Think I’m crazy? Actually I’m awesome and smart, and so are you. What separates you from me is that I know when something smells fishy.

In network marketing there is this notion you need to sign up a TON of people yourself but the reality is that in most MLM’s you don’t have to personally recruit 150 people to make good money – it’s called duplication, the single most important thing in any MLM, period.

That’s right, I said it. When you are building a team in your MLM there will be “duds and studs”.

A dud is someone who joins the business under you excited, motivated, pumped up. They spend some time learning more detailed information and getting knowledgeable…and eventually getting out there to build the business. However…they spend a month or two “trying” (just talking to people when it’s convenient) with little to no success. They begin to ask you for help, for advice. You provide them some tips and tricks spending a couple hours of your time assisting them, great! That dud goes out re-energized, ready to take on the world…and PLOP…nothing to show for their “work”. Then they come back to you asking “why can’t I make this work?” and similar questions. This is the type of person in your organization that makes you little to NO money. They can suck out a ton of time from you but it doesn’t grow your business. This is a situation where you need to prioritize with people who ARE growing.

There are also the “studs” who take need only a small (if any) amount of help from you. These are the people that are go-getters, passionate and driven to succeed. They’ll do whatever it takes to grow their business without nagging you every week or few days.

You’re team is going to be made of both of these types of individuals BUT YOU need to dedicate time to the people who are growing your team. It’s tempting to let anyone join directly through you but can you give each person the time they might need? It’s impossible and unproductive. This does NOT make the best use of your time, unfortunately.

At some point you need to look in the mirror and say “I am looking for quality entrepreneurs – studs, not duds.” It’s OKAY to say “Get lost” (although I wouldn’t use THOSE two words) after you’ve got some basic questions answered from the prospect.

Are they afraid to invest money? WILL they put at least an hour a day towards the business? WILL they dedicate 2 years to build a team? Are they coach-able, trainable and duplicatable? WILL they follow instructions?

Please notice I said “Will” not “Can”. We all CAN do it but that doesn’t mean diddly squat. Ability verse action – keep that in mind.

So…don’t be afraid to say No. You want a strong, passionate team who is absolutely on board for themselves and your team (and their team).

I’m always looking for these people, and only these people. It doesn’t matter if I personally bring in 50 duds. If I bring in 10 studs, my business will flourish in comparison…same goes for you.

Are you a stud? Ready to do something great? Will you be a leader? You don’t have to have the experience because it’s really not hard in the right network marketing business.

….and if you’re looking for a network marketing business, tired of being burned…send me an email or use my contact form. Let’s talk – no catch or strings attached.

You should be aware that building a list is an essential to any business. Whether it’s a list of leads, prospects, clients, customers…they are part of the equation. If you haven’t started building a list, get going! Give your list tender loving care and you’ll be rewarded.

Tip 1:  Offer Free VALUABLE content, constantly. There’s a difference between offering a free eBook download and continually giving free advice, tips and ideas.

Tip 2:  Create capture or squeeze pages. One of the easiest ways to get someone’s information (name and email) is by offering something free if they just submit their information. The capture page should be related to what you’re giving away. If you’re page targets people who are looking for a work-at-home business then your free offer should be content about work-at-home subject matter.

Tip 3:  Use MANY different advertising channels. There are a vast number of ways to advertise directly and indirectly that you could do it 24/7, no joke. Some ideas are PPC, Website banner ads, Traffic Exchanges, List Builders, Forums, Classifieds, Article Submission sites and social networks.

Tip 4:  Purchase qualified leads. Of course this is an easy way but if you have a budget to spend on QUALITY leads, this may be a way to go. And, don’t just buy any leads. You could get 100 leads a day for $10 but I will bet you those leads will be garbage.

Tip 5:  Share your story. People want to follow genuine, experienced individuals. If you’ve been in internet or network marketing for 6 months, you absolutely have a story. It could be as simple as “When I started ____ and now ____.” …of course with some depth. You have to give people a reason to listen to you, and a story is a necessity to being a marketer.
I’ve kept these tips pretty generic. Have no fear, I DO plan to go into detail on these tips in coming posts so stay tuned. Better yet, subscribe via RSS or join my newsletter so you’ll find out when I make an update.

Have a wonderful day!

It’s probably safe to say that 95% of people have a grasp on life but just how many people work to progress? There’s a fine line between making things happen and progress. I continue to read on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and other sites where people write status updates/messages. These messages are of a variety that has no end – from “eating dinner” to “Just read a book” to “Have you seen this video?”. I’m a little baffled how people really get things done towards their goals when they are doing a dozen things within the same hour.

