I heard something pretty interesting in an interview the other day. This genteleman was a minister and also a very successful network marketer.

He pointed out that in the bible everyone had a business. No one had “jobs”. Everyone was self employed. The only people who had jobs were: slaves and soldiers!

Why is it that in modern times many Christian’s have come to feel a stigma towards being a business owner? Why do Christian’s especially feel so negative towards money?

- Ben

*As an aside: I’m a Christian, I went to a Christian College, My parents both graduated from Christian Seminary and have been ministers, My grandfather was also a minister.*

Popularity: 2% [?]

This is for novices who want to learn more about internet marketing. One of the most important things you can do is to buy your own domain name.

A domain name is the way people find internet sites. Google.com is a domain name for the company Google. Gmail.com is Google’s email service. It’s the domain name for their email service.

Having a domain name also gives you a professional appearance. Take for example a new person who starts their business. Most new people will do something like go get a new email from Yahoo:

mynewbusiness@yahoo.com (fake example)

Compare this to the person that buys a domain name and gets email for their business:

ben@mynewbusiness.com (another fake example)

Having a domain name gives you a much more professional image than the guy who is using a Yahoo email. Plus the guy using a Yahoo email is actually helping Yahoo build their brand! He isn’t braning himself!

One more reason to get your own domain name… And perhaps this is a bit technical… It allows you to forward the domain name to your company web site. That way on your business card they see:

www.mynewbusiness.com instead of www.mymlmcompany.com/userid/ben

Again you’re building your brand and you look more professional. Plus you don’t have to risk typos or risk people who just go direct to your company instead of typing in all the information. Finally if your company ever creates a better web site you don’t have to change your business cards, your ads, etc. You just change where your domain forwards to. It’s kind of like call forwarding. You can forward your calls to your cell phone, or you can change it and forward it to your summer home on the beach. With a domain name you can forward it to mymlmcompany.com today or mynewflashwebsite.com tomorrow.

In short having a domain name gives you flexibility and provides a more professional image for your business.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 5% [?]

A lot of people ask me how I’m so successful at sales.  They ask me what to say to a prospect or client. 

What’s funny is I don’t really have a canned speach or pitch or anything.  I keep it real simple.  I start by asking them some questions.

So in my card business I simply start by asking: “How do you communicate with your customers?”

Then I stop and listen.

Usually they set themselves up and give me all the ammunition I need to close the sale.  They say things like:

• I don’t really communicate with my customers enough.
• I know I should communicate with them more often I just don’t have time.
• I used to send cards but I’ve been so busy I haven’t sent cards in years.
• I use email to communicate with them but it’s getting harder and harder to get my emails delivered.

You see how easy the sale process is after the customer gives you feedback like that?  Even if you’re horrible at sales you could probably close that deal.  Right?

So what are some leading questions you could ask people in your business?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 6% [?]

I’ve always believed that if you’re on a limited budget in your MLM business you should begin by investing in yourself.  Invest in training yourself.  Invest in learning new skills whether or not they are sales skills, marketing skills,  or personal development. 

Benjamin Franklin said ‘If you empty your purse into your mind your mind will fill your purse full of gold.’

That’s a pretty darn powerful statement and pretty much is in line with what I’ve alwas said. 

I was listening to an audio the other day from a powerful network marketer and he was discussing how much time he spends learning and studying and going to seminars and things.  Even though he is a millionaire he still invests in training and personal development.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 10% [?]

Let’s look at this another way.

Many of you have commented on my post about “sticking with your MLM” and said, “What if I have no upline support?”

That’s a tough one.

On one hand if you have a successful upline you have a leg up.  Your upline knows what to do.  Your upline may have systems in place.  Your upline may have training in place that you can plug your new people into.

Having an active and successful upline can make your job easier.

HOWEVER the buck stops with you.    You don’t usually hear about the top money earner’s upline.  Very rarely do you find a top money earner whose upline helped them much.  The buck stops with them.  They are the ones who are successful.  They are not successful because they joined a strong upline.  Know what I mean?

