The internet has been a blessing and a cursing in the network marketing industry depending on which viewpoint you have. If you are honestly happy with harassing family and friends, buying and cold calling leads, being rejected daily, small checks, your downline shrinking every time you turn around, and attending hotel and home meetings then this is not for you. But if you are like me and honestly despise that way of getting MLM sales then this is for you.

The internet has drastically changed the way we do business. Now more than ever we can communicate with people all over the world instantly. With that being said in the home based business industry you can read about different network marketing companies whether it is truth or lies. If the lies are about your company that can tarnish its reputation which will cause distributors to jump ship. If this happens expect your MLM sales to go down.

Downline attrition is one of the most frustrating things in the world to deal with. Imagine having a MLM downline of 10,000 people. There is a new company that is launching and a leader in your organization is offered a secure spot. What do you think he is going to do? He’s going to call up his downline and take those people with him. It happens all the time. You can get in a runt where you sponsor more people this month just to replace the ones that came in your business last month.

Not only that but network marketers are tired of small checks. How can you honestly fire your boss if you are only making at the most $300 a month. The average network marketers makes less than that with their MLM sales. If you pair that with constant downline attrition you can forget about firing your boss. It’s not going to happen in the 21st century.

The above is what more than 97% of network marketers go through whether they admit it or not. The solution to the problem is here thanks to the internet. The answer is a top tier direct sales model. In this type of business you sponsor less people but of extremely high quality. Don’t bother building a team of thousands of distributors. Focus on finding 10 strong leaders with this business model. You make more upfront commissions on your sales. Forget peddling MLM sales just to make a few thousand by the end of the year. Imagine making CEO type income within your first year.

You may say what about residual income. I got into a network marketing home based business because of that. Have no fear that is in place too. So you can actually get the best of both worlds. Have your cake and eat it too! This type of direct selling company can actually help you fire your boss and spend more time with your family if you follow what is being taught.

Can Affiliate Marketing Work for You?

If you’ve been researching online moneymaking options, you’ve undoubtedly read several rave reviews of affiliate marketing. It’s one of the most popular means of generating an Internet-based income. That popularity stems from a simple fact: It works.

But will it work for you? Let’s take a look at what affiliate marketing is all about and what’s necessary to effectively implement the strategy.

Affiliate marketing is, put simply, pre-selling and directing traffic to a vendor’s sales page.

If the individuals you send make a purchase at the vendor’s site, you receive a commission payment. Traffic is tracked via the use of unique affiliate links and commissions can vary based on the product involved. With some digital products, commissions can represent well over half of the purchase price!

So, what do you need to make affiliate marketing work?

Being an affiliate is all about driving traffic. You need a way to secure visitors to your own site and to then direct them to the sales page. This can be accomplished in a variety of different ways.

Some people create search engine-friendly, content-rich websites. They outfit those sites with their affiliate links, encouraging their visitors to check out relevant offers by supplying content that “warms them” to the idea of buying the product.

Others prefer to direct that traffic to their own squeeze page. They’ll give away a free report or some other valuable item to those who sign up for their email list. They’ll then work to pre-sell the product via their emails to their list.

There are affiliates who rely on article marketing to generate traffic that either goes to one of those aforementioned squeeze pages or directly to the product’s sales page. Some secure traffic by purchasing pay per click advertising via Google AdWords or a similar program.

So, becoming a successful affiliate is basically a matter of wrangling targeted traffic. If you can find a way to do that, you can start earning commissions while avoiding many of the hassles and the up-front work associated with owning your own product.

With so many ways of approaching affiliate marketing available, many are reluctant to get involved.

They feel overwhelmed and uncertain about the “best” way to to get the job done. That’s understandable. The field of options is vast and new marketers will invariably have more questions than answers.

That’s why the best way to get started with an affiliate-based business model is to start with a proven, step-by-step plan. With a solid blueprint for traffic generation in hand, you can make affiliate marketing work for you. In very little time, you may find yourself evangelizing on its behalf, adding your voice to the chorus singing its praises.

Finding a good marketing plan example can be as easy a paying a quick visit to your library. I was an artist before I was a salesman and I remember the point at which the two talents were forced to combine.

