Do you belong to the 98% of network marketers who are trying to attract people with no experience to their business? Are you experiencing poor results and a high attrition rate in your organization?

One of the most common mistakes made in network marketing is to try to target everyone. Very often you might hear that “Everyone is a prospect”, but this could not be further from the truth. What happens when you try to target too wide of an audience with your network marketing strategies? Well, no one really feels that they are special, that you connect with them or that they can connect with your product or service, and that you are answering their questions and addressing their specific concerns. Moreover, you will lose your focus because it is impossible to have one central focus when targeting a wide range of people.

Your market is the target at which you aim all your marketing efforts. The market you are trying to reach are people with common characteristics that set them apart as a group. The more you know about a target market, the more precisely you can develop your marketing strategy.

What you should definitely NOT do:

- targeting friends & family: they are NOT targeted prospects, they do not care about your business opportunity, they have no prior marketing experience and you are basically loosing your time.

- prospecting complete strangers: they are not looking to start their own business, and if they are open to the idea, chances are they are actually only looking for a J.O.B.!

What do you have to do then? You really need a more targeted niche of people with which to work on. When you know what your target market is, you will be able to get into their minds, think the way that they think and you will know how to properly market to them. You will know how to answer their main question: “what’s in it for me?”.

Your #1 target market includes 2 groups of people:

1. Current network marketers, already involved in another opportunity. They are either having success, which is good for you because if they join you they can be successful within your team, or they are struggling to make money, and you have a solution for them: they can use your system to learn how to market and build their business.

2. Former network marketers who want to come back to the industry

Your #2 target market includes people actively seeking information about getting started in the industry: you have a solution for them: they can join your business, be mentored by you and use your system to learn how to market and build their business.

When you approach this target market, keep in mind that anyone who has shown an interest in a home-based business opportunity has one burning question: “what’s in it for me?”. People are not asking themselves if your product or your business opportunity is great, they are asking themselves how it can benefit them, what they can get from it. I think we actually always make our decisions on this basis, and different people will be seeking different benefits.

This is a very important point that you need to understand about marketing to people who want to start their business; you are not trying to sell your business opportunity and convince your prospect of how great it is. Instead, what you want to do is answering the questions of your prospects, meet their needs and show them that your business opportunity can benefit them in some way. Again, you must show them what’s in it for them.

Then, ask yourself this question: are the marketing and prospecting methods you are currently using the best, the most professional and the most effective they can be in order to bring your target market into your business?

Is everything you do in your lead generation focused on showing prospects how it can benefit them and how it is going to work for them?

When you take these proper steps and formulate a marketing strategy that is centered on your target market, you will be successful. You will see that your prospects are people who are actually interested in your business opportunity and you will make more sales and higher profits.

Learn more on how you can generate 20+ leads per day: check out Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring.

One of the main reasons why people fail in the MLM and network marketing industry is because they are left on their own and don’t have a system to build and grow their business. It is essential to keep in mind that the most successful business models rest upon very strong systems.

In the network marketing industry, you can have the best product in the world, along with the best compensation plan, if you don’t have a system to market your product efficiently, you will never make a dime. And that’s actually why 95% of network marketers make no more than $10 a week.

Now there are many different systems out there and everyone of them claims to be the best. So how do you choose and what are the criteria you should look for in a good MLM lead generation and marketing system?

First, it is important to understand that there are 3 basic principles behind a MLM lead and marketing system that top earners follow to build their businesses online. And the right system for your MLM business must enable you to apply these 3 principles:

1. Build your own list of targeted prospects: marketing a replicated website will never work out for you because you would not be branding yourself and you would be building someone else’s list. The lead generation system that you use must allow you to generate your own leads through proper marketing strategies.

2. Build a relationship with that list: you do business with people and people will only buy from you if they like you and trust you. That’s why it is essential to build a relationship with your list. This is usually possible if the system you use has integrated autoresponder series. This way  you can give your list access to free marketing training, tips, so that you provide people value and have them like and trust you.

3. Monetize your list: the system should enable you to make money through different good affiliate programs, so that you can start making money off the 95% of networkers who will say no to your MLM business by giving them what they want…the principle behind this is that your long-term money is in your list.

