Free advertisement

Using social media, forums, email marketing, video marketing, blogging or article marketing are all ways of free advertisement. Google Adwords, or Facebook adds are ways of paid advertisement. There’re also website that offer banners or text adds for free.

Ebay for example offers the possibility to buy and sell things online. You can also sell a service and therefor your MLM business opportunity. I’ve looked into this and I’ve discovered that there’re curtain rules. Often MLM is a banned topic. Why? I don’t know but it’s also the case when you want to use Wordpress to build a blog. Like we’ve seen earlier, network marketing has a bad image and therefor isn’t allowed everywhere.

When you go to Google in search for ‘free advertisement’ or ‘free advertise websites’ you’ll find lots of websites that offer this. The question is, how many people will see the adds? Google Adwords has a massive range. Until now my campaign is set on $ 4,- per day and my website has more than 200 hundred views a day. Not even half of those visitors are returning visitors so with $ 4,- a day and an average campaign you can get more than one hundred unique visitors a day. I think that’s impressive and I don’t know if this can be achieved with free ad sites.

I think you should use all methods. Just start using social media, start a blog, create a video channel, write a monthly newsletter and try to sign people to your email marketing system, use free and also paid ads. Just getting one sign up would be great, getting more is better but when you skip a marketing opportunity you will not sign that person. It’s all about synergy; all these actions together are more powerful than the one action on itself. Just like building a network of people who are working with network marketing you should build a network of marketing tools/possibilities. Daily millions of people search the web for all kinds of things. Make sure the people who are searching for business opportunities will find you.

Social Media

I think using social media can be a powerful marketing tool. Looking at my own social media profile I have more than 400 friends on Facebook. Spreading information or the link to my website can reach all those people at once. I haven’t did this yet because I want to make sure my website is finished first. I can also spread a link to this blog on Facebook. It’s getting pretty big now and I think it contains a lot of interesting and useful information. What kind of social media is there and how can you use it?

Facebook 

One of the biggest and well known social media networks is Facebook. There are several ways to use Facebook for your network marketing business. First you can share information about your business opportunity. People will see the information and that way they might get interested as well. When they like your information they can ‘Like’ your post and that way hundreds of other people in their network will see the information as well.

Another way of using Facebook to promote your business opportunity is by creating a business page. This is like a website but in Facebook. Here you can write everything about your network marketing opportunity and of course you can put your affiliate link on the page so that people can sign up with your business when they’re interested. Videos can added as well and of course people can ‘Like’ or join the page. This can be a powerful tool to create a network.

Facebook also offers the possibility to advertise. Just like Google Adwords you can use paid advertisement to promote your MLM business. With Facebook you can target your campaign very specific. You can select areas, gender, age and time for example. Do you think men in Peru in the age of 28 to 40 are the best people to have in your downline? With Facebook you can create a campaign only for those people.

Twitter 

Another well-known social network is Twitter. Twitter is different from Facebook. On Twitter you can start mini blogging about a subject and you can start following others who are writing about the same thing. They can follow you back as well. When you write about a subject others who are looking for information about that subject can find you and start following you on Twitter. It’s a kind of search engine. When you’re active on Twitter people will find you and join you. When you write about interesting information people will follow you. Remember, there has to be a reason to follow you, write about interesting things and share useful links as well.

LinkedIn 

LinkedIn is a business social network. Here you can also create a profile and you can connect to other professionals. For example it could be interesting to connect with someone who’s specialized in search engine optimization, internet marketing, web design or network marketing. You can also find interesting information on Twitter, participate in discussions or share you own information about you network marketing business.

Other social media 

These three social networks have a lot of users and offer great opportunities to build a network and to spread information about your own business opportunity. Using these social networks can be described as social network marketing. There are a lot more social networks like Google+, Orkut and Myspace. Google+ is the answer of Google to all social network success. They integrate all their services into the social network. In the future it can become an interesting network but for now most people are with Facebook and Twitter so that’s where you should focus as well.

Not everyone knows this but YouTube and Blogger for example are social networks as well. Sharing videos or articles is also a way of social networking and you can join others as well. There are a lot of other video websites and blog website to use as a social network. Flicker is a social network as well where you can share pictures. Recently Pinterest and Instagram are becoming more popular and are growing every day. You never know which social network will be the biggest and most popular in five years.

Email marketing

Another way of promoting your MLM business is email marketing. When you have a website you can make people sign up for a newsletter. That way you can keep in contact with members and/or prospects. There’re different ways to make visitor sign up for email marketing. Some websites offer the possibility to sign up somewhere on their website. Visitors just have to give their email and then there subscribed to the newsletter. Sometimes an email activation is required to prevent unwanted sign ups or other spam.

