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Is Network Marketing a Good Option for Building a Successful Home Based Business?

Hundreds of thousands of people are trying to build a successful home based business with network marketing. Indeed, Robert Kiyosaki calls it the ‘The Business of the 21st Century’.

But how does network marketing – also known as multilevel marketing or MLM – stack up against other options if you are looking for residual income opportunities? Three questions spring to mind:

1. Can MLM earn you substantial residual income?
2. What are the drawbacks – if any?
3. Is it the only game in town, or are there other options?

Can you earn big money with an MLM home based business, or is it a scam? Well, I’ve spent the past 18 months or so as a distributor with one network marketing company. It has not brought me riches, but I am completely convinced that it has the potential to do so. I say that because I know other distributors in the same company who are doing very well indeed. So it can work.

However, detractors point out that you have to get other people to join up as distributors if you want to achieve high income levels. You don’t get rich selling a company’s products, they say, you get rich by recruiting other people into your team – and your team then make the sales that builds your residual income.

In my view, that’s not a huge problem provided it’s relatively easy to sell the company’s products. If the products are easy to sell, that means that you are bringing other people into a genuine money making opportunity.

The two main issues I have with MLM are the need for ‘selling skills’ and the fact that you are dependent on the long term financial health of the networking company.

You do need decent selling skills to make money at MLM. Either you’re selling product or you’re selling the opportunity to potential new distributors. If you don’t like selling, your chances of making large amounts of residual income are low.

But what if you do well, and build a decent income? What happens if the company goes bust, or something else nasty happens to it? What if you’ve spent ten hard years building your network marketing business?

Given these issues, I believe that it makes sense to look at other residual income opportunities – either as a complete alternative, or to run at the same time as your MLM business. For example, another very popular low cost option is a computer based business. The world is your market nowadays, and many ‘internet entrepreneurs’ are earning levels of residual income equivalent to MLM. Also, with a computer based business, you may not be so dependent on the financial health of another company.

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Effective Marketing Strategies in Product Creation

Marketing includes matters such as pricing and packaging of the product and creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns. There are other options, of course, like product creation, resale rights marketing, joint ventures and the likes, but they are merely secondary to the above.

If you take the freelance route, it is important to ensure that all rights to profit from the final product, or any materials produced in its making, remain yours. Bookkeeping, physical product creation or delivery of goods can be done better with specialized help. Determining the purpose of the product is vital in niche product creation.

Implementation of Methodology – The choice of implementation of Six Sigma methodology depends on whether development is required on existing processes (DMAIC) or on new process/product design creation (DMADV). Determining what you really want to sell, something that you can be relaxed selling is the first step at the creation of a niche product. With the technological advancements in the hosting industry, from automated control panels and scripts that simplify creation of accounts; to complete turnkey solutions, there is no excessive need to worry about spending time on the actual product sold to the customer.

For instance, you should be prepared to either perform yourself or to subcontract the completion of the following tasks:- Product idea research (are there any existing products or patents already existing for this idea)- Product specification document training (what it will do, how it will look, how will it be powered, and how the user will interface with it)- Marketing study (what it will be named, who would buy this, how much would they pay, how will we get customers to purchase the product)- Schematic or electronic circuit design process- Creation of a bill of material or BOM and an approved vendor’s list or AVL for each component in the design, preferably with multiple sources identified, with a BOM and AVL for each assembly level in the product- Printed circuit board layout design process (single sided board, double sided board, or multilayer board; size of the PCB; board material)- Mechanical packaging design with user interfaces (displays, buttons, switches, key. This removes all product creation costs from your budget as a marketer.

No other database of affiliate programs offers such a possibility for profit on either the affiliate side or the product creation site. Your chosen niche should allow for the creation of more than one product or service.

There are several marketing strategies that are necessary in the creation of a successful e-commerce web site – Email marketing (broadcasting) of prospects/customers – Effective use of auto responders (generate automatic email messages) – Online Newsletter – Online Form / Survey to capture your prospect’s email address – Electronic Product Delivery (if you sold a digital product) – Advertisement (Ad) Tracking – Back End Sales – Affiliate program etc.

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Know What It Takes To Become A Good Real Estate Agent

When considering what it takes to become a real estate agent, you have to think about your specific location. Plus, you have to understand that qualifications do change from time to time. You are thinking about the career opportunity, and you’re thinking about the potential commissions. Now it’s time to get prepared to be able to sell real estate within your community.

There are many real estate laws and regulations that wrap around the real estate industry. If you know these well, then you’re prepared to navigate your way through the field. You don’t have to be a big shot to become a real estate agent, but you do have to know what you’re doing. If you do know those particular rules, then you are ready to go.

What does an agent do exactly? A real estate agent has the scoop on many different properties within a particular area. They also have contacts and vital information for those listings, making it easier on a person to purchase a property. If you are planning on buying a property, you need an agent for this reason, but it’s much more than that. Imagine the fact that the seller might have a real estate agent. Then, don’t you need someone on your side? For negotiation purposes, it’s like making sure you have a lawyer when the other side has a lawyer.

Every single aspect of the licensing process in your state is going to be different from other states. That is why you have to be looking at things like this when you are planning on becoming a real estate agent. It is definitely state by state, and you have to abide by the rules in your state.

If you are an agent, you want to be sure that you join certain organizations in order to help you network within the field and become trustworthy to your customers. For instance, the NAR or National Association of Realtors is one of those organizations. These types of organizations make you accountable, and they give you a professional appearance to the public.

Know what you can bring to the general public. You have contacts, and you have means for them to purchase a home right? Give them things that they cannot get on their own. Perhaps a person comes to you with bad credit. If they do, can you help them find a home? You need to have all the necessary information in order to ensure that you can guide a person down the path of buying a home, no matter what position they are in of course.

Each state makes it very known what their laws and regulations are, so the best thing you can do is to study these different regulations. This will give you a step up on the competition because there is definitely an influx of realtors out there available. Make sure you know what it takes to become a real estate agent.