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How to turn MLM on its
Head for Better Affiliate Sales
“You must use the Products”
In
my multi-level-networking days long before mlm came to the
Internet, all the networking programs urged distributors to
“Use the Products”.
Seemed
to make sense at the time. How could anyone recommend or
promote to others a product they didn’t use themselves?
“Please
buy this terrific product. I don’t use it myself but
it’s really great – you try it”.
Wouldn’t
work would it? And it didn’t – so networkers were urged
and urged by their upline to ‘buy their own products’.
Some
networkers didn’t like the products, but they liked the
compensation plan. So they bought the products anyway and
just stored them. Hence the joke about networkers having
huge garages – they needed them to store all the products
they ‘had’ to buy’!
Another
reason they ‘bought the products’ was to increase the
group turnover. All commissions depend upon product sales
– no sales- no commission. Only it was always the sponsors
who got the commission – always the sponsors telling their
downline to “Use the Products”.
It went like this:
Commission
Plan -> Products -> Recommendation & Sales
People
liked to make the commission so they bought the products in
order to be able to recommend them and to make the
commission for their upline.
To
quote one well known *Big A Diamond* “Who cares how much
the products cost – if they cost twice as much I’d make
twice as much money”.
Many
people felt they were buying unwanted products at inflated
prices – just to keep the network alive. Have you ever
been in this situation?
Well
to me this all sounds a bit like legitimizing the old
Pyramid selling schemes, where people had to buy stock to
‘sell-on’.
Of
course, many bought the stock but couldn’t sell it. Hence
network marketing became tarred with the same poor image as
Pyramid schemes. And it’s hard to shake it off.
Unfortunately
on the Internet, there are a great deal of ‘money
schemes’ which are basically networking schemes without
products – chain letters – and pseudo-networks which
have pseudo products, ‘informational’ products sold at
huge mark-ups.
So
people are very wary of joining even ‘legitimate’
Networking programs and everyone loses out on what is
basically a very good idea.
Turning things around
But
suppose this Commission Plan -> Products ->
Recommendation & Sales cycle could be turned on its
head.
Well
now it has. With this website.
This
website was built from the outset to provide a
real website to people who found it difficult to overcome the
technical challenges themselves.
Having
built the site and started to promote it the thought came
– why not also offer the tools used to build the site in
the first place. After all, if anyone needed the same kind
of tool, then I had done all the hard work for them finding
the best there was.
So
the products come first!
Instead
of :
Commission
Plan -> Products -> Recommendation & Sales
It’s
now:
Products
-> Recommendation -> Sales -> Commission Plan
Products sought out to fill a need
These
products, as I said, are the very ones I used to build and
run the site. They are the best I could find at the time, at
a price I was prepared to pay.
They
are products sought out to fill a need, not products sought
out with the best profit margin!
They
include everything from website building – hosting –
marketing – advertising – site automation.
Every
product on this site is one I have actually sought out
because that is the tool I needed at the time. The best tool
for the job. I did not select these products on the basis of
any commission plan.
They
are all products I swear by. I won’t go through all the
products here because this is not a ‘sales pitch’ but I
would like to mention a couple just to illustrate my point.
Example Product 1
Take
MailLoop for example, a really stunning product:
This
handles all my email automatically. I have only scratched
the surface of its features, but here is what it does for
me:
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Filters
incoming email. Eliminates Spam. I mean Eliminates
Spam. No unwanted email gets through to me. Worth the
price of the program for this feature alone.
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On
my site I have a web form that visitors complete to
join my On-Track Newsletter and in return they get
some free eBooks. When the visitor presses the
‘Submit’ button the form is emailed to me. This is
what MailLoop does with the incoming emailed form:
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strips
out all the data from the the form, including
names, email address, date, IP address, type of
browser and more. . .
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adds
all this information to a database that is
specially configured to allow me to
automatically email these subscribers in future
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sends
the subscriber the latest copy of the
Newsletter, together with a welcome message, by
email.
The email is personalised with the
subscriber name, email address and date of
subscribing. (Dear David, at david@eamiladdress.com
thank you for subscribing to On-Track Newsletter
on 12 December 2001)
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If
a subscriber sends an unsubscribe message,
MailLoop automatically removes them from the
list.
