Does online MLM and network marketing really work? This question comes up quite often, and there are some interesting ways to look at it.

I know two top MLM leaders who have made millions in this business. Both are rather critical of online MLM in general. Their basic belief is that you can’t build a big business like this on the Internet.

On the other hand, I know and work with a well-known online entrepreneur who has made well over a million dollars in MLM, and is considered one of the top leaders in the industry today. She has done it all almost exclusively online, utilizing effective social networking techniques and Internet marketing strategies.

So, what do we make of  this? I believe that leaders opposed to online marketing know that many people will pursue their business online without really understanding how things work.

Some want to try building a business online because they are uncomfortable talking to people and think that they can put up a website and have prospects find them and sign up after reading some promotional copy. They don’t understand and accept that MLM is a “people business” above all and that they will ultimately need to interact with others and push out of their comfort zone to have any success.

Others start their MLM business online and jump into social media thinking they can build it big, but lack certain social skills and don’t understand how they come across in this medium. I saw a video yesterday where a popular MLM leader talked about people who make videos (to promote their MLM business) while sitting on the bed with dirty laundry in the background, or in a room with clutter all around, or with very poor lighting.

Many of these people are well-meaning MLM business owners who have been told they can attract prospects online by making videos and putting them up on YouTube. Yet, they don’t understand how what they do turns prospects away. They lack the savvy that makes an effective online MLM marketer. The skills for effective online MLM marketing are something that most people can learn if they want to, although sadly many will choose to just forge ahead and avoid learning the skills necessary for success online.

Another reason that some MLM leaders dislike online marketing is because they know that being face to face with people and prospecting in the traditional, offline way can create an excitement and synergy that isn’t always easy to achieve when working with an online group. It can also encourage a loyalty that makes it easier to hang in there during the early stages of business growth when the going might be slow.

When you meet someone in person and shake hands, it can create a stronger bond (initially at least) than you will get with someone you sign up under who lives hundreds or thousands of miles away, and sometime this bond helps people work through temptation to jump around to all different things.

So, I do understand and respect opposing views about online networking, and I do appreciate where these MLM leaders are coming from. I believe that most leaders who openly oppose online MLM marketing know deep down that it really can work, but they feel that newer and more inexperienced business builders might get overly discouraged and distracted doing it online. I believe they are sincere and have the best interest of people at heart. This doesn’t mean, though, that it can’t be done. It certainly can.

A successful online MLM business does take time and patience to develop, and this is why I recommend that people new to the business start out working offline while building up their online business. That way, you have a better chance of getting off to a good start and seeing some encouraging results from your business right away.

Your MLM prospects and potential business associates are looking for one thing you really want them to find…you! With all the ways we have to communicate and stay in touch these days, people get really discouraged if they can’t reach you. If prospects can’t find you,  they will often move on and find someone they can.

I have first hand experience with this, because there was a time when I rarely answered my phone. I preferred to have people leave messages,  so I could choose to call them back (if at all) when it was convenient to me. Once I realized I was  losing some good new associates and customers, I changed my way of thinking really fast.

I’ve found that many MLM prospects will often choose NOT to leave a message, unless they have a special reason for wanting  to contact you specifically. Often, the call is really to see if there is a “real” person on the other end of the web site or ad.

Try to be responsive to your email and phone calls. I know it can be hard at times. If you work during the day, you probably can’t answer calls from business prospects. However, most people will understand that, and all is well if you return the call promptly (later that day). I am amazed at how many network marketers fail to do this.

Was there a time when you approached someone for information about a home business, and were frustrated because they never contacted you back or responded to your interest? I bet you kept looking and finally found someone who was interested enough to take time for you. This is how you want to be – open, available, and easy to contact.

It’s easier than ever today for our potential MLM business prospects to contact several potential sponsors in a very short time. Being easy to reach, and quick to return calls you couldn’t take right away, makes a very positive impression on people and gives you an edge. It sets you apart.

Make sure you publicize your email address, phone number, instant messenger name, Skype name if you have it, and so on. The more ways you are accessible, the better.

