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[K31]Key Factors For Success

by Eldon Beard, Eld

You are interested in starting your own network marketing home based business. How do you evaluate all the possible opportunities out there? First, it is important to understand how success is achieved with any home business opportunity. Certainly, complete financial independence is possible with your own home-based network marketing business, but it takes time to build it to that point. Some will achieve this independence in as little as 3-5 years. Others will take longer. Your network marketing business should be stable and continue to be an excellent opportunity for those who join in the years ahead. Please ignore the hype about "ground floor" opportunities. Startup companies are very risky to join. It is much wiser to select a proven business opportunity that has a solid track record.

There are three important factors to consider when evaluating a home-based network marketing business - the product line, the company, and the compensation plan - in that order. If you aren't personally sold on the products, the rest doesn't matter. And if you like the products, but the company is in trouble, then the marketing plan means little.

The Products
The product line is, by far, the most important aspect of any home business opportunity. If the products are not good, and reasonably priced, who will want to buy them? Are the products high in quality and is the price competitive with similar products on the market? If you were not earning anything from your downline group sales, would you still purchase the company's products at the retail price? If not, then look elsewhere.

Are the products consumable? If not, you will have to constantly work to find more and more customers. If they are consumable, you can continue to sell the products month after month to a loyal customer base. You will also want to consider what the true market for the product line is. If the products are very high quality with an associated high price, how big is the market for this level of quality? The same goes for unique, one-of-a-kind products. How many people will actually buy the product?

The Company
Once you are comfortable with the product line, the next step is to take a closer look at the company, its management, and their philosophy. As with startup businesses in general, the failure rate for new network marketing companies is very high. A high percentage of new start-up companies don't make it past 18 months. They may be severely underfinanced or have poor management that can't handle the sporadic growth of a new opportunity. If you have committed to a new company and they fail after 18 months, that means that you have wasted all of your effort and commitment, and must start over again with another company.

Find out how long the company has been in business. If it is less than 3 years old, it is risky to join. Talk to associates of the company and ask questions. Are bonus checks being sent out on time and is product being delivered in an efficient manner? Although you are an independent associate, you are still at the mercy of the company when it comes to getting products and getting paid.

The Compensation Plan
Next, consider the compensation plan. Many plans differ on the monthly requirements to stay "active". There should preferably be no monthly requirements to remain active because if the products are good, then the representatives should want to buy them for themselves without being forced to. Nearly all network marketing companies today do not require you to stock products or pay out bonuses to your downline group. You and all of your downline should be able to buy directly from the company and the company should pay all bonuses and commissions directly to the associates.

In comparing retail commissions and bonuses, you must keep a few things in mind. First, some companies quote their retail percentages as a mark up, while others use a discount percentage or commission. A 50% mark up is equivalent to a 33% discount. Second, many companies pay out based on a bonus or point value (BV or PV) while others pay out on the retail price. If a bottle of shampoo sells for $10 and has a BV of $8, a 10% bonus would be 80 cents. Another company may pay out only 8%, but on the full retail amount, so in this case, 8% of the same $10 is still 80 cents. You want to make sure compensation plan payout comparisons are fair.

Some network marketing compensation plans seem designed to make a few associates rich, while the average associate makes little or nothing. Some are designed to allow the average associate to earn a decent income, while making it difficult to build the really large incomes. The best plans provide a balance between these two. After all, for anyone to get wealthy in network marketing, it will take a lot of part-timers in their group to get there. It's important that the new and part-time people can make some money too.

Summary
If you are personally sold on the products, feel comfortable with the stability of the company and management, and find that the compensation plan is fair, then you probably have the right fit for you. My suggestion is to try some of the products, and then present the catalog or product brochure to a couple dozen friends and acquaintances and see what they think about the products and opportunity. This will give you a good idea of what you will encounter as you start your business. Doing this kind of work and thoughtful consideration prior to getting involved should lead to a long and successful career in network marketing!

Factor #1: Product Quality
The web can be a risky place to make a purchase. You can't touch the product and look at it like you can when you're out shopping at a store.

