The Dark Side of Network Marketing

When you started looking for a “home business” did you notice – every time you see something that looks interesting, something that will give you a way to make your life easier and OF COURSE make you hundreds and thousands of dollars – FAST.

As soon as you enter your email address, a new window opens to tell you that as soon as you fill in the rest of your information and only pay – OH anywhere between, $9.95 to $495 you will get the rest of the SECRETS?

It’s not only overwhelming and annoying – it can cost you a small fortune. It seems so many sites are built on this premise and there is just no way of getting around it. It also seems that each site promises that they are better than the other. Rich and I have bought into so many of these great deals. Only to find out that there not great as you thought they might be and once you’re in the system, there is another system to purchase. We have also noticed that the EASY instructions are vague and confusing. All you have to do is purchase another system and it will be easier.

So about now, you get to feel like a rat caught in a maze while spending and spending and spending. At one point, when we first started in our business, I thought it was our responsibility to put the children of the founders of “Google” through college. We found out the hard way that “pay per click” can cost a fortune. Even when we OUTSOURCED to a so called “expert” Build our PPC campaign – not once but twice. Not only did we pay thousands to have this done – the campaigns didn’t work! NO MONEY BACK and the only explanation we got back was that perhaps our website is no good. Don’t you think that should have been discussed before the building process? Not to mention that thousand of PPC dollars to Google were already gone.

SEO – OR – SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION is also another slippery slope. How many average folks do you know that can master this process? So this is the promise you get if you outsource this and your website will be seen EVERYWHERE. All over the world – you will get hundreds of leads every day! ALSO NOT TRUE. Once again, after we paid to have this done, there was no obligation to fulfill the promise that had been made to you up-front. The follow up emails and phone calls we sent were never answered.

Another thing to take a look at is “BRANDING YOURSELF” Basically that’s what we are doing right now. The more we get out there and the more we help folks learn ‘HOW TO’ the more we will be able to build trust and build relationships. We want to give GOOD advice without asking for your money. Starting your own “home Business” is a process and in order to have true success, you need to take the time and the small steps that will need to build a strong foundation.

The best advise we can give to anyone about marketing is to learning as much as you can about the area you want to target and then find the most cost effective methods available. Never consider your new business a way to GET RICH QUICK. It may happen for some but 95% of the rest of us will need to invest the time, the work and the commitment. So – stop clicking and spending.

Invest in yourself and do your homework. When it comes to finding the “best methods” out there, you will find them but it will take time and effort. If it feels wrong – it probably is.

To Your Success!

You have started your direct sales business, your business is growing and sales have started adding up – congratulations!  The next step is to start building your sales team by recruiting other direct sales representatives.  Building a sales team will boost your confidence and feeling of accomplishment by helping others to achieve success.  Do not forget, their success will boost your revenue.

• Some of the most effective ways to recruit are available right at your fingertips.  Online recruiting can be as simple as adding an extra line or two to your email signature.  You should already have something on your signature about your product and your website address. Why not add “contact me for an income earning opportunity” or something to that effect?
• Subscribe to email lists that may be interested in your product or opportunity.  Your email signature will let them know about the products you sell and the recruitment opportunity.  You can be your helpful, social self and enjoy interacting with people on the list.
• Online groups and website bulletin boards are another place you can meet potential recruits.  There are many websites and online groups dedicated to work at home moms.  Join these and let others know about the fantastic opportunity you discovered and how it has been advantageous to you.
• Having your own website is essential to increased sales and an excellent resource for recruiting.  Ask visitors to register, so you can start a database of potential customers and recruits.  Ask registering users if they are interested in an income opportunity and contact them, as soon as possible, if they are.
• Send out newsletters to registered users in your database.  In addition to sending out product information, tell them your story and how your business has improved your life.   Let them know you are available to help them achieve their goals.
• Get your name out on the web by writing articles.  After all, you are an expert on your product.  Mention your website and, if possible, add a link to it. The more links you have to your website, the higher it crawls in the search engines and the more visitors you’ll get.
• One of your best resources for recruits are your favorite customers.  They already love the products and have some knowledge about the company.  Nudge them in the right direction by explaining how much they can save by selling.

Do not forget the most important rule about recruiting.  Talk about your products, your business, and your success.  Tell people, both in person and on the web, how you started; where you are going, and how they can get join in.  Tell everyone what you do and why you love it. Your enthusiasm can be contagious.