Are you looking for a simple overview of the major skills you need to possess or develop for network marketing success, and home business success in general?

Let’s take a look at four key skills that you need to develop. Being competent in all these areas is important. The more you work at it, the more you set yourself apart from the crowd as a true leader.

The good news is, if you lack in any of these areas, these skills can be easily developed with dedication and persistence!

Here are the four major skills you need for success in network marketing.

Develop Quality Connections and Relationships

Meeting people and building relationships is perhaps the most important thing you can do. Since network marketing is truly a “people business”, you must be able to meet people and get to know them.

If you’re really shy or lack confidence in yourself, this can be difficult. However, I’ve come a long way myself so I know you can do it too. As a child, and on into early adulthood, I was basically a loner. It was hard for me to talk to anyone except family and close friends.

Becoming involved in network marketing, along with a determination to “get out of my shell”, changed all that. So, if you feel weak in the area of building relationships, focus on learning to take a genuine interest in others. Meet people and get to know them for who they are, not just as potential prospects for your business.

Build Credibility Across the Board

You want to be a person that people trust. You want people to think of you as dependable and true to your word. In everything you do, be honest and open. If you say you’ll do something for someone, do it.

When presenting and advertising your network marketing opportunity, don’t use a lot of hype and make a lot of promises. This will compromise your credibility immediately.

When presenting your opportunity, be up front and professional. Don’t be evasive when questions are asked. Learn how to answer the most common questions effectively. If you don’t know the answer to a question, don’t make something up. Tell your prospect you’ll find the answer and get back to them.

Posture Yourself as a Confident Leader

Even if you aren’t making a lot of money with your network marketing business yet, position yourself as confident that you are in the right place at the right time. People are attracted to this.

Don’t sweat sponsoring anyone. If you’re talking to a really high potential prospect (such as a local business leader with tons of contacts), don’t come across as anxious to sponsor them. Your prospects can sense anxiety and desperation, and will be turned off.

It’s so true – people are attracted to people who appear confident and relaxed in what they do!

Cultivate a Habit of Daily Action

This is a skill that trips a lot of network marketers. With our very busy lives, it is often just downright hard to find time to build a home business. It’s really easy to fall into a habit of doing “whatever, whenever”. This will hurt your progress in your business.

Make it a habit to do something for your business every day. Find creative ways to make connections at times you normally wouldn’t. If your kids have a ball game, have some business cards on hand and talk to people you run into. Look for opportunities to tell people what you do. It’s very common for new people you meet to ask “what do you do” – be prepared to tell them.

It is the quality time you spend contacting people, developing relationships, and presenting your opportunity that will bring you success in network marketing.

In closing, let me emphasize again – if you’re like most people, you’ll be weak in one or  more of these four areas. These are not born skills – you can develop them quickly if you want to. Make the classic three-liner your motto: Just Do It

Getting enough of the right things done is challenging for any home business, particularly if you’re building your business on the side while holding down a regular job and perhaps juggling family responsibilities as well.

One thing you have to pay special attention to is your “to-do” list. These are your day to day activities that support and grow your business. These are the tasks and actions you must complete in order for your home business to be successful.

There is a stumbling block I’ve found that affects many home business builders. I’ve encountered this myself, and have worked hard to address it and streamline my daily activities.

What is that stumbling block? Most of us do a lot of things, in the name of “building our business”, that really aren’t productive. These are activities that might be enjoyable or pleasant to do, but which take valuable time and don’t do much (if anything) to grow our business.

There are only so many hours in a day. If you’re working a job and juggling other responsibilities, you may only have an hour or two in the evenings to work with. The way to grow your home business faster and more efficiently is to focus hard on doing the things that actually make it grow and prosper.

For example, if you have a network marketing home business, your best use of time is likely to be:

• communicating and following up with new prospects for your business

• training and assisting your downline team in building their business

It’s really easy to do a lot of “busy work” that you might think is productive, but it really isn’t. Some common time wasters include:

• trying to perfect your plans and strategies for building your network marketing business

• surfing on social networking sites looking for prospects but not really communicating with anyone

• posting free ads, using traffic exchanges, and other low-return advertising and promotion methods

Of course, you must have a plan for your network marketing business, but avoid the trap of spending most of your time planning and preparing instead of doing. Always ask yourself, “Is what I’m spending my valuable time on right now getting me in direct communication with a prospect for my business, or helping someone on my downline team grow their business?”