Why should you sign up for a newsletter? There has to be a reason for people to join your email marketing system. This can be one of the following reasons:

• Interesting news
• A guide to success
• Free promotional tools
• A step by step plan to build a website
• An Internet marketing newsletter 

These are some examples of subjects that you can use in a newsletter which could be interesting for people who visit your website. of course you have to write a weekly or monthly newsletter but if that gets you more visitors or at least more contact with others about your network marketing opportunity it’s worth the investment/time.

I’m not using email marketing yet but now that I know maybe I’ll write a monthly newsletter. I think this can be great to help your members. Every month you can write about a different topic on how to build your GDI network, a new marketing strategy, how to support your downline or the newest network marketing trends.

Join a Forum

I’ve talked about using forums before on this blog and since then I’ve signed to three forums. The first forum I’ve signed to was the Global Domains International forum. When you’re a member you can use this forum to talk to other GDI affiliates. There are several topics on how to expand your business. After a couple of days I’ve noticed that there is not a lot of activity on this forum. I’ll keep checking it because I think it’s interesting because a lot of GDI members are there.

The second forum I’ve joined was the scam forum. I joined that in the time I was looking for a network marketing opportunity. There’s a lot of activity on the forum and the information is different than the information you’ll find on the websites about the MLM opportunity. The forum is all about internet scams so the information is about bad experiences. I joined the forum because I wanted to see what people are saying about MLM and GDI in particular. I have to say, reading that kind of information doesn’t motivate you but you can also learn from it. For example people write a lot about joining a network marketing company and leaving it within two or three months. After that they describe their experiences and how you should never join a MLM company. When I see that I’m thinking, what did you actually do to build your company. It’s a bit cliché but I’m thinking: ‘Winners don’t quit and quiters don’t win’. I’ve learn on this forum that a lot of people think you can get rich with MLM the easy way. Also there are a lot of serious warnings on which MLM companies not to join. People describe how they paid their monthly contribution and by the time they earned some money they never got it.

The last forum I’ve Joined recently is Wickedfire. This is a forum about search engine optimization and internet marketing. I thought it would be interesting since I’ve discovered that there’re so many other ways to promote your business. Here they have a Sell, Buy and trade section where you can buy services to optimize your website. I’m figuring out how to make my own GDI website better and how to get more visitors. That´s why I joined this forum.

When you join a forum you can learn a lot. Also people are willing to help you. On most forums it’s possible to use a signature. That way every post you write contains a signature with a link to you website or blog. That way you can use those forums as a marketing tool as well.

Video marketing

One of the ways to promote your network marketing business is video marketing. Video marketing is free. For example you make an instruction video about how to sign up with Global Domains International and you upload it to YouTube, DailyMotion and/or to Vimeo. When people are looking for ways to earn money online they can find your video.

How does it work?

Is making a video hard? Well that depends on what kind of a video you want to make. With windows video maker you can easily edit a video. Just collect some pictures, a music theme and you can add some text in between. This maybe sounds lame but you can really make a great video with just that. Image the video about how to sign up with GDI. In the first shot you use a text like ‘How to sign up with GDI’. Then you add the picture (a print screen) of the page people will see when they sign up. Than you add the text ‘fill in the form’. The people go to the next page, just show the picture of this page in the video. Do you get the picture? With windows movie maker you can make a great step by step video of how to do something.

Building a Channel 

 After you’ve made a couple of videos you can upload them all to YouTube (or one of the other video websites). When you have more than one video you can create a channel. For example you can create a network marketing, Global Domains International or a MLM channel. That way you’ll get more visitors because you channel contains more videos about different subjects. With videos it works the same as with webpages, you can add keywords so that people will find your videos when they search the web. When your videos are interesting and people return or more people will watch the videos you’re video or channel gets higher in the search results in Google and YouTube.

Did you know..? 

Did you know that after Google, YouTube is most used search engine in the world? That’s why you shouldn’t just focus on your website but also on video marketing. Also YouTube is a social network. You can become friends with other users. That way your videos can be found easier as well, because there are more ways to get to them. Your videos also climb the rankings because not only views count for the value of a video but also the network it’s in.

Thinking about using video marketing for your network marketing business but you don’t know where to make a video about? Take a look at the GDI video channel on the right and get some ideas to make a useful video.

