Seth Godin speaks out on real social networking and how to do it right.
I heard an awesome comment recently that I believe to be fairly accurate… “you get to drive the new car and enjoy the 6 figure monthly income when you increase your value to the point that people are crawling over others to work with you.”
I think this video sums it up pretty well…
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The purpose of writing this is to equip you so that you can go out and make a confident decision about the home based business opportunity that you are looking at. Or if you’re in the motions of looking for a new business then these points will help you greatly.
When it comes to home business opps, you might resonate with one particular system while others may not resonate with your choice at all.
See the truth is home businesses online are fundamentally the same as home businesses offline. Provided you know what you are looking for and know what actually resonates with you then you should be fine marketing that particular business.
By jumping into the first thing you find you will probably end up getting burnt and will end up pulling out and having to go back to your J.O.B.
To be pre-informed of the possibilities of your choices gives you power in your decision making process which is vital to longevity.
You do want to be in this for the long haul don’t you?
So let’s get into it…
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Notice the word there I used in that… unique. When you have a unique product, especially one that is in high demand, you have taken a lot of the hard work out of trying to build your business
Think about a lot of the business opportunities that are available for people right now. How many of those companies are offering juices, vitamins, lotions & potions as their main product?
Now these types of products are great and have a purpose but if you are looking for a home business opportunity then you need to realize that the market has changed and that there is almost a glut of these products out there that are available through network marketing opportunities.
The market potential of the juices, vitamins, lotions & potions industry has been diluted significantly due to the over supply of these types of opportunities.
You need to know this if you are going to market that particular product. You are going to be potentially competing with a ton of other home businesses that are marketing their products in the same product line.
Think about the consequences of this when discussing it with your prospect. Think of the potential impact when you tell them it’s another juices, vitamins, lotions & potions opportunity… and then think what they might say when you present them with something that is new & fresh and current with this information age.
So when thinking about what company you should be joining, ask yourself if the product you would be marketing is easy to copy or difficult to copy.
Is The Product In High Demand In The Market Place
Consider this for a moment… if you took the MLM opportunity away from the product, is there a real demand for that product. Do people really want what you are offering?
Right now I am thinking of an opportunity that someone put in front of me about 18 months ago that was supposed to be the latest and greatest as far as home business opportunities was concerned. So I checked it out, I did my due diligence and found out that this was indeed a great company with a great product line that was very quickly developing a reputation for having a brilliant compensation plan.
But when I tried the product I almost vomited. It was the worst product of its type that I have ever tasted and I immediately walked away from the opportunity. There was no way that I was going to believe that there would be a demand on this product and out of integrity I didn’t feel that I could market it either.
Ask yourself… would you want the product, and would others want the product if there was no opportunity attached to it?
Unless I feel inside that there is a demand for this type of product I would have a lot of trouble marketing it & introducing it to my prospects.
My personal belief out of integrity is that you gotta love your own product. Because if you don’t love it and believe it then others will pack that up with you. Passion is the juice of home business.
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The compensation plan issue is not much different to the product issue in that what appeals to some may not appeal to others.
The ideal compensation plans are those that pay you a large upfront payment on your immediate sales and also provide some form of residual commission.
Some opportunities only pay a large upfront payment and have no residual at all, making them more of an affiliate plan. The problem with this is that if you ever stopped making sales then your payments would stop as well.
The other type of plan pays you large amounts of residual, such as your typical network marketing payment plan. The problem here is that it takes a long time before you make any serious money and losing whole down lines and distributor retention is a constant problem that you are going to have to deal with in these types of opportunities.
These two types of income are exactly the type of income that will set you free. Most people who are looking to make money online are looking for cash right now to help them with immediate financial problems, but in order to create long term change so that they can permanently change their life they will need the residual component as well.
Without the residual income you will eventually burn out. If you have to keep going back and generating sales over & over then at some stage you will get tired of it and want to quit. Residual income is where your long term freedom is found.
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Replicated company websites are not something that you would even attempt to market with. You need a system of marketing that can work for you to brand you as an expert and that will work for you on auto pilot 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
Have a good look at the methods of marketing that are being presented to you by your potential sponsor. How do they market and how do they recommend you market? And if you are not comfortable doing that form of marketing then you may not want to be involved.
If the company you are looking at doesn’t have a strong marketing division then they are probably behind the times, using outdated industrial age marketing methods.
Product alone will not make your home business a success. If I was to dump a truck load of the greatest product in the world on your driveway, unless you had the ability to market it you would have no business, no matter good the product was.
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Have you ever heard the stories about people who have built massive businesses and are enjoying residual incomes that took them years to build only to see them evaporate after the company folded because of bad management?