So when you do your research and are evaluating different systems, you should ask yourself those 4 questions and the answer to each one of them should be positive:

- Is this system CUSTOMIZABLE? You must be able to design your own personalized capture pages, this without having any particular technical skills. The customization enables you to brand yourself as the leader people want to follow and generate your own leads.

- Is this system AUTOMATED?  The system should feature built-in sales pages, email autoresponder series, as well as tracking and split testing technology. The automation will save you valuable time.

- Is the system EASY TO USE? You should have access to a comprehensive library of video and audio tutorials to set up the system, as well as technical support for your system. This way, you don’t have to take care of technical issues.

- Does the system include a hands-on MARKETING TRAINING? Make sure the system you choose features a complete marketing training center, with weekly live and recorded training sessions and webinars. It is best when the weekly training sessions are done by top producers willing to share their success secrets with you. This way, you can have access to cutting-edge marketing techniques and you learn how to market the way all industry leaders do.

Herbalife is a reputable multi-level marketing company that has been in business for more than 25 years. It has built upon the mission of its founder, Mark Hughes, to improve the health and financial well-being of millions of people worldwide. It is a rapidly growing company whose nutrition and weight-management products (protein shakes, protein snacks, nutritional supplements and personal care products) are now sold in 70 countries through a network of almost 2 million distributors. In 2008, the company had retail sales of $3.8 billion (8.5% growth vs. 2007).

The compensation plan is a stair-step breakaway. My purpose is not to enter into much details on this type of compensation plan, but just to point out that with this model only a few top distributors will come out ahead. As shown on the Herbalife official website, in the Herbalife Compensation plan, only about 1% of active leaders make more than $80,000 a year, and 2% more than $18,000 per year.

Thus it is very important to understand that in order to make real money with your Herbalife business, the only way is constant recruiting. Don’t ever believe that you will succeed in this business and build a residual income if you just recruit 5 or 10 people. It means you will have to sponsor about 1 or 2 people PER DAY in your Herbalife business.

I get many inquiries of Herbalife distributors from different countries who are struggling and can’t figure out how to be successful in their Herbalife business. As I said previously, there is no doubt that Herbalife is a very reputable company with high quality and competitive products. So why are so many Herbalife distributors struggling and failing?

It might well be because times have changed. The MLM industry is changing fast,

the promises of MLM and “life-long” residual income are gone for the average person. And uplines are still teaching old methods that do not work anymore: let me go straight to the point: the old-school techniques are dead and will get you nowhere.

You must forget chasing friends and family, buying leads, cold-calling, spending hours on the phone qualifying prospects; forget hotel meetings and handing out flyers in supermarkets. This might have been efficient when we were not living in the internet age. But this is 2009 and our cyber world. Those techniques anyway will never allow you to sponsor enough reps into your business so that you can build a solid residual income.

The new generation of internet marketers has already understood this. Today’s top marketers have a totally different way to look at their business that completely changes their results. They learn how to understand and leverage the power of the internet, they learn how to position themselves as leaders, they learn how to bring value to the market and the industry so that they can attract an endless stream of prospects to them.

If you want to make money in your Herbalife business in 2009 and have a chance to be successful, you’ll have to learn how to build your business like the top producers in this industry, how to leverage the power of the internet. If you learn how to master Attraction Network Marketing, YOU will succeed with your Herbalife business.  And the good thing is you can write your own pay-check.

I hope that this helped you understand how you can be successful with Herbalife. If you want to learn how you can sponsor 20-50 reps per month into Herbalife, check out Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring.

Once you have embraced the concept of MLM attraction marketing, you will want to find the right marketing system for your network marketing business.

There are a lot of different systems on the market, so you need to know how to make a choice and what are the criteria you should look for. In another article, How To Choose The Right MLM Lead Generation And Marketing System For Your Business, I discuss the 3 basic principles behind an attraction marketing system and the 4 questions you should ask yourself when evaluating such a system.

The purpose of the present article is to focus on doing a short review of 3 of the most well-known MLM attraction marketing systems, and help you in the process of making an informed decision.

