Have you ever tried promoting your MLM business to friends and family members, to no avail? Have you ever tried advertising your biz in your neighborhood, posting signs, flyers, and giving away calling cards? If you’ve ever done any of those mentioned methods, I’m sure you have many war stories to tell. You’re still probably not a millionaire at this point and you’re actually losing more money than you actually make. Well, many distributors are experiencing the exact same thing.

There is a better way to make more money in network marketing. Instead of dragging your friends and family to a business opportunity meeting, hoping that they will sign up, you can use non-threatening and “automated” methods towards promoting your MLM program. Thanks to the internet, you can now use new marketing methods and strategies that would not have been possible to networkers two or three decades ago.

The easiest way to make money in MLM is to sell front end products first. Instead of directly promoting your business opportunity, offer something that your target market already needs and wants. Better yet, if you could sell something that they are already buying elsewhere and are willing to invest money in repeatedly, you can successfully penetrate the market. Your “front end” product must be dirt cheap and ideally below the price range of $14.95. It could be a physical product, a service, or a downloadable item.

Now, selling front end products is not your main goal. Your goal is to start an ongoing stream of cashflow to your business. You then invest your cash into more advertising, until a snowball of revenue accumulates. As you gradually increase the amount of your customers through weeks and months of selling, you then “back end“ those customers to your network marketing business. This means, you offer your business opportunity to active customers of your front end products. This also means, you earn money whether people join your business or not.

I’m not claiming in any way that this method is easier than the traditional way of network marketing. You will need to learn new skills, such as direct response advertising, website building, autoresponder follow up and many others. You also need to learn additional skills such as website building and marketing methods such as article writing and pay-per-click advertising. Scary? Not so. These things can be learned. And once you master how this online marketing process works, you can make more money easier than the traditional way of pressuring your family and friends, or posting flyers and signs in the neighborhood.

Too many people join an MLM business but they don’t have the skills to present their business opportunity to others. The result is that they become full of desire and passion to succeed, but they don’t have an outlet to channel that. So they end up feeling frustrated and as broke as when they first signed up.

There is no shortcut to learning how to present your business opportunity perfectly. But just like any other skill, mastering the art of presenting can be learned. The key is to start your presentation with a bang. Open up by stressing important benefits related to your business opportunity. Grab your prospect’s attention. Ask him a mind boggling question: “How would you like to earn an extra $10,000 per month in the next 12 months?” is just an example. You can try other openings to catch your prospect’s attention.

After you catch the prospect’s attention, you then smoothly transition to your “problem-solution” routine. This is the part where you stress a particular problem (or a set of problems) which your prospect might have. You are already aware of these problems because you have done your market research beforehand. For example, if you want to present your business opportunity to corporate people, stress the hardships and struggles of corporate life. Make them feel the pain for as long as it takes. Stress the problems and emphasize the struggles until it hurts. When it hurts so much, people will want to hear a solution. That solution is your product or business opportunity.

I have just given you the simple format towards presenting your business opportunity. First, you open with a huge attention getter. Next, you stress an important problem (or a set of problems) that your prospect has. Then, position your product as the solution to that problem or need. You can do this sequence in face to face meetings with prospects, or when you’re marketing online through a sales video or sales letter. If you can fill your website with this proven presentation sequence, you’ll doubtless get more customers.

But wait, there is one final step to presenting your business opportunity. After opening with a bang, emphasizing a painful problem, and presenting a solution, it is now time for you to close the transaction. In other words, you seal the deal with a powerful call to action. After you’ve already stated your case, simply ask, “Are you ready to get started?” or “Should we take the next step now?” or simply say, “Fill up this form right here.” Don’t underestimate this step. This is where the money is.

Multi-level marketing is a business model that lets products and services be distributed primarily through word of mouth advertising. In easier terms, MLM is a way of pushing products and services by simply telling it to others. Traditional marketing uses channels of distribution such as TV ads, newspapers, magazines, and radio to promote a business. Network marketing, meanwhile, promotes products through a circle of friends or primarily through a “network” of friends and relatives.

But today, many network marketers are shifting towards traditional methods of advertising. Many have begun to use radio, print, and online advertising. In fact, the competition in these ad networks has become very tight over the past few years. With everything that’s going on in the industry, what is the future of network marketing? Is it ok to use traditional advertising and prospecting methods?

In my opinion, doing traditional prospecting methods is not bad if (and this is a big if) there is a system of converting leads and prospects into raving customers. You can advertise and promote all you’d like, but if you can’t turn your ad respondents into signups and customers, you don’t earn money. Period.

The internet seems to be the best option towards advertising your business nowadays. Of course, I’m not saying this is the only way, but it is the best in our time. Never before has it been possible to write a three-line ad and potentially reach a million people with your advertising message. Google Pay Per Click Advertising, for example, can be a very beneficial tool for networkers who take an upfront selling approach, then a backend recruiting model.

All this simply means, the best way to advertise your MLM business is to advertise it online. Now, when you promote through the internet, you should sell upfront in order to get hungry customers. Once you have a regular stream of customers at your doorstep, you then “back-end” them into your business opportunity. That’s the process used by many MLM distributors who have taken their business online. It allows them to erase their advertising costs and automatically generate a stream of prospects, customers, and new distributors.

Implementing the plan above may not be easy at first. You have to learn some skills. You need to learn how to use online tools such as websites, blogs, and autoresponders. You also need to have a way of converting your leads into verified buyers and signups. All this can be learned. It is important to keep searching and learning new things everyday. There’s so much to learn from the internet.

There is a growing misconception nowadays popularized by MLM trainers and online gurus. They tell you that sponsoring your friends and relatives to your network marketing business is not a good thing to do. That is not true! You see, your “warm market” is a very rich source of leads, prospects, signups, customers, and referrals. If you know the right way to tap into it, that’s equal to money earned for you.

The problem though, with lots of network marketers, is that they approach their warm market the wrong way. You see, they drag Uncle Bob to the latest business opportunity seminar. They promise Aunt Betty that she will earn thousands of dollars if she just invested a certain amount of money. They “terrorize” their friends and persistently overwhelm them with get rich quick schemes and complicated compensation plans. These tactics will not work if you’re trying to tap into your warm market!

The best way to work your warm market is to simply be yourself. Don’t hard sell. Don’t get into long presentations. Just be yourself and don’t be ashamed of your business. Eventually, if your life is out in the open and everybody knows that you are working a network marketing business, some of your relatives will start to ask how you do what you do.

Friends and relatives absolutely hate it when you hard sell them. I mean, you would feel the same way, right? What if your nephew tries to hard sell you into buying something you think you don’t need? No doubt you’ll laugh and say, “Some other time nephew, you know I’ve got lots of things to do.” So don’t be a hard salesman. Just work your business wholeheartedly enough to generate interest from your relatives. When they start to ask about your business, just give them honest, reliable, and no holds barred information. Don’t hide stuff from them. Treat them as “insiders” and show them how to save money on their purchases. If you do this, you’ll win more of your friends and your relatives to your MLM program.

Have you ever tried working your warm market list? I’m sure you have lots of war stories to tell. However, I’m pretty convinced that warm market prospecting really works. I’ve sponsored many of my friends and relatives to my program and many of them benefitted from the business opportunity I offered. Don’t be afraid to approach your warm market. It is a very good source of highly interested prospects and referrals, if you know how.