so.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

How To Explode Your Traffic With Network Marketing Leaders

Most people who build network marketing sites are always struggling to get more traffic. Whether to increase their Google AdSense income or to use it as a lead capturing tool to get more downlines, it is always good to have more traffic for your websites or your blog.

Sometimes, they try all sorts of traffic generation campaigns like search engine optimization, banner exchange, posting in forums and many other marketing methods that is ‘typically online’.

Here is one way that you can explode your traffic and it even works if you cannot tell the difference between HTML and HTTP.

You need to go back to the familiar path by exploring offline methods – by approaching network marketing leaders to drive traffic to your website.

You see, network marketing leads have something you want and you will have something he or she wants:

You want them to visit your websites, and they want good information for their network marketing downlines.

You can create a win-win situation out of this.

Firstly, you must focus on writing quality content on your website. Traffic is king but so is content. With these two ‘kings’ working side by side, your website will be unstoppable but you need to have good content on your site before you can drive traffic there.

Next, you can approach your network marketing leaders in this manner. If your network marketing leader is your upline, it makes life so much easier because they will help their downlines to succeed. In fact, they might send all their people to your website if you have good information for everyone to share.

If you are approaching a leader who is not your upline or in a different company, you can position yourself as a product user (to gain their trust) or you can position yourself as a website/newsletter publisher that gives good information to their downlines. The most important aspect is to gain their trust.

It is also a new concept to most network marketing leaders because most of them do not bring their businesses online! Do not underestimate the size of their list either. After all, most leaders usually keep a rolodex of their downlines and they email them all at once using a rudimentary form of emailing system, but nevertheless is extremely effective because one call from the leader and all the downlines will come running (to your website, that is!)

Once people are sending traffic to your website, you can use a lead capturing page to capture leads and you can even market affiliate products to them. But remember to market good quality information products otherwise, the leader will frown upon you.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

Network Marketing – Robert Kiyosaki’s Perfect Business

Robert Kiyosaki, the famous author behind the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series of financial books has talked about network marketing as one of the most perfect business models on the planet.

But why has one who has never been involved in network marketing seem to endorse it as a good business model? Some may claim that this is a hypocritical endorsement, but in reality, Kiyosaki’s findings are founded on solid business building principles and are hence, are valid observations.

To understand what he means by a perfect business, you must understand the background of the E, S, B, I quadrant.

E stands for employee, where you are under legal employment working for an employer getting a payroll. Kiyosaki claims that most employees are stuck in a rat race, where the employee constantly working to pay off his debts to the government, the taxation institutes as well as the banks. He finds that there is little freedom and to exit from the rat race, you must progress into the different quadrants.

S stands for small business. He quips that it stands for solo businessman as well where in order to do things right, you gotta do it yourself! This quadrant of businessmen rarely leverages on others because they not only have the responsibilities of a business owner, they often need to double up as the worker and sales rep, the customer service rep and sometimes, even the delivery guy!

B is the quadrant Kiyosaki wants to get people into where you run a BIG business by leveraging on people ‘under’ you.

Lastly, the ‘I’ quadrant is where big business investors wind up. They use their money to earn MORE money.

Kiyosaki describes the network marketing business model as the perfect business simply because he believes that you can easily jump from the ‘E’ quadrant directly into the ‘B’ quadrant without going through the hardships of the ‘S’ quadrant.

When you start a network marketing business, the most important skills you will learn are business skills. Skills such as managing people, understanding the needs of your customer, how to invest your time and money wisely and lots of self-improvement, mindset changing awareness that will take your business skills to the next level.

The most important aspect about being in a network marketing business is that you get to learn all these business skills at a very low investment (a couple of dollars to a few hundred dollars worth of product investment), the guidance and believe of a mentoring upline, and all the time in the world for someone to develop those business skills. After all, not everyone’s attitudes are alike. A network marketing business will help you to build those skills even if you are a slow learner – because you don’t have to worry about huge rental or inventory costs unlike a traditional business in the S or B quadrant.

The facts indicate that what Robert Kiyosaki says is valid and true about network marketing indeed, being the perfect business.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

How To Develop The Right Mindset As An Upline

What is the role of an upline in network marketing?

Is he a leader like a loud army general or a slow and patient mentor like Master Yoda from Star Wars?

Is he a fearful motivator like Darth Vader or is he a person who exudes confidence and inspires others with motivating words?

We know one thing about an upline; he or she is there with an important role to play, besides just overriding the commissions of his or her downlines. If you are there simply to take advantage of your people and get commissions without doing anything, then you have missed the point about network marketing.

A good upline has the mindset of a leader, mentor, helper, servant and friend all rolled into one. You need to be a person who helps others to achieve their goals, just like what Zig Ziglar says about achieving success only when you help ‘enough’ others to achieve success in their businesses as well.

