Building up a full-time MLM Check typically takes three to five years, and normally even longer, especially if you are doing it part-time. Most people who join our industry have a short-sighted vision. They want immediate income and they aren’t willing to stick around long enough to become successful in their network marketing business.
Simply put, most people in our industry are looking to GET PAID TODAY! They have an employee mindset and have never owned a business before. They are accustomed to trading hours for dollars in a job.
They don’t understand that almost every business takes one to two years (minimum) just to get profitable and five or more years to build a consistent, secure cash-flow. If they aren’t making a good income by their third month in their MLM Business they give up and move on to something else. Sadly, many of these people switch companies every 90 days for YEARS, thinking the company or opportunity itself is the solution to their challenges.
While I think it’s important to focus on building your network marketing business for the long-term, and put in a consistent effort, you need SOMETHING that gives you positive cash-flow so you can stay in business today!
If you can find a way to create an immediate income while you build your MLM Business, you have a much better chance of sticking around the industry for the long haul and achieving the success you desire.
Today, I want to show you how to do that. I want to give you seven ways you can get paid today while you build your downline. These income streams/strategies are listed in no particular order. They won’t apply to everyone, but I’m sure there is something on the list that would work for you.
# 1 Retailing
I know, I know, this option doesn’t sound very sexy. But retailing is an important part of your network marketing business. Every rep should have at least 10-20 customers before they go out and sponsor ANY distributors. Having customers gives you immediate retail profits. You will make more money from 20 customers than you will from 20 distributors, so get some customers. This gets you paid today, while you build up your team and build up your residuals. I also enjoy the retail to recruit concept.
# 2 Sell Leads
Every network marketer needs more leads. Not having enough leads is quite perhaps the biggest cause for failure in our industry. There are plenty of lead services online that offer affiliate programs. In many cases you can earn 20% to 50% off each referral you make, so this will provide an extra, immediate income.
# 3 Sell Training
Training is a multi-billion dollar industry, even in the network marketing world. Everyone in our industry needs more training. This could include coaching, seminars, CDs, DVDs, mastermind teams and more. You could create training products yourself or market someone else’s training materials for a commission (as an affiliate).
For example, maybe you can form an affiliate relationship with someone who makes training products and earn a 20 to 50 percent commission per sale. What’s great about selling training materials is that every other network marketer is a potential prospect. In addition, you could back end your happy customers into your network marketing business. Here is my favorite training program.
# 4 Sell Advertising
If I was going to start all over again in this industry, this is what I would focus on. Everyone is a prospect when you sell advertising. Every network marketer wants more leads. You could sell solo ads, newspaper ads, magazine ads, pay per click ads or just about anything else. You could handle all aspects of advertising for people, or they could pay you a fee for you to help them pick the right marketing mediums.
# 5 Sell Services – I love the services industry. I sell lots of services myself such as newsletter service, coaching, copywriting services, auto-responder campaigns, blog design, article writing, social media campaigns, and so much more. Most network marketers need someone to help them do these things.
# 6 Sell Affiliate Products – This is quite perhaps the easiest way to get started with the get paid today concept. This is when you partner up with someone else who has a product or service and you get a commission for selling it. You spend all of your time on marketing the product or service and the affiliate manager handles the money, customer service and product delivery. I personally promote about 40 different affiliate products myself and I can tell you that it works.
# 7 Top Tier MLM Programs
This is when you promote a company or opportunity that pays you $500 to $1000 or more per sale. Some people call it high ticket programs or top tier programs. With these programs you only need to recruit a few people each month to make a substantial income. My favorite top tier program that I promote is Elite Marketing Pro. This can provide a big, immediate income while you build up your residual with your MLM Company.
Additional Insights
These are just seven examples of how you can get paid today while you build your MLM Business.
There are several benefits of following this approach. First of all, it’s much easier to find prospects. Few people in the real world are looking for a new network marketing business opportunity, but most network marketers are looking for leads, training, coaching, advertising and services to help them with their business. That creates a huge opportunity for you.
The next major benefit is that you can earn an immediate income while you build your network marketing business. It’s much easier and quicker to make a full time income promoting one or more of these services than it is to make the same income building a downline. I think that network marketing has greater long-term potential than selling any of these get paid today models, but it does take a while to build up a large MLM Income.
The final benefit is that many of your customers can be converted into distributors in your network marketing business. As you build up a list of people who buy something from you or hire you to help them, you can introduce them to your network marketing company on the back end.
Final Thoughts
The Get Paid Today model is here to stay. While I love network marketing and know it has a huge potential, I think it’s wise to have multiple streams of income at the same time. Selling leads, training, services, advertising or affiliate products is a great way to make money today and find prospects for your network marketing business at the same time.
