How I Rushed In Too Quickly To Network Marketing - Learn From My Mistakes!

Looking back, I dived head-first into network marketing without any of the planning and research that I now advise others to undertake! I turned up at a coffee morning at the house of a friend of mine, bought far too many of the greeting cards he was selling, and took home a catalogue to look through later. The catalogue featured the stories of a number of "successful traders", all of whom managed to run a part-time business from home, look after their kids, and make loads of money. I fell in love with the idea and signed up - much to the surprise of my friend, who had never actively tried to build himself a "downline", but enjoyed selling the cards around his acting career.

Why did I sign up? I loved the product (I'm a stationery fanatic) and I thought that the cards, wrapping paper and accessories were perfect for young families. I saw the possibilities of building a downline, and realised that the opportunity was one which other mothers of children might want to be involved in. Although my kids are getting older, I had spent a fortune on birthday cards, wrapping paper and gift tags for their various birthday parties over the years. I felt sure that I could build a network, especially with my websites to promote the opportunity.

I spent a month setting up, buying stock, building a little website to recruit a downline, publicising the opportunity through my existing websites and building up to a "coffee morning" with friends, family and neighbours. The coffee morning was a great success and I made a "profit" of nearly £200 ($370) on sales on the day. But I was left with a further £400 of stock which hadn't sold and I'm sorry to say that over the next few months I added to that stock even more in an effort to turn up at events with the latest cards, wrapping paper and accessories to keep people interested.

It was a hard slog. I booked tables at various Christmas events and had to carry in huge boxes of stock, display stands (more investment) and carrier bags, then carry almost as much out again. At one event, which lasted from 10am (set up 8.30am) until 5pm (home at 7pm) on a wet Sunday in November, I sold 6 greeting cards and a roll of giftwrap. All the other traders said it was the worst fair they had ever attended. I was disheartened, exhausted, missing my family and husband (who, because of his long hours at work, I only really saw on the weekends), and getting broker by the minute: after paying for my table and a cup of coffee to wipe the chill from my toes, I was down about £30 ($56) and a lot of hard work on the day!

About 6 weeks into the experiment, I had a curt letter from the company telling me that they had "discovered" my online references to the opportunity and that I was to take my website down immediately. I was more than a little surprised, as nothing in the literature suggested that the business could not be publicised online. It turned out that there were about 5 or 6 ladies like me who were mentioning the company on the internet, and that a bunch of existing traders had complained that we made it "unfair" for those networkers who weren't capable of using the internet to their advantage. The company took a while to deliberate their position, but in the end decided to ban the use of the internet to sell either the product or the opportunity.

Throughout my short year with the company, I received regular newsletters telling me how sales were going from strength to strength and that each month was proving better than the last. New products were being launched at the rate of knots (all of which, of course, one had to buy to keep your customers interested). Records were being broken all the time. I'm sorry to say that, by the time I realised that the wonderful growth that the business was enjoying was mostly down to people like me taking on stock and all the risk, I had sunk over £800 into stock - most of which is still sitting in my cupboard upstairs.

Please learn from my mistakes!

Do your research! Talk to existing traders - not just the person recruiting you into the opportunity.

Work out the figures carefully. I had to sell 2 cards to make enough money to invest in 1 card for my stock - so I was always pouring more money into the company's profits and detracting from mine!

Think about how you will sell the product. How often are you prepared to do "coffee mornings" or sell at events? How much work will it really involve? Lugging your samples or stock around can get very tiring, very quickly.

How much will your friends and family tolerate? The cards I was selling were really very nice - nobody had a problem buying them at all - but there are only so many cards that your friend or mother can buy! The same will be true for whatever product you sell.

by Lindsay Small

Lindsay Small is a Work At Home Mother who owns and runs a collection of family-friendly websites including W-A-H-M.com - where Work At Home Moms can find information, ideas, inspiration, advice about work at home opportunities, interviews with successful WAHMS and hopefully a laugh or two. Visit http://www.W-A-H-M.com and subscribe to the weekly newsletter by sending an email to W-A-H-M@aweber.com.

** Attention Newsletter Editors / Website Owners **
Please feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your newsletter or on your site, as long as you leave all
links in place, do not modify the content, and include our resource box as above intact.