Think about it this way… if you turn your downline into a superstar recruiter, do you think that it will benefit you greatly? Of course it does, you will definitely be laughing all the way to the bank!

The key point is to go all out to ensure the success of your downlines no matter what the costs. You can’t just think about money or ‘PV’ all the time. If you obsess about it, your downlines will see you as materialistic monkey who is out there to grab their money.

Remember, your downlines are not there for you to boss around either. You just can’t preach about network marketing being the way out of your J-O-B and firing your boss if you are turning into a boss that is even worse than the one they are trying to shake off in the first place!

A good upline doesn’t just motivate their downlines with the stick or the carrot either. There is actually a third motivation factor and it is long lasting – personal empowerment! This only comes when a downline achieves self-actualization about their dreams and their business goals. You will want to train a lot of downlines like these but it would require a lot of patience within you. Not everyone will make it to this ‘level’ but you just got to keep on believing in people until they stop believing completely in themselves.

Whether your own upline adopts this mindset is irrelevant. The most important aspect is to focus on you and your own business. You can’t let your upline do all the thinking for you and expect to have the right mindset as an upline yourself.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

The Myth About Network Marketing Saturation

A lot of people who get involved in network marketing usually have scruples about this scary word – its called saturation.

It means that one day; everyone will join a network marketing company to the point that there is no longer a market for it anymore. When there are too many people in a company, there will be so much competition that it will be nearly impossible to get new downlines yourself.

Some mathematicians even claim that one day, the entire world’s population is not enough to sustain a ‘pyramid structure’ and the whole MLM system will collapse.

This is not true and saturation is actually a relatively small concern. Here are a few reasons why saturation is a myth:

(1) The world’s population is constantly recycling.

The mathematicians may have a point about mathematical saturation, but that principle only applies when the population growth is stagnant or dwindling! This means that they are speculating that there are no new infants being born and people will live forever.

When you put things into the right perspective, there will ALWAYS be people turning 18 (the legal age to join a network marketing opportunity). People will grow old one day but before that happens they will have kids and more and more kids will be turning 18 – this means that there will always be new people who are ready to join your network marketing business every year.

(2) There will always be people looking for more opportunities.

There is a new consumer born everyday. Remember, your network marketing business is all about offering people opportunities. If you give people the right opportunity at the right time, they will take it! Look at the market out there. Someday, there will be an economic crisis because of the cycles of economy. There will always be people who are disgruntled with their work and they want a way out from the rat race.

In other words, there will always be new people coming in; looking for new opportunity and that is where you must be, at the right place at the right time with the right opportunity.

(3) There will always be people looking for a leader

In this short sighted world, leadership is always in demand. Bear in mind, network marketing is not a pyramid scheme because the downline can ALWAYS surpass his upline anytime if he or she works harder.

In your network marketing company, you will be able to position yourself as a trainer or a mentor to someone else. The more people you train, the better a leader you will become. People will always look up to a leader with ample strength and when you are ‘strong’ enough, you can even attract network marketing reps from other companies to switch over and join you.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

Why Use Search Engine Optimization For Network Marketing?

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the most lucrative ways to make money in network marketing.

Let’s explore the concept of SEO.

SEO focuses on organic search engine traffic. This means that you do not have to fork out a cent for paid advertising campaigns like Pay-Per-Click (PPC) or Google AdWords. All traffic on SEO is free.

Furthermore, SEO traffic is perceived to be of a higher quality compared to PPC. When you search for something on Google, where do you click? Left or right? Most probably the sites listed on the left because it somehow seems more popular, right?

That is why SEO is very lucrative.

Next, you need to explore the market for SEO in network marketing.

SEO is good for your network marketing business because it is generally a low competition market (compared to debt consolidation or credit cards) because not many network marketers are bringing their business online… yet. On the other hand, people who are good with SEO might not get involved in network marketing. They generally prefer to spend more time in front of the computer and they could be afraid of network marketing (whether people try and recruit them or they dislike the industry because ).

Simply put, very few network marketers are ‘SEO guys’ and very few SEO guys are network marketers.

So you will be able to get your sites ranked easily.

Here are a few tips you must focus on to get your sites ranked easily on the Internet.

Focus on optimizing your network marketing company’s brand name (e.g. Herbalife, Usana, Agel, Amway, etc) by writing articles about your company and submitting them to article directories like E-zine Articles. Remember to use a proper anchor text for your article and your site – e.g. Amway.

Next, you need to target long tail keywords. A long tail keyword example is – “Lose weight with Herbalife” or “How Transfer Factor Works”.