• Renegade Network Marketer by Ann Sieg

This attraction marketing system is about avoiding the common mistakes that network marketers make and that causes them to fail. It is about un-learning all the outdated methods such as cold calling or pitching your product or company to family and friends, and instead learning cutting-edge techniques and strategies top marketers are using to build their MLM businesses. It is about positioning yourself in order to attract prospects to you.

The system offers a training program with a step-by-step blueprint that shows you how to setup a marketing pipeline that feeds you and your organization with a constant flow of qualified prospects.

The foundation of the system is a 143 page in-depth, how-to manual that details the exact formula Ann Sieg used to build her downline in her primary business and profit from multiple streams of income.

• 7 Figure Networker by Jonathan Budd

The system is based on the idea that there are 3 reasons why people achieve success: Technology, Systems, and Training ; and there are 3 steps that every top marketer are following to build their business: Lead Generation, Personal Branding, and a Self-funded proposal.

The core of the 7 Figure Networker system is marketing and lead generation, and the system enables you to build your own list of prospects, brand yourself, make money from multiple income streams, and establish interpersonal relationships within a community of networkers and MLM business owners.

7 Figure Networker is a built-in system you can plug into, and you will learn how to market online through video tutorials, as well as weekly trainings and masterminds.

• MLM Lead System Pro by Norbert Orlewicz and Brian Fanale

This is a fully branded, customizable, lead generation and attraction marketing system that combines attraction marketing, affiliate marketing, cashflow programs and traditional MLM.

MLM Lead System Pro will allow you to target the right prospects, to really customize your landing pages to make them unique and stand out in the market place, to brand you as the leader, build your list, and include sales funnels to create multiple sources of income.

It is also a built-in system you can plug into, with a focus on education: you will learn how to market online through video tutorials and recorded webinars as well as weekly webinars from industry top earners and marketing experts.

All 3 systems are bringing a lot of value to the MLM industry and enable network marketers to get massive results. They are similarly priced and all three give you the possibility of test driving them, so make sure you do.

About every other day I receive an email about the last best pre-launch MLM opportunity, the deal of the decade. More and more new MLM companies advertise a pre-launch phase to attract their first distributors and it seems to be the brand new pandemic in the network marketing world.

Whether you are currently looking for a MLM company to join or you are involved in one of those pre launch opportunities, keep on reading because this might open your eyes.

Here are the top 3 points that you should consider with respect to a pre-launch phase of a brand new MLM company:

1. There is a 90% chance that a new company will be out of business within its first two years:

As I wrote in a previous article, The Four Main Reasons For Failure in Network Marketing, the #1 reason why people fail in their MLM business is because they get involved in the wrong company. And one key variable to evaluate a company is how long it has been in business.

It is important to know that only 10% of new companies ever make it to their 24th month before going out of business. And if a company is less than 5 years old, statistically the company is still at great risk of going out of business. You need to understand that partnering with a MLM company younger than 2 years old is exactly like putting your money on a high-risk volatile stock.

You should also watch out for new divisions of existing companies and evaluate them by the same time standards as any new MLM company. The reason why the parent company decided to launch a product or service under a new company rather than with its already existing company is often because they want to protect the existing company in case the new division would fail.

The other possibility is you find an existing company which previously did not use network marketing as its distribution model and is now doing so. Again, past experience does not matter. Many successful companies have gone bankrupt when they decided to try to use network marketing in their new endeavor.

As far as pre-launches are concerned, it is important to recognize that on occasion, a fledgling business will use a pre-launch as a way of raising much needed funds to fund the opening of the business. And those funds are in such case provided by unsuspecting new distributors attracted by hype and false promises.

What happens when the company doesn’t raise enough capital to sustain the business? It crashes and burns, and the new distributors lose their investment. My advice is you should never pay money to partner with any company who has not yet officially opened for business.

2. You would have a very hard time building a downline:

First, MLM brand new companies and especially pre-launches attract all kinds of tire-kickers, definitely not the best quality MLM prospects. Some people I know join a new network marketing company every other month. They are not really serious about building a MLM business, and are permanently looking for some get-rich-quick scheme or easy path to wealth. You definitely don’t want this type of people in your downline.

