Home Business Diary

Here are the ups, downs, and lessons learned as I go about building my home based multilevel marketing business.  The purpose of this blog is to share pitfalls, business tools, and insights with others wanting to start their own business, whatever that business may be.  While each of us will have unique experiences, hopefully time and money will be saved by reading about things that have or have not worked for me.

For me, it all started in June 2007 when I was invited to a "meeting".  In exchange for a free makeover, I sat through the marketing pitch to become a consultant with a skin care company.  To my surprise, it worked!  I really did like the products and the more I learned about the company, the more impressed I was.  Moreover, the idea was presented to me that I could go on the "leadership" track rather than focus on the selling side of the business.  I would build a team and my job would evolve into one of teaching and mentoring. Note:  No matter what you are told, if there is a product involved, you are going to have to learn how to sell it.  Don't fall for "the product sells itself" line, no matter how wonderful the product may be.

If you are unfamiliar with multilevel marketing, or direct sales, there is a structure.  With degrees of variation, the basic idea is the same for different companies.  Usually, one "buys in" to the opportunity.  Some initial fees are quite high - mine was a fairly reasonable $100.00 with a 90% money back guarantee.  The starter kit will have enough information and/or products to begin, though I was encouraged to purchase more for my initial inventory.  There is quite a difference between companies as to what kind of discount is offered.  This particular company sells product to me at the wholesale price which is 50% off.  I must continue to purchase $200 wholesale ($400 retail product) every three months to qualify for the 50% discount.

Note:  Depending on the company, customers may be able to purchase products directly from the corporate office.  This is not good news for the new business owner.  If a customer wants product "xyz" and doesn't know where to get it, he/she will go to the internet and type in "xyz.com."  This means you are competing with the resources of a giant company for sales.  Far better if "xyz.com" directs the customer to you!

Every time I bring someone in to the business, they become a member of my team.  I then make commissions based on their activity.  It's important to know whether these commissions come out of the team member's pocket, or are paid by the company.  My commissions come from the company.  The more team members I have under me, the higher the commission rate.  I move up the ladder from consultant, to senior consultant, to team leader, etc. as my team grows to prerequisite numbers.  Meanwhile, by spreading the word that I am selling the product, my customer base grows as well.

There are countless business "opportunities" out there these days.  Some pay a predetermined rate as you bring in new team members.  Some offer a commission for getting customers to try the product, even if they don't buy it.  Compensation for individual sales will vary from company to company.  Note: When looking for a home business, decide ahead of time whether or not you want to deal with a physical product.  Do you have room to store it?  What if you have to ship it all over the country? 

I was ripe for new adventure and definitely interested in a way to boost my income.  Serious about investing in my new business venture, I bought about $3,000 worth of inventory, purchased business cards, read stacks of materials about the company, its founder, the products, and then headed out to "get names".  The goal was to get the contact information of a least ten people a day and then get them to come to a meeting similar to the one I had attended.  Hopefully, I would either gain a new team member or customer.

More on how that went...next time!

Update on Sunday, April 13, 2008 at 05:35PM by Barbara Silva

Haven't Heard From Me in a While?

Okay...you learn something everyday.  I am trying very hard to keep up my learning curve so that I can pass on my experiences to you.  You would not believe all the technology I have been introduced to in the last several months and there are new doo-dahs and widgets coming up all the time.

The RSS feed isn't all that new, but it was new to me.  When I enabled it on this blog, I was under the impression that subscribers would then be updated on any new content on the whole blog.  Wrong!  Each page could have its own feed, but that would be pretty cumbersome.  All this time, I thought my subscribers were receiving notice of new content on this blog whenever I put it up.  But it's only for this page!  No wonder this page was getting so many hits!  I only realized this today as I was linking a new article I wrote to this blog. 

When I realized something was off, I went back to my Renegade Professional tutorials and went through the lesson on RSS again.  Within two minutes, I was set straight and now know that you  all only get updates to this particular page.  I am a bit embarrassed since so many of you have been kind enough to subscribe!  At least, this will prevent some of you from making the same mistake! 

That's what I love about Renegade U, you can go back and get the information again whenever you need!

So now that I'm up to speed, I've decided to post an update here whenever I have a new blog entry or a new article out.  The new article is called "Attraction Marketing: Too Good To Be True?"

Thank you all so much for subscribing and I hope to bring you good, useful information that actually reaches you!

Barbara