Patrick Curl: LDS, Network Marketer, and Entrepreneur: How I made my first Dollar in Network Marketing

(My Original Blog Post: http://www.theresabloginmysoup.com/how-i-made-my-first-dollar-in-network-marketing-it-only-took-me-8-years/)

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How to Make your first Dollar in Network Marketing.

That first commission check is the most important in a Network Marketer's life. It is the make or break of becoming successful.

Many Network Marketers say to themselves, if I could only make that first check, I know I could be successful.

The sad thing is most people never make it that far.

We all dream of being the epitome of success. We all dream of making $10,000 per month. To reach $10,000 monthly we must first meet $1,000 per month. Before we can reach $1,000 we must reach $100. Before we can reach $100 we must reach $1.

How do we get that first dollar?

With everything in life there's a process. I've been in and out of Network Marketing for many years. I've never really had much success myself until 2008.

When we begin our network marketing career we lack the confidence to talk about our opportunity. I kept saying to myself: "Sure if we had a ferrari everyone would listen to me, but nobody is going to take me seriously in my crap car."

I've wasted maybe 3 years of my life trying to be successful in many different programs. I say it was a waste, but instead perhaps it was just an education. One that I just hadn't planned on.

You know, it actually took me 8 years to make my first dollar in Network Marketing?

During the 8 years I've made many changes in my life, I got married, I buckled down at a day job that I hated, but that I needed to pay the bills.

I've spent hundred on self-help materials thinking maybe I just don't have the right mindset, people are being successful -what's wrong with me. Why can't I do it?

Enter Social Media.

In 2007-2008 I found a new business. Blogging. I first started out writing my blog, and monetizing with affiliate programs and ad networks like google adsense.

I made a few dollars here and there initially. Then I started getting more and more traffic. Eventually I was getting 40,000 hits per week.

It was about this time that I was introduced to MyWorldPlus. It was also about this time that things were tanking for the economy as well.

MyWorldPlus caught my eye because their powerline structure is extremely powerful as a marketing tool, and I saw this potential. However, the selling point wasn't the commission structure, or the business opportunity - the seller was the product.

In order to make money, online or off, you must fulfill a need. Who became the richest during the gold rush - prospectors or the people who sold them their supplies?

Right now we aren't in any goldrush by any stretch of imagination, but if you target your audience and focus on what they need, you will win as those gold mining suppliers did.

Today the gold mine is helping people save money. It just so happens with this business opportunity you can also help them make money.

First let me talk about saving money.

MyWorldPlus is a savings card that lets you save money on goods and services that you would buy everyday. MyWorldplus also offers money-back from purchases at hundreds of stores. This card literally pays for itself each and every month.

Sure there's a monthly fee but it's nominal and the money saved is about 5-10 times what I'm actually spending.

In this crappy economy saving money is a gold mine, or helping people to live more frugal.

Now lets talk about The Opportunity.

MyWorldPlus is a great company where you can make money almost immediately - you'll very likely receive downline members via the powerline, and you can receive a percentage of the global pool by only referring 3 members.

Some people only refer three people themselves and make decent income.

Back to earning your first dollar.

I joined MyWorldPlus and had a number of people placed below me before I even joined. I didn't think I'd really make any money off these people. The first month though, I made a whopping $2.50 just off the people placed below me.

Now sure you say - $2.50 isn't anything to get worked up over. When it comes to my failures in Network Marketing it was a LOT to get excited over. It was essentially my first $2.50 - after 8 years of trying.

I had my first taste of success, and I became an addict. I worked hard placing ads all over the place, posting in forums and putting the link in my signature, and blogging about it.

Now I have a loyal following of blog readers, and I didn't want to bombard them with batant ads and make them stop following me. Some people have been burned out by Network Marketing before, and have an almost religious crusader attitude against all things Network marketing. I myself have always kept an open mind, believing that it was my own failure that was the issue - not the company.

Having learned many things in my 8 year marketing experience, blogging and social media was the biggest catalyst. I have learned how to build a following.

The key to success is learning to build relationships. It's all about relationship marketing - it always has been - it just so happens that social media and social networks make it a lot easier in this day and age to build relationships.

Some other tips to successful relationship building via Blogging:

You absolutely must master twitter - of all social networks right now Twitter is the best. While you're at it - why not follow me on twitter.

Be conversational - @reply to a lot of people on topics related to your niche - it will make you stand out as an authority. A good tool to see conversations related to a certain topic, and reply is monitter. Just enter some search terms and it will show live twitter results for those keywords.

Participate in online forums. Some of the best forums are forums for work at home moms. The members are very active and they're usually more friendly and honest than a business opportunity forum. Also they're a lot less spammy.

Write like your life depends on it. The bottom line to successful blogging is the more content, the more traffic. Period. That is the biggest secret - to be truly successful you should be writing at least 3 blog posts daily.

Lastly - Never give up - your time will come and if it takes longer than you are hoping then you will be that much more grateful and thankful when it does. Never give up hope.