The sad truth is that if you "had to make money today" even with the top network marketing companies it would be nearly impossible.

This is because most MLM companies do not have sales and recruiting systems in place that a new person can implement right away to start seeing immediate results. Most network marketing teams are people driven instead of systems driven, meaning they rely on throwing a lot of mud at the wall and seeing who sticks. Who sticks are those who already have large centers of influence and strong sales, marketing, and leadership skills.

Those who are willing to join because of the big promises made at the opportunity meetings are left to either quit because of frustration or hold out until they figure out that to make old school MLM work they have to develop into an outgoing personality and build a sphere of influence. Either way, they won't be making much money right away with old school MLM tactics.

Network marketing no longer has to rely on a face to face approach to your potential customer. With the explosion of the internet, the business can now be accomplished through effective internet marketing techniques. Network Marketing is a product of steady evolution, outgrowing earlier business models by eliminating middlemen, resellers and the associated price markups. By unifying the manufacturer with the marketer, Multi-Level Marketing ensures that no disagreements or mis-communications have place to bring a business

Why do top network marketing companies still teach the old, outdated, and uncomfortable ways of building a MLM business? It is either because they do not know how or because they do not want their reps to be empowered with 21st century techniques for fear of losing those reps to other opportunities where they can be completely independent.

When Robert Kiyosaki says that hard work will not make you rich and that you must work smarter instead of harder he does not mean that you can just believe and embrace a new way of thinking and money will just start to show up.

I think Dan Kennedy stated it best in his book, No B.S. Wealth Attraction For Entrepreneurs, that you must take congruent action to achieve your goals. This is different from hard work. You can spend countless hours handing out business cards at the mall, going door to door, delivering your MLM company DVD's to friends and cold calling genealogy lists (all of which is hard work) and not make a dime.

But you could learn a skill like the art of pay-per-click marketing and, once learned, only spend an hour or two a day managing your campaigns and make a fortune.

But the key still is that you must take action to learn pay-per-click marketing and you still must put that skill into action, even if it is only for 1 to 2 hours a day.

To be successful in network marketing, as in any business or endeavor, you must consistently take action that is congruent with your goal. If you wanted to become a champion boxer it would be silly to practice pitching a baseball all day. Even though practicing pitching would be hard work, it would not be an action congruent with your goal of becoming a champion boxer.

It is also silly to continue working hard at old school MLM building strategies that produce little or no results while there are much faster, easier, more productive, more profitable, and more comfortable ways of building a network marketing business available. My network marketing tip: always take congruent action and read everything you can from Dan Kennedy and Robert Kiyosaki.

I jumped to and from several network marketing business opportunities and was taught the same thing as almost everyone: "make a list of 25 to 100 people" and make recruiting presentations to all of them, or slightly glaze over the opportunity and try to convince them to come to an opportunity presentation. I wasted a ton of time in the early days because of this for several reasons:

1. By chasing people down, you put yourself into a very weak position in the eyes of the person you are trying to recruit. This goes beyond the fact that your are poisoning their perception of the business by immediately putting the impression into their mind that if they do join you that they too will have to put themselves into the uncomfortable situation of chasing and begging their friends and family. You are putting yourself into a bad position because you are chasing them. When someone is chased it is their natural reaction to run away. Think about a situation in which people are gathered in a social situation to meet members of the opposite sex like at a club or a party. Who are most of the women their going to be attracted to, the guy who is desperately going to every woman one by one trying to get a phone number and a commitment for a date or are the women going to be attracted to the confident, relaxed "James Bond" type whose posture says "I don't really care if I meet you or not"? If you think that women would rather engage the pitiful, desperate type then you really need to clear your calendar this weekend and watch all the of the Sean Connery era Bond films and take some notes. If you want to sponsor people into your business then you need to develop yourself into a leader that new recruits will want to follow. Mike Dillard, who is one of my network marketing heroes, talks a lot about this concept and you need to read his work as much as you need to watch the Bond films.

2. The people you get into your business through this "chase em' til' they sign up" approach are not the right people for your business. Isn't that ironic? 95% of newbie network marketers are told to make a list and chase the people on that list but the people who sign up after being chased are totally wrong for your business. Why? Dani Johnson put it best by saying (to paraphrase) that if you have to convince someone to join your business then you will never stop convincing them. You will have to convince them to come to meetings, you will have to convince them to go to training conferences, you will have to keep convincing them over and over to do the things that they need to do. At this point you do not have a business but rather an unpaid adult babysitting service.

