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I first encountered Multi Level Marketing/MLM/Network Marketing in 1997. It was a company offering cheaper long distance and international telephone calls and I thought that I was on to a winner.

I was broke at the time but put together some leaflets promoting the service itself and promoted the business through mail order mailshots and advertisements. It did not work out for me for 3 reasons.

1. Although I really pushed the product, most people were not interested in saving money off their phone calls. The main objection was that they did not want 2 bills. The idea was new at the time, it was only a few months after British Telecom lost their monopoly and people were not very enlightened then.

2. I did not have enough start up capital to do my promotions justice and although I introduced users and promoters I always fell just short of the monthly join up requirements to be paid. Being paid for my efforts might just have made the difference if I could have used what I had earned to increase my promotions.

3. I joined with a very nice lady but she was also new to network marketing. As her upline did not offer any help to her we helped each other. It was fun but like the blind leading the blind.

I tried with that company for several months and never got paid. In the meantime I had found information publishing where I was making money. I was loathe to use that money to promote a company I had become disillusioned with so put my earnings back into what was doing well for me.

After a couple of years I published my own home business magazine and a lot of what I saw involving MLM disillusioned me further.

I saw companies launching in the UK without the correct legal paperwork. Lots of people would join and in their innocence spend money promoting something that was actually illegal and likely to be closed down if the DTI got wind of it.

I knew people who had piles of the products stashed away and never likely to be used. Why? Because some of the companies require you to buy an amount of product every month before you are paid for your efforts and your downlines efforts.

A friend earned thousands of pounds every month with his company. One month he spent 2 weeks on holiday and came back ill with food poisoning. He fell 1 short of the required monthly recruiting figures and his earnings went to his upline.

Companies shifting the goalposts just when promoters start to do well.

As a magazine editor I became a prime prospect for network marketers. I could advertise for free in my magazine as long as nobody else was promoting the same thing, and people took that little bit more notice of what I was promoting.

I would get telephone calls inviting me to join a wonderful opportunity. Because I am polite I did not tell them to get lost when they were extolling the virtues of companies that I probably knew more than them about. I would list my objections and get really annoying answers:

I am not interested in the product
*The product does not matter you will soon earn lots of money

I have not got time
*You only need to spend an hour a week on this business

I already have a lot of projects on the go and would not be able to do this business justice and spend time helping those who joined with me.
*They will not need any help this business is easy to run

I could go on but I am sure you get the drift. I really grew to detest network marketing and some of those that it attracted, but being in daily contact with them was part of my business so grinning and bearing it was a daily chore.

Then one day I had a telephone call from a new subscriber. He was a network marketer yawn* and he tried to get me to join. What he said to me during that call altered my bad opinion of network marketers, but he was one among many.

He told me that I should be interested in the product and use it regularly to enable me to truly recommend it. He said that I would need to make a good initial investment to be able to promote the business properly. I was also told that it was hard work, would take at least 20 hours a week of my time and that it would take a few months to start earning and then my earnings would gradually build if I continued to work hard. In a nutshell he told me the truth!

I was astonished at his honesty and told him why. His reply was that he was always honest about the business and that he would rather have one good joiner who knew the score from the beginning than 20 who believed that they would earn a fortune with no money and little effort. That one good joiner would earn both of them far more money than those who joined on pipedreams.

That guy impressed me, he became very successful and his downline were successful. I did not join his group and apart from placing ads and designing brochures for network marketers I did not get involved with any of those companies, mainly because I was never interested in the products.

Recently I decided to give it a try with an internet company and I am sure that I will follow his lead knowing that is the way to network marketing success.