Some time ago I watched a video by Eben Pagan and he talked about productivity a bit. Now this information wasn’t a “never before seen” discovery (although I believe he did some testing on this claim) but his point was that to be truly productive it was best to do things in time blocks. Basically, instead of spreading yourself between 4 things in a given two hours, focus on JUST 1 thing before moving to the next. He claimed it takes 20 minutes to really get into something with deep thought. If you break away from copy-writing and then try to go back, it will take 20 minutes to get into your thought process and frame of mind. If this is accurate then most people are much less productive than they could be…

Eben’s information ties directly into my “Progressive Marketing” course. Generally we all have several things going on in our lives such as family, friends, running a business, creating websites, cooking, school, work, etc.. The concept behind Progressive Marketing is to help you become more productive immediately. There are dozens of things you simply don’t need to spend as much time doing as you probably are currently.

There is a big huff in the Internet marketing world as people struggle to make their first $1000 or even $100 but it’s simply not hard to do if you’ve got the right skills, tools, resources and drive. I’m going to help you get away from that struggle – you’re going to want me to help you.

So where do you get this Progressive Marketing course? When it’s ready, you’ll find it on The Progressive Marketing website. Oh, and you’ll get Free stuff right away – it’s pretty awesome.

Talk to you soon.

~Matt

This isn’t exactly a factual percentage but 90% of internet marketers know that building a list is one of the most important things to further their business, whatever it may be. Why is list building so important? Once you have a list of people who directly receive your emails, it’s practically free to contact them about whatever product or service you want to tell them about.

Let’s look at some popular internet marketing names.

Mike Filsaime is a very successful marketer who has created countless websites that simply help build his email list. Mike believes in lead generation as a crucial part of his online business. As an 8 figure earner, he has done incredibly well for himself in a short time period, and his email lists are very big.

On a different style of marketing, Frank Kern uses his personality and creativity to draw people to himself. His unique approach has drawn very large numbers of people to his products/services even though he’s really only sold a handful of internet marketing courses. Primarily, his copy writing style is what catches people’s attention by using clever wording and phrases. His email lists are enormous for the “work” he’s out into them and some of that is due in part to the free marketing content he simply gives away.

One of the most well-known marketers is John Reese who’s proven his success over and over. His following is asbolutely HUGE – when he announced to his list about joining Facebook, he maxed out the “friends” limit of 5,000 pretty quickly. John’s list building efforts have brought him to have one of the biggest followings of any single internet marketer.

These are just three internet marketers who’ve taken list building as a focus of their business. If you follow in the footsteps of successful people, you’re more likely to succeed as they pave the path to success. Getting started is usually one of the toughest parts to list building but if you stick with it and are determined, you’ll make the best of it.

You should also check out my post about Lead Generation that I wrote several weeks ago.

In case you don’t know, “SEO” (Search Engine Optimization) means more than putting some keywords, description, and title into your meta information on a specific webpage or website. Those three elements are the very basics that are generally the starting points in regards to having a search engine friendly webpage/website.

Lately I’ve talked/chatted with people in several type of conversations where SEO has been a topic. For whatever reason the term SEO has taken on a life of its own. When optimizing a website or applying SEO to your website, it involves more than the three elements of meta information that I previously mentioned. Yes, you can have do some basic SEO but in reality, that should already be the case when building any webpage/website now.

Looking beyond those basics, you want to apply image tagging, link tagging, inbound links, outbound links, internal link tagging, linked keywords, copy writing with keywords, specifically targeting less generic keywords for each page to start…and so on. Don’t think it’s impossible to learn some more than basic approaches but realize real “SEO” is more involved than choosing 12 generic keywords, writing a description, and applying a title for your meta information – remember, there are companies that specifically offer SEO services so if you think you’re doing SEO like you should be doing, you may want to investigate further.

Let me remind you that if you have a website that you want to get traffic to, adding new content weekly or even daily is a good practice. Along with that, make sure you’re applying new keywords, descriptions, and titles to that content, like what you would typically do on a blog. This will drastically help search engine ranking…

Keep on building!

When you do any marketing, you have to decide when and where to spend money and what type of marketing you’ll do for free (or maybe you only want to do one of those). Two of the areas of internet marketing that can yield good results is in Organic and Paid Search.

Organic Search is that which Google, Yahoo, MSN, & other search engines show you when you perform a search. For example, if you do a search for “Dog House” using Google’s search engine, you see a list of results in the left hand side which are not in the “sponsored links” area. These results are considered Organic Search because they are not paying Google for the search and show up based on criteria that search engine spiders look for in order to rank the page based on the keyword – in this case it’s “Dog House”.

Paid Search also shows up when you do a search in Google for “Dog House” but the results are based on how much an advertiser is willing to pay to show up as a search result. In the right hand side of the page and above the Organic Search results you’ll see some sites listed. These sites are paying Google to show up there but do not necessarily meet your searched terms.