Internet marketing

I’ve been searching the web for information on Google Adwords and how to build a proper website. The good news is that there is a lot of information but that’s also the bad news. It looks like internet marketing is a profession on itself. There are so many ways of promoting a website and also a lot of possibilities are free. I’ve made a list of things to promote my Global Domains International business and I’ll try them one by one. When I think it’s a possible way to promote my business I’ll share it. Soon I’ll make a list of things you can use to promote your own network marketing business.

Google Adwords is great. You can start right away and you see results immediately. However it’s not free. Now my campaign is running with a maximum of 5 dollars a day. When I increase that I’ll have more visitors and my company can grow faster. At this time I don’t know if my website is the way it should be and I’d like to see how many people will sign up this month. Also I want to see how those people will do, building their own businesses. I’d like to learn from them as well. For now I not going to invest more than the one hundred dollars I’ve invested in the Google Adwords campaign. When my credit is used I’ll see what I’ll do next. I’m not making money with GDI yet so I have to see how much I can invest and how much I’ll be making.

While the campaign is running I can focus on different things like the other promotional options I’ve found on the internet. This week I want to join two or three forums where I can talk and share ideas with others who are also having a network marketing business. Maybe I can work with those people and maybe they want to join my company. That would be great because those people are probably exactly the people I want to have in my downline.

I think that there are a lot of possibilities with internet marketing and I’m going to figure out what those are. In my next posts I’ll try to write about a new way to tell others about you’re business opportunity. To give you an impression of what’s coming here are some possibilities:

• Video marketing (YouTube) 
• Forums 
• Email marketing 
• Social Media (Twitter, Facebook) 
• Free advertising

My first visitors

This is fun, I’ve finished my website and I’ve started a Google Adwords campaign. The first day I already had over thirty visitors. I have to say Google Adwords looks easier than you think. For now I’ve created a campaign but I don’t know for sure if I did it the right way.

The first thing you need to do is create a Google account. I already had one so that was easy. Than you need to set up a campaign name and then you can create several advertisements with different titles, texts and keywords. I think that’s the hard thing to do. No I used my imagination to come up with words people will use who are interested in a network marketing business opportunity. I check my campaign every day and I can see how some words get clicked on often and others get clicked on less often. Also you can see how much it costs when people click your ad. That way I’m trying to optimize my campaign to get as much clicks (visitors) as possible for less money.

Now my website is visited thirty times every day. How much subscriptions do I have? Now that’s an interesting question. I have two ‘missed sign ups’ a day. That means people start filling in the form but don’t complete their subscription one hundred percent. I think I know why. Somewhere GDI asks for your credit card information. I don’t think everyone has a credit card. Although the first seven days are a free trail GDI needs your credit card details for the first payment once you decide to become a member. I haven’t figured out how to fix this problem but of course I will look in to it and I’ll write about it when I can tell you more.

Now that I’m getting visitors, I’m getting subscriptions as well. The first subscriptions have been ‘missed sign ups’ but maybe they’ll return. If they don’t new customers will sing up. Now I think I need to focus on optimizing my website and my Google Adwords Campaign. That way I can get more customers to my website and once they’re on my website I can make sure they sign up by making my website bigger, better and more attractive to visitors. My website must convince them to sign up, I can’t tell them that in person but I can try to create a good sales page.

Building my website

I’ve tried to build a Google Adwords Campagne for the replicate sites Global Domains International offers members but since a lot of people use these websites it’s not possible to advertise them. Google Adwords points out that the website address redirects user to another website. That’s true because it redirects to your specific user id page so that people who sign up with GDI sign to your team.

So before using Google Adwords I have to create a website. To be honest I forgot about this feature because I was focusing too much on signing my first members. It looks very easy. It’s an easy to use interface where you can add and move around pages. Also there are a lot of features and gadgets to use on the website like the income calculator, video’s and there are several templates to choose from. The only thing that takes some time is writing the content for the website.

I’ve watched some other websites to see how they are build and what kind of information is given. I’ve decided to create the following pages: 

• Home
• What is Global Domains International 
• How can you make money? 
• How to build your GDI business 
• About me 
• Contact 

Also I’ve made sure that on every page there’s a possibility to click a sign up button. You never know when someone decides to join the team. The first page will be about what people can find on the website. It will be an introduction to a network marketing business opportunity. Here it’s important to get people’s attention, they have to want to read more. On the second page I’ll write my elevator pitch. I have to describe what GDI is and how it works and I think I have to use 300 words maximum. On the third page I’ll explain further how people can make money, I’ll explain how the compensation plan works. Also I’ll add the income calculator widget so that people can find out for themselves how much they can make with GDI. Then I think it’s important to explain how to create a business. I’m experiencing now how to find new members. As you can see on this blog sometimes I have success but I’ve also done things that didn’t really help my business grow. The fifth page is about me. Here I’ll describe my motivation to work with GDI and I also write about this blog and tell people there is a lot of information on here that might be useful. They don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Last but not least I’ll add a contact page where people can ask me all kinds of questions. 

