NETWORK MARKETING VS AFFILIATE MARKETING

As you can see in my introduction and my profile, I spent some time in Network Marketing, and had some success, although not as much as the business was hyped up to be.

Yes, I took advantage of all of the social marketing techniques in order to attract only the good prospects that might have an inclination to join my business after they had "opted" in to one of my landing pages that were furnished to me via one of the programs that I had bought into. Once they opted in, it gave me permission to send them emails listing why I am the one they should let sponsor them, and what I have to offer versus everyone else that I am competing with in the Network Marketing sector. Believe me, there are plenty of them.

It did work! Prospects did start to come to me, and I did form relationships, and subsequently was able to build a team of my own. It was not a big team, but it was a team, and it afforded me a pretty good living, and it still does.

However, it did not come without problems. Now you might say, well every business you start is going to have problems in some sort of way. I am not disagreeing at all. It does. All I am saying is that there were more problems than what people talk about on the internet. You hear the good things about Network Marketing, and you don't hear too many bad things about the business. That is ok too. Who wants to hear about negativity and problems? What I want to point out is that there does come the bad with the good.

My conclusion about Network Marketing is that for all of the hard work that I put in the business, I did not get out of it what I expected. Why? Well, it is my humble opinion that there were too many steps involved to build your business, and then too many steps involved to keep it going. Let me go into this detail by detail.

First of all it takes alot of research, writing and blogging, and posting to get started with Attraction Marketing. I mean you really have to post content on several sites just in hopes of someone opting in to your landing page and giving you permission to send them emails. I really got after it, and I mean I burnt the midnite oil. It took me several months to have a decent...not good, but decent amount of prospects to interact with. Now let me point something out. As advertised, the prospects come to you. However, they are not going to "knock" the door down calling you wanting to join your business!

That brings me to the second point! Since they are not "knocking" down your door to talk, you will have to eventually call these people, and get the "low down" about where they are, what their goals are, and if they are going to be a fit for you and your company. What I have found is this is a minimum of 2 phone calls, most of the time it takes 3 phone calls to either sign them up, or disqualify them. Let me remind you, that while you are doing this, you still have to maintain your writings, posting to forums, ezines, bookmarkings, social sites...ect, while you are keeping up with your calandar and your contact phone calls. Folks I am talking alot of busy work, and whoever said that they only spend 20 hours a week on their Network Marketing business, is out of their mind.

Ok, you got some prospects signed up, you got them duplicating your system, and hopefully they are able to sign some prospects up themselves. Let me mention the third leg of the business. You are going to have emails and phone calls from your downline. It is inevitable. You are the leader, and you have to provide the leadership. This is going to mean conference calls once a week for your team, not to mention conference calls for the company. These are needed to keep everyone updated on current events, product changes, and accolades for those who have over succeeded for that week. This takes up alot of time itself.

Meanwhile, you are still working on the first two legs of the business, just to keep new prospects coming into the pipeline. This is imperative, because you are inevitably going to suffer attrition in your downline. I don't care what any of the Attraction Marketing gurus say out there about prequalifying your prospect. I have had my share of former corporate executives, who suffered burnout, and had a notion that Network Marketing was going to save them. I don't have to tell you what happened. They went back to the corporate world.

My whole point to this article is that there is so much involved in Network Marketing, and it is a business that you are going to have to depend on other people to make it happen for you. That is just the way it is, and when you use the model as I have shown above, you can see that it takes alot of work and diligence to keep it going.

I still get income from my Network Marketing business. However, I got out of it because my sponsor told me that once I have my business on cruise control, I will only have to put in so many hours a week to keep it going. It was not true. I put in as many hours as I did being a Regional Vice President for a financial firm.

I switched gears and started Affiliate Marketing. Yes, I still have to write, post, and blog, but what I don't have to do is talk, qualify, and sponsor others who might or might not make a difference to my business. I am making good money, and enjoying my time that it has afforded me.