The difference here is that you, as an advertiser/marketer, would rather show in Organic Searches as you don’t pay for each search, clicks, or impressions. You could have 2,000 clicks on your website and never have to pay a dime for those clicks from the Organic Search results but if you had 2,000 clicks and using Paid Search, that would be a very different story…and likely paying a few thousand dollars.

Here’s the challenge – showing up first in Google, Yahoo, and MSN within the Organic Search results for your most relative keywords. If you can do that, you’re on the right path and will save tons of cash. To do so you’ll need to know the many important ways of implementing SEO into your website. No, it’s not impossible but can take some time to do it right and includes copy writing that is targeted to your keywords.

In development is a private membership club that will be LIMITED to how many members allowed, at least for the first phase. We’re putting in place a strategy to helping each member make money and we believe this is an excellent way to be part of a private group dedicated to working together.

There are existing membership sites in which anyone can join – tire kickers, unmotivated, lazy, successful, and newbie marketers. Our strategy is to help build a plan and schedule for those that are lost, to bring together those people who are going to put forth effort in their business, to create a friendly club of like-minded entrepreneurs, and to develop relationships between one another and the individual goals. Don’t worry, making money is part of the strategy.

Again, this will be an invite-only group and one way you can be invited is by being a subscriber to my newsletter. You can relax about SPAM – I don’t email my list every other day with a new opportunity. In fact, I’ve NEVER emailed my list with an opportunity offer as of today.

Leave a comment on what you think about the club. I know it’s very vague right now but more will be revealed as we draw closer to launch.

Among a few of the most important personal characteristics in building trust is showing leadership. Studies have shown that people will listen to someone that has shown or does show leadership. It’s almost human nature to listen to somebody who leads others in projects and business.

In most successful companies, the leaders are those who are “higher up” in the company and usually get their due in part to their leadership skills. Do you see this where you work? Now, I’m not saying that it’s always the case but in most instances it can be found to be true.

Take it upon yourself to lead people. Those successful individuals who’ve proven themselves will usually lead others to making the best approaches, proper decisions, and teach others to lead like themselves.

How have you shown leadership? Or, have you?

Quality leadership doesn’t come naturally but instead with experience and practice.

Whether you are in the business of selling CDs, eBooks, or jewelry…without sales you’re not going to make any money. To generate sales, you need people that are going to be informed (through various mediums) about your products/services. The easiest way of informing people about you offers is by maintaining a list of customers, prospects, clients, and friends.

Most people don’t even realize that building a list is one of the first tools to utilize. There’s a general consensus that it’s hard to build a list, but that’s simply up to the individual. Millions of people browse the internet for information, products, and services. Wouldn’t you like to have 500 people on your list that recieve notification of your offers? What about 1000, 2,500, or 10,000 people who listen to and respect you?

I know 10,000 is somewhat of a stretch – though it’s entirely possible.

Start with a list of people that you know. First off, it’s good practice but more importantly it’s easier for them to listen since they already know you…and vice versa. The easiest way of doing this is by sending each person a personal email. Yes this may be time consuming but a good start. What do you provide to them? That depends on your market. It could be about news, articles, your own tips, guidance, or something related. Whatever you do, make sure you’re providing something with value (in some way) and NOT always trying to sell them on something. This is also important when you’re communicating with people you don’t really know.

People on your list need to trust you. You have to create your own character that they will want to listen to and see value in so they that don’t unsubscribe.

Oh, and lastly, you want to build an opt-in list. This means a list of people who manually accept joining your mailing list. Even if you add them to the list yourself and then they have to “accept”, you want them to approve joining. Much more valuable this way and you reduce complaints about SPAM.

The internet continues to grow both in size and the content base. Millions of websites serve the hundreds of millions of web-browsing, information-hungry people across the globe.  You may be like many people who would love to have their own functional website except don’t have thousands or even five-hundred dollars to spend on a small site. You also may be among the majority who don’t know how to read basic code, are not software saavy, have no graphic design experience, and don’t know anyone that can help you…

Creating a website doesn’t have to be torture (mentally, physically, and monetarily). However, you DO want to make sure your website is effective. It’s in your best interest to have a website that works for you not against you. Some basic elements and characteristics can make a drastic performance benefit such as SEO, design/layout, content, and even your domain.

I’ll tell you right now that having a profitable website is MUCH easier than you probably realize. How easy? You don’t even need more than 3 pages – I’ve tested the concept and can prove it works…and very well.

We tend to think that duplication is the key to building solid wealth by piggy-backing on the tail of our sponsor (who may not even be successful). Duplication is great if you can actually duplicate what has been done. But, in many cases, there are missing elements that keep you from 100% duplication and cause you to fail.

So how do you go about it? I’m not going to say here nor right now. But…in the near future I’ll be releasing this information and teaching you what do to. And I’ll even.. [Removed (Sorry, I've decided not to reveal yet)] ..you setup.

Remember to stay positive and work to achieve your dreams.