The simple truth is that most people DO fail in home based business & network marketing. But the reality is that most people fail at everything they attempt to do anyway.

Failure is a part of life and is all around us but for some unknown reason people use the excuse of failure as their reason for not even attempting to become successful in home based business.

People don’t fail to lose weight, they quit before the got thin. People don’t fail to quit cigarettes, they quit trying as soon as the going gets tough.

The same analogy is true in home business and network marketing.

This video below by leading network marketer Tim Sales spells out the difference between failing and quitting and will show you the real reasons people fail in this industry.

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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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Point 1. Find A Business That Has Unique Products That Are in High Demand

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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Point 2. A Lucrative Compensation Plan

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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Point 3. A Powerful Marketing System

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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Point 4. Company Management

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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Point 5. Global Expansion & Reach

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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Point 6. Support Mechanisms In The Company

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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Point 7. Leadership That Can Advise You

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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I have thought about this many a time in light of all the marketing that we see daily on Twitter.

Should the Twitter question “What are you doing?” be renamed “What are you marketing?”

I mean given that there are so many marketers promoting their stuff on Twitter wouldn’t it be more truthful to change the question?

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I guess it depends on your perspective on Twitter…

• What do you use Twitter for?
• What should it be used for?
• Should people be allowed to market at all?
• Should it be left solely for communication between people?

So there you go. I would love to get some feedback on this. Is anyone game to put forth their beliefs?

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If you have come to this page from following me on Twitter you have come to the right place. Thank you for the follow!

My name is Greg Martin and I have some very brief information here that will help you benefit from using Twitter in a big way.

Just below here is an introduction to how I am using Twitter to automate and market. As you may already know there is power in automation and what I have below for you is exactly what I am doing right now to build a Twitter following and market to that following on complete autopilot.

Below that there is some background on me for those that like to know who they are dealing with. I hope you like it and that we can connect.

If you haven’t come here from Twitter and you would like to follow me then you find me here @web2greg

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Twitter Marketing Tips

Here is a brief overview of what you could be doing…

Promote other people as much as you can - this shows people that you are not just interested in pushing your own agenda and that you have others interests at heart.

Post valuable and helpful information - that hasn’t come from you that you think would benefit those who are following you. Remember that people are looking for answers to their marketing problems and if you are providing valuable content that helps them you will be seen as a valuable person that is worth following.

Post valuable information that you have created - finally it’s time for you to promote your own content. There is nothing wrong with promoting yourself as long as it isn’t all sales and spammy. I like to direct people through to content on my Blog that can help others in a big way. My goal is quality first before quantity.

Answer the questions going on in your followers minds - This is an important tip, like any other form of marketing online you need to consider what the conversation is that is going on inside your prospect or followers mind. They have followed you for a reason and you need to be catering to that reason.

I personally think it’s ok to be posting non-marketing content like “having dinner at my favourite restaurant”. But if that is all you do then your followers will get a little tired of that. Your postings still need to be targeted to the niche of people who are following you and that is best achieved by asking yourself the question “what is going on right now in my followers mind?”

Thank people for following you - this is the right thing to do but it can become a time consuming issue if you don’t automate your activity. I will get to automation in a moment but thanking those that follow you is very important and you need get this happening ASAP.

Engage in conversation - This is a powerful way to get followers. You need to realize that whenever you do this the entire following of the person you are conversing with gets your posts with your Twitter name on it. This works powerfully when you are conversing with top industry leaders who have large lists.

My first encounter with this was with @Mike_Dillard who at the time had a following of over 12,000 people. From the brief conversation I had with Mike I saw my follow numbers escalate for almost a week. Believe me it works.

Tweet useful and informative quotes - I like to grab informative success and motivational quotes that appeal to me and retweet them to my followers. For me this creates the warm and fuzzies that I am looking for in people so that when I do actually post something with a link in it, because they have liked what I have already posted and know where i am coming from, my followers are more likely to click on the link.

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Twitter Automation

This is seriously awesome and worth your attention. Automation is your key to growing a profitable Twitter following.

TweetAdder combined with Twitter has become the fastest method I have ever engaged in to create traffic. Twitter is very responsive and by using this service you can be guaranteed of instant response to your postings.

With TweetAdder I can automatically follow thousands of new people over multiple Twitter accounts as well as post as many Tweets as I like to my followers. Of course I don’t recommend you post too many in one day otherwise people will unfollow you.

But TweetAdder is THE key to Twitter automation for serious marketers.

