March 5th, 2009 by George Dodge
by George Dodge
MLM, also known as Multi Level Marketing, can be a wonderful method for achieving your personal and financial dreams when combined with the power of the Internet.
There are literally hundreds of companies which use this business model to move their products from production to the end user and my goal in this article is to provide you with the simple facts on what this industry IS and what it is NOT!
You can only make an informed educated decision as to whether or not this business concept if right for you if you have the required information upon which to make that decision. I hope to provide some of that information in this article.
Multi Level Marketing is nothing more that a business model that uses independent distributors with a multi level commission payout plan to move products from production to the consumer.
There are many myths about MLM companies, including that they are illegal pyramid schemes or scams. For true Multi Level Marketing companies, nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately, those who believe these myths, simply do not understand how MLM companies work.
First you need to know that Multi Level Marketing companies are 100% legal and many large multi-million dollar companies employ this business model to move their products from production to the consumer. The pyramid shape associated with MLM companies is the same shape as almost all non MLM companies. There are always more workers in the lower ranks than there are senior managers, Vice Presidents, and CEOs. If companies were not of this shape, they would collapse.
Some of the best known MLM companies include Amway, Shaklee, Tupperware, Princess House, a subsidiary of Colgate Palmolive, A.L. Williams, Mary Kay Cosmetics, U.S. Sprint, MCI, Melaleuca, and NSA. These companies have been around for decades.
There are actually 100’s to 1,000’s more Multi Level Marketing companies. Like other companies, some are good and some are not so good. But one thing is for sure. MLM is here to stay, and it is an explosive growth field! Fortune 500 companies are even increasingly including the Network Marketing business model for some portion of their marketing portfolio!
So what’s the big attraction to MLM companies and programs? Well, it represents a wonderful opportunity for the “little guy” to start his own business on a part time basis and make a whole lot of money provided he or she is willing to put in some work! This is not a get rich quick scheme and work is involved, no matter what some MLM recruiters would like you to believe.
John Paul Getty is often quoted as having said that he would always prefer earning 1% of a hundred peoples efforts than 100% of his own efforts. And that is precisely what Multi Level Marketing is all about. The Multi Level Marketing sales force members are not actually employees of the company, but instead they are independent distributors who are compensated for their efforts by commission based on the amount of product moved by not only themselves, but also by those whom they recruit as distributors.
What makes the business “multi level” is that each independent distributor can recruit other independent distributors to work under them and earn a wholesale commission on the amount products their recruited distributors move to consumers. And this process can go on and on for some designated number of levels. This chain of distributors is called a downline.
The more people a distributor can recruit for his downline, the larger will be their total commissions. The number of levels that a distributor will earn override commissions on will depend upon the company’s compensation plan but five to seven or more levels is not unusual. These wholesale override commissions can quickly add up for distributors with a large downline.
Thus, there is a strong incentive for a distributor to not only recruit more distributors below them, but to also train them and retain them as part of his or her downline. So a successful distributor must be able to duplicate their success in their downline members.
Building large stable residual income is therefore the result of successfully recruiting, training, and retaining others. The better one is at doing these things, the larger their income will become. While it is not necessarily easy, it can be very rewarding.
Millions of people are discovering the advantages of being their own boss and working from home with the MLM business model. A basic computer, telephone, fax machine, a HUGE ambition, and the knowledge of how to proceed to grow your business are all it really takes! To learn how to properly build a MLM business online and learn some of the common Multi Level Marketing myths that cause people to fail in their Network Marketing businesses, click the links in the resource box below.

Home based businesses, home business, Marketing, mlm, multi level marketing, network marketing