To Your Continued Success!

How to Generate Leads and Kick Start Sales for Your

Network Marketing Business

Before you join any opportunity learn everything about direct marketing, business leads, how to generate leads, sales prospecting, sales training and more. Leads are the life blood of any network marketing business. Before you start generating leads, be sure that you have a great strategic foundation in place.

Building your Network Marketing or home based business requires advertising, but if you are like me, you ventured into this lucrative market because you needed to earn more money not spend it. If you’ve spent time and money on a great-looking website, but you’re not getting the leads you need to keep your internet business profitable and you may need to look at other advertising streams. Online marketing generates leads that increase sales dramatically. Your unique on line lead generation for your direct marketing business will help you stand out from the crowd and help you get noticed. Online article marketing is also a great source for potential leads. Setting a good goal to get as many great quality articles out on the internet as you can boost your lead captures immensely. It is also a way to get yourself branded on the internet and explode your home business.

Update your sites with a series of informative articles and information. Include a free offer at the end of your article, get it published, and you’ll find prospects contacting you without spending lots of money on advertising. Article writing can take 30-60 minutes to write, translating into a salary of $40-$75/hour. You can learn how to use articles for better search engine placement on Google, MSN, and others while maintaining your professionalism and credibility. Article writing creates a positive relationship of trust and generates a perception that you are “the” authority in your industry about your product or service.

I also encourage my business associates to launch a blog campaign. You can start by reading as many others blogs as you can, leaving comments and link that can benefit the other blogger. A great site to go to review and start writing blogs is WordPress.

Finding hot leads for your new home business is a major component of network marketing, not only for finding new customers, but also for building up your down line of distributors. Because network marketing success hinges on building a network of customers and distributors, it is a good idea to use word of mouth advertising amongst your friends, family and business colleagues.

An investment in a lead list can pay off with big dividends by expanding your customer base and potentially building up your down line. On the other hand if you pay hundreds of dollars for thousands of email addresses that don’t generate any business and you’ve lost money.

If you are an independent professional or small business owner, building the list of prospects for your target market should be one of your core marketing activities. Yes, ten thousand or a million people could get your marketing message, but if they are not your target market, it won’t help you a bit and instead could create a negative impression. Once you have a lead make sure your marketing communication addresses the problems they want solved.

Older methods that have proven successful in the past can continue to provide significant results, however, can be very costly. After months of due diligence and research, I identified low cost if not free advertising sources that I could track for results, and made a goal to reinvest a portion of my earnings into affordable, low cost advertising mediums. These methods cost me very little, and as I began to make money, I diligently reinvested a portion toward budgeted advertising campaigns, being sure to track my results for each paid advertising campaign. Leads are generated and validated through my system to ensure lead quality without duplicates or bad data. Producing prospects using these methods encourage them to create and develop networks of their own.

Our mission in one word — results. The Secret to a Successful Online Business: It’s All about Generating leads, Building Relationships, Establishing a trust relationship with your potential online clients and this takes time, but it is well worth the effort.

To Your Success!

Network Marketing for Today

Network Marketing is a business model where direct selling companies market their products through independent distributors. Network marketing is simply talking, or networking, with other people in your target market and encouraging them to either buy products or become a part of the company. It is NOT chasing down your friends and family to sign up or buy into something. Network Marketing IS NOT A It should never be described as a “Get-Rich-Quick Scheme”.

Many of these marketing plans are often referred to as a Pyramid Schemes and this is far from the truth. Pyramid schemes are illegal financial engines where there are no products or services being sold. Network marketing on the other hand is a legal business model where real and legitimate products and services are distributed between large networks of customers.

Network marketing is about leveraging yourself, recruiting more people, and selling many more products than you could possibly do on your own. First, it’s based on providing people with real, legitimate products they need and want at a fair price. While some people do make a lot of money through network marketing, their financial benefit is always the result of their own dedicated efforts in building an organization that sells real products and services. The team building aspect of network marketing is of vital importance to the success of each individual member and to the team as a whole. The biggest mistake one can make in network marketing is to try and be a bulldog recruiter, make 100 cold calls to dead beat leads (after spending a lot of money for them) and expecting your entire network to replicate the same flawed method, Although sharing the products or services and the opportunity with people you know is still the basic foundation of the business, today we see more people using sophisticated marketing techniques such as the Internet, conference calling and other long-distance sponsoring techniques to extend their network across the country.

