Lets talk about some off line marketing techniques first, before we get into some of the Internet marketing strategies.

The first one that I love is the $100 dollar bill drop cards. They look just like a real $100 dollar bill. One side has your information, and the other side has the look of a $100 dollar bill. You fold them in half and you have the real look of a one hundred bill. They come in other denominations, but for me, the $100 dollar bill works the best.

About 90% of all customers pay for their gas with a credit card at the pump. Very few people will go inside to pay for their gas unless they need to buy a drink or something else. After I pump my gas, I will put one of my folded drop cards into the credit card slot. The next person that comes to that pump has to take the drop card out and look at it. Now, one of two things will occur. They will read it and like it or they will throw it down on the ground. Now you have a $100 dollar bill drifting around on the ground. This is as viral a marketing technique as you can get. Everyone is going to pick that card up and take a look at it.

The next way to market your drop card is at a newspaper stand.  This is best done in the morning when the paper stands are full of newspapers. Put your fifty cents into the stand and when it opens, you will see about thirty or forty newspapers. Put one of your drop cards into everyone of those newspapers. For just fifty cents you just got some great marketing to thirty or forty people. Do this at about five or six stands and you just marketed to about 200 people for about three dollars.

The next place to market your drop cards is at the book store. Go to any Barnes and Noble or other traditional bookstore. Go to the magazine section. Look for the “Work From Home”; “Entrepreneur” or “Success” magazines. Stick your $100 dollar bill drop cards inside of these magazines. The people that purchase these kinds of magazines are the kind of people that you want in your organization.

The other place is in the books like; “Rich Dad Poor Dad” or any kind of entrepreneur or homebased business books. These are the people that you are looking to enroll in your business or enterprise.  You can also go to your library and find these types of books there. Place a drop card in each one of them.

One of the more recent best selling books was called, “The Secret”. Oprah Winfrey was a big proponent of this book. She had it on her show with numerous guests. There is a chapter in this book called “Prosperity”. What if you were engrossed in reading this book, and you come to the chapter that is titled, “Prosperity”. As you open this chapter a $100 dollar bill drops out.  Wow! The Secret Works!

These are the people that you want to recruit into your down-line. People who are reading and studying about their personal development. People who want, and are learning how to be successful entrepreneurs.

Drop cards are a great way to generate good quality leads for your business because…….they work.

You need to be marketing a funded proposal. I know I’ve said this before, but this is the most important part of attraction marketing. What is a funded proposal? A funded proposal is a way for you to generate income, from your prospects, even if they never get into your primary business. It is a way to generate leads that are exclusive to you and not from a company where you have to buy them. It is a way for you to sell a system that answers the top two questions that every network marketing business has. Lead generation, and generating a cash flow to cover the costs of my marketing expenses.

Marketing a funded proposal is marketing a solution for your prospects instead of a business and starts them generating an income immediately. This creates confidence and momentum inside of your team. It doesn’t matter what kind of business you’re in. You will have all the free training you need to build your business online as well as offline. With a funded proposal, you will be able to create a strong bond within your organization. You will be able to exert your energies towards those that are serious about building their businesses as apposed to those that aren’t.

The money you generate from a funded proposal will help you to advertise and market your business. You have to look beyond your family and friends if you truly want to build a strong enduring business. You have to laser your focus on your real target market, which is other network marketers. You have to zero in on the reason why 95% of all network marketers fail. Not having enough leads, and not having enough money to advertise and stay in the game.

A funded proposal will give, the people in your organization, the cash flow that they need and enable them to advertise their businesses endlessly and freely. The average network marketer will quit his business in about 63 days if they don’t see some cash in their pockets. The funded proposal will answer this very important problem.

A funded proposal system will generate exclusive leads that you did not have to go out and purchase. You are able to generate a front end income from these leads and give your organization the same advantage through a funded proposal system.

Now you could go out and buy your leads, but they will never be the same as having a system that separates the tire kickers from the serious buyers. I don’t care where you buy your leads from.  Getting on the phone and getting rejected takes a special person. This is not easy to duplicate either, unless you are an A-type personality.

I get phone calls everyday from people who are trying to push their business down my throat. They think they are using the attraction marketing system of a funded proposal, but they are not. Leads will call you. You don’t have to chase people with a funded proposal. They will come to you.

