I decided to write this article after hearing of a friend’s economic dilemma and how it lead to her recent entrance into the network marketing business arena. Nicole Cooper told her story of how a successful real estate business crumbled within a 6 month period due to the collapse of the housing market. As might be expected not only did her personal business crash but her personal financial situation fell right along with it.

In time, however, she discovered a network marketing business that appeared to offer a solution to her financial situation. By seizing the opportunity and working through the difficulties of building a new network marketing business, she mimicked the “Flight of the Phoenix” to rise from the proverbial ashes. The truly amazing part is the “comeback” happened during the time when the global economic situation slid steadily downhill.

Nicole used the network marketing opportunity to help elevate her family’s financial situation from a state of near desperation to one of growing prosperity. Anytime I read a story of someone’s triumph over extreme adversity, I find it both motivational and more importantly, extremely inspirational.

Though the inspirational moment arose instantaneously while reading her story, I also realized that with her back ground in real estate Nicole already had a mindset that served her well as she made the transition into a formal network marketing business.

Why would a background in real estate help in network marketing?

Simply because people in a real estate business are already used to employing traditional network marketing tools (warm market prospecting, cold calling, etc.) in their daily business practices. These same tools, however, fall well outside the comfort zone for most of us. Coupling her previous networking background with her business experience Nicole was well positioned to use many of the network marketing tools available and build a successful business.

Given the success of Nicole and others like her, many people impacted by the current economy believe network marketing should be the obvious choice when looking for alternatives to traditional employment. It is also likely that many people are drawn to these ventures due to the relatively low start-up costs associated with a network marketing business.

But is this a realistic answer to their problem?

The honest answer to that question is maybe yes; maybe no.

Thinking back on Nicole’s situation, though her initial financial situation may be similar to many people being impacted by the current economic upheaval; her professional background and experience are significantly different. I know from my own personal experience in previous network marketing business ventures, the lack of an appropriate background and experience often set the stage for a far less successful outcome.

In both of my previous endeavors, I believed in the products, opportunity, company and even that I would build a successful business. Each time, however, I ended up quitting mainly due to unrealistic expectations about how long and how much effort it actually takes to build a business. Additionally, I lacked experience using traditional network marketing tools further inhibiting any substantial progress when actively working those opportunities.

Does this mean that I proved that network marketing or MLM companies are hoaxes or scams?

Absolutely not! Both companies still exist today; have excellent product lines and many successful distributors.

What it does mean is that I wasn’t properly equipped to effectively utilize the available network marketing tools or posses the mindset to see those opportunities through and succeed. Even at the time I quit each venture, I never stopped believing in the companies, products or opportunities.

Over the last 15 years, however, I gained much of the missing background and experience that was previously missing. Today I know any future endeavor in the network marketing business arena will yield the success I always expected.

But what about those people who do not have the right skills or experience?

From my perspective, individuals impacted by or feeling at risk because of the current economic situation can look to network marketing and MLM being viable solutions to their personal economic problems if they understand and act upon the following:

1. It takes time to get the education in both the opportunity, business in general and marketing;

2. It takes time to acquire the appropriate skills with traditional network marketing tools and/or online marketing techniques; business operation, time management, etc.;

3. It takes time to address each of the daily tasks to run business operations (including marketing and sales);

4. You must be patient and persistent in working your business both through the good days and bad ones; and

5. You must maintain realistic expectations for the growth of the business.

Anyone either possessing the appropriate skills or who is willing to work to acquire them as well as adapt to a rapidly changing environment has the opportunity to leverage any of the quality network marketing business opportunities to their advantage. In doing so, they will begin creating a new, independent future for their efforts.

When starting any business, especially an online or network marketing business, most of us hear the numerous declarations across the “Web” about making five or six figure incomes within weeks or months. After hearing those claims over and over again, we sometimes get the false impression that some online opportunities or hypothetical business building “systems” can launch us there almost instantaneously with little or no effort.

The stark reality: we usually waste both time and money expecting the golden egg to fall from our computer monitors. Building a business, any business, takes time, patience and persistence. In this video I discuss why it is essential to maintain that frame of mind and hold realistic expectations if we truly expect to succeed in any business venture.

One of the major struggles many network marketing business owners encounter with Internet marketing relates to the lack of technical skill to create “traditional” websites. This is one of the main reasons why Internet marketing advocates often develop blogs as the medium of choice when delivering their message via the Internet. Learning blog basics along with more of the nuances of blogs and blogging is a key factor in driving traffic to those sites.

Blogs are designed to allow the author, who in this case is a network marketing business owner, to simply and frequently enter fresh material with the most recent entry being added to the top of the article list. Since blogs often allow your visitors to leave comments, it makes the site a dynamic environment, more socially interactive and establishes a sense of trust with the readers. Another reason why network marketers loves blogs; search engines love blogs! As a matter of fact, there seems to be a special relationship between blogs and Google; the king of the search engine realm.

Most blog platforms offer content editors with a “WYSIWYG” (meaning “what you see is what you get”) mode that allows the author to enter text, images, video, URL links, etc. via an interface structured like most word processors. Even the most technically challenged business owner can easily work with the various editing and site management controls to keep the valuable messages flowing to their customers and followers.

Once you are convinced that blogs and blogging is an option you want to pursue for delivering your message to the masses, you have to know where and how to set-up a blog. There are two different platform types that can be used to set-up your blog:

• Externally hosted blogs where you can use websites such as Blogger.com (free), WordPress.com (free to low-cost), TypePad (low to moderate cost), SquareSpace (low to moderate cost);
• Self hosted blogs where you use the “stand-alone” version of WordPress (downloaded from WordPress.org) and then uploaded to your web host with your own domain name.

The externally hosted options are by far the easiest to get up and running as well as maintain but have a distinct disadvantage for a business owner. Since a blog is actually a subset of external host’s overall website, you must abide by their rules and terms. If you violate the terms, the site owner reserves the right to shut-down your blog with little notice. If that happens, it could cost you sales or customers if the problem takes to long to work-out or worse yet, never gets resolved.

In the case of a self-hosted blog site, you not only control the content but also the domain, accordingly there is almost no chance of your site being shutdown (unless of course you are doing something illegal).

Admittedly, the set-up is more complex but there are some fantastic resources available to help you get the site up and running. One of those resources is a series of ten how-to videos prepared by two well-known and highly-respected professional bloggers, Yaro Starak and Gideon Shalwick.

Access to the videos can be obtained by clicking on the following link “becomeablogger.com“, providing your name and email to get instant video access (the ten videos are free), future access to their newsletter, blog and a free blogging report “Roadmap to Become a Blogger”.

The videos use step-by-step instructions covering everything you’ll need to complete to get your own WordPress blog running on a web host of your choosing with your very own domain name (web address).

And yes, the first ten videos are indeed free, so just click on the following link to check out the videos, blog and get a copy of the e-book.  Become A Blogger!

I believe you will be happy you did!

Recently web sites and training programs specializing in search engine optimization (SEO) techniques clearly indicate the power of blogs, especially self-hosted WordPress blogs, to serve as the central hub of any Internet marketing system.

One of the simplest enhancements you can make to your WordPress blog site is to alter the format of the link assigned to each post you make to your blog by adjusting the “Permalinks” format setting.

Kurt Henninger prepared the short tutorial video (below) demonstrating the simple steps required to make this quick enhancement: