Agree with most of your comments. Born and raised in the corporate community, we never even considered a MLM until came across one after retirement. Looking back we would have looked seriously at the industry much earlier. In any event, we had one good run until management made a few very bad decisions…killing 40 % of our business. But now we’ve found a new home with WGN. Among the many differences is they’re a technolgy company operating as a MLM…go figure.
The kinds of leads that you are likely to get for free are ones that have been gathered in a scatterspray way – they could be poorly targeted, or in some cases even people who have not opted in at all. If you contact leads like this, then you will be putting your brand at risk, because you could end up in trouble with your web hosting provider, or the law, for unsolicited marketing. Alternatively, you could end up contacting people who might otherwise have converted, but who come to view your brand as a spammer because of the way the initial contact was made.
Twitter offers a more automated means of lead capture. With a target web site, either your own or the ‘offer’ money site, you are in a position to write short articles or blogs and then post Tweets carrying links to these articles. Keep those down to about 10% of the total, linking the other 90% to interesting on-topic snippets elsewhere on the web. Then use a good scheduler to queue a week or two’s Tweets and then let it run on auto pilot.
The legal distinction between MLMs and traditional pyramid schemes has been characterized by many authorities as a legal fiction. Jurisdictions that retain a legal distinction between MLM pyramid businesses versus illegal pyramid schemes retain said distinction on two key distinguishing features: 1) that MLMs always encompass the sale of actual products/services, while traditional illegal pyramid schemes ordinarily do not (though sometimes they do), and 2) that climbing an MLM pyramid is overwhelmingly statistically improbable (especially to its highest participant levels) but not theoretically impossible, whereas climbing a traditional illegal pyramid scheme is both statistically and theoretically impossible.[citation needed]
You already know that MLM has the potential to be one of the most valuable business opportunities that you can possibly get involved with. However, if you are getting started with a new MLM venture, you are engaged in an uphill battle. There are plenty of other MLM pros and entrepreneurs out there who would like to use your prospects to build their list!
With the perennial boom and bust cycle of the American job market, there are always going to be people who have decided that they’ve had enough and they want to strike out on their own, trying to be their own boss. These people, known as business opportunity buyers or simply opportunity leads are hungry for ideas and turn key businesses that they can buy into in order to create their own success.
As a last resort, you could try cold calling by phone. This is probably the most depressing and soul destroying activity on the planet. Even if you get past the usual questions such as ‘If you’re selling something – I’m not interested’ and ‘How did you get my number?’ you need a really slick and professional script and the ability to recognize and avoid lonely old ladies who just want to interact with someone, anyone, in fact.
