Choosing a Network Marketing Business

My wife and I have tried several different types of network marketing businesses. Through our experiences, we have noted the good and bad sides of network marketing businesses. Now this is a long post, so be prepared to either skim through the main points or sit down to read for a while.

Preface

Let me first say that network marketing businesses require a lot of work. Some companies really push on you that it’s easy and you could make a million dollars or drive away in some nice car or whatever. While these things can happen (I’ve known a few who have done it), it requires lots of time, commitment and a good sales personality. No network marketing business is easy regardless of what anyone tells you.

However, if you do put the time and effort into it, it can be a great way to provide a side income or, as for my wife, be a way to be able to work from home. My wife wants to be a stay at home mom, so this is one of the ways to assist her in doing that as I don’t make enough to support both of us yet.

Now that I got that out, let me tell you my experiences.

Passive Income

I think that one of the best ways to do a network marketing business is to make sure it’s passive income. Let me explain what I mean by this.

The first company my wife tried out was Mary Kay. One of the problems I had with Mary Kay was that you constantly had to have stocked product. If you didn’t have stocked product, you had to order the product and deliver it. This created a lot of headache and overhead. You had to make sure you had cash on hand to purchase the products and then you had to arrange delivery, etc. It was a lot of work.

When customers ran out of stocked product, they had to contact you in order to get new product. If they are close friends, they will most likely order from you but if they aren’t close friends, nothing stops them from moving on to the next distributor who is a friend. When you only have a few customers, you can contact them occasionally to keep their business, but as your network gets bigger it gets more difficult. Again, this is all hard work.

The other 2 companies we tried are Arbonne and Juice Plus. Both of these offered ways to automate their products. Juice Plus automatically bills them each month and sends them the product. Arbonne does the same for certain products. For some of their other products which are meant to last longer, they have a simple online ordering form. This way, they don’t have to contact you ever again, however you still can get the commissions. This is great for those who move out of town or you lose contact with.

The goal is to do the initial sale and move on. The slight downside to this is that the commissions are often smaller for the automated systems, but I’m a man of strategic laziness. It’s like putting your long-term savings into an index fund and waiting for retirement. It’s simple, easy and it works. Very little work is required to keep it going.

Score

Arbonne - 1

Juice Plus - 1

Mary Kay - 0

Low initial investment

This is a big thing for those on tight budgets and also for those who aren’t quite sure about network marketing and want to try it out. If it isn’t something that you are cut out for, then you lose very little to start with.

Both Arbonne and Mary Kay require a decent amount of initial investment. It’s strongly suggested that you get products to be able to show clients. How can you know if a particular type of lipstick will look good on you unless you actually try it on? What if your skin has an allergic reaction to a particular product? You need to test these things out.

My wife couldn’t afford a stock of Mary Kay at the time and therefore couldn’t really do much to grow. With Arbonne, we spent $1000 on products.

Then you have to look at the other “hidden” costs. With most companies, you have to purchase promotional materials. Arbonne charged a rediculous amount for their website feature. Juice Plus charges for a telephone service which gives you business and training information. These costs need to be factored in when signing up for a particular business.

Juice Plus is a pill product, so you really can’t demonstrate the product to the people. We paid $50 for the sign up fee. There is a few other of the above mentioned “hidden” fees which we don’t get charged for a month or two after signing up. This is nice, because if the business doesn’t work for us, we don’t get charged too much right at the start. Our sponsor is helping us with some of the promotional material to start with, but we will be investing about $100 more into promotional CD’s which are priced very well. From my knowledge in CD and DVD production, it looks like they are priced at or just below cost. This give Juice Plus a one-up on the competition.

I highly recommend going for a business with low startup costs.

Score

Juice Plus - 2

Arbonne - 1

Mary Kay -0

Low Market Saturation

This is the tricky thing. It works just like the stock market. You jump in when things are small. If you were to be an initial investor in Microsoft, you’d be a millionaire. You may need to do a little research regarding this subject.

For instance, Mary Kay had enormous market saturation in my town. Everyone who wanted Mary Kay already had their distributor. There was no room to make money.

