Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Multi Level Marketing Basics - The MLM Business Model

By George Dodge

MLM, which is an acronym for Multi Level Marketing, is an amazing success formula for working from home, using the POWER of the Internet and achieving your personal and financial dreams!

This business model is used by hundreds of companies to move their goods and services to the end consumer. In this article, my goal is to provide you with information on what this industry is and what it is not.

You can only make an informed educated decision as to whether or not this business concept if right for you if you have the required information upon which to make that decision. I hope to provide some of that information in this article.

Multi Level Marketing is simply a business model for moving products and services from production to the consumer using independent distributors with a multi level commission payout plan. Since distributors can recruit other distributors and establish teams that work together, this business model is often also called Network Marketing.

There are many myths about MLM companies, including that they are illegal pyramid schemes or scams. For true Multi Level Marketing companies, nothing could be further from the truth. Unfortunately, those who believe these myths, simply do not understand how MLM companies work.

First you need to know that Multi Level Marketing companies are 100% legal and many large multi-million dollar companies employ this business model to move their products from production to the consumer. The pyramid shape associated with MLM companies is the same shape as almost all non MLM companies. There are always more workers in the lower ranks than there are senior managers, Vice Presidents, and CEOs. If companies were not of this shape, they would collapse.

Some well known Multi Level Marketing companies include Herbalife, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Shaklee, Amway, Tupperware, Princess house (a subsidiary of Colgate Palmolive), A. L. Williams (Insurance), Melaleuca, U.S. Sprint, MCI, and NSA. Companies such as these have been around for decades.

There are hundreds more MLM companies and just like other companies, some are good and some are not so good. But MLM is certainly here to stay and it is an explosive growth field! In fact, increasingly you will find more and more Fortune 500 companies employing the Network Marketing business model for some portion of their marketing portfolio!

So what's the big attraction to MLM companies and programs? Well, it represents a wonderful opportunity for the "little guy" to start his own business on a part time basis and make a whole lot of money provided he or she is willing to put in some work! This is not a get rich quick scheme and work is involved, no matter what some MLM recruiters would like you to believe.

However, the beauty of MLM is that it's not about one person doing it ALL. It's about many people each doing a little and working together as a team! Members of a Network Marketing or Multi Level Marketing company are not actually employees of the company, but rather independent distributors. Each distributor helps "distribute" the companies products to consumers. The distributors are compensated for their efforts by a retail commission based on the amount of product moved from production to the consumer.

What makes the business "multi level" is that each independent distributor can recruit other independent distributors to work under them and earn a wholesale commission on the amount products their recruited distributors move to consumers. And this process can go on and on for some designated number of levels. This chain of distributors is called a downline.

The more people a distributor can recruit for his downline, the larger will be their total commissions. The number of levels that a distributor will earn override commissions on will depend upon the company's compensation plan but five to seven or more levels is not unusual. These wholesale override commissions can quickly add up for distributors with a large downline.

A strong incentive is thus created not only for a distributor to recruit more distributors for their downline, but also to train them to move products as well. Thus a successful distributor will want to duplicate their success by teaching their downline members how to be successful. By making their downline members successful, they make themselves more successful.

In addition to selling products directly, recruiting, training, and retaining others becomes the key to earning a large stable residual income with Multi Level Marketing. It is not easy, but it is very rewarding.

Want to be your own boss? Millions of people are earning a solid income using this business model working from home. A telephone, basic computer, fax machine, a HUGE ambition, and the knowledge of how to proceed to grow your business are all it really takes! Are you ready to explore the opportunities that Multi Level Marketing offers? If you would like to know how to build a MLM business online and discover some of the popular Multi Level Marketing myths that cause people to fail in their Network Marketing businesses, click the links in the resource box below.

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