Then, sudden or constant changes by the company’s management during pre-launch phase, for example with the products or the compensation plan, is not a good sign. These so called product enhancements, compensation plan adjustements or improvements are a proof that they are still experimenting and that their business model is not strong enough. This should be a red flag. Your downline would also probably consider quitting because they feel the business is not on the right track. After all, everyone is looking for some security and stability.

3. You could lose your biggest asset: your reputation:

If you join a company in its start-up phase, you have to be prepared for the risk of losing your investment, your customer base, your business. But much worse, your reputation could also be permanently damaged. And people will be less inclined to follow you into another business opportunity if the last one you recommended crashed and burned.

So ask yourself if you really want to risk damaging your reputation on a highly volatile startup just to make some money. Remember your name is your biggest asset, and make sure you don’t make it a liability.

As a general rule, until a company has proven itself by staying in business for 24 months, they should still be considered high-risk, and I would not recommend a pre launch or MLM start up of any type. There are enough reputable companies out there for you to build a successful MLM business without taking any greater risks.

Then, after joining the right MLM company, you will want to learn the secrets that will allow you to sponsor 20+ people per month leveraging the power of the Internet. Make sure you check out Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring.

The MLM industry is currently operating a big shift and we hear a lot about attraction marketing and how you should apply it to your MLM business in the internet age.

What is it actually and what is the difference between attraction marketing and other forms of marketing?

Attraction marketing is a marketing strategy designed to attract prospects and turn them into buyers, without having to sell them on a product or service. The focus is on creating interpersonal relationships and building trust.

Think of your favorite garment store; you would hate being chased after by the salesperson, you want to have a good shopping experience, you want to make your own decision, and the salesperson is here only to answer your questions and help you. And if your experience is good, maybe you don’t buy today, but you will be attracted by the store, and you will come back.

Now, start thinking what happens if we apply this to MLM.

The traditional marketing and advertising techniques in MLM start with prospecting, cold calling, talking to family and friends, as well as buying leads. With these methods, you have to pitch your product or business opportunity, you must convince your prospects, and you might have a hard time overcoming their objections, because most people hate being sold and the more they are sold the more resistance they will develop. This is probably why so many people are struggling and why the failure rate in the MLM industry is still so high.

What you want to do is attract prospects to you by thinking and acting as a leader and not as a salesperson. This does not mean that sales is eliminated from the process, but the difference with common MLM techniques is that your prospect is pre-sold because you did not chase after him but he was attracted to you instead.

MLM attraction marketing is all about attracting qualified MLM leads and prospects by making their experience with you enjoyable, by branding yourself, by positioning yourself as a leader, by listening to your prospects and offering solutions to their concerns, by establishing a relationship and building trust with them, and empowering them to do the same.

Attraction marketing is actually a very up-to-date, professional, still natural and fun way to grow a home based MLM business. Of course, it takes time and education to make it work. You need to have access to a solid MLM system and a good training to support your efforts.

There are a lot of resources on MLM attraction marketing, you can learn strategies with online videos, blogs, training programs.

Attraction marketing is highly powerful and if you can apply it you will be in a position to achieve great results, building your own list and growing your downline. You will also be amazed how many quality people you will attract to do business with you.

Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring course is THE foundation of all your marketing efforts. I have read this course again and again; it will teach you Attraction Marketing so that you can attract people to you and sponsor 20+ reps per month in your MLM business. When you get the principles taught in this course you will never ever chase after prospects or buy useless leads again. Get your copy now!

Once you have made yours the concept of MLM attraction marketing, you need to set up your personal attraction marketing blueprint.

A blueprint is simply a detailed plan, so it has to do with strategy and planning. It is about carefully defining your own game plan to become attractive to others. You should focus on your personal strengths and not only copy paste what other people are doing.

First of all, there are 3 main principles to keep in mind when creating your blueprint; make sure you respect them and you will be successful in attracting people to you:

1. never ever pitch your business opportunity on the first contact (it would be like asking to get married on the first date…not a great idea indeed)

2. First give before you can expect to receive, if your goal is to achieve long-term success.

3. Establish deep and interpersonal relationships between you and your prospects.

Then, the first step for your attraction marketing blueprint is to know your market and identify what are the most common frustrations of your target market. It is critical for you to determine what type of people you want to attract to do business with you.