Arbonne had a little market saturation here. We met 2 people on our street who were already using it. 1 person had heard about it and nobody else knew anything about it. An issue we had with Arbonne is that we started with it because of a friend in our church sold it to us. This friend had already got the business of most of the people in the church and therefore it made our job much harder.

Juice Plus is about the same as Arbonne as far as market saturation in this area. Only about 2 people that we talked to had ever even heard about it. Luckily, with Juice Plus, we were the first in the church to promote it, and therefore it’s easier on us.

In your area, Mary Kay may not even be in existance and Juice Plus might be the latest fad. You need to do the research for your area to find out what works for you. I’m just expressing what has worked for us.

Score

Juice Plus - 3

Arbonne - 2

Mary Kay - 0

Good Product

This is very important. You have to believe in your products. People realize if you are just doing this just to make money but aren’t actually sold on the product yourself.

Personally, I think all 3 of these companies were good. Juice Plus gets a little extra of a bonus due to the fact that it’s a health product with an amazing amount of medical research by Universities and other 3rd parties. This gives it credibility. We’ve also seen health benefits in our lives so it’s good for testimonies. Things like this sell.

My wife still uses Mary Kay. She’d use Arbonne if it weren’t for the price. We both agree that Arbonne is a better quality product than Mary Kay but ultimately we are trying to save money. Arbonne has a little better promotional material than Mary Kay which made it easier to sell, but the high price sort of negated that.

Regardless, make sure that you are using the product you’re selling. Unless you are just the most incredible salesperson in the world, you won’t go very far otherwise.

Score

Juice Plus - 4

Arbonne - 3

Mary Kay - 1

Easy sells

This one is tricky because it depends on the products.

One of the things I particularly like about Juice Plus over the other 2 companies is that you can sell a product even if you only spend 30 seconds with a potential customer. They produce these extremely informative CD’s which do the selling for you. You can also sell it as a health and wellness CD because that is what it is. Each of their many CD’s has a certified doctor which gives great health tips and advice based on their field of expertise. At the end, they do a brief wrap-up about how Juice Plus can help with the advice they give. If you are in a rush, you just hand them a CD and tell them to listen to it and they are already sold with little to no work. Again, it’s strategic laziness.

For both Arbonne and Mary Kay, you usually have to schedule a time to show a potential client the products. Sometimes this can be done via “parties” but either way, it requires a lot of additional effort on your part.

Juice Plus also does “parties” which can be sold as health and wellness seminars with no mention to Juice Plus. Most of the talk is about health and wellness. They just throw in Juice Plus at the end. And since there are so many scientific studies which were done by legitimate Universities, the benefits are immediately and undisputedly apparant. This makes saying “no” almost impossible.

I’ve talked to my wife’s sponsors of both Arbonne and Juice Plus. The Arbonne sponsor said that about 1 in 10 people that come to the party end up purchasing product. The Juice Plus sponsor said that most, if not all of the people that come to the presentation end up pruchasing the product. Make sure to ask these questions to see how easy the product sells.

All sponsors will tell you that “the product sells itself”. To gauge that, ask them how many people purchased the product at their last party or presentation, or better yet, go to one and look around to see how many people are purchasing.

Score

Juice Plus - 5

Arbonne - 3

Mary Kay - 1

Cautions

Just remember that this takes a lot of work. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s easy or be taken over by the business presentation that makes it sound like it leads to fame and fortune. As you can see, Juice Plus is my favorite of the three we’ve tried. I didn’t know anything about the business except that a family member told me about it and I had been to a few Juice Plus seminars already. The other 2 (especially Arbonne) seemed way more glamorous like a get rich quick scheme.

Also, I wouldn’t really compare commission percentages too much. If the commission rate is huge but you can’t sell product, you will still make less than a lower commission with tons of customers. So don’t be swayed by sweet words and empty promises. Wow… that sounded almost Confucious-like. Maybe I should think about becoming a monk or something… Naw…

Anyways…

Be careful in choosing which company you go for. Make sure it will work for you.

Self promotion

If you are interested in any of these products, feel free to Contact Me. We’d be happy to get you set up or point you in the right direction… hey, I’m going through the trouble of putting this information together for you. I can do a little bit to promote my wife’s business, can’t I?