A buddy of mine recently asked my advice about doing online MLM. When I told him what I did for my online business, he panicked and said, “I can’t freaking do that! It’s impossible.”
When he finally calmed down, I explained to him that:
1) his reaction was perfectly normal and very common
2) I didn’t start out doing all of this
3) he doesn’t have to do everything I do
Whew! That made him feel a lot better. He then asked, “OK, then what should I do?”
What to Do if You Are New to Online MLM
As with starting any new endeavor, learning how to do online MLM is all about keeping it simple. As I have discussed on my blog many times, having an online presence for your MLM business is about having a solid home base (like a blog or custom website) and having media outposts where you promote your business and drive traffic back to your home base. (Thanks for Chris Brogan for introducing the ideas of home base and media outposts.)
But building all of that online stuff doesn’t happen overnight, especially for the newbie online MLM marketer. I’ve already written a lot about how to create an online home base on this blog, so if you are a newbie you should be able to glean what you need to know from those posts.
Instead, what I want to focus on in this article is the mental mindset you have to have as you begin creating your online MLM presence. Here are two things that you really must understand as you begin this process:
1) You need another source of income in the beginning
2) The process takes a long as it takes
Let’s take a look at these two points individually to see why they are so important to the newbie online marketer.
1. The Importance of Another Source of Income
I’ve often discussed the fact that online marketing has slower growth in the beginning than offline marketing for MLM businesses. You can read more about that in my blog post on this topic. In any case, it can take 6 months to a year to really start attracting visitors to your website or blog, and getting honest-to-good business partners and product customers. That’s a long to time to wait around for something to happen, especially if you are starving and desperate. So avoid being starving and desperate by having another source of income.
That usually means you have to have a regular day job to pay your bills or you already have a downline built with offline marketing efforts to pay the bills. Either way, you have to find some way to cover your living expenses while you start your online marketing campaign. It takes a while. Be forewarned and prepare. Having your bills covered by another source gives you the breathing space you need to build your online presence, learn how to market online, and recover from your mistakes (there are always mistakes).
2.The Process Takes as Long as it Takes
The online world continues to expand, change, and morph faster than the speed of sound. That means that a marketing method that succeeds today may not work in 6 months. That means you have to take the time to stay educated about what’s cooking in the online world. That means that “success,” whatever that is to you, takes exactly as long as it takes. No one can predict how long it will take, not even the so-called “gurus” of online marketing.
The gurus can point out some first goals and first wins to aim for, as well as give you pointers that will help you avoid pitfalls. But there are too many factors in the mix–between your own quirks and the changing online world–to predict when success will hit. So be patient and allow the process to happen in its own time. Definitely be persistent and follow a plan, but avoid getting impatient or angry with the process since that attitude will definitely hinder your process.
I hope these two principles help you as you get started with your online MLM journey. Like any small business, building an online MLM business takes what it takes … just with less overhead than most small businesses. The risk is less and the rewards are great, but you still have the eat in the meantime, and develop some patience along the way!
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