The advent of the internet has brought to the marketplace an entirely new breed of entrepreneurs… and with the new breed, while we are certainly still in the infancy of a new dawn of economics, has brought with it it’s own unique set of problems, as well as a whole new range of opportunity for the savvy business builder.  However, I would like to address a SPECIFIC debate within the realm of the aspiring Network Marketer, and it’s that of the question:

Is it even POSSIBLE to create an ACTUAL seven figure residual income entirely online in the MLM industry?

I might surprise a bunch of you who are regular readers of my blog… but here goes:

The answer is… NO.  It’s not.

“What???” Now before you high-tail it out of here, or contact the FTC and file a complaint that I’m telling you to go build a business by attacking your broke friends and warm market with the prospecting spear head, hear me out.

It’s important to understand what we’re doing, and not doing when we’re building a business online, and it’s also important that if we have a long term goal of passive wealth, that we not ignore the facts and the reality of both what exists and what doesn’t in our industry.

What DOES exist in our industry, and has existed for more than sixty years are thousands of people earning seven figure incomes who built their incomes almost entirely through business networking and warm market prospecting.  What DOESN’T exist is ANYBODY who has created the same brand loyalty, RESIDUAL wealth, and leverage through ONLY the internet, or ONLY through any other kind of advertising.

In fact, most of the people I know online who make a lot of money make massive amounts of cash selling affiliate products, coaching programs, websites, and systems, but their ACTUAL residual income from a legitimate Network Marketing company is less than $10,000 per month.  In fact, MOST of them have a residual income of less than $1,500 per month.  (These are the top dogs, people)

Well, that’s cool, because they can still make fat amounts of cash selling their programs.  In fact, the other day I saw a promising program online for sale called:

“How To Make Butt-Loads Of Cash Selling ‘How-To’ Courses To Network Marketers Without Ever Actually Being Successful In Network Marketing Yourself…”  (I’m kidding, of course… sort of)

So where’s the disconnect?  Why is it that people like Randy Gage are creating residual incomes of a couple of hundred thousand a month while the top dogs online jump ship from deal to deal looking for the magic bullet? (a whole new blog post is coming on that one…)

The answer is probably more simple than you would think, and it’s something that we need to address…  Think about it like this:

Normally, for the last 60-70 years when you would get started in a Network Marketing company, your upline would give you some kind of advice like this:

“Talk to EVERYONE, your neighbors, your cat, the grocer, the local police department, illegal aliens, etc…. your goal is to SPONSOR no matter what, just get out there and TALK to people”

So when you get started, that’s exactly what you do…  Now, this might not make you rich (really it depends how influential your sphere of influence is and how good you are at positioning yourself) but what it DOES do is get you sponsoring in your first week.

Compare that with what happens online.  You get started and your sponsor tells you:

“Ok, you need to learn how to market yourself before you’re ever going to be successful…  so set up your blog, set up your autoresponders, create a capture page, hire an article writer, learn how to be a guru, spend 4 hours a day chit-chatting on facebook, set up 14,000 affiliate accounts, and then FINALLY you’re ready to START….”

The problem is, that stuff takes so long and is so complicated, that MOST people will NEVER start.  They’ll quit before they do anything.  (Where in the traditional methods, the quitters still quit, but before they do they sponsor 5-10 people).  What online marketers also tend to be quiet about is the fact that to be successful in online marketing, you CAN’T copy someone else, you have to learn how to be ENTIRELY unique.  It will take most people six months to learn how to do if they are extremely aggressive.

As a result of this disconnect, distributors who build their businesses completely online have GIGANTIC frontlines and almost zero duplication in their teams, and they have the highest attrition rate of any business building method that exists.  So what do they do?  They assume that MLM is dead, duplication can’t happen, and so they jump to a program that doesn’t require anyone but themselves to be successful, hence the advent of ‘Top Tier’ programs.

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The flawed philosophy of doing that is that people in traditional Network Marketing have incomes that completely trump top tier programs, and a way better quality of life.  For example, in my last company, there are about 10 distributors with six figure monthly residuals, and about a thousand with healthy six figure annual residuals.  Most of those people could drop dead and still make seven figures a year.  Can you do that in a top tier program?  No.  You have to keep producing and selling $20k packages like a dog for the rest of your life.

So what’s the solution? It seems as if I’m harping on internet marketing as a way to build your business.  I’m not.  I just want ALL of us to realize that IN ADDITION to learning how to build our business online, let’s START sponsoring and building a team before we’re gurus, and get our teams doing the same thing.

Don’t ignore what’s worked for 70 years to try and build something that can’t be built.  I think that if Network Marketing is going to have a future, we need to have a war cry, that we learn to EMBRACE traditional methods and get people STARTED doing something simple that they can IMMEDIATELY do, and then they can learn whatever marketing method they want as they go along.

I think a good war cry would be to simply talk to five people a day about your opportunity, no matter what.

Now, if you’ve learned how to generate leads and you want to talk to five people a day from your leads, cool.  If you haven’t, prospect every day while you’re learning to market online.  Who should you talk to?  Anyone that you can practice with.  You could meet people through business networking, social clubs, you could talk with people and build relationships on facebook, pick up a newspaper and look for social gatherings and just get out there and network, learn how to meet people in coffee shops… anywhere.

Mike Dillard’s famous book ‘Magnetic Sponsoring’ got us all focusing on learning the ‘Marketing’ of Network Marketing, but what about putting the ‘NETWORKING’ back in network marketing?

Why not market your business online at a coffee shop, and then just build relationships with other people that hang out?  My first successful organization I built almost entirely through people I met in coffee shops (before the online days).  I wasn’t pushy, and I didn’t go to the coffee shop dressed like an Amway distributor.  I just made a lot of friends and as a result, I sponsored a lot of people.

Do I want you to abandon building your business online?  No.  There are things you can do through marketing that there is no possible way you can do in any other way.  You can sponsor 40-50 people a month into any company like clockwork by learning some clever advertising.  But do you want people in your team to HAVE to learn to be a marketing guru to be successful at all?  I’m just telling you that if you want long term residuals, don’t ignore the traditional methods in your pursuit for online Guru-Hood.

Did you get burned out trying traditional methods?  Maybe you were acting like an idiot to your friends, or maybe you never learned how to do it in a way that works.  Maybe instead of bashing the methods that have created REAL residual income, you could just learn the skills that can enable you to add the most powerful leverage building technique in existence to your business.

I might lose some of my following for saying some of the things I said in this post, and if that’s the case, so be it, but I want you to know the truth.  It’s time for the online community to wake up.  If you’re not going to embrace reality, maybe it’s time to join a top-tier program and rip off strangers for the rest of your life.

I’m holding a new war-cry all of you.  Talk to five people a day.  If you have leads, great, but if you don’t, learn to prospect until you do.  Learn to reach out, connect with people, and build relationships with people you haven’t met.

Don’t be an idiot and hang out in an elevator in the local shopping mall with a huge grin on your face and corny business cards, learn how to NETWORK.  Isn’t what we’re doing to build relationships?  I want you all to know the REAL marketing skills that will let you sponsor 40-50 people a month, but BEFORE you have them, you can build relationships right now.  There’s a world of people who are hurting for change, who are trapped in a race of 9-5 slavery.  Let’s go out and teach them the truth of economic freedom, and be a Hit-Man to the machine.

I appreciate all of you, and I encourage all of you to enter into a new era of Network Marketing with me, let us go out and set the world on fire.

Your Friend In Prosperity,

-David Wood

P.S. Be sure to leave your comments on this one.  I’d like to hear how many of you think I’m full of it, right on, etc.

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