Thinking about the results of each action you take applies not only to network marketing, but to any home business. Try breaking down and examining what you actually do during your business building time, and focus more on the tasks and actions that actually move you forward and make money for you.

You’ve made the decision. You want to create your brand and promote your home business online, so you’ve decided to start a blog.

Your blog may be focused mostly on personal branding, which I feel should be the priority, or you may use it to highlight and focus on a particular home business opportunity.

Whatever your focus and purpose, you’ll want to start getting visitors (and potential prospects) to your blog as quickly as possible.

There are different ways to get traffic to your home business blog.

• search engine traffic, which is free but requires knowledge of search engine optimization and a good bit of patience, because you won’t get ranked for useful search terms overnight

• traffic from paid advertising, such as Google Adwords or other pay per click programs

• traffic from visitors who see your link on social media sites and click through to see what you’re up to

Of the three, the fastest and most economical way to start getting traffic is through participation in social media communities. Unless you already have knowledge and experience with pay per click advertising, I can’t recommend you go that route just yet. This is a subject you need to study and understand well before you venture in, because it is very easy to spend a lot of money fast, without necessarily getting the type of traffic you want. Over time, you’ll want to apply some SEO (search engine optimization) methods – but for right now you want to start getting some visitors as soon as possible.

Here is how I recommend starting out.

Establish your blog with a minimum of 5-10 good posts before you begin publicizing it.  You want visitors to see some good content, not just one or two posts and a lot of empty space. Also, be sure you have an “About Me” page that tells more about you and what you’re doing.

Join a few major social communities like Facebook – but no more than you can stay visible and active in. For most people, this may be only 2-3 communities at first. Complete your profile (include a good picture) and put links back to your blog wherever they make sense – including in your bio.

Visit these communities on a daily basis and be a contributor. Comment. Answer questions. Start your own topics. Be helpful. Look at what the leaders and popular users are doing and emulate them, but in our own style and voice. Your best best is always to be genuine, and just be yourself.

Look for links to other peoples’ blogs in your niche and visit them. Make quality comments to their posts when appropriate. This creates more links back to your site, but be sure your comments are quality – short blurbs like “Great Post!” or “I Agree!” likely won’t be approved by many blog owners anyway.

There are some “social tribes” that you can join, where the focus is on members promoting and commenting on each others content. This approach might make sense if your time allows, as it will showcase your blog to people who share with you a common interest in home business success.

This is how I recommend starting to get traffic to your home business blog – be social!

MLM and network marketing is all about sharing your enthusiasm and belief in a home business model that has made many people wealthy and financially independent. Deep down, you hope you’re the next big success story at your company convention and you really want to build it big.

Under it all, though, maybe there is something holding you back. You see other people having great success with their MLM business, and wonder what they might be doing differently from you.

While there can be various obstacles to success in MLM, one thing that is very common is a lack of conviction. This is often revealed when someone (particularly someone new in the business) is strongly reluctant to approach their warm market to tell them about their new business.

There is often the feeling that “I need to be successful and making some money first, otherwise my friends will laugh at me“. If you’ve ever felt this way, it’s time to take stock of your beliefs and attitudes toward MLM and network marketing in general.

I’ve found that many people in MLM really do feel excited about the potential of their business, but there is something lurking in the back of their mind somewhere that holds them back. That something is often a collection of negative stories or one-liners they’ve heard and read about the MLM industry over the years.

Uncle Joe tried that Amway thing and ended up a bunch of products he couldn’t get rid of…

My friend got involved in one of those pyramid deals – I need to talk some sense into him…

MLM is a scam, and people who promote it are scam artists looking for quick bucks…

Only people who get in at the top of the MLM pyramid make any money…

You get the idea. Because MLM and network marketing is such a powerful home business model, it does tend to attract con artists who sell hope to people out there desperately looking for cash or a way out of a bad financial situation. It’s sad, but that’s the reality.