The Internet allows someone to use products and services that are already in place for customers. The business you choose must fit with your fundamental beliefs or you will never remain passionate or faithful long enough to honestly represent the products you are selling.

What is absolutely true, is that whatever way you choose to market to your potential consumer or business Partner, if you do stay at home and sit on the couch and never market your product to anyone, you can never become successful and will never have any sort of income from your business. No one has ever logged onto the Internet for the first time and started pocketing dollars in a really short period of time.

This is very definitely a relationship business and each relationship typically starts out with two complete strangers sitting at their respective keyboards. For the average person, who likely has little or no prior business experience or technical training, Network Marketing is about the only way to establish a potentially world-wide marketing organization which can be highly profitable and long term.

This type of marketing is also an excellent source for Passive Income. Not to mention, your business can be run directly out of their present home and is an economical vehicle to ‘use’ to help you achieve the freedom you desire. Network Marketing is a way of life, a lifestyle. Definitely not for a job seeker looking for the traditional “time for money” It is about committing yourself to a serious effort and doing it. This is a serious business, not a hobby, and it is for people who actually want to run a successful business.

To Your Success!

Retention and the Social Impact

Through personal experience I came to know the social impact of retaining a child. The school system my daughter was in recommended retention in grade three. She was a tall girl and socially immature. Her grades were low and she had trouble with friendships.. At the time, we felt this would be the best situation for our child and agreed with the school and kept her back.

We didn’t realize the devastating effect this would have on her and spent the summer trying to put her self esteem back together. We actually moved to a different town so our daughter could have a new start at a new school. Her height allowed her to tower over her new third grade classmates and the social impact started to sink in. Had we made the wrong choice?

We got her involved in sports right away to counter the ill feelings of being held back. Her grades were a little better but nothing to write home about. She continued to have trouble making friends. We had her tested for learning disabilities and to our surprise identified with ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. Unlike many ADD children, she was never a behavioral and worked very hard to improve her grades. Grades four and five were uneventful but she managed to make the junior high softball team in fifth grade.

Through classroom accommodations and wonderful teachers in grade six, my daughter made honor every term. Near the end of sixth grade we decided to reverse the process and pushed to have her skip a grade. Girls especially have a tendency of leaping ahead in social maturity between the 6^th and 8^th grade and she found herself even more isolated from friends. The school was against moving her ahead, but after many meetings, having to be on the honor roll for the year, and hiring an advocate, they allowed my daughter to skip the 7^th grade.

That was the best decision we could have made. Our daughter was able to maintain honor roll and be very successful in sports all through High School. We often wonder if we hadn’t worked so hard to have her moved ahead and she hadn’t had our support of her teachers if she would have continued her education and receive a 4 year college degree.

Retention in school is also called grade retention, being held back, or repeating a grade. This can be emotionally traumatic for young students and can cause irreversible damage. A major reason cited for the use of retention is that the child is immature and lagging significantly behind his or her peers academically and/or socially. I am not an advocate of social promotion, but I also have serious questions about retention. I believe that we must identify and apply solutions other than retention and social promotion when students are having significant struggles in school. The temporary benefits of retention are deceptive, as teachers do not usually follow student progress beyond a few years.

Regards,

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, is one of the most common mental disorders that develop in children. The diagnosis of ADHD has become so common that between two and 10 percent of school-aged children have been labeled as having ADHD, with boys three times more likely than girls to develop and be diagnosed with the disorder (Barkley, 1998).

Simply telling the Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder child to “Clean the room” may not produce the desired results the parent expects. First and foremost, ADHD children do not choose their ADHD symptoms. Secondly, parents need to know that the ADHD symptoms are not produced by parenting flaws. Major components of treatment for children with ADHD include; parental support and education in behavioral training, appropriate school placement and medication (typically psycho stimulants).

Although many in the medical community believe in drug treatment for ADHD, there are many other health professionals, parents and educators alike that do not agree that a long-term course of medication is the answer to calming the symptoms. There is a well-known controversy about the frequency of the use of the drug Ritalin for treatment of behavior disorders such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and hyperactivity. Many parents and clinicians alike believe that a change in diet, family counseling, patience and acceptance produce more positive results than medication.

Regular communication among parents, teachers, and doctors benefits a child who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Children with ADHD may also qualify for free services within public schools. Most children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or other disabilities are eligible to receive special education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Best Regards!

