After spending almost twenty years as a Chief Financial Officer in corporate America, I have now worked in network marketing for almost nine years.
When I started in network marketing, I felt that I only needed to find one or two legitimate home businesses and I would be on my way to riches.
Unfortunately, the MLM businesses I joined taught its distributors the old traditional MLM methods of marketing. I struggled in a big way. Although I later started having success, I never enjoyed the recruiting process. I just didn't like chasing after people and calling long lists of cold leads for ten hours a day.
It was three years ago that I first discovered true internet marketing. These new marketing methods seemed perfect for me. Instead of chasing after people, I could now attract prospects to me.
I found some excellent internet marketing training. It took me almost a full year to get through it all. As I went through the training, I tried to implement what I had learned.
It was very apparent that using a company's replicator website was not the way to go. I needed set up my own website or blog - my own internet marketing system. In order to be a successful internet marketer, I needed to generate my own leads.
What follows is a long list of some of the things I did to set up my internet marketing system. It was difficult and very time consuming. At the end of this article, I point out an internet marketing business model that greatly reduces the time and difficulty in achieving success.
1. I first tried pay per click marketing. There was so much to learn - keywords, ad copy, split testing, and so much more. Although I did get a lot of leads, it was so expensive.
When my sales slowed down, my expenses continued to rise. I later shut down my PPC accounts. It was just too expensive for me. Many people are extremely successful using PPC. But you must know what you are doing or you will lose your shirt.
2. I started working on setting up a blog. I prepared educational information for my blog that would be valuable to the reader. Good copywriting was the key. In fact, I took at least two copywriting courses to help me.
3. I learned how to set up a capture page and put one on my blog. It was not as easy as my internet marketing training said it would be. The purpose of my capture page was to convert the reader into a prospect. The words on my capture page had to entice my reader to fill out his name and email address and "opt in."
4. I wrote a report that I could offer my readers for free. To get the report, they had to opt into my blog. To be able to write the report, I spent hours studying the topic so I could provide prospects information that was of value to them.
5. I then prepared at least 30 auto responder email messages to send to my prospects after they opted in. You can imagine how much time that took me. Again, good copywriting was important.
After hours and hours of internet marketing training, research, and copywriting, my blog was at least presentable. But guess what? No one came to my blog. They didn't know it even existed. So I had to come up with ways to generate leads - ways to get traffic coming to my blog.
6. I wrote articles - tons of articles. I had to learn search engine optimization so I could properly use keywords, linking strategies, and more. Again, copywriting was important.
Good content was critical. My writing had to be interesting and valuable to the reader. Otherwise they would never read it and never get to my blog. I attended a multi-week "writing with pull" course.
I learned how to set up and use Ezine Articles, Hubpages, Squidoo, and other article directories. I learned and used bookmarking. I had 30 pieces of content on the internet and the number was slowly rising every week. Unfortunately, I wasn't getting much traffic.
7. I did videos - over 20 of them. I am not a video person. They weren't very good. But everyone told me I should use videos in my marketing if I wanted to be successful. So I did videos. Then I had to learn how to edit the videos. I had to learn how to put titles on them and how to cut out those parts I didn't want seen. I then learned how to transfer them to YouTube.
8. When I did receive a lead, I called them. My approach was to not come on too strong and to not immediately start promoting my business.
Some people had much success talking on the phone with their prospects. Others did not. I was one that did not. So I took a couple of courses on proper telephone recruiting and relationship marketing.
Here is the bottom line. I was trying to do everything myself. I was trying to be the jack of all trades. Because of that, it took me hundreds of hours of training and work to set up my system. Even then, I still wasn't very successful.
One of my real weaknesses is the ability to deal with the technical aspects of this business. I spent hours trying to set up my blog in the right way and to set up my free report on the blog so that my prospect received it immediately upon opting in.
After all this work, you would think that I would be flooded with leads. After a couple of years, my lead generation did improve. But it took me working from early in the morning to late at night almost six days a week to reach that point.
The pressure to succeed in my internet marketing business was all on me. I had to know everything. I had to do everything.
When I wasn't getting leads, I had to determine why and fix it. When I was still not getting leads, I had to go through the entire process again. When my capture page wasn't converting, I had to determine why and fix it.
In fact, I had to drop out of one good business opportunity because I wasn't generating enough leads. Oh, I could have bought leads, but that was very expensive and not very effective.
I do have some good news. I have found a way to be very successful in the network marketing industry. Here's the important thing - you don't have to know all areas of marketing and know how to generate your own leads to be successful in this business. And I do mean very successful.
This is one of the few legitimate homes businesses that uses a team approach to its marketing.
What if you found a business where you don't have to know all areas of marketing in order to be successful? What if there was no pressure to know everything? What if you didn't need to create your own website or blog or articles or videos? What if there was no need to generate your own leads?
What if you could select only one area of marketing to work in? What if that area was one you had an interest in? What if you didn't need experience in that area of marketing and could rely on other team members to train you?
What if each member of the business worked together as a team? What if all members worked in the one area that they had an interest in?
Fortunately, this is the internet marketing business model I have found. The team concept that "no one gets left behind" results in one of the most lucrative and legitimate home businesses available today.
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