Hi everyone,

2008 is quickly approaching and I thought it might be fun to get feedback from you!

What one thing do you want to learn in 2008 about building an MLM business on the internet? One one thing would help you the most next year?

You can answer the question by clicking on the little “comments” link to the right. Click on the number of comments and it will take you down to the comments section where you can leave your feedback for me.

I’m planning out the blog for next year and what topics I should cover. I’m also thinking about getting some guest speakers or guest authors to come and help.

Let me know what you think is most likely to help you next year!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 51% [?]

Here’s a question for you.

How much time do you actually spend building your MLM business?

I mean BUILDING the business.  Not doing busy work.

Checking your email is busy work. 95% of the time it isn’t going to have anything to do with actually building your business.  5% of the time it is actually going to be a prospect or team member.  Guess what? If you’re checking your email every 10 minutes you’re not doing the business. You’re wasting time. Those important emails from prospects or team members can wait.  You can respond to them a few times a day.  Checking your email isn’t building your business.

What about conference calls?

Are you one of those people who gets on every team training call, company call, and the 3rd party mlm trainer calls.  That’s great! I’m glad you’re so motivated, but how much time do you actually have left to build your business?

Several of my top downline leaders… *drumroll* never get on my calls unless it’s an important call.  They don’t have time to. They are busy actually building their business.  They want quality of life with their family too, so they can’t be on every call and have time to actually develop leads, train new people, and still have time for their family.

On the other hand I know people who come to every single training call, yet they have sponsored no one, have no customers etc.  Back in the day when we used to do hotel meetings I was one of the city leaders and helped host the meetings.  We had a lovely couple show up at every meeting and training.  One day however I found out they had only one customer. Themselves!  They spent all this time coming to meetings (and never brought guests).  I guess they thought coming to meetings would build their business, yet the real truth is they weren’t actually speaking to anyone about the business!  How could they possibly expect to build their business?

So what things actually consist of building a business?

What things do you do that are business building activities?

What are some other things that you see people doing that are just busy work and don’t help in building a business? 

Let me know what you think!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 55% [?]

My last article in the network marketing magazine talked about those ads you see for dirt cheap web site traffic.

Well it seems I’m not the only one writing about this.  One of the people I admire a lot in the internet marketing industry just did a study on dirt cheap traffic sources too.  He  followed a more scientific approach and documented his results with cheap traffic.

Guess what?

He and I agree 100%.  You see cheap traffic is trash traffic.  You really get what you pay for.

Here is the article from Jonathan Leger on trash traffic.

Next time you see an ad for cheap web traffic, it probably is too good to be true!

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 46% [?]

Hey Stupid!

That got your attention didn’t it?

I don’t think you guys reading this blog are stupid! BUT I do think a lot of people doing MLM these days are just plain dumb. Building an MLM online isn’t about your marketing. It’s about your relationships. Even mailing lists are about building a relationship and giving them free information, responding to their questions, etc.

Here is an example of someone who doesn’t get it. Let’s call him “Bill”.

Bill is a member of one of my mailing lists. I just sent out an email about my new web site and Bill has an automatic response that comes back like this. (This is called an autoresponder.)

Make Money Online! I Will Pay Your Way Today!
No Start Up Costs! I will pay your way in!
No paperwork to fill out. We are 100% online!
No special training required.
Unlimited market. We are worldwide!
Flexible hours. You set your own schedule.
Want to know more? Request my free report and I will send you full details on how you can get started.

Free Details at…

So Bill sends this automatic email back to ANYONE that emails him.

Really, does that make you want to email Bill for his free report?  Not me! It sounds like a bunch of hype.  It’s the same old crap you always hear from these MLM companies.  “unlimited market” “i will pay your way in” Yikes!  What a SCARY program this guy is in!  It is full of bull and certainly if the FTC saw this email they’d begin an investigation immediately.  This is exactly what gives MLM a bad name.

Bill has it partially right.  He should email back and let people know he has a free report, but he shouldn’t make it so full of hype or spam.  It just reeks of advertisement.

Here is what I’d do if I was Bill.  I’d set an autoresponder like this:

Do you want a little extra money at the end of the month?
Fill out my survey and let me know what your #1 question is about making money online…

That’s a different approach and it begins to build the  relationship.  You’re showing genuine interest in the person and engaging them by asking them questions instead of spamming them.

What do you think Bill should have done?  Would you ever respond to something like what Bill wrote?

- Ben Fitts

Popularity: 41% [?]

Who wants to build a profitable mailing list?

When I’ve been doing network marketing training events like teleseminars for Cognigen,  I’ve had a lot of people ask me about building a mailing list.   One of the things I discovered was that people were advertising their company’s web site directly. This is a big no no especially if you are paying for advertising.

Why?   Well most people only buy after seeing your product or web site3-6 times.  Only 16% of people have been found to purchase within 1-2 times of seeing your product.

One way you can improve your odds is by building an email capture page (or squeeze page).  You route the people that click on your advertisement to this page and you offer an incentive to  get them to enter their email address.  Then and only then do you pass them along to your network marketing or affiliate web site.

Now you’ve started to build a mailing list and you can email those people over and over again.  That’s one way you can increase your sales immediately without increasing your advertising costs!

I just released a new web site all about Email Capture & Squeeze Pages.  If you want to know more about building a mailing list check out Squeeze Page Firesale. You can get a bunch of squeeze page templates, a 61 page ebook on list building, and some videos that show you how easy it is to create your mailing list.

I hope you like them!

Ben Fitts

Popularity: 40% [?]

Just published in the December issue of the Network Marketing Magazine…

My 3rd lie in my series of 5 lies… This one is probably more of a myth than a lie but it is certainly something that a lot of new network marketers fall for. A lot ofpeople (including myself) have spent hundreds of dollars on this kind of thing:

Have you ever gotten one of those emails telling you that you can buy 250,000 guaranteed hits to your web site? Or perhaps it was more like 1 million guaranteed hits to your web site.

Well they might seem like a great deal… after all if you purchased 250,000 hits and converted only 1 in 10,000 you’d still sign up 25 new people! That sounds like a great deal right?

WRONG!

Read all about it here.

(The article is free for the next 30 days.)

I am a Contributing Author of CLICK HERE to read my latest published article.

Popularity: 47% [?]