Check out TweetAdder here

Check Out My Twitter Spam Post Here

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SocialOomph

Another great tool that you will definitely want in your Twitter marketing arsenal is SocialOomph. When you follow someone on Twitter and you receive an automatic welcome message from them you are seeing SocialOomph in action.

You can easily setup a different message for each different Twitter account that you may have or you can keep them the same for all accounts. Which is exactly what I do.

SocialOomph used to be called TweetLater and was the main tool of choice for automating your tweets until Twitter slapped their service and they had to stop the auto tweet facility. None the less, SocialOomph has a host of other great services that you can use and the best part it it’s a free service.

Click here to visit SocialOomph

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Follow Those Who Interest You

Another great tool I use for following people automatically who are in the same market I am interested in is Twollo.

With Twollo you can automatically follow anyone that uses certain keys words. For example if you are into Search Engine Optimisation or SEO for short, you can enter SEO into Twollo and it will automatically follow the person who posted SEO in their tweet.

I have dozens on word combination’s I am tracking and have followed hundreds of people automatically with this tool. And they are all discussing the subjects I am interested in.

How cool!

Click Here To Go To Twollo

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Engaging The Twitter Community

You may have already noticed that using the Twitter website to interact with the community is a proverbial pain in the butt. It’s not designed for ease of use.

The best tool I have come across for to engage with my Twitter following is  Seesmic Desktop. If you haven’t yet used this services then you are not getting the best out of Twitter. It’s an absolute must.

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Tracking Your Traffic & Clicks

If you are thinking of marketing like a professional on Twitter then you are going to have to track your traffic and clicks.

As of this writing I am receiving around 2,000 clicks per week and rising from my accounts of around 12,000 followers. These tweets are being sent for different blog posts and for different target audiences. But that’s the overall result as it stands now.

That’s not a bad effort and the way I can know how I am doing is by using a service called Bit.ly I have also used Budurl but I like the graphs on Bit.ly better.

Google those terms and open your free account, add your links and include the shortened links into your tweets and your away.

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So there you go, I hope you enjoyed the post. And please feel free to leave some comments below.

I am perplexed about this topic of Twitter SPAM so I thought I would write this post to give my angle on it but also to get your opinion as well.

Who knows I may even get some “hate” tweets from this as it is such a hot topic of debate.

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How Did It Start?

Someone tweeted me this message about an article I wrote called Twitter Marketing Tips…

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“Your article sends mixed messages; you rightly say don’t spam, then promote automatic list builders like a prime spammer”.

This person was upset because I mentioned in that post that you should not spam but then promoted an auto posting service called TweetAdder. I think in his mind he related automatic posting to SPAM for some reason.

When I read this persons tweet my first thought was this…

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“Does the use of an automatic posting service mean that your posts become SPAM”?

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Scenario Example

I am currently promoting TweetAdder as the tool of choice for building a list fast and then posting to it while you’re not at your computer.

Now if I send out a single post to my Twitter lists that goes something like this…

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Hey this tool has really helped me build multiple Twitter lists in virtually no time at all – Click Here

Is that a SPAM posting? Most people I think would say that it’s not SPAM as it is only single tweet. It’s ok to promote your product through Twitter like that. After all most people are promoting something on Twitter… aren’t they? And it is only a single tweet right? How could that be considered SPAM?

Now let’s say that I take the same post and manually Tweet that out say 4 times per day. Does that make it SPAM? Can a single post tweeted multiple times over a day or even over a week make it a SPAM tweet?

Ok now let’s say for the sake of convenience that instead of posting manually which can become very tedious and boring, I decide to employ the facilities of a service like TweetLater which is an auto posting service? And instead of sitting at my computer to create these tweets and manually post them, I rather set them up to be automatically posted at a time that is convenient for me.

Does that then turn the original single post message into SPAM?

Also… in this instance are there any hard and fast rules that are documented that would dictate to us what Twitter SPAM actually is? Who made those rules and where do they come from?

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The Comparison With Email SPAM

If we stop and think about this in terms of email SPAM, does that fact that an email that is posted to us either at a single time or multiple times change the fact that it’s SPAM? Not really, it’s still SPAM whether you received it once or many times.

SPAM email is SPAM email whether we receive it once or a thousand times. So then we really cannot use the argument that a single post promoting our content or anything that we sell is acceptable while multiple tweets of the same post are not.

When someone sends me an email that I do not want or haven’t subscribed to then it’s a SPAM email. It’s SPAM because I haven’t asked to receive it, and I didn’t want it. It was sent to my personal email address which they had no right to send to.

There are laws that are supposed to protect me for that crap.