I don’t know if this is the right way to build a website but I have to start somewhere. In the meanwhile I’ll try to find out more about building a website so that I can make it better over time.

Who do you want in your downline?

After my research about pro’s and con’s of network marketing I kept think about why some people are successful with network marketing but also so many people quit. What’s the difference between success and failure. Will I be one of the people that will be successful or is this the beginning of me quitting as well?

While thinking about this I asked myself another question: Who do I want in my downline? The first answer that came to my mind was people who don’t quit. Then I thought about people who are successful with network marketing. I want to have people in my downline who can build their own business, they have to be creative, independent and most of all they have to achieve success and don’t quit. I can sign up one hundred people who quit after six months or five people who won’t quit until they also have found five people each that will be successful as well.

This tells me two things. First I can’t just tell everybody about my business opportunity and hope they’ll join. Telling my friends is ok but only if they are really interested. The thing about telling them and making sure they’ll sign before leaving is now officially over. The second thing is another question: Where do I find people that are willing to invest the same energy, time and maybe a little bit of money to build their business.

I thought about two things to answer this question. The first thing was Google Adwords. I thought I should advertise for domain registration and for business opportunities. That way I could reach people that were looking for business opportunities or who were looking to register a domain. I also thought about advertising for network marketing and MLM opportunities. I’ll start doing this next Monday and I’ll keep you posted about the effects.

Another thing is joining a forum about network marketing, global domains international or about business opportunities. Here I can learn a lot and maybe I can find people to join forces with. It feels good to have new things to try and to realize maybe I wasn’t on the right track yet. I’m excited and I’ll write about my experiences as soon as possible in my next post.

Pro’s and Con’s about network marketing

If been trying to find the answer to why network marketing is described fantastic and as a scam at the same time. I’ll write about the pro’s first and then I’ll write about the con’s as well. You decide what you think about network marketing after that.

Pro

Network marketing offers an opportunity for people to generate extra income or even a fulltime income. Actually there is now limit to what you can make with network marketing. Also you can work from home or even from another country. It offers the possibility to travel and see the world and still be able to earn money. That is of course if you become successful. 

You can make money by finding new members or customers to join the network marketing business. No matter if the product is about health or about having your own domain name, it’s all about expanding your business or network and earing money over the people that joined the business through you. The great thing is that you do not only earn money over the people you directly refer but also for people that join through others that you’ve already signed up. Global Domains International for example calls this the power of duplication. When you think about it and when you use the income calculator you can see that there is a lot of money to be made with MLM. The compensation plan of a lot of network marketing opportunities offer that possibility to make a lot of money.

Con

The great thing about making money with MLM is that when you manage to build a large business all those people will also try to build a large business and you will earn more and more money because of that. When those people are doing well you’re doing well to. But maybe that also one of the con’s about network marketing. If you succeed to build a big network, you can make a lot of money. But what if you don’t? What if you tried to expand your network but nobody seems to be willing to work with your business opportunity? Why do some people succeed and why do some people fail?

I’ve discovered the percentage of people that start with a network marketing opportunity and quit within six months. Are you ready to see how many people quit network marketing early? 95 % doesn’t make a single dollar and quit. It looks like building a business isn’t as easy as it seems.

Another thing I found was telling people you know about your business opportunity and when they aren’t interested you get frustrated. I totally recognize this problem. In the beginning you think people you know will sign up but then you discover they are all having a job or they just aren’t interested in the business opportunity you’re offering them. It’s terrible to discover that you’re frustrated and irritated to your own friend. When you discover that the people you thought you would sign up right away aren’t sign up you start to realize you’re running out of options to expand your business. 

I also have to say that at this moment I’m pro network marketing but what happens when I quit. I’ll maybe say network marketing is a scam because I didn’t succeed. I had a dream of being rich and I’d have all the freedom in the world but when that gets taken away from you your mad.

Looking at the pro’s and the con’s I have to say I can relate to both sides of the story. I’ve also read somewhere that “quiters don’t win and winners don’t quit”. When I quit my network marketing business already without really trying I definitely won’t make any money. I have to find a way to find people who are willing to build a MLM business just like me.