This is why it’s so important to pick a reputable company with outstanding products, and then get grounded in the real potential of owning a successful MLM business. Talk to people in your upline who are successful and making good money. Listen to their story, their struggles, and let their experiences serve as inspiration for you.

If you’re brand new and feel funny talking to people you know before you’ve made your first dollar in your business, take the honest approach. Say something like this, and don’t be afraid to admit you’re new in business. The biggest businesses in the world started at zero profit.

I just started my business with [company name], and I’m really excited about the potential. My sponsor (or someone upline) is very successful and is making great money. I want you to know about this because I’d really enjoy working with you, and I value your opinion.

Work on your conviction and confidence – it will help you break out and achieve greater success with your MLM business!

Success in a network marketing home business depends on a lot of things. Your products, your “why”, your commitment – all of these things are a part of the big picture.

One thing that strongly influences everything else, and goes a long way in determining how successful you will be, is your level of expectation for your business. What do you really expect your network marketing business to do for you?

Hopefully, you’ve written some really positive and inspiring goals down on paper. Maybe you’ve done some serious brainstorming and feel like you’ve really nailed your “why”.

If you’re not enjoying the day to day success you expect in your business, ask yourself this question.

Do I really believe I can reach the goals and dreams I’ve written down? Am I really, truly expecting to achieve them?

The more I talk to people in my group, and other network marketers in general, the more I’m convinced that success in business is closely tied to expectations. I know you’ve probably heard this before – it seems to be part of just about every seminar or course on self-improvement and personal growth. Stop and think about it for a minute.

I’ve known people who had very ambitious goals on paper, who appeared to be very enthusiastic and committed, but achievement and business growth didn’t seem to follow. In so many cases, I found that deep down they didn’t really believe they could achieve the goals that they so carefully thought through and worked out. They wanted to, just didn’t really believe they could.

If you don’t seem to be making the progress that you expect in your network marketing business, this is something you might want to think about. Dig deep inside and see what’s really going on. If you really deep down think you lack the ability to reach the goals you’ve set, raising your expectations can help you kick start your sponsoring and begin giving you the confidence you need to achieve the success you desire.

Here is a tip to help you get started in raising your expectations. First, review your goals and commit to yourself that you can achieve them. Then, every action you take to build your business, expect something good to happen. Every action.

If you’re making a presentation to a prospect, expect something good to come from it. Your prospect might not sign up, at least not then, but don’t consider that you’ve “struck out” if they don’t indicate much interest right away. Keep them in the loop, follow up with them in the future, and think of that presentation as one step closer to sponsoring your next associate. The key is just expecting good things to happen with everything you do.

Unless you are a born optimist, and most of us are not, this will take some mental discipline and practice. Master it, and you’ll become virtually unstoppable!

Growing your network marketing business is your ultimate objective. Nobody really wants to build a business that peaks and stops growing, right?

Actually, there is a classic rule in business. Your business will never stay the same. It will either be growing, or declining. This isn’t just about network marketing and MLM, it applies to any type of business.

Growth requires change. Growth in business requires adapting to change. When the time comes for change and growth, many people rebel against it. It’s natural to desire a status quo, to find a comfort zone and stay in it.

Many people in network marketing find change difficult to deal with. I’m talking about the kind of change that takes you from one level to the next. For example, bearing down and learning how to effectively present your opportunity to more prospects. Rather than realizing that change and growth is an internal thing that might be temporarily uncomfortable but necessary for success, some networkers tend to look to things outside themselves for answers.

Sometime they want somebody upline or downline to make their business grow somehow. Sometime they begin to believe that the compensation plan is what’s holding them back. Maybe the products aren’t just right. Some begin to believe that external factors beyond their direct control (such as the economy) are the reason their success isn’t what it should be.

When you start thinking like this, it’s easy to  feel that a different opportunity, a more lucrative pay plan, or a better upline training and support system is the thing. This is why some people seem to jump around from one network marketing business to another, never achieving near their potential with any one of them, but always seeking.

