Sunday, January 6, 2008

Multi Level Marketing (MLM) - Does It Work?

For some people, MLM is the way to go and indeed a large number of people around the world swear by it and i personally know people who make well over $100k a year working their multi level marketing program.
The unfortunate part about it is that they were the only ones making money. No one on their team was duplicating the efforts they were doing. Whether they were selling vitamins, travel, a gas saver product, lotions, potions, pills, candles or juice beverage products, I have tried it all and it was a difficult task for me.
The classic MLM training plan is to firstly approach your family & friends but if you are like me (just a normal family guy) i soon ran out of people to bug, so what then, well i then tried the next step in the manual and hosted two or three home parties and got nowhere, once i ran out of leads I started buying leads, in the hope of converting some people into my business. That is so much harder than it sounds. Sure I made sales, but by the time I was getting to the next profit level, the people who i brought in 2-3 months ago were dropping like flies. This is why I could never make it to the next big payout level of the commission plan.
For some reason, I would always fall short of the next bonus payout or car bonus. Usually, I would fall short of personal volume or group volume or I would have enough on my left side, but not enough on my right side, so I would miss out on the big payouts, month after month.
This is the same old stuff you hear about why MLM doesnt work for most people and the only people making money were the people with huge dowlines and people that have been in the business a long time with lists of hundreds of thousands of people to market to. For any newbie MLMer joining, good luck.
I once watched a stay at home mom put $13,000 into a business to quit within a year. Most of us are smarter than that and would have quit after a few months and maybe only lost $1000 down the drain, but this person was persistent and did not want to fail. So she kept plugging away until they had no money left and when gas prices went to $3.50, the father of the family couldnt afford to put gas in the car. So much for a supportive upline.
The only thing we have found on the internet to work for most people is a direct sales company that pays you 100% of the sale. Companies that have a price point of less than $1000 to start. This is the only way you have a chance to succeed. Beware of the $1500 to $5000 programs, the start up company and program jumpers.
The truth about start ups is that they have no track record. You have no idea if they will be in business two years later. Watch out for people who jump ship every time a new program comes out on the internet.
Most importantly, be careful of the program that costs more than $1000.00. They are hard to sell, no matter how good it sounds - unless they have lower entry levels or allow you to work your way up without further investment - but these are few and far between.
I hope this helps your research in determining a company that you have confidence in and that you can be proud to represent.
About the Author:
MarkQuibell is a successful entrepreneur having developed severalsuccessful businesses over the past 10 years. His latest enterprise hada t/o of 300+ million US$. To join Mark and his business partner Shayand become part of their next success story please visit www.amazingincome-4u.com