I was awakened one morning by a phone call telling me that my father had been in a serious accident and had fractured his skull. He was in a comma for a couple of months and developed amnesia. The medical bills wiped out all of our funds. I stop pursuing a masters degree, left college, and started working full time immediately. I had experience in direct sales, and decided to combine that talent with my architectural background. I went to the school, withdrew from my classes, and asked them to refund my tuition. A few weeks later, I was selling paintings at art shows.

Even though I had learned to draw as an architectural student, I still had to learn to paint. I went to the Library and devoured every art book I could find. I copied the paintings, tried the techniques, and almost made myself sick cramming information every second I could. A few weeks later I was ready to exhibit and eventually I even started winning prizes at the shows. To learn to draw people, I got books on anatomy, got a ream of cheap paper and drew skulls and skeletons from every angle, repeating the same drawings over and over again.

One of the tools that helped me the most was a series of books with titles such as “Twenty Artist Paint Landscapes,” or “Twenty Illustrators and How They Work,” and so on. Those were my favorite types of books. Though I learned from all the artists, I would always identify more with just one or two of them. Those were the ones I began emulating and my skills improved quickly.

Needless to say, another area of the library that I loved to visit was the marketing and sales section. I again devoured everything I could read about direct marketing, mail order, copywriting, etc. In fact, it has been interesting to go back to that same library for the last thirty five years and find books I had checked out way back then and see what I learned and implemented throughout the years, whether as an artist, a salesman, a marketer, or a consultant.

It is important to discover different approaches to marketing your business before you choose your own marketing mix. Paying a visit to your local library may be the quickest way to see the way other businesses approach marketing. Gather as many marketing books as you can. Discover the approaches with which you identify most, use their marketing plan example as you develop your own plan.

When I started my real estate investing career 8 years ago, I always wondered how the top investors found all of the really good deals out there. I made it my number 1 goal to find out how these guys would just pick up deal after deal!

I began by asking local investors at my REI meetings how they were picking up deals and I was shocked by some of their answers! It turned out that about 75% of the people who I asked at the REI have not done more than 1-2 deals in their lives and some of them have never done a deal. Rather than come across as a disappointment, this actually got me really fired up! I just realized that roughly 25 people out of the 100 that attend the meeting were actually picking up these deals! Right then and there a light bulb went off in my head. I realized that if I could out work the 25 people in my REI club than I could pick up all of the good deals in my market! Work ethic has always been my strong suit. From my days of playing middle line backer to my first business venture, I knew that I could match and exceed anyone’s work ethic!

After the good news flooded through my veins it was finally time to figure out how these investors were picking up all of their deals! What I found astonished me to say the least! With the powerful presence of the internet and other technology, these guys were picking up most of their deals using direct mail! You heard me right, direct mail! They were sending letters to leads in hopes of getting them to respond back. They would then set the appointment, go out, and try to get the house under contract.

Doing some simple investigating I found out that most of these investors were focusing their direct mail campaign on two main areas. The first area was focused towards people who were in default on their mortgages and the second being people who going through a divorce.

This is where my business sense kicked in. I knew that if a bunch of people were mailing the same people then there would be competition over the houses that were available in my market. I also knew that if a home owner was aware of the competition for his/her house then that would give the seller tons of leverage during the negotiating process. So I decided to focus my direct mail campaign towards landlords who just filed a notice of eviction with the courts in my area!

Within, 2 weeks of mailing my first batch of letters I went out and looked at 5 houses. Out of the 5 houses I found one landlord who just had his rental trashed. I was the only person who had contacted him. It was a great property and since I was the only one there it was even better. We finally negotiated out a price and shortly after that I assigned the contract to a family friend who owned a construction company. I made 8k on my first direct mail campaign! This was all right after I turned 18yrs old.

Direct mail is one of the most affective ways to target the sellers in your area. Go down to your local REI and find out the type of leads everyone in there is targeting and rather than mail to the sellers they are mailing to, find your own niche. Chances are you will be the only one mailing most of these sellers which puts you in the driver’s seat!