You can also create Squidoo Lenses and Hub Pages to get traffic and bolster your rankings easily. These two sites are considered high authority sites and you will be able to get traffic if you write content there.

At the end of the day, you don’t need to have a super high ranking site or a blog in order to get traffic. The key is to drive traffic no matter which search engine ranking position you are in – it is no point getting rank no.1 if no one is searching for that keyword at all.

Why The Internet Gives Predictable Duplication Results

Building your network marketing business on the Internet is becoming an increasingly viable option for people looking for new ways to increase leads and prospects. With ‘offline’ marketing strategies becoming more and more competitive, a cheaper and easier way to generate leads has emerged.

Of course, I am not saying that old school network marketing prospecting methods do not work, by all means, it is still the bread and butter of home businesses, but let us examine the feasibility of these methods through downline duplication.

You see, there are many angles you have to consider:

- Credibility
- Contact
- Charisma

This 3 C’s are all critical factors when it comes to prospecting and they are some of the hardest aspects in order to duplicate.

Credibility wise, your upline may be the top CEO of a former Forbes 500 super company and they can easily sponsor thousands of reps by sheer force of their influence alone, but you can never duplicate credibility for your downline, you can leverage, but it is impossible to ride on your upline’s shoulders forever.

Contact means all the customers a person knows in their circle of influence or in their name list. An upline may have tons of valuable contacts, but if their downlines do not have quality contacts like their upline, it is very difficult to succeed as well.

Lastly, Charisma is one thing that you cannot duplicate. You may observe your upline, the way he or she talks, the way they walk, the books they read and the way they show the plan, but because human beings are uniquely different, it is very hard to be able to duplicate the charisma and influence.

So how does one easily duplicate results in their downline? By using the Internet. You can use the internet to do the following things – increase your credibility as a network marketer using e-books, blogs and forums (you don’t need to rely on your ‘offline’ credibility much), you can also build a large list of contacts through driving traffic and lead generation and finally, you do not even need to have ‘offline’ charisma, you can ‘hide’ behind a computer screen and use your writings and E-products to give a very different online charisma.

At the end of the day, using the Internet may help your downlines to succeed if they are having trouble talking to people or if they are shy and afraid to talk to people.

To your success, www.shopgbg.com/timeless

How To Generate Cash Flow For MLM Using Affiliate Marketing

I’m sure as a network marketer, you will want these two things more than anything else for your business – more leads and more cash flow for your business.

Let’s talk about cash flow.

You see, getting leads in your business is very important, no doubt. But leads in and of itself that doesn’t transform into money is as useless as window shoppers. Some window shoppers might walk into a shop to checkout your wares, but when nobody is buying your products, you might as well shut down your business because you can’t even pay your monthly rental to keep your business alive.

The network marketing business functions on the same level as opening your own restaurant or a shop:

- You need to buy products every single month or pay for your monthly auto-ship. Now opportunities with auto-ships may be a double edged sword. You have a commitment to pay monthly but so do your downlines (and that translate into a monthly income for you). A program without an enforced auto-ship is good too, but the volume needs to come in order for your business volume to grow. In essence, you have to spend money to buy products; otherwise, your downline will not do so (duplication).

- You need to pay for your gas mileage and other fixed expenses. After all, you have to maintain your day to day expenses. Many network marketers get so fired up about their business until they forget that they have to pay their expenses and they quit because they run out of money.

- You need to invest in training materials as well. That is the only way to move forward as a leader. Books, tapes, CDs, DVDs and seminar tickets are all expensive but worthwhile investments.

Bottom-line, you must have cash flow otherwise you can’t succeed in network marketing.

Let’s explore a way to get cash flow consistently. The first two ways are the most common, while the third way is untapped (mostly by network marketers) and worth exploring.

1. Recruiting new downlines and getting them to buy starter pack. This is one of the fastest, quick money ways to get cash flow. You can also cash in on their monthly auto-ship and other purchases.

2. Retailing – you can make a consistent income when you retail your company’s products to your consumers.

3. Affiliate marketing – this is a very good way to make money from your leads or prospects even if they do not fall into the two categories above.

When you engage in affiliate marketing, your goal as a network marketer is to market a low-cost, generic information product about network marketing. These are information that anyone can use and it has the largest target market due to its low cost and high demand. After all, everyone needs information.

A good affiliate program will pay you anywhere between 40% to 75% for marketing other people’s info products. Even if your prospects do not sign up with you or buy your products, you might as well make money by diverting your leads or traffic there.

At the end of the day, you can make good money by driving search engine traffic, forum traffic, Facebook or MySpace traffic and even bring people to your blog by marketing affiliate products for cash flow to keep your business afloat. Who knows, those customers might even turn into your downlines some day.