I personally feel that it helps to have a successful upline if you’re new.  However if you’ve been in the business for awhile it’s more about YOU than it is your about your upline.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 14% [?]

You will encounter problems with your MLM as I wrote about earlier this week.  It’s inevitable. It’s bound to happen.  It happens with all companies.

You might be tempted to jump ship.  The grass is always greener on the other side, right?

Or maybe you begin to make a name for yourself and a guru or expert or new company owner calls and offers you a position right at the top of their downline.  You might be tempted to jump ship.  However let’s take a look at what your downline sees.

Your downline joined you hoping you could make them successful.
They put time and effort into your company.
They probably told their friends and family.
They don’t want to start over again!

But you, their team leader just jumped ship!

So what do they do?  Do they jump ship too?  Heck they might not even like the new company.  Or maybe they’re just afraid of what all their friends and family are going to say. They aren’t going to be able to go back to them and tell them about this new company because they JUST told them how great their current company was!

So you see… it makes a lot more sense to stick with your company.  When the trouble comes fight through it.  Continue to help your team members grow their business.  Don’t abandon them.

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 17% [?]

Someone pretty smart once told me this phrase: There is no perfect MLM company.

That is something we will all deal with at some point in our business.

One of the reasons why people switch companies a lot is because they feel that “The Grass will be greener on the other side”.

They encounter a problem in their company which frustrates them. Then they go looking for a new company because it must be better than their current company. However that’s almost never true!

Just because you switched to a new company doesn’t mean it’s going to be any better than the company you are with now. You might find a better company or you might get there to find that they have just as many problems (or more!)

If you do decide to take a look at a second company make sure you do so with integrity. Don’t burn your bridges with your existing company. Don’t make a big deal out of your leaving your company to join the new one. Don’t target your downline. Those are things that can get you in trouble and can come back to haunt you.

I’ve had few issues lately with my company. My inital knee-jerk reaction was screw it, I’ll go find another company. After thinking about it however I realized you know this is a pretty darn good company and a few “hiccups” are bound to happen. I can either choose to be part of the problem or part of the solution.

I could have taken the tactic of going somewhere else but there’s no guarantee it’d be any better. Why not stick with it and help my company get through these hiccups. I’d rather be known as the guy who helped fix things than the guy who abandons ship! Wouldn’t you?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 20% [?]

Have you ever wondered why most MLMers quit too soon?

Here is an example of what many companies teach in their business opportunity presentations. Many of them show you a diagram and tell you all you have to do is sponsor 3 who get 3. Then they show you how on your 7th level you’ll have 2100 people.

The problem is that in reality this is NEVER how it works. It never works out perfectly where you get 3 who each go out and get 3, and then they get 3, etc.I repeat it never works out this way. It usually takes several people before you find just ONE that will work at the business. Because of this most new network marketers (MLMer’s) give up right here:

You see they have been told that all they have to do is get 3 and they’ll be millionaires so most MLMers quit here. Many of them spend a lot of time trying to teach these 3. Many of them stop recruiting and spend all their time trying to work with these 3 and drag them with them. They get discouraged and give up.

Even future leaders can get discouraged. They may go out and sponsor 5 or 10 or more people and get discouraged when it doesn’t work out. Why? Because they’ve been mislead.

In reality it usually takes 20-30 people to find just one leader. The potential leader in the above example might have given up just before he found his next leader!

In reality this is probably a better example of what your organization will look like from a successful MLMer.

You see this person stuck around long enough. They personally sponsored 20 or so people and while only a small percentage (20% or so) did something with their business, they found that one person who was a leader and their business began to really grow. And pretty soon they found another leader. It may not come from someone you personally sponsor. It might be several levels down. If you stick with it and sponsor enough people and train enough people it will happen.

If we began to show examples like this, would we be more successful in MLM?

If we began to show examples like this would we have less people who get angry thinking “we took their money”?

If we were honest like this and showed how much work is required would we sponsor less people but sponsor more qualified people?

What do you think?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 50% [?]

