This is the second of the two - different, but overlapping - streams that are involved in affiliate marketing or network marketing. Actually it's not really an overlap. It's really a second layer (sales team) built on the solid foundation of the first layer (sales).
Going back to what we said earlier - about having a shop in the high street - what if the shop does very well? It can expand and grow. But there's a limit to how far it can expand. And maybe it can't be expanded. What about moving to a bigger and better shop? There's a risk that you'll lose the customers you've already got, and the new location might not be as successful as the original one.
Perhaps open a second shop, somewhere else, and copy what's obviously working already in the original one? That's why franchises, like McDonald's, work so well. This is what moves affiliate marketing into network marketing. The copying. The duplicating. The creating of teams.
What to copy (and what not to copy)
But let's be VERY CLEAR about one thing right from the start. It is not the copying/duplicating that works. Think back to the shop. If you copy a failing shop, what do you get? Another failing shop. This is, without shadow of doubt, where the 97% fail and the 3% succeed.
The 3% build a successful shop, then duplicate it. The 97% start out attempting to duplicate, but have nothing worth duplicating. Why do they do that? Because that's what the MLM businesses told them to do. That's very poor advice. So why do they do it? Simple.
They do it because they've been told something that I've already dismissed as baloney. They've been told that you cannot sell what you would not buy. They tell you to buy something. That handles the first stream - sales. Not in a good way, but it's done.
Now they say - duplicate. Recruit someone to do the same as you did - ie join and buy. Again, sales is covered (albeit badly, again). If you think you can smell something fishy, join the club. If you're thinking pyramid, scam, so am I. No sound business would ask this nor expect it. The problem you're facing is that your shop has only one customer - you. That is never going to succeed. Can you imagine a Tesco store where the only customer is the store manager? "Disaster" wouldn't begin to describe it.
Sure there's a basic logic to it. You'd open a golf shop if your interest is golf, and you'd buy your golf stuff there. Of course that's going to be true. But, equally, like my non-smoking newsagent, or my non-gambling casino owner, you could just as easily not want to buy the kind of stuff you sell. And even the golf shop example is flawed if the only customer is the owner.
The two issues - sales and team - are not inextricably tied together, Nor should they be. If they are, they are. If they're not, they're not. End of. You decide how and where and when to overlap the team stream to the sales stream. But don't, for one minute, think they are one and the same.
Building A Realistic Team
Duplication, as already mentioned, is the key. But duplicate a success, not a failure. The first job is to create the success. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that it does not have to be a massive success. It can be very tiny success, in fact. Think back to the example of compounding - just double the result, and repeat it.
In affiliate marketing you need only 2 customers. That could be you, plus one more. Or 2 customers, if you are not a customer yourself. The critical point here is that you are actually making money from sales of products. There's absolutely no point in even thinking about duplicating a process that makes no money.
Once you are making money, then you can think about recruiting another team member, and teach that person to do what you just did - ie to make their own money by having 2 customers.
From the product supplier point of view - you personally created 2 sales for them, then engaged another person to generate 2 more sales, making a total of 4 sales for the supplier. Do you see where the "doubling up" is happening? Do you see why the supplier is pleased? Do you see why so many companies are looking to go this route?
All you have to do now is to decide the pace. Are you targetting 2 customers a day? A week? A month? This is what decides your level of income. £100 is nice, but £100 a month is better, and £100 a week better still. How about £100 a day?
Setting A Realistic Pace
Whatever pace you can set, or want to set, is entirely in your hands.
MLM companies are keen to tell you what happens if you continue the same pattern of duplication, but beware of how they come up with the numbers. It's all but impossible to build the symetrical team that they use in their examples. The people you bring into your team are totally an unknown quantity. They might do the same as you, but that's not very likely. More likely some will do better than you (sometimes much better). Others will not do as well (often performing very poorly or not at all). You'd be surprised at how many will join as affiliates and then do absolutely nothing at all.
I know organisations that acquire thousands of new affiliates a day. It's quite fascinating watching the signups happening, live, 24/7, around the globe. You can watch it happening here at SFI Affiliate Joiners. Just "refresh" the page to see the changes happening right before your eyes.
But 99 of every 100 of these signups will take no action beyond that. They have their reasons, and it's not my place to comment on their motivation or their sincerity. My concern lies solely in bringing up to speed those who've joined in order to make a life for themselves. I will offer to coach every single one of them. But I can't make them do the work that's needed.
If I get only 1 in 100, so what? At the end of the day I need only 2 in any given month. It matters to me only that they are able to make the money they set out to make for themselves. They can then go on to build their own teams, and I'll be happy to show them how.
Conclusion
At the risk of labouring the point, and putting things the other way round - if you have a business that is not able to sell product to at least 2 independent customers ... believe it or not ... you do not have a viable business. Do not waste your time trying to copy it. Bin it. Walk away. Find a better way to spend your time and effort.
Selecting The Right Target Market
The reason I've dwelt so long on isolating the 2 different streams is simply this. The different streams need to be marketed in different ways. They are different markets. One obvious difference is that sales needs to be marketed to potential customers, and team building needs to be marketed to potential business owners.
In the longer term a customer may well become a business owner. Many affiliates start out as customers. Equally many business owners become their own customers. Nothing wrong with that. But marketing to both, simultaneously, requires a rare combination of skillsets. It's easy to do it badly, and it usually backfires.
Cost-effective Marketing
I accept that there is merit in the argument that it is more cost-effective to market to potential business owners because marketing the business and marketing the product can be done in one single action, whereas marketing the business to existing customers usually requires two actions.
I'm going to discuss marketing cost-effectiveness next but, for those new to the industry, there's a massive learning curve involved in understanding the difference between cost and cost-effectiveness. A "free" advert that brings in no sales is a waste of time and effort. A "expensive" ad that brings in 20 times more profit than the advert's cost is worth doing time and time and time again, no matter how expensive it it.
This is yet another reason home-businesses fail. A year spent putting out free ads that bring no results is heartbreaking for anyone. Especially where there is nothing wrong with the product nor with the company.
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