Once you start  branding yourself as a leader, once you start to make money off your affiliate commissions, and you are effortlessly bringing people into your primary business, and you learn how to market your funded proposal, you will never do business any other way again.

Think about it. Doesn’t it make sense to make money off the leads that will never join your primary business? Doesn’t it make sense to market a solution instead of a business? You will stand out from the crowd just by doing this. Doesn’t it make sense to market your business to people you already know instead of total strangers?

Utilizing a funded proposal for your business will put leads into your system and generate the income that will keep you and the people in the organization in the game.

Direct Sales and Multilevel marketing. Are these legitimate  businesses to be involved in?  Have you ever heard of Avon or Amway. These are billion dollar companies. Avon has been around since 1886.

Why do so many people look down at anyone who works an MLM business or is involved in direct sales? I am so tired of having people look down their noses at me because they think that my business is a scam or I am involved in some under ground illegal pyramid scheme.

People who are in physiology or finances are the ones who give me the worst rap. I guess it might be that they had to go to school for eight to ten years and run up 100,000 dollars in student loans, and now they are stuck in a job that occupies seventy to eighty hours a week of their time.

My job is around my schedule. I make my own hours and appointments. I don’t have thousands of dollars in student loans. I don’t put in seventy hours a week on my job, unless I want too. I don’t have to answer to a boss, who tells me when I take a lunch or if I am going to take a lunch. My vacations are whenever I want to take them.

The way I see it,  having a JOB  is being in prison. You had to pay all that money to finance an education, so that you could get a job, that takes all of your time.  It might take you ten years or more to pay off your student loans.

I am not against education. No way. We all should get an education and learn. I love to learn and I am always learning. I wish I knew back when I was younger, what I know now, about how money works. How the wealthy exchange their money for time, and the rest of the population exchange their time for money. My friends are putting in seventy to eighty hours a week for a paycheck. The wealthy have learned how to use their money to work for them in exchange for time.

Time is the most valued commodity there is. It’s what we all want more of. You can work for someone else and use all your time to get money or you can learn how to use your money to work for you and in exchange you get more time. Time that you can use as you wish.

Multilevel marketing and direct sales offers you a chance to start a business of your own at a minimum investment. It does take work and time to build your business, but you can do this at the pace you set to adjust for your family and their needs. Full or part time. You decide.

With our economy still struggling, more and more people are looking to the MLM industry to fulfill a dream to work for themselves or to bring in another stream of income.

It won’t cost you $100,000 dollars and it won’t take seventy or eighty hours a week of your time. But there are people in this industry that are making $100,000 dollars a year or $100,000 dollars a month. You just might find a very rewarding and lucrative business that will give you a comfortable lifestyle and more of your time back to you, to do as you please.

Through direct sales and multilevel marketing businesses, people are learning how to get more of their money working for them. Don’t let anyone look down their nose at what you do. They might  just be  jealous.

How many of you love fishing? I am not an avid fishermen, but I do enjoy getting out and relaxing in a boat with a fishing rod in my hand. I may only do it once or twice a year. It’s not for the love of the sport, it is more for the relaxing time that I go. The camaraderie that you have with a couple of good friends and the occasional fish that you might catch. I enjoy that.

There is one thing that you must have while you are fishing. That’s patience. If you struggle with patience you will not make a good fisherman or a good prospector for your business. Fishing is a lot like prospecting.

Lets examine this further. First you have to go out to the right spot. You just don’t go to where you want to go. You have to go where the fish are. You see, when you are prospecting you may have to get out of your comfort zone and go to where your target market is. Like we said before, talking to grandma and Uncle John are probably not going to get you very far in your prospecting attempts. Oh they will listen to you, but your bank account will soon run dry.

When you see a certain marketing strategy, that you really like to do, is not working out for you, change the location. Or try a different marketing technique. Don’t get frustrated and do what the 95% of all network marketers do after about sixty days of working their business. Quit! “This isn’t working for me, I quit!” Patience is required when prospecting.

Try a different spot on the lake. Use a different lure or maybe these fish like worms?  The fish are out there. You just have to be patient. Find them, and use the right bait. You’ll catch em.