This is part 2 of why MLM companies should not charge for web sites…

In the first part I mentioned how someone I was talking to showed me their new company and their company was charging $20 a month for web sites. What’s worse is the web sites were horrible and I would NEVER market that web site as it would only cause you to loose money. Any advertising would be ineffective as the web sites suck. All money spent marketing the web site would be lost.

So some of our readers commented back and I’d like to take this opportunity to address their comments:

Cheryl Gonzalez Says: May 10th, 2008 at 5:34 pm eBecause they view it as another Profit Center, although some have both a free and a paid site. I don’t believe Company sites are very effective though…maybe helpful for signing people up, but they can’t be found in the search engines. I don’t think Companies realize this.

Hi Cheryl,

Is it ok for companies to create a profit center around charging their distributors for web sites?

I once was involved in a telecommunications and Internet based MLM. Keep in mind it was an Internet based MLM so you’d think they’d have some cutting edge web sites right? After all they SOLD web sites to other businesses.

However:

1. The web sites were crap

2. They charged their distributors for web sites!

Afterwards I figured out at $24.95 for web sites times 200,000 distributors the main reason they were doing this was because they were making almost $5 Million a month off the websites. Even if they were paying out 50% profits to their distributors they were making 2.5 million a month in profit off their own distributors.

You’re also 100% right. The company web site might get listed once in the search engines, but all the self replicated web sites for the distributors won’t get listed.

Anyone with a unique web site will have a better chance of getting listed in Google even if it is only a 1 page web site!

Cheryl also wrote:

Good sponsors will put together a website with their Team and make replicating pages available. I’ve been doing that since the early 90’s and have built dowlines in the thousands. I don’t believe the upline should charge for that either…although most of them will

Good point. I made self replicating lead capture pages for my team and this is one of the things I do is I give them away  free to them.  Then I found people who weren’t on my team and people who were below my paypoint were using them so I added a premium membership.  I even feel bad about that and plan to get rid of those premium memberships at some point soon.

Melody the Watkins Lady Says: May 21st, 2008 at 9:59 am eI’ve thought about this as well and I think there are a couple of good reasons why companies charge for their web sites.

#1. It weeds out the people who aren’t really serious.
#2. It helps cover the cost of maintaining the site.

I always recommend my team members wait until they are already producing an income before they sign up for a site, this way their business is paying for it’s self.

I disagree with Clement’s statement, the site can be extremely effective if you know what to do and how to use it. In fact they are no different than Cheryl’s self replicating sites, neither can be found in the search engines.

For me knowing I don’t need to worry about updating the shopping cart, security issues, payment processing, shipping, hosting etc gives me peace of mind so I can focus on marketing the products and helping my team members.

Unfortunately I have to disagree with your statements.

There is no reason to weed out the serious!  The company should actually do whatever they can to help the “non serious” be successful!  If we could help the average distributor get a few more leads and make a check or two we’d find many of them suddenly become more serious! Why wouldn’t companies want more leads, more customers, and more distributors?  What if companies made better lead capture tools and made them free.

What if it lead to just 10% of those average distributors getting 1 more customer or 1 more distributor.  Do you think that would have a big impact? Do you think they’d be pretty excited to get a paycheck and might put more effort into promoting the company?

It isn’t just the 1% growth you’re company would have but the 10% of distributors who get more interested.  What if you could energize 10% of your worst distributors and make them more effective?  Don’t you think that would be worth it?

You also said you thought it would cover costs.

Obviously you’re not a technology person.  So let me break it down for you.

Most companies don’t even create their own sites.  They outsource them.  There is a popular company that sells mlm, back office, downline, and accounting software to companies.  They also will create the web sites for the company.

If they did create their own sites from scratch then you have the costs of a few developers and your web hosting.  Even if you’re paying $200k a year for developers, you’re web hosting is probably only a few thousand dollars a month! Let’s say a grand total of $250,000 a year for the company to have their own cutting edge web sites.

