What Is Network Marketing?

Network Marketing is a way that companies market their products to the consumer. It is different from most other types of businesses because it doesn’t have any advertising, wholesaling, or retailing costs involved in it. It is done entirely by direct selling and referral, word-of-mouth type of advertising. This eliminates the middle man.

What do you mean by “No Middle Man”?

One of the benefits of this is that more money can be spent on research, development and manufacturing, which usually results in much higher quality, unique products.

Another plus of the Network Marketing business plan is that some of the money that formerly went to the middle man - advertising, wholesalers, and retailers - is now available to compensate the people who actually promote the products by their word-of-mouth advertising.

This person is referred to as an associate, independent agent, or distributor. He or she is a salesperson who has their own business or distributorship. They create income by building up a customer base that buys the products directly from the parent company, or by recruiting other entrepreneurs who in turn build their own customer base, or usually a combination of both. This increases the size of the overall organization.

Indepedent agents earn their money in at least two ways - through the efforts of their downlines, and by purchasing products from their company at wholesale prices then turning around and selling them for a profit. Commissions are paid based on what’s called a “compensation plan”, which determines how many levels of people will be receiving income from one person’s sales.

I’ve heard of multi-level marketing, or MLM. What’s the difference between this and network marketing?

Basically, nothing! The two terms network marketing and multi-level marketing refer to 2 different aspects of the same business.

Network Marketing describes how the products are marketed, through a network of people in communication with one another.

Multi-level Marketing is how the people in the network are compensated for their efforts. It simply means that commissions are paid on multiple levels of the organization, thereby creating leverage.

What do you mean by leverage?

When you are talking about leverage in this context you are talking about earning money from somebody else’s efforts.

The leverage concept is nothing new. It’s used by all for-profit businesses that have employees. The company charges money for something that the employee produces, then only pays the employee part of that. The owner of the company then keeps the rest, thereby leveraging the employees hours to create income for himself.

This is kind of the same as network marketing compensation plans, but there is a big difference: In a network marketing plan, the ones that are being leveraged off of are other independent distributors instead of employees. Therefore, there are no employee costs involved and hopefully these people will be more motivated because they also own their own business.

Wait a minute! Is this one of those “Pyramid Schemes”?

If distributors are paid primarily from money received from new recruits, or if they’re required to buy more product than they are likely to sell, then the company may be a pyramid. Pyramids are illegal in all states and most countries. Legitimate Network Marketing companies are not only legal, but thrive in every state and in most countries.

The way to tell if a company is a pyramid scheme is if you can earn commission from sign-up fees. If there is no product or service obtained for this fee, then it’s a pyramid. All legitimate network marketing companies pay commission only on sales of the company’s products or services.

Two Good Resources For Learning More About the Industry of Network Marketing.

These resources, from a third-party perspective and not created by any specific company, are Brilliant Compensation by Tim Sales and The 45 Second Presentation That Will Change Your Life by Don Faila. I recommend both of these as not only informational, but as good resources to use in your prospecting efforts with skeptical people.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!