A growing number of current home based business owners are now giving up on their dreams to achieve financial freedom. The main reason of course is negative cash flow. A business in which you spend more than you profit is not worth pursuing. It’s always better to quit than lose all you have on a losing proposition.

That’s how MLM / Network Marketing / home based business is perceived nowadays – a losing proposition, and with good reason. With a 95% or higher attrition rate, finding future successful network marketers would become a rarity. So for those of you still willing to stay the course, having an idea of what marketing strategy actually work today would give you an advantage.

First, you have to realize that most people who browse the Internet are not there to buy anything. Making a purchase is the furthest thing on the minds of troubled people. What they are searching for are answers. These are the types of individuals to include in your target market. Provide them with the information they need to resolve their problems on the front end and then promote your business opportunity as back end sales.

This marketing strategy of promoting yourself in the initial stages is called attraction marketing. You concentrate on whatever disappointments your prospects have in your industry and then make the solutions available to them in the form of intelligent information. This establishes your credibility as an authority in the industry and in turn qualifies you to promote your business to them.

People like to deal with people they believe in. Buyers are wiser and this is what makes the attraction marketing strategy so effective. They approach and make their purchases from the home business owners who have the best information and know what they are talking about.

So it’s absolutely critical that prospects see your willingness to take that extra step to help them. The essence of attraction marketing is attracting potential clients to the entrepreneur that can solve their problems most efficiently. Being perceived as an industry expert is the perfect way to earn their trust. This trust will generate sales for your businesses products and services.

Sustaining the confidence of your prospects means maintaining the knowledge and information that they constantly require. For that reason, your education and self development must be a continuing process. Every piece of knowledge you gain enhances your value as an authoritative voice in the industry.

Bill McMahon

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Find out more about Attraction Marketing:
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Virtually all online network marketers are saying that the merger of Internet marketing and Web 2.0 is a perfect match up. How so? Network marketing businesses need traffic to survive and Web 2.0 sites generate an incredible amount of traffic every single day.

Since the advent of the Internet, a rapidly increasing number of constantly improving web technologies have been made available to the private entrepreneur and big business alike. Business ventures that did not take advantage of the Internet phenomenon were eaten alive by their tech savvy competitors. The Internet has become the all important mode of marketing outdoing every other form of media. Web 2.0 has become a decisive element in the plans and infrastructure of every thriving business enterprise today.

Web 2.0 reclassifies the market and spawns a sizeable variety of extra opportunities. It is therefore essential for marketers to have a thorough knowledge of the means the web can be employed and incorporated with other marketing plans.

Web 2.0 technologies have introduced new possibilities of communication and interactions between business owners and clients. Influencing these technologies to offer a strong end user experience can convert disinterested site visitors into customers and cause a general effortlessness in the whole promotion and marketing process. These user friendly technologies have also made it cheaper for entrepreneurs to exploit the full potential of the web and improve their efficiency. The more creative users can now do without the services of programmers and web designers.

As earlier mentioned Web 2.0 sites produce a staggering number of traffic. Therefore the goal of every network marketer is to gain control of some of this traffic. For majority of them the best way to do this is through writing original high quality articles with persuasive and credible content. The articles can be submitted to content sharing and rating websites. Once submitted, visitors of these sites can vote for it, and the more votes it gets, the more people see, read and vote for it. For them to read the full article they will have to click the link to your website. This means while your article gets more popular, the more traffic it drives to your site. The more quality articles you make, the bigger the potential traffic you generate.

This is only a taste of the substantial capabilities of Web 2.0. In the ever fluid network marketing industry, the ventures that adapt this novel, state of the art marketing platform has the best chance of achieving success.

To your success,
Bill McMahon

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http://twitter.com/joinbillmcmahon

Find out more about Web 2.0 strategies:
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For the nth time, what is network marketing? Some would say it’s about promoting your business, products, services and the opportunity itself. Some would even say it’s about building relationships. Is it really?

Most people in the MLM industry concentrate on the money making aspect and they seem to forget that network means a system made up of people. Networkers are so focused on the comp plan, lead generation and article writing that they forget the human element. Prospects, leads, reps, up line and down line – they’re all made up of people. They write articles to drive traffic to their websites. Shouldn’t they really mean “attract people to their websites”?

It’s not working. Even with the new automated lead generation systems, it’s still the same. Those cutting age systems didn’t change anything – same attrition rate, same retention rate – nothing’s changed except that the newfangled systems made networking more mechanical. They have just successfully taken more of the human element out of network marketing.

It’s even worse with Web 2.0. What should have been the perfect platform for relationship building? What we got is a bunch of MLM business owners sending adverts to each other. What happened to “Hi! How are you doing these days?”

Put yourself in these persons’ shoes. Would you do business with a total stranger just because he writes helpful and informative articles? A con artist can do articles too, and probably even write better. Yours could be the best company or opportunity in the World Wide Web but if people don’t really know you, your business won’t move an inch. Personally I’d rather keep my money in the bank than embark on a business venture with a person I hardly know.

If you take the time to learn about the people you come across with, know their likes and dislikes, their fears and desires and the reasons why they’re looking for an alternative source of income they will see genuine concern. They would trust the person who shows real interest in them as people – not prospects – and who would truly be willing to help them address their needs.