Let’s be bold and say you develop your own rocking web sites.  You pay about 400k a year for a staff of developers and designers. That includes a lead developer you pay $100k a year too and several support developers and a designer. You also pay another $240k in web hosting costs at $20k a month.

In the scenario I gave you above where the company is making $5 million a month off selling their web sites to their distributors they spend $640k a year on developing and maintaining their web site.  But their making $60 MILLION selling the web sites to their distributors.  The costs to create and maintain a KICK BUTT web site is minimal.  The company could easily eat the cost of $640,000 right.  If they gave away their web sites for free to all their distributors don’t you think they’d make back that $640,000 in extra sales?

AND I’m talking about a kick butt web site not the junk most companies have.  Most companies have no idea how to market on the internet.  Heck most companies don’t know how to market period.  They BUY the marketing tools from the top distributor teams.

Did you know that?

If you’ve been in a startup company with no tools you’d understand.  I’ve been with a new company from the beginning and I’ve seen it first hand.  All the cutting edge tools we have were almost all purchased from top distributors.  Very few were actually developed by the company internally.

The other thing many of your companies do is outsource the web sites.  So the costs for them are even less!

If you disagree I’d love to hear your opinion! (or maybe you just have questions…) Click on the comments link to the right and let us know!

- Ben

Popularity: 53% [?]

I have recently see a lot of network marketers making a big mistake.

They are trying to build multiple streams of income in multiple companies.

Usually the person making this mistake is a novice. That’s why they try multiple companies. They aren’t making enough money so they keep trying something new. Or perhaps they are making a little bit of money in one company so they thing they can go out and start something new.

It’s ok to be a novice and be looking around trying to find what’s right.  I understand it.  I did it a bit myself.

However let’s look at it from the point of view of someone who has had a little success and has started to build a successful business.

Let’s say you’ve sponsored 10-20 people.   You’ve started to build a small group.  Maybe you have 100 people in your organization.  You probably got one or two promotions in your company already. You’re probably earning more money. You’re probably making higher commissions and bonuses now because of your promotions.

So now you hear about something like Wowzza. You decide that it’s something you can do in conjunction with your current company.  It’s not a direct competitor so you think that you could offer this to your downline and get 10 or 20 or more to join you in this new deal. Plus if it works like you hope you can get some new leads, right?

Well let’s look at it from a different point of view.

Let’s say you put 20 extra hours into your current company. You’ve already gotten a couple of promotions so you’re getting paid more on each hour of effort.  Anyone you sponsor is going to pay you better and you just might find that next leader that takes you from 100 people to 1000 people in your organization.

On the other hand let’s say you spend 20 hours promoting Wowzza.  In addition you share it with your team and 20 of them spend 5 hours promoting Wowzza.

That’s 120 hours of time wasted on Wowzza.  20 of your time and 5 * 20 for your downline that follows you to Wowzza.

PLUS since you’re just starting out with Wowzza you have no promotions or anything so you’re making the minimum amount of money.

Meanwhile if you had that 120 hours back and you and your team put that effort and energy into your main company… you’ve already gotten a promotion so you’re making more money…PLUS your group is growing.  Wowzza isn’t growing it’s just you telling your existing group about it and them all joining the new “deal” with you.  You aren’t neccessarily growing your business.  Eventually it will grow but you gotta start everything with this new business… put out new ads… develop new lead generation… etc.  That takes time.

Do you see how dangerous the attitude of dabbling in multiple programs can be?

Imagine if you’re like me and you have a downline of thousands… If you dabble in another program it isn’t just 120 hours wasted… Its multipled by the hundreds of people in my organization that would put energy into Wowzza that could be spent growing our main business.  It’s a horrible drain on your business and people who do this over and over and just forcing their business to be stuck and aren’t really able to experience the exponential growth that can occur by focusing on one thing at a time.

What do you think?  Am I crazy?  Does the math make sense?  Sound off and let me know how you feel!

- Ben Fitts

PS. Do you know ANYONE who makes $10,000 a month in TWO or more companies? I do NOT.  I have yet to find anyone making that kind of money in more than one company at a time.

Popularity: 100% [?]