If your experience in MLM has been anything like mine, you'll have been told to create your network marketing list of prospects by jotting down the names of friends, family and everyone you've ever come into contact with.

What's wrong with this is that these people are not, in most cases, actually looking for a business opportunity. And you may struggle to come up with enough people and be forced to pursue them over and over again, making yourself pretty unpopular!

Don't get me wrong - it's a good idea to tell people you know about your business. You already have a relationship with them and although most won't want to join your business, they may be prepared to help by directing you to someone who does.

But if you're looking to build a big business, you'll need to take a much broader view in planning your network marketing lead generation strategy.

So who exactly should you be targeting? Who are your hottest prospects - the people who have already demonstrated that they are in the market for your business, or something similar?Yes, I'm talking about network marketers - people who are or have been in a network marketing business, or who are looking for one to join. These are your hottest prospects of all.

Where do you find them, I hear you ask. Well, one thing's for sure. At any one time a massive number are online, surfing the web for information. Information that will help them choose the right business, build their network marketing list, generate free network marketing leads, train their distributors more effectively and so on.

The smart way to build your network marketing list is to go online and attract those prospects to you. This may sound daunting, but there's a myriad of ways of doing this and it can be fun. If you enjoy writing, you can author articles and even set up a blog - but be sure to identify the key words you want to rank well with and include these in your articles. If you do this right, you could and should find yourself on the first page of Google.

Another effective strategy is to contribute to some of the many online forums offering help and advice to network marketers, thereby sharing your expertise and building trust and a reputation.

A word of warning. Whatever you do, don't pitch your network marketing business up front. Put the emphasis on providing your prospects with useful and valuable information and on building relationships. Do this and your network marketing list and your business will grow.