Nothing will undermine your conversion efforts faster than a crappy product. It's extremely easy for unsatisfied customers to post scathing reviews on blogs and forums. Having to defend against a product that doesn't meet expectations is a losing battle.

Understand that all your multivariate and sophisticated eye-tracking tests won't mean a thing if you're putting out a substandard product.

Factor #2: Product Demand Versus Supply
This is an area that can trip people up. You may assume that there is a need for a particular product, but unless you have proof of that demand, you're better off moving on to something else.

How do you access product demand? You use a keyword research tool like Wordtracker or Keyword Discovery.

Keyword tools allow you to type in a search phrase and get an estimate of the demand for that keyword (how many people type it into the search engines within a fixed period of time) as well as the supply for that keyword (a measure of the competitiveness of the keyword).

Using a keyword research tool will tell you that writing an ebook on “Fishing” is a losing proposition. While the term “Fishing” is extremely popular, the competition for that keyword is enormous, making it virtually impossible to rank highly in the search engines.

However, the keyword phrase “ice fishing house plans” has a good search volume and very little competition. Writing an ebook on this topic is a much better idea and ranking in the top ten for this search term is very doable.

Before you create a product, do some keyword research to ensure your product is viable and has a low level of competition.

Factor #3: Unique Value Proposition
Every high-converting sales page succeeds at helping the customer reach their goals. In other words, you must be relevant to your web visitors. One powerful way of doing this is to spend some time defining your Unique Value Proposition or UVP.

A UVP isn't a mission statement or a slogan. It's a statement that answers the question “Why do I need to buy this?” If you can't quickly communicate the answer to this question, you'll never achieve a high-converting sales page.

Your UVP should be one of the first things your visitor sees. It must be concise, memorable, unique, and explain why the visitor needs to buy.

Factor #4: PREselling
As far as I can tell, the term “PREsell” was coined by Dr. Ken Evoy, a Canadian businessman and creator of the Internet company SiteSell.

Below is Ken's own words about his PREselling concept.

“On the Net, effective PREselling creates a warm, ‘open-to-buy' mindset in your target group and gets that important click-through to your monetization source (i.e., your order page, your merchant-partner's sales site, your store, etc.). And PREsold visitors are much easier to convert into customers.

Successful PREselling content ‘works' at several levels...

1) It has that ‘been there - done that' voice and flair.

2) It has specific knowledge that comes from real experience.

3) It is supported by a depth of useful information -- good reference material plays an important part.

4) It is spun or positioned in a way that is uniquely yours. Furthermore, it is consistent, from page to page, from e-zine issue to issue, from week to month to year. And finally, it is for the customer, absolutely.”

You'll find a lot of sales pages on the Net that really aren't complete websites. Well, I suppose you could call them single-page websites, but all they are trying to do is sell a product.

Having a one-page site is not going to create that nice warm ‘open-to-buy' mindset that Ken talks about above. In addition, the Search Engines are moving away from that single page model and looking for sites that provide more substantial value.

Here's my recommendation. Build a complete business website that not only contains your sales landing pages, but provides lots of additional free content centered around the wants and needs of your target market.

Creating a small site that contains 25-30 content pages based around the theme of your products will do wonders to help PREsell to visitors. In addition, each of these content pages can (and should) be focused on additional profitable keywords that are related to the theme of your product or service. Over time, this will help to bring in even more natural organic traffic from the Search Engines.

By following these four basic factors for website conversion, you'll be in a great position to naturally increase your website conversion rates.

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About Author

Both Eldon Beard & Corte Swearingen are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.

Eldon Beard has sinced written about articles on various topics from Sleep Disorder, Best Mutual Funds and Recipes. Eldon Beard is a Watkins Manager with Associates All Across the USA and Canada. Watkins has been famous for quality home, personal care, and gourmet cooking products since 1868. To learn more about starting a profitable home business with Watkins, visit o. Eldon Beard's top article generates over 14800 views. to your Favourites.

Corte Swearingen has sinced written about articles on various topics from Computers and The Internet, Web Development and Marketing. Corte Swearingen has been a marketing professional for 20 years and is the creator of and the. Corte Swearingen's top article generates over 18100 views. to your Favourites.