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When
I want to send out a Newsletter, MailLoop does it for
me automatically and personalizes all the emails.
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I
can even control MailLoop from another computer! Yes
if I am away from the office I can send an email to
MailLoop and command it to send out any Newsletter.
(This is a service I could market, if I wanted too.)
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MailLoop
also includes as many autoreponders as you want. It
can respond based on Subject, From Subject and so on.
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On
the other hand, it has a built-in scheduler that can
run any program at any pre-set time. I can schedule
follow-up emails at any intervals I want.
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And
as I said, that is just scratching the surface of what
MailLoop can do.
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And
because it runs from my own computer I don’t pay
monthly fees.
Oops, sounds like a commercial for MailLoop!
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Sorry
about that, but when you see it in action and how it
saves hours of time processing these jobs manually –
its truly Awesome.
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But
the point is – I sought it out. I went on the hunt looking
for email automation software. I looked at all the other
well know products and in the end settled on MailLoop. It
does what I want very well indeed and I recommend it to
everyone who wants a serious online business.
Oh!
Do I get a commission by recommending it? Yes, but that is
not why I bought it and that is NOT why I am recommending
it. I recommend it on the basis of being the best tool for
the job at the price I want to pay.
Now can you see?
Can
you now begin to understand why The Affiliate Website
Company turns the old mlm model on its head?
Instead
of :
Commission
Plan -> Products -> Recommendation & Sales
It’s now:
Products
-> Recommendation -> Sales ->Commission Plan
The
same applies to theaffiliatewebsite.com website itself. I
built it to help people who wanted a website but were
put-off by the time and technology involved.
I
did not start out with the thought ‘how can I make a ton
of money selling websites’.
My
goal was to make a website that people could own and use to
build their own business.
Example Product 2
So
I recommend that people buy the product, the
theaffiliatewebsite.com website, because it is the best
product for its purpose.
And
I believe it is the best. In fact it is unique.
There
is not another website out there like it.
Let
me prove it to you. (Then I will get back to turning mlm on
its head!)
You
can buy, or obtain ‘free’ a website from many places on
the Internet. I’ll even tell you where to get them! But
just for now, believe me when I tell you where these other
sites fall down:
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They
are empty shells.
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That’s right you can ‘buy’ a
website for $1000s (thousands of US dollars) and it
has no content.
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All you get is the front page.
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You
never own them, they always belong to the Merchant You
have to pay a monthly or yearly fee to get access to
‘your’ site
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You
can’t add your content or Affiliate links
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In
fact, this product was developed for that very reason,
because there was nothing suitable available! I
developed the website to suit my own requirements,
also mindful that it would suit other people’s needs
also.
So
what better recommendation is there? I am not
recommending it because it makes great Affiliate
profits for me, but because it is a product I had to
develop to fulfill a need and it is a product that I
know people want – because they just keep buying it.
Example
Product 3
AdMinder
is an ad and sales tracking product.
I
am now tracking all my ads using AdMinder. This is
essential to anyone who wants to know which ads
perform. Its throwing money and opportunity away if
you don’t track your ads.
I
used to use Roibot. That’s not bad, but near the end
of last year they accidentally deleted my records, so
I discontinued. That was a once-off server problem, so
I have no problem recommending ROIbot, its just that
AdMinder is more sophisticated.
It
tracks ads and sales. AdMinder is just a single
program, ROIbot is bundled with other useful stuff.
You can get a 1$ trial with ROIbot, so if you are
placing ads there is no excuse for not tracking them.
All the info on ad tracking and ROIbot is on your
site.
But
AdMinder not only tracks ads, it tracks sales also. On
the control panel you will see the performance of each
ad in terms of clicks and also you will see the number
of sales each ad has made.
It
also calculates all the metrics, such cost per click,
cost per sale and so on. Truly an awesome piece of
software that anyone who takes online marketing
seriously cannot be without.
Without
doubt, I would not be without it.
A
true endorsement.
To
learn more about some of the products I endorse,
please visit our products page by clicking here
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