There are thousands of people who join a home-based business or network marketing business every year. Many people simply want a side income while some people want to work the business as a full-time income. Whatever your interest level may be, it doesn’t make a difference. What DOES make a difference is your time and attitude.

Many years ago when I first got into network marketing it was simply because I wanted to make money. Now of course the majority of people want to make money in their business – kind of silly to think otherwise. My drive was to make a bunch of money even though I didn’t really know what a “business” was at the time. My mind was focused on the wrong thing. I was not seeing the overall picture of the situation.

At the time I was in college, trying to get through classes I really didn’t want to attend, doing homework I wasn’t excited to do, etc.. But when I could, I spent time advertising (probably spamming), calling cold leads, emailing people that I had networked with, and so on. While I was doing that my mind was in the game of “Come on, I want to make some money!” and “Dude…please buy this stuff so I can get paid!”.

The unfortunate side to it all is that…it really didn’t work out too well. I made a few sales but I worked FAR more than I should have for the results I got. It wasn’t the products (directly) nor that I wasn’t spending enough time (that’s for sure). It was me, and partially the training I had been through…if it can be considered training.

Please please please…before you jump into a home-based business or network marketing business, ask yourself these following questions:

1. Do you want a full-time, part-time or passive income?
2. Will you dedicate 2, 4, 8, 12 or more hours a week?
3. Would this be a business or a hobby for you?

Those are three simple questions you need to know your answers to BEFORE you start. Why? It’s important to plan ahead, not to fool yourself into thinking “I want to have a business too!” when in you’re only fooling yourself.

People who really build a network marketing business well spend 3 to 4+ hours a day doing so, and for many people it’s hard to get 30 minutes to themselves just to relax after a long day at their job.

So…my question to you is…are you interested in a business or is your goal just to try making some extra money? A business takes work, lots of it. You need to provide support to your customers and to your team members/organization. You will want to constantly be building leads, finding new customers and new distributors. It may involve some light traveling and even attending corporate events. You may also want to attend house parties or organize meetings.You see? These are things you should be thinking about.

Building a home-based business doesn’t happen over night. It may take you a few months before you have more than a dozen new members or you could be very successful and grow at 20 new members a month – both are very possible situations.

Be realistic with yourself. Get excited but don’t think that by joining a business you will suddenly make a bunch of money with little work – it simply doesn’t happen like you may believe.

Questions? Ask me and I’d be glad to help you out.

My guess is you’ve heard the term “business opportunity” or “home business opportunity” before but have you heard the term “program” in the same realm? If not, don’t be surprised if you do because it is widely used similarly.

When people use the term “program” it reigns down a negative connotation, in my opinion. Why? To me a “program” is a short-lived method to make money which may not adhere to legal or ethical practices. Additionally my experience tells me that you find the same people advertising “program” after “program” – as new ones are launched, they jump right on them touting them as the next greatest thing.

When I hear the term opportunity it has a much more pleasant ring to it. There is probably a legitimate business and product involved, with (more) legal practices and ethical standards.

This may sound ridiculous to you, I understand. The next time you hear these terms used, take a look at what is being referred to in each case. Chances are you’ll see what I’m talking about if you do a little investigating. And by all means, understand that I’m not necessarily right…these are just my opinions. The point is to be careful and really understand what it is you may be joining. For me, I simply roll my eyes when someone uses “program” to tell me about a “money making scheme”.

What do you think? Am I crazy?

One of the easiest ways of getting traffic to any website is by using a very popular means of advertising called a Traffic Exchange. To put it briefly, a Traffic Exchange works like this: you view a member website and in return you will get a visitor to your website. Typically there is a surf (when you are viewing member websites one at a time) ratio such as 3:1 which means you would view three member websites and in return have your website seen once. If you understand this then you’d agree that the best type surf ratio would be one that didn’t exist. 

We put together a Traffic Exchange that solves the surf ratio problem. Instead of a 3:1 ratio or even 1:1 ratio, why not give unlimited website views to you? This makes it one of the best traffic exchanges around.

List Surfing is a new way of using the power behind a Traffic Exchange without the hassle of surfing CONSTANTLY and having to view far more websites than you’ll receive back. Instead, all you need to do is surf 50 websites a month and open 10 member emails every 30 days – you’ll receive unlimited traffic to your website(s) this way. You are not depending on accumulating credits nor are you going to spend a long time trying to grow your credits.

On top of the normal surfing we added an email advertising feature. You are able to email hundreds of other members to advertise your website, and they WANT to open it because they’ll earn more credits and keep their account active.

We’ve received great feedback from members and have made MANY improvements to the features. Signup for Free to ListSurfing and start driving traffic to your websites!

Additional features include text ads, downline builder, banner ads, start pages and more…

Right off the bat I know you’re probably curious and that’s great, but you should also be thinking “Yes, Matt’s right” without even reading more than the title of this post.

Success doesn’t come from luck. Well, sometimes it can but generally speaking it does not. Some lucky cases might be those where business decisions are made without much logic or analysis, yet the results of the small actions are excellent. You might be the type of individual who plays the lottery – you’re lucky if you win but you also wouldn’t have won had you not taken the action of playing in the first place, right? I don’t consider the lottery completely luck because of that pure fact.

Anyway, the reason I know you’ll be successful is simple; you WANT to make it happen and you WILL make it happen. Those are primarily the only two factors that you need to have engraved in your mind. You first need desire, without it there is no reason for success in the first place. Secondly you need to make it happen by putting forth the effort and accomplishing the tasks which will lead you up the ladder. This may sound very simple, and you’re right – it is.

I’ve been involved in internet and network marketing for many years. When I look at the people I met when first starting out or even simply a couple years ago, I see them not much further ahead than they were back then (if at all). In my eyes, it’s because they’re not being as productive as they should be…