For several months, I got involved in a forum which formed the communication and training center of a program with a concept so different that I needed time to become comfortable with it. For most of that period, I wrestled with a feeling that it was all smoke and mirrors, but I eventually realised as many successful network marketers do that, if there was just one person in five thousand who thought it was a genuine and wholesome program, then in a world population of six billion, there would be at least one million other people who would feel the same about this program, so let's go find them.

Spending a lot of time reading up on the marketing and promotion ideas and putting them into action, I eventually realised that almost all the advice was plausible rubbish. The opportunity was being exposed to hundreds of thousands of people and many were joining as it was free, but no one was making any money. The inevitable happened as people started drifting away resulting in the usual massive list of completely inactive, unresponsive members who existed in name and email address only.

The program closed because the web-hosting service suspected that the program was nothing more than smoke and mirrors and possibly illegal, so they refused to continue hosting it. The word was out and no other web hosting service would take over, so the program as such was buried.

Remarkably, within weeks the head honcho had set up again with a program which couldn't be accused of being smoke and mirrors or an illegal anything. All members of the original program were offered equivalent positions, retaining their downline and a new forum was opened.

The same people were in the forum with the same old plausible but ineffective ideas on marketing and promoting. But this time, because joining involved parting with cash for product, the number of new members registering each month was pitifully small and mainly introduced by the head honcho plus one or two others who weren't about to divulged their methods.

However, the owner decided that if people were prepared to pay him a fee he would use that money to advertise and he would recruit a new member for the person who had paid the fee. Let's call it the VIP program. Sounds fair enough, doesn't it? But then he went further.

He announced that only the members who had been actively participating in the old forum could benefit from the VIP program. So all the others who had drifted away because the advice posted was ineffective, were banned from participating. Okay, so they hadn't helped and maybe you feel that the new recruitment package should only be for those actively posting in the forum. However, isn't this at best, a tad short-sighted?

Let's assume you were allowed to participate in the VIP program and you received a new member, who then copied you and subsequently received a new member, too. Now let's say that this process continued down several more generations with everyone being a little reluctant to participate in the forum, then the next person recruited was a real "carer". They just loved that forum. They just loved the interaction and helping others.

On the other hand, let's assume that you had been banned. You didn't pay your fee so you didn't start building your team. Would that carer have been found? Possibly, but also, very possibly not. The important point is this; a wise network marketing business owner knows that it is not only you that counts but also the people who join because of your involvement.

If you are involved in any opportunity that clamps a restriction on your ability to recruit, then I strongly recommend you find another network marketing business, and fast.