Two keys to your growth and success in network marketing:

• understand that growth requires change and adapting to change

• understand that change and growth means stepping outside your comfort zone

Once you step outside that comfort zone, and do what you need to do, you actually get better and establish a new comfort zone! Always focus on what really drives your success – you.

It all works out. Just focus, adapt, grow, make it happen!

To be successful in network marketing and build your dream business, you must be a leader.

Some people seem to be natural born leaders, in the sense that they’ve been “take charge” type people all their life. Maybe you’re not terribly outgoing, and have wondered if you have what it takes to be an effective leader.

The good news is that leadership is something that can be developed. You have already demonstrated some true leadership capability simply by having the desire and taking the initiative to start your own home business!

You can start from wherever you are and build your leadership skills as you go along.

There are a couple of things that strongly influence your ability to develop as a leader.

• your ability to get along with other people – having patience and faith in others

• how much you believe in and commit to win-win relationships

As you develop as an effective leader, you’ll find that you attract other leaders. The greater and higher you build your own personal leadership skills, the higher the level of leaders you’ll attract to your network marketing business.

Here are seven characteristics of great leaders. Reflect on these and plan where you can begin developing your own leadership skills to a higher level. Always keep in mind – the greater your leadership skills, the more leaders you’ll attract to your business. As you can imagine, this becomes a very powerful factor in your success.

1) Leaders quietly work through obstacles and difficulties – you rarely if ever hear them complain or whine about anything. Their attitude is Just Do It.

2) Leaders never look back – they focus on the future and what can be, not on the past and what might have been.

3) Leaders know how to help people get started “where they are” by showing them opportunity in virtually any situation or circumstance.

4) Leaders understand that giving their team quality time and strengthening them with training and encouragement makes all the difference in the world.

5) Leaders aren’t envious or jealous of others with great potential – they look forward to learning and working with the very best they can find.

6) Leaders assume responsibility. They don’t point fingers or make excuses. The buck stops with them.

7) Leaders understand that education and ongoing self-development is critical to their long term success. They enjoy life and the rewards they’ve earned, but they never “arrive” and reach a point where they think they know all there is to know.

Build yourself as a leader – your network marketing business will prosper!

Many people start a network marketing business, and plan to do their prospecting and business building online.

Building a powerful network marketing business online is very realistic, particularly if you learn how to use the social media and networking sites like Facebook effectively. It’s all about going where your potential prospects are going and learning how to get involved and meet them.

That said, I have found that some network marketers prefer to start their businesses exclusively online, while avoiding warm market contact as much as possible. Sometime, this is because they have approached their best contacts one or more times in the past, and feel reluctant to go back and say “I have done my research and found the RIGHT opportunity this time!” Other times, they feel that many of their friends will reject them for one reason or another.

I believe in and teach attraction marketing. This is the art of having prospects who are currently seeking an opportunity come to you looking for information. It is often easier to work with people who are interested and approach you asking for details, as opposed to exploring possibilities with warm market friends who may or may not have any interest at all. It really depends on how you approach it.

If you have done your research and made a serious commitment to building a network marketing business, you should let your friends and family know what you’re up to. I’m not a big fan of making a list of 100 names and systematically working down the list making phone calls and trying to schedule presentations. The approach I prefer is using “warm marketing notification”, then making those calls.

Put together something that explains your business in a nutshell, including a little about why you chose your business. Send your warm market contacts a personal note, a card, a letter, or even an email with links to your online business site. Invite them to take a look, and explain that you’ll be in touch in a few days to see what they think.

Notifying your warm market in this way, then following up after they’ve had time to receive your information, helps take the pressure off everyone. You aren’t putting them on the spot by calling and trying to schedule a presentation right then, and you’re giving them a chance to see just enough of your opportunity to determine whether they’re interested.

Those who are interested in making money with a home business will respond, while others might be prospects at a future time.

Do whatever you feel comfortable with. The big thing is, make those warm market contacts in the beginning. It gives you a chance to practice talking about your opportunity and helps you work out answers to common questions about your network marketing business. This will help you immensely when you are talking to prospects you find online.