Heart breaking to say the least! Look at the management and consider their past, their track record and what they are involved with. Are they people of integrity and can you easily get access to information about their past.
Once again I reminded of a company recently that was starting up that some marketers I know where involved with very early in the startup phase. They had already built a reasonable sized network in pre launch only to see the company change the rules that made the opportunity very unattractive to people.
Their business ceased immediately after they had spent over 6 months building marketing materials and conducting webinars etc.
You don’t want to be wasting valuable time only to see your efforts collapse within a short time.
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Make sure that whatever company you decide to partner with has the ability to reach the entire world and not just a local country.
There are companies still these days that either because of product or system restrictions cannot expand globally. This means that you are limited in your ability to market online to anyone around the world.
This is especially true with vitamin or supplement opportunities. Speaking from experience from one of my past MLM businesses I was involved in, the company had many issues to overcome with ingredient restrictions depending on the country they wanted to market into.
All of this detail places restrictions on your ability to build a large global business.
The type of product right now that is attracting the attention of the bigger marketers online is the information product. These products are applicable to most people’s lives and are not encumbered by international issues.
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Does the company have a family type atmosphere that you can lean on for support? Trial and error can be expensive both in regard to time and money. What you need is a great support system in place that can help you and answer your questions and guide you through the difficult phases of building a business.
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Have a look at the person that is introducing the business opportunity to you. Consider their marketing methods & knowledge. Can they help you achieve the results you are looking for?
In particular in this information based internet age, can they help you technically and advise you on issues like setting up and implementing marketing systems, emails & autoresponders, video marketing, social media, SEO and Pay Per Click?
Have a good look what they are doing. There is an old saying that goes “A leader can only lead you into pastures that they are grazing in themselves”. In other words… if they aren’t doing it then they can’t advise you.
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When thinking of home business success, leadership is a principle that you must understand in order to generate the level of success and subsequent income that you are looking for.
Failure to grasp this concept and implement it could mean failure in your home business.
You need think of your home business like you were playing a game of chess. Think about the chess board for a moment; think about the pieces that make up your team and the strategic moves that each piece makes.
While all the pieces can freely move around the board they each have a different role in the overall result of the game. And each of them has a different set of moves that they can make in order to bring about a desired outcome. Once you have mastered the moves that each piece can make you can then move on to playing the game from a strategic perspective and work the pieces together.
When it comes to building a home business, there are many and varied tools that you can use on the internet that by themselves have a distinct outcome, but it’s in learning how to use these tools together in unison that will mean the difference between winning or losing.
Now the thing you need to see here is that you are the master, you are the one that is in control. You are a strategist that is able to master each of these individual components and work with them to your advantage.
Now I am not saying that you have to know everything about all of the various systems & tools on the internet that you can use for building your business. You need to be selective about what it is you would like to work with, and when you have made your choice then you need to master each of them.
In my own business there are tools that I use regularly and others that I have stayed away from. I don’t use all of what is available to me out there. The main reason for this is that I don’t believe you can master all of them as you would be spreading your time too thinly in the process. So I have a select few that I work with and it is those that I work with.
Remember, just like playing the game of chess, you are the one that is in control of the flow of the game, and the outcome of your game is determined by your ability to lead others and master the technology.
Which brings me to my next point…
As a leader in your business your ability to inspire others is another major determining factor. You may know how to shoot some videos and create some Twitter tweets, but unless your content is inspiring your messages will fall on deaf ears.
Inspiration is the sauce of life; it’s the juice that we as people run on. In fact I would go as far as to say that we do very little for ourselves or anyone else for that matter unless we are inspired to do it. And the greater that level of inspiration the higher the level of commitment.
Inspiration is what drives high achievers to do whatever it is they set out to do, whether it’s in an academic field, a sporting field, a business field or whatever other field it is, inspiration is what drives us on to the prize.
Your ability to inspire or rather your failure to inspire will result in either defeat or success in your home business. People inherently follow leaders… sometimes we like the people we follow (as in sports or arts or some other field) and other times we don’t (as in politicians), and seeing that a home business is actually a voluntary occupation, meaning that your team are actually volunteering to follow you, then your ability to inspire is crucial.
When you think about the power of attraction marketing, nobody is attracted to someone that is not inspirational, it’s not how we operate. So your ability to develop inspiration in your content whether it be video, Blogs, emails, articles… whatever it is, your goal in your message is inspiration.
So when you finish working on a new piece of marketing material, sit back and ask yourself if you are inspired by what you see or hear. That would be your first step in your ability to create effective and inspirational marketing materials.
Success in business, especially home business is directly proportional to your ability to master the technology, implement and work with the technology in a strategic manner, and to impart inspiration to your team through that technology to the point that other people are inspired enough to want to follow you.
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