When I saw people promoting their Network Marketing business on Social Media, I wondered if there wasn’t a long-lasting method of MLM promotion. After all, when I scan someone’s Facebook profile or business page or Twitter feed I barely spend two minutes looking down it, before moving onto the next one.
And in truth, I’m not really on social media to make decisions about purchasing products or joining a business. I’m there to check for messages from friends, see pictures of my family and have a laugh at jokes. Of course if anyone from my team sends me a message I will reply there. But to make purchasing decisions I go to search engines and I read emails.
I was reminded, yesterday, of my first really successful MLM / NWM business when I had a team of thousands and was earning four-figures a month.
Here’s my MLM Success Story….
My husband had just left me and my biggest part-time work contract dried up – all within the same week. So with two sons at uni, my back was against the wall to find a way to make an extra income.
So I started in MLM, not for the first time, but it was the first time I really needed that extra income.
My previous NWM ventures had been offline product-based businesses, built traditionally, but they didn’t fit in as part-time businesses because I was also working full-time.
It was only when I turned to online marketing that with my own eyes I saw proof that Network Marketing really could work and I was taking the results to the bank. But as with any successful MLM team, I didn’t do it all by myself.
I was luckier than you could imagine because, as well as personally recruiting a few distributors who built their own small teams, I recruited ONE person who knew exactly how to market online and he built a massive team within my downline.
Internet marketing was very new in those days (I’m talking about, maybe, 2004) and I had absolutely no idea what (let’s call him) Fred was doing to find all these people. I just watched in amazement as his team, and therefore mine, expanded month by month.
(Sadly that company made a very bad decision by trying to move into a different area, lost a lot of money, and had to close down – if they’d stuck with their original, successful concept I’d still be with them today.)
So, picture me, trying the traditional methods of recruiting people into my Network Marketing business:
- After previous ventures, my family and friends were already crossing the road when they saw me
- Chatting up random strangers – that really isn’t ‘my style’
- Leaving business cards shopping malls in the hopes they’d be picked up
- Exchanging business cards at local business networking events. Almost everyone else was promoting an MLM of their own, and we were ALL well-practised with our objections – there to sell, not to buy!
- Buying lists of opportunity seekers – expensive and unproductive
- From 2019 onwards, spending time creating free eBooks to give away and building my own list of interested would-be entrepreneurs.
- Paid ads (that my competitors were probably clicking to waste my budget)
- Finally, blogging on my personal blog
- Towards the latter part of my MLM career making social media posts – you only have to read my opening remarks to know my feelings about buying on social media. This method has actually worked for me, but oh so expensive in time – my most scarce resource.
Despite working hard with the traditional methods above, my team building progress was slow – but Fred was on a roll!
Finally I Discovered His Secret MLM Team Building Method
But before I tell you what he was doing, don’t rush off and try to duplicate it, because with the speed that online marketing changes, that exact method is no longer effective. However, with more experience online, I am using a variation of what Fred was doing.
Fred was using the ‘Article Marketing’ strategy.
The idea was that you wrote many articles on your business, covering it from several different angles, and published them on directories of articles so that people searching for similar topics would come across yours. You then collected their name and email and told them about your own offering.
Having discovered Fred’s method I tried it out for myself with an obscure product in the complementary health market place that I was marketing at the time and I had great success selling that with Article Marketing. My articles were generating literally thousands of ‘hits’ to my website for months and months, in return for a couple of hours work writing each article.
The principle behind it was that, because these article directories held vast amounts of content, the search engines ranked them highly as solutions to present to people searching for answers to their queries.
What Went Wrong With Article Marketing?
If it was such a great technique, why do I no longer recommend it?
Unfortunately the article creators got lazy.
Instead of spending a couple of hours per article to write unique articles, like Fred and I did, they started using software tools called Article Spinners which would turn one article into several, all slightly different, by changing the odd word here and there. This led to the following problems:
- Automation without intelligence meant you could end up with total gibberish to read, so people would dismiss such articles as the total rubbish it often ended up being.
- Search engines got smarter and quickly realised what was going on, devalued the content and stopped offering it up as solutions.
- The Article Directories fell into disrepute, which was a shame, because the sites themselves had worked hard to provide a user-friendly place for article publishers and readers. A few lazy marketers had ruined an effective way to deliver quality content to people searching for solutions.
Adapting the Article Marketing to Promote a Network Marketing Company
As mentioned above, I had had so many failures using the traditional methods to promote product-based Network Marketing companies that I had vowed ‘Never Again’ to promote another one.
There are many such companies online and offline all extolling the virtues of their products – and most products are top quality, ethically formulated etc.
If I were buying products purely for their pedigree, choosing between them would be a tough call. But my reason for joining a network marketing company is to build a long-lasting income.
So when I choose a company to promote I must also take into consideration their marketing methods. I know from past experience that the traditional methods are ineffective. I don’t have the time or the personality.
But even if I were able to build a team that way, I have seen for myself that no-one I have ever recruited has been able to duplicate these methods. Fred built a huge team – but using the article marketing method, as described above, NOT the traditional recruiting methods.
So, because they have that elusive combination of excellent products and an excellent method of team building, I have joined and am promoting a health and wellness business, using a variation of article marketing.
The Best Way to Promote Your MLM
I tried to promote an MLM on my own blog, but it didn’t work particularly well. Since then, experience has taught me that if you’re part-time in online business, blogging works best as a team effort to build the authority of a large quantity of articles on one ‘directory’.
The team I have joined has emulated ‘Article Marketing’ with a team blog, packed with quality articles about the business and products. Our blogging team targets topics of interest to enquirers who are looking for solutions to their problems in two main areas:
- Network Marketers searching for a new or better company to build an extra income.
- People with health problems, looking for solutions to improve their health and well-being. Many users of our products have had great results and are happy to share their experiences.
We no longer have to hunt for customers and distributors, we let search engines deliver them to our blog. And with a team of us working on one blog we’re building a large store of quality content faster than one individual working alone can do. (The quality is checked by other team members who understand we must maintain the quality of the articles.)
I know blogging works to deliver long-term results because on several occasions I have been contacted or made sales from old articles I wrote without the training I now have. Yesterday was the most recent when someone contacted me about an article I had written on my personal blog five years ago. That’s wonderful, but I don’t want to wait five years, and my blog is a drop in the ocean of blogs online. With a team all working towards the same end the popularity of the blog can happen faster.
How Are The Leads Shared Out?
It’s completely fair, because every one of your articles contains your own affiliate link, so the more content you deliver, the more chance you have of being found. YouTube is a search engine in its own right, so video marketers are also welcome to join the team and make their contribution that way.
- Experienced bloggers, and those who understood the old method of Article Marketing saw the potential right away.
- For anyone new to blogging and wondering if you can earn money from a blog there is free Search Engine Optimisation and blogging training. Joining our team means you can test the effectiveness of blogging without the hassle, technical expertise and expense needed to start your own blog.
I’m no longer alone trying to make money from my blog. It’s great to work within a supportive team. We welcome new or experienced bloggers who would like to try this.
There’s also a way to receive leads from a team rotator when you have proved yourself willing to put in the work to deserve it. No passengers, no magic money here (or anywhere).
Remember – work done today can deliver customers and distributors years from now. Don’t think short-term. “Make money online fast” just doesn’t exist. If it did, I would have found it by now!
If you’ve had enough of traditional methods of building a network marketing business, why not open a free account and join our Facebook support group to have a look round at how we work. Ask any questions of the team leaders, and if it’s not for you, you’ve lost nothing but an hour or so of your time.
Click here to learn more about a long-lasting method of MLM promotion.
