Hi Gary! Been a pretty busy week. I get in to read the posts but seldom have any time to reply. Then when I do, we're usually so far past where my train of thought lies that I get sidetracked by the new info! LOL Upline will always find a way to make money. An interesting comment. Do you say that in regards to existing large groups or new and upcoming distributors? Wouldn't it make sense for an enterprising distributor to put together a website for training their downline? At no cost to the distributor. It would serve in their best interest wouldn't it?

Hi Winston, Yeah, the pace here has been furious. I'm trying to do something on my website and I keep getting all these "Adland Community" emails. LOL! Anyway, it's Saturday here - overcast and blowy. I'll take my own comment first and expand on it: ---------------------- "Upline will always find a way to make money." ---------------------- OK. Somebody, maybe Linda, mentioned something a while back about business minded people being good at making profits no matter what the business. (Sorry if it was someone else). I agree with that notion. Adding to that... I read in a book once that if all the money in the world was collected up then distributed evenly to every man, woman and child in the world, that inside 2 years those who have it all now would have it all back again. Now, I don't know how one would quantify that but the idea behind it is that some people are just really good at getting the stuff and others are not. ----------------------- An interesting comment. Do you say that in regards to existing large groups or new and upcoming distributors? ----------------------- Pretty much as above. I have seen king-pin distributors quit large organizations then go and build to huge levels in other organizations. They know the MLM formula that works for them. ------------------------ "Wouldn't it make sense for an enterprising distributor to put together a website for training their downline? At no cost to the distributor. It would serve in their best interest wouldn't it?" ------------------------ Heh, heh... now we enter the minefield (somehow I always seem to get back to the battlefield!)... If an "enterprising distributor" commenced doing such a thing and it worked like a charm, how long do you think it would be before the king-pins adopted an even bigger and better system based on the E.D's model and instructed him or her to shut theirs down? Either that or they would name theirs as the "official blah-blah" site. Either way, if it worked well the king-pins would usurp it. Or the company supplying the goods might ban it from being aligned to their products. Which gets back to my original comment: ---------------------- Upline will always find a way to make money. ---------------------- Hope that answers your questions. Gary Simpson

Hi Winston; ========================================== I mentioned this before. So far, what I see is that most MLMs don't "get" the Internet. They don't understand how people actually sell product online and they don't give their people the tools to do it right. Linda, I recall you mentioning this before. What kind of tools do you think would be advantageous to help MLM companies help their distributors through this? ========================================== Here's a perfect example. I have a client that runs an herbal site. They have a small handful of products that are their own. They also "private label" a few products, which means the manufacturer lets them put their own name on the product. (This is quite common) They have a database of about 9,000 customers. Now, they've been looking for a particular antioxidant formula. They don't want to manufacture yet another product, so they're looking to resell. Private label or not. And they found one. It's sold by a company that's using the MLM structure. So, they "issue" a url that's (of course) parentcompany.com?id=herbalco When people click on the url, they go to the main page, which has all the "opportunity of a lifetime" spiel on it. So I say.... NO, NO, NO to the business owner. You have a good reputation with these 9,000+ people. Many of them will be turned OFF by MLM pitches. They don't come to your site to sign up for an MLM. They come to your site because they TRUST YOU to sell them good health care products. I want to tell about the product on the herbal site.... and send them straight to the shopping cart to check out. I want to bypass the "join the MLM" pitch. MLM company scratches head. Ummm... we can't do that. Why? I ask. Well, that's not how our tracking works. You will need to use parentcompany.com?id=herbalco I don't want to use that. I am not trying to sign up these 9,000 people in the downline. I just want them to buy the antioxidant formula. How can I send them straight to the cart? Ummm... we can't do that. Okay, I ask... Can we BUY the product and fill the orders ourselves? Ummm... we can't do that, either... Why not, I ask? Um.... that's not how the system works. Herbal co will only get credit if they send people to our website to buy. So.. herbal co is supposed to send people to the MLM pitch, fully knowing that some customers will get turned off and stop shopping with Herbal Co. Those that don't get turned off may join themselves, bypassing the seller. Scratch that product. This same herbal co found ONE MLM product that allowed them to stock their own goods and fill their own orders. Our first promotion did 13,000 in sales. When the MLM awarded the herbal co owner with "Gold seller of the month" everyone wanted to know how we did it. Sure as heck NOT using their crappy online system. We had to bring IN the product and sell it at the herbal co site to get those results. Incidentally, with the product we later stocked ourselves, we also tried using the "replicated MLM site complete with seller id" to prove the point. Sales sucked royally. That's what I mean. Sorry it was a bit long winded. They don't "get" the point that people need to be able to SELL product without sending everyone to the downline pitch. : ) Linda

---------------------------------------------- If an "enterprising distributor" commenced doing such a thing and it worked like a charm, how long do you think it would be before the king-pins adopted an even bigger and better system based on the E.D's model and instructed him or her to shut theirs down? ---------------------------------------------- I've been wondering the same thing Gary. I know of an instance where someone had gone ahead and done just that with corporate offices support along the way. Corporate liked it so much they started refering other groups to this site to get their training. (I've not heard of any reprecussions from the so called King Pins to date.) To me, as a simple matter of building an mlm business it would be in your interest to make sure that your downline had all the tools they needed to help them along the road. If you can provide them for free, all the better.

---------------------------------------------- I want to bypass the "join the MLM" pitch. ---------------------------------------------- I can certainly see how that would present a problem. While I can understand how the sale of the product is important, if the mlm companies do that do they not defeat the entire purpose of thier MLM business in the first place? Especially when it comes to exclusivity? Being a person that believes in the sales end of your products, if I go to a website and see a companies business opportunity plastered all over their front page, then that is definitely one I want to stay away from. Fortunately, some of these pitfalls you mention in this area we do not face with our business. Mind you, there is a link to the business opportunity on the main page but it's just that, a link. Their main up front focus is the product/service. I think the reasoning behind that is because of the type of business they operate. While it does have an MLM element for those interested, it also has just a resellers account as well.