Network Marketing

Also known as Multi Level Marketing, MLM, Referal Marketing, Home Business & Direct Sales

The Network Marketing structure is brilliant, it rewards you for your hard work but doesn’t reward people who are lazy.   If you work a corporate job and get to mess around all day doing nothing and get paid, you would hate this business.

Defined in Wikipedia: Multi Level Marketing is a marketing strategy in which the sales force is compensated not only for sales they personally generate, but also for the sales of others they recruit, creating a down-line of distributors and a hierarchy of multiple levels of compensation.

There are many different compensation plans out there.  I will have new pages about those really soon.

Before I really took a look at the Network Marketing industry, I had the same gut feeling that a lot people have about MLM.  The funny thing is, I never saw a presentation for any MLM company until 1 month after I joined my company.  I entered the world of MLM on March 16th of 2008.  I’ll have a link here soon to that story.

There are thousands of network marketing companies out there, from nearly every industry to choose from.  Because of this, if you are passionate about something, you can probably find a company to join that will interest you.  From Nutrition, Coffee and Travel to Technology, Make Up, Candles and Purses.  Not to pick on these industries but there are even tabaco and porn companies that use the multi level business model.  Here is a list of companies.

The network marketing industry started back in the 1930’s, most people thing that Amway was the first network marketing company but Wachters started as the first network marketing company in 1932.

A lot has changed since them, the biggest change that happened was in the last 20 years, the internet.  The largest companies online have been built using the same strategies of referral marketing / MLM have been using for years.  They let all of us market for them.  Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and the latest one Groupon never had to spend money on marketing because they let us build it.  Facebook was valued at 25 Billion Dollars in 2010 and growing fast!

There are people out there that think Facebook will get bigger than Google.  I don’t buy it, I truly believe that a new social media concept will come out and topple Facebook just like they did to Myspace.  Time will tell.

There is a race going on right now, the new social media race.  The next big thing is already in place online, most people just don’t realize it.  My prediction is that a company will do something just a little different and get extremely big really really fast.   there will be several great companies that have either launched or are about to launch.

I believe the winner will be structured as an MLM and a lot of people will not even know it’s an MLM for a long time after being on board.