by James Ruhnke

Created on: January 23, 2007   Last Updated: April 13, 2007

The goals of both Affiliate Marketing and ML Marketing are the same in the end. The purpose is to generate more sales for the company. In Affiliate Sales, the commissions may be reduced depending on how many affiliates refer one website to another. If you wind up with your website turning into a Pop-up, then your effectiveness is greatly reduced due to pop-up blockers. And it also depends on how much money you are willing to spend to have your site highly visible on a prominent search engine. If you are charged per click on your site, just to have it more visible, is the cost worth the commission that you may get? Especially if that click does not generate a sale. It does have the advantage of being able to be done part-time and with a minimum of personal interaction if that is what you are interested in. As in any business, the costs involved are just a part of running a business.

In MLMarketing, it behooves those in recruiting others to train them well because it helps their bottom line. While described by many as a pyramid "scheme", with a reliable company it is not.It is a network wherein some people that have been brought in later can actually make more money than their "up-lines". If you look at traditional businesses, they are pyramids. There are a lot of people on the bottom, and the middle, making the people at the top, especially the owners, rich. Those people on the bottom seldom have any hope of reaching the top layer of money makers in the company. And even if they do, they are still using their skills to make someone else more money than they are.
With MLM's there is a great potential for real wealth creation by those just coming into the system. Robert Kiyosaki who wrote "Rich Dad,Poor Dad", has a lot of good things to say about MLM's in his book "The Business School for People Who Like Helping People" The potential network marketer has to do their research though on which companies offer not only the best continual training, but the best proven track record for providing goods and services that are cutting edge and viable in the marketplace, especially now in the internet marketplace. No longer are people pushed to drag their family members or friends into the business, or guilt trip them into buying their products.
In MLM's you have the ability to create residual income. This doesn't happen in the normal business climate. If you have a traditional career, even a very well paying one, like an attorney or a doctor, when you aren't getting clients or patients, you aren't getting paid. With residual income, when you have built your network, you will continue to get income from your "down-lines". At this point, some people will walk away happy with the money that they have made. But many more are happy to stay in just to be able to help others get to where they are.
If you really want to look at MLM's as pyramids, picture this...take a traditional standard business with it's static layers and put people in each layer with a line between the layers. In many cases you will have the people in the upper layers standing on the people in the lower layers to keep them from rising in the pyramid. Now picture another "pyramid". Instead of lines, you have people in the upper layers reaching down to the lower layers to pull people up. In a good network marketing system, that is how it works. It is a much more people orientated system than affiliate marketing, which may require no personal contact at all. Whatever floats your boat, each system has something to offer.

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