Article Surfing Archive

Persons looking for another line of work or just the chance to earn some supplemental income may want to consider network marketing as a home based business. While there are many new scam programs on the internet every day, there are also some quality opportunities to earn extra money. Remember there is a difference between home based businesses and work at home businesses, but most will require some customer contact to make it work for you.

Before the internet, there were many home based businesses geared towards people who wanted to earn extra money but needed a flexible schedule, allowing them to continue working their full-time job or work around the schedules of other family members. Jewelry and makeup sales as well as home products were available as a home-based business as the participants went to others' homes to peddle their wares. Many trade people had an office in their home but worked in the homes of others.

For the people holding so-called parties in other people's homes, they were deeply involved in network marketing, adding people to their network every time they performed a demonstration. Whether the other attendees at the party actually made a purchase was not as important as them learning more about the products being sold and having the seed planted to host their own party.

The incentive to the customer was free merchandise. Usually depending on the amount of the total sales at the party, the hostess received free merchandise. The business owner could then talk to others about earning free merchandise, or better yet, buying everything at wholesale if they became an authorized distributor, working under you. You offered to train them and help them with their first few parties, offering to split the commission with them and once they developed their own network you could also receive a small commission on their sales.

Many of these party-plan programs ran successfully and unencumbered for many years with some still going strong today. While there were not called multilevel marketing companies at that time that is exactly what they were. Today, many of those same people shy away from the term MLM because they see it as an illegal method of making money. While they say they should not have to pay to do their job, these same people bought their own demonstration kits as well as 'prizes' to hand out to those at the parties.

There really is no difference in this type of home-based network marketing than those being offered today. It is the reputation some companies have transferred to legitimate business offers that have formed a negative view that hinders participation and growth. It may only taken a year or two for this negativity to overshadow the benefits of a home-based network marketing program, but it will takes years for legitimate businesses to climb out from the shadow.

When talking to friends about a new network marketing program the wrong approach is often taken. Instead of talking about how you plan to be rich in a few years by working this multilevel marketing program and they should get in on it as well, talk to them about how the product is working for you. In time they will want to sign up if, for no other reason, that being able to buy the product at wholesale.