One example of this is when I first started video marketing. I was not a good candidate for the screen. At least that’s what I thought. I was nervous and fumbled my words, but I keep working at it. Practiced what I would say before I went in front of the camera. (You don’t want to be reading a scrip.) Finally I put my first video out and I had more people say how good my video was. I thought I was terrible. Sometimes you have to get out of your comfort zone. Try different marketing techniques, even if you are uncomfortable with them.

Ever catch a small fish, or one that just wasn’t right? What did you do with that fish? Throw em back in the water?  Sometimes you have to do that. A person in your organization just doesn’t have it or wants to leave for this, that, and the other reason. Let em go. Throw them back. There are more and bigger fish in the lake. It’s the big fish that your looking for anyway.

Remember, once you learn the art of marketing and prospecting, it doesn’t matter what kind of business that you are in. You will be able to find the fish. You will have an arsenal of lures to attract the right fish to you, and you will have the right strategies and techniques to catch those fish and bring them into your boat.

Be patient! Fishing takes time, and so does prospecting. Remember. Quitters never win, and winners never quit.

There is a friend of mine that believes in leading with an iron fist. He is the boss and everyone should jump to attention when he snaps his fingers. He does have the best behaved kids. His wife keeps the house clean and never skips a beat when it comes to preparing his meals. There is only one thing wrong. His whole family hates him and they are afraid of him. This is not how you lead.

True leaders lead with value. You cannot expect people to follow you when you don’t know where you’re going. The value that you hold out to them and give to them is going to mark you out and make you an attractive person to follow.

We live in the information age. The industrial age is gone. What you know and experience is very valuable to others. People want to know. You have learned and put into practice this knowledge. That information holds value for others. It sets you apart from the rest of the used car salesmen that are chasing everyone around trying to ram their products down everyone’s throat. You are giving information that people want.

What if you are just new to the business of network marketing? Maybe you don’t have any value to give. Sure you do. Write about your experiences. Do some research on your peers or a company that you may be  interested in. Write an unbiased review in an article about what you know and what you have learned. Start a blog and post that information for all to read. Send it out to article directories like E-Zine or Digg. You are going to be posting information that you know just because of the research that you did.

Whenever you go to company functions, make sure you bring your video camera. Take videos of interviews with the leaders that are inside of your industry. Take notes with the leaders that you are trying to emulate. You will not only learn and grow from their information, but just by association, people will begin to identify you as a leader, because you hang around with leaders. Go back and read my story about the clowns in Attraction Marketing Rule #3. You are known by the company you keep.

Write articles about direct sales and network marketing. Submitting these articles to places like Linked In and Face Book. Over 350 million people are on Face Book. Remember you are becoming a master of your trade. Sharing this information is going to position you as an expert and a leader.

A colleague of mine generated over 11,000 leads in three and a half months, and netted just under $45,000 in that period simply by writing articles and using a simple system to get himself ranked on top of Google. He had never done any internet marketing before this and he is using only article marketing in his arsenal of internet marketing tools.

I will be getting a little bit more detailed as to some of these marketing strategies and how you can become very effective in using them. That will be coming in future articles.

But the best part about all of this is……..it’s free.

One of my favorite movies is “Band of Brothers”. It’s the true story of the 101st Airborne Division, Easy Company, who fought back in World War II. I don’t know why they called them Easy Company, because there was nothing that these guys did that was easy. They were lead by Major Richard Winters, who came up through the ranks to lead this group of men through some of the most hard fought battles in WWII.

Major Winters was just not handed this role of leader. He earned it, and the respect of everyone of his men. He brought the value of a true leader out into the open for all his men to see. He never asked his men to go through something that he was not willing to go first. One of his soldiers said, ” We would have followed him anywhere.” Can people say that about you or me?

As you are following this series, we talked about becoming a student of your craft, in attraction marketing Rule #3. As you grow and your marketing and prospecting abilities are being refined, you are becoming a leader. You know more then 90% of all the other network marketers that are out there. You are starting to stand out from the rest of the other peddlers in the ocean of network marketing. You are leading with value like Gold. You have information that others want to know and learn so they can become successful in their network marketing businesses.

Have you ever heard the statement, “You are what you think”. You are a product of your thoughts. Focus on what you are becoming, not what you were. Remember, Michael Jordan didn’t become one of the best scorers to ever play the game by sitting and dreaming about it all day. He worked very hard at being the best basketball player he could be. Michael Jordan pulled away from the rest of the players by becoming a student of the game, working hard at learning and refining his skills. Even though he is not playing anymore, he is still one of the most respected and sought after people in the world.

