Network Marketing is a great business model for the average person to utilize. I personally love the idea of making money off of other people working under me. The whole idea is to have a lot of people working on your team so that you can make money off of other's hard work. The more people you have on your team, the faster you'll be able to quit your job or retire for life. Above and beyond every other aspect of marketing and closing sales, you need one thing more than anything else, and that is leads. Without leads, your business will be going nowhere fast.

How do you generate leads?

Until recently there were only offline methods of marketing, which would somewhat limit a person's ability to expand their business world-wide. These methods are great for people who have a lot of time and are very outgoing. There are also some online marketing methods which take a little bit more learning and training to master, but once they're mastered they can be very effective for you while you're not actually working. Some online methods require you to do the work only once, and you'll see results for years to come. I'm going to cover some of both methods in the next few paragraphs.

If you're a newcomer to this industry, I'm sure you've been told to make a list of your family, friends, neighbors, doctors, dentists, and the list goes on. This list is where you initially try to get people you know to take a look at either your products that you're selling or joining your business team. I know from personal experience that this is a very frustrating way to try and build your business effectively. Above and beyond that, your list can only grow so big before you run out of people that you know.

Another way to generate some leads for your business is to purchase them from lead vendors, and I've not personally tried this tactic yet, but I can imagine the warm welcome that you'd get on the phone when you're calling people who don't even know you. I know how hard it was for me to get a warm welcome from leads I'd personally generated and I just didn't contact them soon enough. If you're playing the numbers game though, this can be an effective method. Other people have built businesses in this fashion.

I'm also sure that you've heard of the three foot rule, which is where you offer your business opportunity to anyone within three feet of where you are. Again, this can also be very effective. I've known people who've made over $100,000 a year using methods like this. If you're the type of person that can walk up to anyone and start talking to them and get them to listen to what you have to say, this method would probably work great for you.

Let's get into some online marketing strategies…

Network marketing online offers a much larger group of prospects to you and your business. If you think about the fact that there are over 5 billion people in the world, and at least 2 billion of those people have access to the internet, you can only imagine how endless your possibilities for expansion will be. However, when you begin to market online, you have to find a way to automate a lot of the process. You wouldn't want to have to still talk to every single person that might be a prospect. Automation is where the online marketing methods will simplify your life much more than offline marketing methods.

Let's just cover the simple fact of showing your business plan to your prospects. Say you have 25 people per day coming to you at different times wanting to hear about your business opportunity. That wouldn't leave you much time to do other things for yourself or your business. Having a webpage online will automate that process for you, and you will potentially be able to show your business plan to 10,000 people per day, even more if need be. This is one reason why the internet will allow you to generate a ton of leads in a short period of time.

The key to generating leads online is simply by generating quality traffic to your websites that show your business plan. There are both paid methods and free methods of advertising online, and I recommend that if you're new to the online arena you should start with some form of free marketing. You'll want to get your feet wet first before you spend a ton of money on paid methods. There are a whole slew of free marketing methods to choose from such as Social Media, writing articles, joining forums, free classified ads, and much more.

Where do you start?

You have to pick a method that you want to start with, and study as much as you can about that method, and then implement those tactics. Tweak your methods until you're generating a good amount of leads with that particular strategy. If you jump around from one method to another, or start with too many methods at once, you're not going to see the success you want. I can guarantee you that any marketing method online can generate a ton of leads. It's just a matter of figuring out how to make that particular method work for you and your business.

Which method is better?

Choosing between online and offline marketing methods will completely depend on your business and what type of person you are. Some business models aren't set up to be marketed effectively online. Some people can't handle the methods of offline marketing. Online marketing can be intimidating and confusing, and offline marketing can be timely and frustrating. Both methods will work, it's just a matter of figuring out how to make them work best for you.