Try it for a change. Focus on the people around you. Talk to them and find out about them and not if they’d buy your product. Write some personal e-mails. Instead of adverts, share photos of your kids and ask about theirs. Build relationships and bring back the people part of network marketing. Slow down and enjoy the interaction. A simple change in pace could be the ticket to ultimate success for your business.

Bill McMahon

Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/joinbillmcmahon

“Quantity over quality….”

Sometimes network marketers have it all backwards. It’s a proven fact that the MLM industry retention rate is five percent. If ninety-five percent of all network marketing business owners fail to achieve success then there’s obviously something wrong with this philosophy of sponsoring.

First would be duplication. Training your team members to duplicate your efforts is one of your most crucial responsibilities as their sponsor. If you’re an advocate of the “super sponsoring” approach and are capable of sponsoring say, fifty to a hundred reps a month, you do need to be superman to be able to teach each of those persons the most important ways to build their business and do what you do. Unfortunately, for everyone concerned – especially for the MLM industry’s reputation, there are no supermen, so the industry attrition and retention rate applies.

Are we after the sign up bonus or the residual income? Without proper training, a large percentage of the new reps would be treading water. Sooner than later they would be washouts. There are no profits to be gained from these failures. And since they lost cash when their business went down, they’d be telling everyone that MLM really is a pyramid scheme.

You know what’s worse? The surviving reps, having been your best students, will have taken the lesson on duplication seriously. They’ll do exactly what you have done – sponsor a large bunch of new reps, attempt to teach all of them the finer points of duplication, then lose most of the group to attrition. The whole cycle of error over and over, with no one getting any nearer to financial freedom, which is supposed to be the goal isn’t it?

Why do we keep on doing it? Because the selection process of sponsoring has always boiled down to “anyone with a credit card.” That’s the way we were conditioned and unless we think “out of the box”, most of us end up as part of the ninety-five percent.

So how come five percent gets to achieve success and gain financial independence? That’s the point isn’t it? Why only five percent? Of course everybody can’t be successful but why not at least fifty percent?

Let’s do a little experiment; reverse the abovementioned philosophy, then apply the new approach. Make a pledge with your team that everyone is to sponsor only one new rep per month. No more, no less. One rep that each of you could train extensively – one on one – for a whole month before the new guy makes his own pledge of bringing in one rep a month. Make the sponsoring and duplication process work slowly but steadily in an ever expanding network of highly effective entrepreneurs. We should get interesting results.

Bill McMahon
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joinbillmcmahon

Find out more about effective duplication:
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If you’re part of the great majority of people doing a nine to fiver, and live from paycheck to paycheck, the work you put in should be directly proportional to the income established in your contract. Simply put, if you work 40 hours in a week, you get paid for 40 hours. If for some reason you are not able to work – illness, emergencies – you don’t get paid. Being the “best employee” of the month won’t make any difference. No work, no pay.

If you’ve gotten tired of that arrangement, maybe it’s time for you to explore the advantages of having a residual income. The most evident benefit is the ability to make money for less effort.

The Internet has opened a new world of opportunities to earn residual income through home based online businesses. For many like you who have had enough of the rat race, there’s nothing better than making good money from home, and working your own hours. Throwing in a bit of time management allows you more extra time to spend with the family or on your hobby.

A steadily growing number of people have started joining affiliate programs to earn from the Internet. To start with, there are a large number of affiliate programs online to choose from. The idea is quite simple – join the merchant of your choice as an affiliate, advertise their products and services on your website or on a link they provide you. You will then receive payment for the referral. For each customer the merchant gets from your referral, the merchant pays you with a commission.

As an affiliate, you are basically part of a merchant’s sales team. What the merchants love about the affiliate system is it actually saves them money. They don’t have to pay salaries and benefits to employees, instead they give you, the affiliate, a one-time finder’s fee for bringing customers who actually buy products or avail of their services. This affiliate program is called Cost Per Action or CPA, and its cost effective properties greatly benefits affiliate merchants, but what about you? CPA has essentially given you a source of income that’s very similar to your old nine to five system. The merchant pays you for your effort to produce customers for their businesses. Tit for tat – it’s no work no pay all over again. That is not residual income.

This is where it comes in:

If you look closely, you will find merchants offering programs that give lifetime commissions to affiliates. Fundamentally that’s what a residual income is – payment for work made earlier. Since this type of program is obviously more attractive than CPA, it draws more affiliates to promote their products and services. When you promote a merchant and gets customers to buy monthly subscriptions, you earn a finder’s fee. If these customers maintain their monthly subscription or continue to buy products and services, you get paid for every month they are subscribed plus commission from purchases. That’s how a residual income affiliate program works; you don’t have to work to death to recruit customers to make money.

Residual income allows you to do important things to improve or expand your business. The logic is simple – the more effort you put in today, the more money AND free time you get in the future. Remember that residual income is long term and the rewards you reap for hard work today will continue for many long years.

Bill McMahon
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/joinbillmcmahon

Find out more about residual income strategies:
http://tr.im/wyBL