This is exactly how you should approach your business. You must focus your thought energies on what you want to become. The greatest book ever written, The Bible, says ” As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.” You are a product of your thought process.

Study your craft and lead with value. People will follow a leader that will lead them to victory and the bank, not someone who is going to lead them down the wrong path and to the death of their businesses.

Another saying that you may recall. (Sorry, they are popping in my head like crazy right now) Talk is cheap. Seeing is believing. Perception is reality. How people see you is what you really are. There is a lot of empty words on the Internet today. Don’t let your words be empty too. Let them be full of value to help others. When you do, you will earn the respect of others and be marked out as a true leader. Your following will grow and so will your business.

It’s going to take your marketing expertise and efforts to generate the leads that your business is going to need. It’s also going to take the prospecting  skills that you will need to develop and turn those leads into the cash flow of your business. Prospecting is going to become the heart and sole of your business.

Becoming proficient at prospecting is going to take some education. Prospecting always starts on a physiological level. This is where most people, including myself, fall flat on our faces.

I was not born with an A-type personality. I was more of the, sit in the back of the room kind of guy, and just listen to people. I learned that listening skills are very important when it comes to prospecting, but it is only part of the equation.  You still have to know when to listen and when to talk and what to say when you do talk.

This might sound very complicated. I made it more complicated then it had to be, as most people do, when it comes to prospecting.

When I worked in the mortgage industry, we used to do cold calls to get leads. We were told we could go home after we got fifty No’s. Well that never happened. You see, after you would get a couple of hang-ups and some “not interested”, you would get an application. That would take some time. You would build a report with that person, and before you knew it, an hour or more has just gone by. You see my fears were all in my mind. I was paranoid for nothing.

As I educated myself on our products, and the prospecting techniques that I would use, I could relax and be myself. I could now use those listening skills that I had, and work on the others that didn’t come as easily.

All those hang ups, and all those No’s were just a training ground for me to develop and grow my prospecting skills. You have to get it out of your head that prospecting is painful. The phone is your friend. All those No’s brought me closer to a yes.

Remember, we are talking about attraction marketing. You have learned how to laser beam your target market. Your target market is other network marketers. We learned that in the first article of this series. If your prospecting other network marketers, your closing ratio should be very good.

Embrace the art of prospecting. Embrace all the no’s. Prospecting will become a fun daily routine that you will look forward too. Yes I said a daily routine. Because if your not prospecting, your bank account is not growing.

Rule number four for the implementation of attraction marketing to your business is marketing and prospecting. You must spend a good majority of your time to this purpose. Most people fall apart at this point. This is the life blood of your business. This is what pays the bills. Without marketing you won’t have prospects and without signing the prospects you won’t have the money to put into your bank account.

First there’s marketing. How many sources are you using to market your business? If you are just talking to family and friends, that’s one source. Making cold calls is another. If you are only doing one or two different types of marketing techniques, you are limiting yourself to the people you are targeting. How effective will your marketing be. You see,  people respond to different things.

Have you ever heard of Google? The number one website in the world. What about Yahoo? The number two website in the world. You Tube? The third largest website in the world. Maybe you’ve heard of Face Book. Face Book, with 350 million users, is the fifth largest website in the world. Let me ask you a question. What kind of presence do you have on these, the largest websites in the world? If you don’t, why not? These are only four of the many sites that you could be marketing on.

Most people only remember the first word in network marketing. Yes they call all there family and friends and network  like crazy. But what happens when you run out of these people to talk too?  It’s not if it will happen, it’s when it will happen. Your warm market is going to dry up. Then you will have no choice but to learn how to utilize the second word, marketing.

Most people jump into their business without a clue as to how to market. Would you jump into a 747, sit in the cockpit of the plane, and expect to fly that aircraft? I don’t think so. So why do you think you can start a business and without any knowledge of how to market, expect to carry your business into profitability. Not going to happen.

When you learn how to market, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you have. When you learn how to market, you will be able to separate yourself from all the other peddlers. That’s why those that understand marketing can come into your business, and within months, shoot right up to the top of the leaders.

Think of marketing like food. If you don’t eat your body becomes weak and unresponsive. The same is true if you don’t learn marketing. Your bank account will become weak and unresponsive.