Homework – Like It or Not

The basic purpose of assigning homework to students is the same as schooling in general. Homework is assigned in order to increase the knowledge and improve the abilities and skills of the students. Homework should be designed to reinforce what students have already learned, prepare them for upcoming lessons and improving learning skills.

Teachers have traditionally assigned homework as a way to expand their instructional time, but if it is not matched to the student’s ability and the teacher does not have the time to give the proper feedback, then the opportunity to provide effective homework activities are significantly limited. Homework should also provide the opportunity for parents to participate in their children’s education. This can create a major aspect for role modeling as well as positive reinforcement. Students with a positive attitude toward homework, who enjoy it and work on it enthusiastically, generally complete their homework faster and achieve better grades in school

Teachers need to know what their students understand and can do independently, therefore they often advise parents not to do the child’s homework assignments for them, nor correct their child’s homework assignments and have them copy the corrections. Another way teachers can be more effective is by alerting parents to their students’ homework, giving parents a chance to become familiar with the material and their child’s progress.

Most kids don’t like homework and some parents dislike the task even more. Typically, there are a growing number of teachers, parents and students that advocate to eliminate, or at least limit the amount of homework a child is assigned. The main reason for this belief is that students also learn from activities in life other than textbooks and workbooks found in the classroom. The amount of time a child spends in the classroom, then working at home completing assignments can leave the child out of touch, without free time, and unable to get exercise or pursue extracurricular activities. Talents and other interests cannot be nurtured in a classroom setting with teachers focused on a specific subject.

In the meantime, the following are some suggestions which may help in the homework dilemma:

It is imperative to make homework as painless as possible.

• Try to have kids relate homework to something positive such as time with mom or dad maybe sharing a piece of pie or cake.
• Make homework the ultimate of importance.
• Use homework completion as a chance to praise a child.
• Make the penalty for non compliance of completion logical and clearly understood.
• The most important aspect for homework completion is not to be critical.
• Take breaks based on the child’s ability to focus.
• Setup a schedule for homework times.
• Set up a location in your home for doing homework.
• Regulate the noise level based on the child’s comfort level.
• Make a game out of assisting your child to study for a test.
• Encourage your child to participate in study groups.

Don’t forget that your child’s teacher is a good source of academic information.

Best Regards!

Hilton Head Island, SC is located at the southernmost tip of the state directly along the Atlantic Ocean. Hilton Head Island is known as the most family-friendly destination in the world. During 2008, it is estimated that over 2,100,000 people visited & vacationed on Hilton Head Island. Captivating with its spectacular scenery of towering live oaks, grassy marshes, white sandy beaches, and warm, friendly people, Hilton Head Island is truly mystical and is situated on 5,000 oceanfront acres, spanning a third of the Island. Bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and Calibogue Sound, the island offers many breathtaking views.

Hilton Head Island offers a peaceful getaway and great resort accommodations, vacation homes, condo rentals and villa rentals, all in a charming and historical setting. Composed of four distinct neighborhoods, Hilton Head offers abundant dining, shopping, and entertainment. Hilton Head Island may only be 12 miles by 5 miles wide, but you’ll find everything you need for a perfect Island retreat. Hilton Head Island offers unlimited opportunities for great vacations and holiday memories. Hilton Head Island (#10 on Golf Digest’s list of the World’s Best Golf Resorts), is home to over 20 world-class championship golf courses designed by some of the biggest names in golf including Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Arthur Hills and Pete Dye. Hilton Head Island is rich in history and culture.

In 1663, Captain William Hilton sailed from Barbados to explore lands granted by King Charles. In his travels, he identified a headland near the entrance to the Port Royal Sound. He named the island “Hilton Head” after himself. While in Hilton Head, he noticed the trees, crops, “sweet water” and “clear sweet air”.

Hilton Head Island has gone through numerous transformations over the 500 years since Europeans first set foot here — long before Hilton Head’s modern-day father Charles Fraser built the island’s first resort. For thousands of years, Indians lived peacefully on the shores of this large Carolina sea island, leaving behind few traces of their civilization other than Indian shell rings, the remnants of their circular dwelling areas.

So, this is a small glimpse of what Hilton Head Island is all about. Take a closer look before you schedule your next vacation. I’ll be posting some more information and Island picks in the future.

Regards,