To me it’s an invasion of privacy because I had no choice in the process. And I certainly did not choose to subscribe to the spammers email list.

But with Twitter you have a choice; you are not powerless over the fact that you receive tweets.

The entire medium of Twitter operates on choice. From the time you join you are either following people or people are following you by choice. You can’t use the software until you have followers. Who is going to receive your tweets?

So you receive tweets from others by choice and others receive tweets from you by choice.

It’s a medium of mutual consent.

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How Does This Relate To Twitter And SPAM?

When someone is posting advertising tweets either automatically or singularly on Twitter it’s totally unlike email SPAM. First of all it’s not addressed to your personal Twitter account, it’s just posted on the medium for all to read, and secondly you have complete control over whether you want to receive that persons tweets or not. You have the freedom to decide.

You are not powerless in the process.

Twitter to me is like a magazine with ads in it. You accept the fact when you purchase the magazine that there will be ads in it. It goes with the territory. You can’t gripe about the fact that the ads are there, they just are.

The ads or not there just for you alone, they are there for everyone. Some people will read the ad and respond while others won’t. But you can’t get upset and criticise the magazine because there are ads there. If you want to read them then read them, if you don’t then forget about them.

Twitter is the same… if you like someone’s Tweets and you want to follow them then follow them; if not then don’t follow them. But this also means that you will receive their advertising tweets as well. It goes with the territory.

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Subscribing To The Gurus List

Twitter to me is like subscribing to the “gurus” list.

Like most people on the internet you are more than likely subscribed to some of the marketing “gurus” around the place. I could name people I am subscribed to but that’s not necessary.

Ok you got me; I am going to name one. I am on Frank Kern’s list. Chances are you are as well.

Have you ever noticed that most of his emails are selling stuff? I mean how much real information does he put out there that’s educational and free? Not much, with Frank you have to pay for it.

But I stay on his list and it’s my choice that I do so. I want to receive Frank’s emails.

Now the truth is I have no right to call Frank up and abuse him for spamming me with marketing emails. He would laugh in my face and tell me to unsubscribe myself.

Do you see the principle there? I guess what I am saying is that a person really has no right to call another person a spammer on Twitter. To me that’s an absurd position to take.

I don’t accuse people of spamming… I just unfollow them. If I don’t want to receive Frank Kern’s marketing emails then I am in control over the process… not Frank. I can unsubscribe any time I like.

I have the power… and so do you.

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The Profile Of A Spammer

I want you to think for a moment about a real spammer… not a so called Twitter spammer. You will notice that someone posting marketing materials on Twitter has a totally different profile to an email spammer.

You will find that an email spammer operates anonymously in the background. They are sending you emails about products and services or whatever it is they promote and you may never know who they are. They don’t want you to know them.

They are not up front about themselves and they hide themselves away and prefer not to be known.

They operate from an angle of deceit and deception just to get you to open your wallet and purchase what they have sent you. And they certainly have not gained your approval to send them marketing materials.

Now compare that to someone who is automatically posting on Twitter. I know with myself, even though I post automatically on Twitter, I have profile pages and Blogs that clearly identify who I am.

You can easily reach me. I am not trying to hide myself away from anyone and if you want to contact me through Twitter or my Blog then you can.

There is no deceit and no hiding. Just plain and simple marketing, if you like what you are reading then respond, if not then don’t respond.

I get feedback to my posts, and I have people retweeting these same posts every single day. It’s totally powerful. I also have followers telling me how great the information is and how much they appreciated it.

Compare that to a real spammer. Are you going to forward a spam email that was sent to you to your email list? Hardly!

In my opinion there is a big difference between a person that is sending spam emails and someone who is automatically posting on Twitter. The two are totally different.

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Conclusion – You Cannot Spam Twitter

This is my conclusion to whole Twitter SPAM argument.

There is no such thing as Twitter spam, it’s a medium for you to use anyway you want. It’s up to your followers to decide if they want to follow you or not and whether or not they want to respond to your tweets or not.

We have no right to accuse someone that is posting marketing materials on Twitter of being a spammer. Our only choice is to unfollow them. That is how the medium was designed to be used.

Twitter spam to me is actually on oxymoron (Conjoining contradictory terms, as in deafening silence). The two terms cannot go together. They are opposing terms that do not work together.

Now of course you are entitled to your opinion and I would love to here comments about this subject. And if anyone can help me see otherwise then please let me know.

But that is how I see it for now.

Well done if you have read this far. You are obviously very passionate about this subject and I hope you gained a lot from reading this post.

Regards, Greg Martin

Twitter - web2Greg

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