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The Death of Network Marketing and MLM

Author Todd Falcone

Alright…so, I guess I better go out and get a job at Jack-in-the-Box again and start my entire working career all over.

Sorry folks. I will be closing my training company this week and getting a job. NOT!

This one has got me a little miffed. There’s a new e-book coming out featuring Mike Filsaime and Ellie Drake, titled something like “The Death of Network Marketing.”

I haven’t seen it or read it yet, but the title makes me want to puke.

I know Ellie personally and she is a very good trainer. In fact, I have spoken with her on stage a number of times. I’m not sure what SHE is going to do with her speaking business, since network marketing is dead. I DON’T personally know Mike Filsaime, and don’t think he has had any network marketing success. Although, I do know he has a fair amount of success doing online marketing with his Butterfly Marketing System.

So…here’s my beef, and I would love to hear from you on this one.

There’s a bunch of terminology being thrown out there about things like Web 2.0…and now Network Marketing 2.0, 3.0, etc.
Web 2.0, is a phrase coined by O’Reilly Media in 2004, which refers to a perceived second-generation of Web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and other things that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users.

I absolutely agree that technology changes things all the time. I DO NOT however, believe that network marketing is dead, or even close to it. I think that a subject line that reads: NETWORK MARKETING IS DEAD will certainly capture the attention of lots of people and inevitably sell a lot of whatever it is they may be selling using that quite powerful headline.

Technology has always changed the way we do things. Let’s look at a little history in network marketing.

1950’s-1970’s: Most network marketing business were built through one-on-one presentations, hotel meetings, and in-home presentations.

1980’s: During the 80’s lots of companies were built using the same methodologies of the past, with a few changes. VHS provided the opportunity for someone to watch a video tape about a business. Cassette tapes also became commonplace as a means of disseminating information.

1990’s: A ton of change happened in the 1990’s, and I was there to experience all of it. Still, many companies built through warm market (and they continue to do so today), hotel meetings, in-home presentations, and coffee shop one-on-one’s. Conference calling, recorded presentation lines and Fax-on-Demand became widespread throughout the entire industry. Still, tools continued to progress, with flashier brochures and hot audio tapes like “Dead Doctors Don’t Lie” putting New Vision on the map to over 500 million in sales  and “The Ray Cassano Tape”, which essentially MADE Cell-Tech.   Along comes the Internet. First…no one really knew what it was. AOL comes along and people began chatting their rear ends off. If you asked a friend in 1991 or 1992 if they had an email address, the answer was “no” a majority of the time. In the mid-90’s, lead generation companies began to spring up all over the place. In fact, I invested 11 years of my life with one of the top lead generation companies of it’s time. The World Wide Web exploded during the mid-90’s as well, and along came things like auto-responders which allowed marketers to load up leads and email their brains out. During the latter part of the 90’s, things began to change. The massive proliferation of spammers caused “filtering” to exist. ISP’s and individuals could filter out mail that they didn’t want to receive. The pure number of emails people received caused them to NOT pay as much attention as they did in the mid 1990’s. Capture pages (squeeze pages) allowed people to begin to market themselves online and “capture” information about their prospects. At first, it was free. Now…while generating traffic to a site can be free, PPC (Pay-per-Click) advertising has become the norm for a lot of marketers. The good marketers are still able to generate traffic because of their skills and knowledge related to creating sites that are solid in content and contain relevant information for the web surfer.

The early 2000’s: While some of what I just mentioned, PPC advertising and Squeeze pages began to formulate in the 90’s, it really matured in the year 2000 and beyond. Still today, even with the advent of very cool technologies, network marketing really has not changed. What HAS changed is the way we attract people (if we choose to utilize some of those methods) and how we PRESENT information to people. In today’s day and age, everyone has a website, a squeeze page, an online system, an audio CD, a DVD, online movies, etc. But STILL, even today as I write this message, people are using and successfully building their businesses the way they always have.

Again…what HAS changed are the tools and the technologies available to us. Network Marketing is STILL a people business and always will be. Until we move into the age of I-Robot starring Will Smith, where we have robots building our businesses for us, WE still need to do the work, generate the trust, and assist people in building a distribution network that generates volume through sales, so that YOU get paid.

I LOVE technology. I LOVE new tools and ideas.

In just the last couple of years, Social Networking has exploded. What IS Social Networking? It is simply a new phenomenon of linking people together in some way, shape or form. Sites like YouTube, MySpace, Friendster and MagneticSponsoring allow people to connect, share and network with one another, which certainly does change the landscape a bit in terms of our choices.

Change is inevitable. In fact, the only constant in life IS change. I believe it is critically important to EMBRACE it, rather than fight it. I’ve got a blog, a YouTube site, a MySpace page, a profile at MagneticSponsoring.com, and continue to utilize ALL of these new ideas to grow my company.

What pisses me off is to say that Network Marketing is dead. It simply is not true. Our profession as a whole continues to grow both domestically and globally.

Just to set the record straight, I will be posting an audio interview on my website later this week. I am going to interview a handful of people who have build GIGANTIC businesses in just the past few years using the same methods that have worked for decades.

Again..I’m NOT saying that you ignore technology at all. Use it. Learn it. Embrace it. But, to make such a statement and say that the “old way” is totally dead is simply NOT true.

Wait for my interview. You will find it at http://www.MLMPowerHour.com