3. The "chase 'em 'til they sign up" approach does not duplicate on a large enough scale to make a highly profitable business. Even if you do get a few people into your down-line this way after many uncomfortable opportunity meeting invitations that you have extended to friends and family members (most of whom belong in a J.O.B.) most new people will quit not because they are not workers (even though many are not) or because they can't follow instructions but because they get heavily discouraged after the first few "no's" they get or even worse after the first few times that they get laughed at by friends or relatives who they probably should not have approached to begin with (remember those who belong in a J.O.B.?).

However, I believe there is hope for most network marketing business opportunities, including yours and mine. I believe that you have to have systems in place that:

1. Position you as someone who is a leader who prospects should follow 
2. Weed out people who do not have any entrepreneurial drive and who really belong in a J.O.B. 
3. Allow you to make a significant income whether you recruit anyone or not

Every newbie needs to be able to plug into a system for their network marketing business opportunity that immediately generates interested recruiting prospects and interested product prospects, that weeds out deadbeats and filters in people who have the right determination and who are in the right place in life to be serious about your opportunity, and they need a big ticket product that is in high demand that will produce significant income before a down-line is even built.

This system does not even have to be a high tech cold-market system that only uses the internet to find new prospects. This could be a warm market based system as well.

you should look for when making the decision to start a network marketing business are the right compensation plan and the right product or service. You need a program that is in big enough demand in the marketplace so that it could stand on its own outside of the business opportunity. There are network marketing companies out there that distribute vitamins, phone service, and financial service programs among thousands of other products and services but when you are making the determination on whether or not you should join a company you need to ask yourself, "Would this product be successful if it was marketed through traditional channels like retail stores?" You also should ask yourself, "Would a consumer who is not part of a business opportunity or a friend of this product distributor purchase this product at this price?"

While there are products out there in the network marketing industry that are great, the truth is that many are overpriced just for the sake of paying bigger commissions to the "reps" or "distributors" in that particular opportunity. Is the company you are looking at marketing a skin cream that is virtually identical to something that could be found at your local drug store for a fraction of the cost? Is this MLM company asking for a $400 or more upfront fee to "buy your own travel business website" when sites like Travelocity and Orbitz will give you a travel portal website for free to earn travel booking commissions? Are you looking at a company that is charging over $3,000 for a financial management software program that is not much more advanced that Quicken or Microsoft Money which are only about 5% of the cost? Have you heard a pitch for a box of books and some CD's that are priced at $2,000? I will not name any companies here but these are all real world examples of business opportunities out there right now which have products that are priced artificially high relative to their end user market value just for the sake of paying out a big commission and which leave the reps at the bottom with a big dent in their bank account for a relatively useless product and the only way that these reps have to get any value out of their participation is to go out and find other suckers who will overpay for a product.

Now, do not misunderstand me, there are many products in the network marketing industry, especially nutritional products, which are a little more expensive that those you find in your local grocery store or vitamin shop. However, these that I am referring to are products that are extremely high quality and you should know that their cost is only justified if you can find compelling research from independent lab studies as to their efficacy or they are endorsed by renowned physicians. There are many great nutritional products out there on the market that fit this description but you must do your own research.

But what I don't like about nutritional products, even the very high quality supplements, is that you must build an enormous down-line of usually over 500 people to make any significant money. In other words, you cannot make a 6 figure income without recruiting anyone. The same goes for MLM companies that market phone services, medical discount plans and the like.

But even when you find a network marketing company that has a product or service that is in high demand, is priced reasonably compared to its real market value, and has a compensation structure that enables you to make a $100,000 a year before you recruit a single person you still have to join a team that will offer real value to you through the training and mentorship that they provide.

When I say training and mentorship I do not mean that you will have an up-line person tell you to make a list of 50 people that you know and to bug them or trick them into coming to an opportunity meeting. You need someone who will give you the training you need to go into the marketplace and generate leads of people who are interested in what you have to offer. This includes showing you systems for finding entrepreneurs to join you in your business and systems for finding product users.

But training is not enough either. You also need true mentorship. A mentor is not someone who will take your money for a product or sign up fee and then email you instructions and tell you to "go get 'em". Anyone who is allegedly your leader in your company should be there for you to mentor you, take you by the hand and walk you through every step of setting up your business to make it run profitably.

To recap, the best way I know how to start a network marketing business is: 
1. Find a product or service that is in demand in the marketplace 
2. Make sure that this product or service has a compensation structure that would allow you to make a 6 figure income by yourself and even more when you build a team 
3. Find a true mentor who is part of a team of entrepreneurs dedicated to coaching and teaching all those who are willing to learn and willing to work.