In this day in age, you’ve really got to watch your back when it comes to business investments.

First of all, How do you measure whether or not something is a scam? Let’s use the famous Amway case of 1979 as our yardstick.

The FTC case is called “In re Amway Corp. 1979″. The FTC found that Amway was not an illegal pyramid scheme – the business model as a whole is not a scam.

But the FTC ruled that the company had to cease price fixing, exaggerating the average income of distributors, and allocating retail customers among distributors – Scammy tactics.

The FTC advises that network marketing organizations that place greater emphasis on recruiting distributors that on product sales may be a scam.

A less quantitative measure of how much of a scam network marketing is would be the affect of the business on your relationships. Basically, use the quality of your relationships as a barometer of how scammy the tactics are. We will discuss traditional methods, newer traditional methods, and internet marketing.

Traditional network marketing methods can strain your relationships. The old-school tactics of inviting all your friends, family, neighbors and coworkers to vaguely described home meeting can hinder your social life. People feel tricked when they show up to your house to “try a new product you found” and they are ambushed by a fast-talking king-pin distributor.

Newer traditional network marketing methods work a little better, and hurt your relationships a little less. This is typically called the “sharing technique”. You share your product with friends, family, and co-workers. If they like the product, you invite them to your home meeting. At least they know why the are at your house in this case. But, people still associate home meetings with network marketing scams.

The newest network marketing tactics include internet marketing. The problem with the internet is that it is like the wild west. There are tons of scammers of all kinds on the internet – including network marketing scammers promising huge income for little or now effort on your part. This is where some of the biggest network marketing scams lie, because the scammers have more anonymity online.

To protect yourself from network marketing scams, you have to ask yourself some important questions about SPECIFIC opportunities.

Does the network marketing company reward both product sales and recruiting? Does the product appeal to enough people to support sustained growth? How does the company back up it’s claims about it’s products? What up-front investment do you have to make? How do the leaders in the organization advise distributors to promote their network marketing opportunity?

Use the FTC ruling and your judgment of how people would respond to the organization’s tactics to decide if you’re dealing with a network marketing scam.

The author contributes related topics such as The Whats Working Now Short-Cut System Review and the online network marketing training course WWN Review.

Tags: home based business, home business, home business opportunity, Marketing, mlm, multi-level marketing, network marketing, Work from Home

Baseball stars who were inducted into the Hall of Fame only played every third game and only when they felt like playing. Or was it when they were wearing their lucky socks? Every baseball fan knows the key to great ball players who made it into the Hall of Fame was consistency and riding out the ups and downs of each game. If you want to become an MLM success, you have to be consistent in all that you do in the business.

How do you leverage that consistency into success – into profit? See people for what they are and money for what it is. Don’t treat customers and prospects as a means to an end for your business.

Caring about people, investing in their lives, and getting involved in their success is what motivates people and makes them gravitate toward you. The users always end up as losers – losing their downline, losing profit, and ultimately losing their business.

There’s a sad joke that says to get to the top of the money-making ladder, you have to step on people. The trouble with that kind of thinking is that after awhile they’ll move out of the way and you’ll fall.

So if you think of people only in terms of what you can add to your bank balance, you need to change your philosophy. The MLM marketers who are enjoying the greatest success put money second to people.

You don’t want to get a reputation as someone who believes in success at any cost. Multi level marketing was never intended to be a business that promoted one person’s success over anyone else’s.

It was meant to be a business structure that shared the wealth available to anyone who wanted to invest and work to reach his or her monetary dreams. Your goal as a marketer should be to help others reach their dreams, to teach them and show them ways they can get the job done when they stumble. Caring about the people you bring on board is the key to having the most MLM success.

But you also have to stop daydreaming about what could be. This takes away from your productivity. You need to be focused on what tasks are at hand right this second and forge through the down times so that you can one day enjoy the fruits of your labor.

The author’s topics of interest include xowii company, network marketing lead generation, Team Xowii, and internet marketing techniques.

Tags: home based business, home business, home business opportunity, Marketing, mlm, multi-level marketing, network marketing, Work from Home