The Evolution of Network Marketing

When I was first introduced to the network marketing business model, there was no such thing as the internet. There was really only one process that my first sponsor introduced me to…Drawing circles on a whiteboard. I know, it sounds sort of pathetic to me now too. Anyway, he was pretty good at selling the dream, and I was hungry even at the age of 18 for a better way to wealth than sacrificing everything for some company for the next 40+ years.

I had no success in my first attempt at network marketing, but looking back I really didn’t put much of anything into it either. I ended up coming back to various network marketing opportunities about 10 times over the next 20 years. Never really achieving any breakthrough success, but refining my approach and learning something each and every time.

I think back over the course of my exposure to network marketing and I see the way the industry has evolved slowly over time. I have personally used every one of the following approaches as well…

Phase One – Drawing circles on a whiteboard

Phase Two – Inviting friends and family to an in-home presentation

Phase Three – If the local group was big enough, invite friends into a hotel or conference room meeting.

Phase Four – Once the warm market dried up, or avoided me like the plague, I started branching out to more people through a number of methods…Truly professional marketing strategies such As:

• Flyers

• Pull-Tabs

• Cheap Business Cards (I can still slide one into a driver’s side window without missing a step in a parking lot)

• Nailing and zip-tying up signs all around town in the middle of the night

• Hanging out in Malls and shopping centers handing out business cards and/or flyers

• Holding product-driven parties

• Drive-by business card delivery (one of those cheap biz cards and a couple pebbles in a small baggie)

• Wearing crazy buttons, or hats, or shirts to get someone to ask me about them

• On a couple of occasions I even paid the parking fees at amusement parks to spend the day putting out cards and getting run off by security guards. (Creepy!)

I got away from this insanity, thank goodness, and didn’t get back into network marketing for several more years. When I did come back in, I thought I had found the perfect system for building my business…

Phase Five – I could purchase prospects from a lead vendor and start cold-calling prospects or opportunity seekers.

Here are a few of the difficulties this approach brought with it:

• These leads were not cheap, and it meant that while I was "building" my business that I needed about a $500 a month budget to do so.

• Prospects that were anything but targeted

• Prospects that didn’t remember requesting any information

• Downright rude people who would hang up on me

• Many tire-kickers who would gladly waste as much of my time as possible

• Wrong numbers, or wrong emails, or avoided phone calls

• I invested thousands of dollars and hours on this process to build my business up to a whopping $300 on my best month. (My company check was $800, but after subtracting out the money spent on advertising and the mandatory Auto-Ship…I netted about $300)

This time instead of getting away from network marketing for a while, I decided to do some research to see if there was a better way to build a business out there…

Phase Six – Study and employ actual marketing strategies and learn how to harness the power of the internet to build my business.

I won’t go into great detail here (that is a separate article), but here are some of the advantages this modern day approach has for me:

• No geographical limits

• No need to spend myself out of business to get started

• No need to ever talk to anyone who isn’t a qualified and quality prospect

• No harassing my friends, neighbors, or family

• No need for strong-arm sales tactics (or 3-waying prospects in with someone who has them)

• The ability to build a massive team, and KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you are doing can be duplicated

• The ability to interact with like-minded individuals from around the world

• The ability to create an endless stream of leads coming to me, rather than hunting people down to "pitch them" on my opportunity

Through the application of the principles of attraction-based marketing and the ability to utilize the vast assortment of free resources available on the internet today, I cannot even conceive of doing business in some of the ways I did in the past.

I am so very thankful that I live in this day and age when the goldmine of the internet is right at my fingertips. The only limitations on my business today are those I have put on myself.

With the multitude of online marketing methods that can extend your reach and influence globally, there is no better time to become a student of online marketing than now.