What are your thoughts? What do you think about the get paid today model? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you. Have a great day!
Chuck Holmes
20+ Year Network Marketing Professional
Top Earner & Top Recruiter
Email: mrchuckholmes@gmail.com
P.S. Learn how to grow a successful network marketing business. Secret tips, training, and practical ideas. Free training delivered by email.
You will find that even Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have multiple income streams. Why? Because it’s wise not to put all your eggs in one basket as they say. Multiple forms of income is a no brainer.
I am surprised by the number of people who have said to me “I don’t want to wait that long to make money”. My reply is always, “How long have you been in the business you are now”? “Have you made your goal income in that 10+ years”?
You will not be able to change some people’s minds, so you must find the ones who want to work and be coachable.
Most definitely. Most people joining our industry come into it with the employee mindset, trading hours for dollars. That is not how any type of business works, especially a new business. Ultimately, when you are building your own business, you are building an asset. In the beginning, you normally work for minimum wage, but as your business grows, you can work much less and make even more money (if you built it right).
Also, having multiple streams of income is good, but if you are just getting started, you should focus on ONE income stream until you get it going. Spreading your efforts too thin right out the gate, and trying to create 3-5 income streams at once is next to impossible.
I think it is great to diversify in the ways that you have suggested. I love the MLM model. There is always time to do a little extra to make additional income that will complement what you are already doing. I always enjoy reading your blog post, thank you!
Having a few little income streams makes sense. By all means focus on your MLM, but be diversified a bit.
For someone who is new to MLM, I think affiliate marketing and selling advertising are a great place to start. Anyone can do either of them today with very little effort and no cost. Selling leads could be automated and done fairly easily once you get a good lead generation plan in place. The hard truth is that running a business is not going to pay off quickly. It will take time for you to realize your initial investment. You have offered some ways to make money while you wait for the business to grow to a place of supplying a stable income. Any one of these revenue streams could be the difference between someone staying in business or closing up shop.
As I was rereading this excellent post for the third time, something came to me suddenly. Getting paid today can be accomplished by simply selling the products or services your network marketing company offers. So many network marketers are searching for other distributors and they neglect the fact that they have products they can sell. This is why so many distributors with Avon do so well; they focus on the products before the new distributors.
You can easily get paid today by just selling the products or services you have available.
These is great advice! I have used or known someone that used all of these except for selling leads. I haven’t known anyone that’s done that one yet, but maybe I should look into it. I also have not personally tried selling training although I know it works!
From personal experience, the one I’ve had the most experience and outcome with is selling affiliate products.
I have recently started to look into the idea of selling training. This is why it is so valuable to become an expert in whatever area of business you choose to go into within the MLM industry. Then you are able to create quality training material and offer it to individuals who are looking to grow and develop within their industry. I think giving them a taste of the training for free is a neat idea to showcase your knowledge and then they will be enticed to purchase training material because they see you as someone reputable and knowledgeable in the industry.
Taking the time to become an expert was one of the best business decisions I ever made.
I just wanted to add what Maggie and I did to make a bit of extra money.
As authors, we had written and published several bilingual books on pueblos in Puerto Rico. These books are in paperback and also on Amazon Kindle. With an idea provided to us from the tourism director in Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, we decided to sell just a few advertisement spots within the books. All together this netted us $4,300. This was all pure profit, it just took some time developing the ad and installing it in the books.
The reason I mention this is: you could sell ad spots within eBooks. It is straight profit and will just take a little time to do it.
That’s brilliant. I never thought about selling an ad spot in one of my books or eBooks. I will definitely consider that for the future.
Many businesses will jump for an opportunity to get placement in a book or eBook. The fact is: the ad will be available for a long time: as long as the book stays published. I sold the idea of getting near the front of the book with the fact that many of the first few pages of a book can be viewed in Amazon without purchase. This meant their ad was being seen by people who didn’t even purchase the book.
We charged more if we developed the ad, or less if they provided it to us. There are a wide variety of ways you can do it. I plan on using this concept even more.
The main thing is to be picky in the types of businesses you will put in, and also the amount. We never wanted one of our books looking like an ad jungle.
Putting an ad in a book or eBook makes a lot of sense. It’s a great additional income stream.
This was a very good post Chuck.
Many people jump into the network marketing game wanting to earn that quick buck. When it doesn’t happen, they get depressed and run to another system. Many of those people are hurting for money when they joined the MLM they are involved with.
You just showed several simple ways to bring in some extra cash while we are building the business. Hopefully many people will read this and will stick with the MLM they joined. While they are building it, they can use one, or more of these approaches to bring in some extra money.
You just have to get creative and think outside of the box!