The second step is to define how you are going to position yourself and bring appropriate solutions to your prospects’ problems. You need to offer support in the areas less obvious than what everyone else does, create your own area of expertise. Developing a magnetic personality is easier than you think when you take the dollar sign off your forehead and start to truly focus on helping people and make it your primary goal to alleviate their pains.

The third step is to take action and implement what you learn in order to build credibility and trust. There are a lot of useful resources you can get inspiration from, among them Brad Weinman’s Attraction Marketing Blueprint™ e-book, a step-by-step guide to help you maximize your growth and profits in your online business, and for more advanced marketing strategies, Mike Dillard’s MLM Traffic Formula 2.0, that should enable you to define your exact and personalized attraction marketing blueprint.

There are tens of thousands of people who start in the network marketing industry each month. If you are one of them, it is important for you to really understand what you should look for and what mistakes you should avoid.

When you get started with a network marketing company, there are several steps you must take in order to avoid the four most common mistakes people make in this industry. Let’s review the four main reasons why people fail so you can see what you are up against.

I would say that there are 4 main reasons for failure in network marketing.

1. Getting involved in the wrong company: most people who want to use the same marketing system that I am using to build my business first tell me about the company they are involved in and ask me if I think they made the right choice. They are completely right, because they know that choosing the wrong company will highly jeopardize their chances of success.

What’s a wrong company? There are different variables here, but the main ones are the products, the management, the compensation plan, how many years the company has been in business and its financial strength.

There are companies who have strong, effective products but whose management is poor and finances are bad. They have a higher chance to go out of business. Some companies have a good financial strength, a good management, but the products are not competitive or effective, or the compensation plan is lousy, and the distributors will then go through a lot of struggles and most probably leave the company within the first one to two years.

Then, if a company is less than 5 years old, statistically the company is still at great risk of going out of business. On the contrary, if the company is over 25 years old and financially strong, the company should stay around but the momentum phase may be so advanced that the opportunity is not as great as it once was.

2. Having the wrong upline: even when distributors find a good company, it is nearly impossible for them to build a successful network marketing business without an upline offering weekly training and support. Without training and support, new distributors are left on their own and there is a 95% chance that they will fail.

3. Not having any system: Most people I talk to are very excited about getting started. They don’t always realize that they will not make it on their own, though. And in this industry, even very determined individuals will usually fail within their first year if they don’t have a system that will save them money and effort and help them leverage time.

4. Not developing persistence and being committed: most people who want to start a network marketing business are actually looking for some kind of get-rich-quick scheme, and want to take the easy road. It’s hard to find people with the determination and persistence necessary to build any business. And lack of persistence is the number one reason for failure in MLM. Quitters don’t succeed. And without a strong commitment, even the best company, upline, or system will not be able to help you.

If you are persistent and ready to do what it takes, if you can find a good company, with a strong marketing system and a personal mentor, you will dramatically increase your chances of success in the network marketing industry.

What Is Ardyss?

Ardyss was created by a Mexican family who was involved in the garments production and decided to start a business in the wellness industry. Ardyss started as a factory and company back in 1991. Today Ardyss International is a leading company in the health and wellness industry and is doing business in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Puerto Rico, with more than 40 distribution centers worldwide.

The company has an ongoing product research and development staff of engineers and doctors, and offers a wide range of products: reshaping products for women and men; nutrition products such as le’vive Juice, an organic juice that concentrates the power of the world’s top five anti-oxydant producing fruits; high-quality skin care products; and the well-know BodyMagic, a reshaping system for both men and women.

Ardyss products are solid in that they are affordable for the average person and they provide quick and visible results to the consumer.

Is Ardyss a Good MLM Business Opportunity?

It is in 2007 that Ardyss International relocated their corporate headquarters to Las Vegas, Nevada and changed from a direct sales to a network marketing business model. This change opened the door for people to join the Ardyss MLM opportunity and allowed them to build their own business working from home.

The start-up costs to join Ardyss are low, $30 to join to a $299 PowerPack (data from the Ardyss website from year 2008). The compensation plan is typical of any MLM company. You can have a look at it here.

It is quite solid and Ardyss has laid the ground work within this compensation plan to allow its distributors to make back their initial investment very quickly and build a profitable business.