You Must Become a Student of Your Craft:

“Before you can increase your profits you must increase your value.” Jim Rohn said that.

I love sports. I played sports when I was much younger. If you wanted to be the best at what you were doing, you had to be a master at your position. I played hockey, and there is a lot more involved to the game then just skating and hitting people. Someone said that sports is 90% mental and 10% physical. I do believe that is true. You have to be much more then physical to compete in any sport today.

Michael Jordan used to shoot six to 800 shots everyday. Why do you think he was so good at making those clutch shots at the buzzer. He did those shots everyday when he practiced. What kid didn’t go over and over in his mind dreaming of shooting the winning shot at the final buzzer. When you play that scenario out in your mind everyday, you are going to have that opportunity some day in your life. You want it so bad you can taste it. So you work at it all the time.

The same should be true of your network marketing business. Treat your business like your life depended on it and you will be successful. Treat it like a business and take it seriously and it will reward you. Treat it like a part time hobby, and that is all it will pay you.

You will become like the top five people that you hang around with. There is the story of three people walking down the street. One was dressed up as a clown.  A little boy, walking with his mother, saw the three people. He said to his mother, ” Look Mom at the clowns”. You see the little boy just blended the other two people that were not dressed as clowns as being  clowns, simply because of the clown they were walking with. You will blend into the people who you hang around wit. You may even start dressing like they do, or thinking like they do. It’s a very slow but subtle change.

Don’t walk with clowns. Walk with the successful people. People that are where you want to be.  People that are doing the right things and making the right moves. Emulate those people and do what they do and you will be successful in network marketing.

Are the people that you are surrounding yourself with holding the same qualities and character that you want to emulate in your business? If you want to become a better prospector, a better marketer, than you want to hang with the Mike Dillards, Jeffery Combs, and Cedrick Harris’s of the world. You should be listening to their Cd’s, reading their books. Be a sponge and take in everything that these leaders in the network marketing world have to offer. Copy them and watch your business grow.

If you had to have brain surgery, would you feel comfortable going into the operating room and glancing over at the surgeon reading the introductory manuel for brain surgery? Probably not.

So many people get into network marketing and are not willing to take the time to learn their trade and learn if from the guys who are doing it and doing it well. Be the best you can be. Become a student of your craft. Take those 800 shots everyday at practice. You will become so proficient at what you do, it will be like breathing. You won’t even have to think about it. Soon your hard work will payoff. You will find yourself at the top looking down.

You Must Brand You Incorporated;

People buy from people, not from websites. When you learn this rule, your business will change overnight. This is probably the most important one of  them all. When you brand yourself, you are going to stand out from the ocean of  peddlers. These peddlers are all selling their companies and their companies products. They all have company replicated websites that promote and brand their companies, not themselves. Why do you think they call them replicated websites? They are repeated or duplicated over and over again to thousands of distributors who are branding the company, not themselves.

Why are 95% of all people who are inside of  network marketing  failing? They are all being stamped out from the same mold. Their companies are just cloning thousands of the same thing. They all look the same and they are all marketing their company and it’s products.

What do you see when you go to one of these replicated company websites? Do you see a video of you. I highly doubt it. What if you Google your company name? What do you think you will find?  What you will probably find are the top leaders of your company who understand this rule of attraction marketing. I guarantee…..you won’t find you.

This is done every day from some of the biggest and largest companies. When Coke, Pepsi, and Nike sign celebrities like Michael Jordan, Labron James, and Tiger Woods to endorse their products they are using this very important rule of attraction marketing. They are branding their products to these very popular athletes and people will buy them.

You must do the very same thing. You must market you. You must brand yourself and overwhelm people with value. Stand out from all the other fish in the sea and people will be attracted to you.

Another very important reason to apply this rule to your business is ownership. While you are in your company, you own nothing. They own it all. If they decide to let you go, they keep all your down-line. They don’t give you a severance check. All your hard work belongs to them.

As you are marketing you and branding a name for yourself you are building a list of your very own loyal followers through an auto-responder like Aweber or  GetResponse. This list  is full of people that are following  you,  not a company. You are the business. You are the brand. If you and your company should ever part for any reason,  you will own your list and your name.

Because the one thing in this world that we all truly own, and  no one can ever take away from us is our name. Own yours today and start to brand and market yourself. Remember……you are the business.