Even though Ardyss International can be seen as an old company that has been around for almost twenty years, it is still a ground-floor opportunity for anyone interested in growing a solid home-based business. That’s why I would recommend Ardyss as a good business opportunity.

However…

It is important to join a good company, but this is not enough, and if you do want to make money in Ardyss, realize that your ability to create a successful organization is completely independent of the company that you join. Success in MLM has much more to do with who you are and become as a person.

Too many distributors in MLM are still struggling and failing because they don’t realize they have to learn real marketing skills. If you want to have success with Ardyss, you’ll have to learn how to build your business like the top producers in this industry, how to leverage the power of the internet. If you learn how to master Attraction Network Marketing, you will succeed with your Ardyss business.

If you want to learn the secrets that will allow you to sponsor 20+ people per month  in Ardyss leveraging the power of the Internet, check out Mike Dillard’s Magnetic Sponsoring.

When you want to start your own home business, you are looking for a legitimate home business opportunity, and you must be able to make the difference between different internet business models. The choices for a work from home business in today’s home business industry are almost unlimited.

There are two different categories of home businesses: you can decide to start your own business offering your own product or service to consumers, or you can become an independent distributor or affiliate for an existing product or service. In this article I will focus on the second category, as this is the most chosen by people who start in the home business industry.

The home business industry can allow ordinary people to match or even exceed the earnings of executives and CEO’s of corporate America. Choosing the right business or company can propel you to a five or six figure yearly income, regardless of your educational background or your previous experiences. It gives motivated people the opportunity to start and build a business on a small budget, and to then go on to earn a significant income.

It can also be the playground for many deceptive businesses, so it is important to know how to tell the difference.

First I want to address the issue of “pyramid schemes” and how to spot one, because they are not legitimate businesses, they are scams and you should avoid them. An illegal pyramid scheme is a situation where there is no product or service offered, only the exchange of money.

It’s a situation where you are encouraged to join an organization for a certain amount of money, and the promise is that your “investment” will grow to several times that amount. You don’t buy a product, you don’t sell a product, you simply find other people who agree to pay the same amount to join the organization.

Sometimes these programs are called “gifting” programs…just “people helping people.” It’s still an illegal pyramid scheme and not a legitimate business. So the first thing you want to look at is if there is a product or service offered. If not, stay away.

Then, there are the multi-level marketing (MLM) companies, who offer a legitimate home business opportunity, and who use network marketing as a distribution model. Network marketing is often the distribution method of choice for companies with unique and high-quality products. This is a person-to-person method of distribution that allows for more product information to be given to the consumer than what could be accomplished by selling the product through retail stores.

Before starting a home business in the MLM industry, however, you should keep this in mind: first, the attrition level facing MLM’ers is very high. 97% of people in this industry are still failing to make money. And people get started in your team but drop out within the first 90 days, all the more so as the initial investment is often so low that people don’t loose much money by quitting.

Then, the old-school methods of prospecting (buying leads, doing surveys, handing out flyers, cold calling, chasing friends & family) are far from attractive and most of the time will not bring you any results. You can be very successful in MLM, but if you really want to succeed in an MLM business, you’ll need to have access to a very good training and a marketing system that will enable you to generate leads, brand yourself and attract people to you.

Eventually, there is what is called GPT (stands for Get Paid Today). This model gives serious entrepreneurs the opportunity to quickly achieve 5 to 6 figure incomes. Most of your commissions are paid upfront by the company, and you also have the opportunity to earn a substantial residual income from your team. The initial investment varies from a few hundred dollars to several thousands, and entrepreneurs who join at the higher levels of investment are less likely to quit because of their investment.

Now, if they do quit it isn’t such a big deal for you because you have been paid your commissions upfront. This commission structure tends to attract more committed entrepreneurs than the MLM model. You also have access to a turnkey marketing system that eliminates or highly reduces cold calling, selling, pitching, as well as a complete training and support system you can depend upon to actually train you on how to market and leverage the internet.

So, when you want to start your home business, make sure you do your due diligence. There are some awesome companies out there which meet and exceed all the principles above, but there are also plenty who don’t. If you do your research then you can find the company that suits you and have the success and the lifestyle you are looking for.