Some Truths and Myths of Direct Selling
By Jackie Khor
5 June 2008
Double sales in 10 years! Own a business with no employees and run it from home. Be in an industry that does over $29 billion in retail sales annually. Requires no previous experience or skills. An industry where a majority of the sales force is between 35 and 64 years old and 75 percent have a minimum of a college degree. No boss or set hours. Most sales people work less than 30 hours per week!
Sound as if it is too good to be true?
Not according to the statistics from the Direct Sales Association, www.dsa.org.
The viable and legitimate business of direct sales has grown for 25 years consecutively. Most traditional sales are person-to-person, advertised by word of mouth, which has often been thought of as the most effective means of advertising. Just the last few years, Internet technology changes the way we market the business. A lot of money has been made on Network Marketing via the Internet as it takes your business a global exposure in a short period of time. Even more so with Social Networking and Web 2.0, this industry will grow rapdily to another higher level. Direct selling has 99.9 percent of its sales force as independent contractors. Most are called distributors because they distribute the products or services directly to a consumer. Many of them recruit other distributors and receive a commission based on the activities of their new recruits and their new downline recruits. The distinction between traditional sales and direct sales is the residual income obtained from repeat sales of consumable products or services.
Direct sales was born around 1936 but did not really earn respect until 1950. Today, the industry is often called “Network Marketing,” or MLM. The Direct Selling Association refers to it as direct sales. The term multilevel marketing is actually a form of compensation of the Direct Sales.
The industry has evolved over the years from warehousing product for delivery to ordering and recruiting online. Many fast-growing and stable MLM companies are publicly traded and scrutinized by federal agencies, the public and potential distributors.
As in any business or industry, there are the occasional unscrupulous offenders. The failure rate can be high because many businesses fail in the first five years. Many people don’t have financial discipline or know-how to run a business, so they often simply fail because of lack of sales and declining income.
It does not take a lot to start these home-based businesses. Most can be started with less than $500. I call it initiative-based. You have to have the initiative to make it work. And ultimate success depends on your initiative and commitment. Becoming successful requires work and effort, just as in any other business.
The demands for online shopping, unusual products and services, a desire to be more self-sufficient and a desire for more free time motivate thousands of people to try this business. It can be a hobby or a vocation, depending on the entrepreneurial desire of the individual.
The key to success is to make sure you understand the industry, the products or services, the company and your own ability to function as a micro-entrepreneur which requires the ability to market and coach well. Avoiding pitfalls requires research.
Bookstores have books by authors such as Paul Zane Pilzer, Mark Victor Hansen, Robert G. Allen, Stephen Covey and Robert Kiyosaki who extol the virtues of network marketing. The Internet offers an abundance of information about the costs, opportunities and training. Associating with the right individual who has experience, leadership skills and training capabilities can lead to success. But be wary of any get-rich-quick language.
If you are considering starting a home-based business, perhaps part time, contact the Direct Selling Association and explore the opportunities available. This is certainly not for everyone, but if you do your homework and work with a credible company and mentor, you can create a business and income to match your lifestyle.
Free newsletter is available by subscribing to Home Based Business
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Submit Links to Social Bookmarking Websites Automatically! Get Thousands of Visitors! Increase Website Traffic and Income with Automatic Social Bookmarks Submitter. Prepare to upgrade your servers today
Monday In searching for sites related to AdSense but more specifically to %KEYWORD, I found your site which has great content.
Social Bookmarks Demon is enormously powerful, 100% automatic social bookmarking software which will build UNLIMITED number of top quality backlinks, send first-class traffic in minutes, increase your affiliate sales, AdSense income and site revenue as much as never. Social Bookmarks Demon combines features of ALL social bookmarking tools available in the market for price of single tool.
I could not believe I missed it! I’ll need to check some external resources regarding this topic.
Hello webmaster Wow what a fantastic article about Multilevel Marketing! Your keen insight into Multilevel Marketing is informative and creative. I look forward to reading other articles you have. Thanks.
I read similar article also named Some Truths and Myths of Direct Selling, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me
Did you know you can post comments automatically on websites like YouTube, XTube, Revver and more? You don’t? I’ll teach you how! Post comments automatically on video sharing websites, promote your websites, products and services automatically! YouTube Comments Poster – the best way to promote products and services for people who are interested in your niche!
Hey, would you like to submit comments and backlinks to millions of blogs automatically? Blog Comment Poster will do it for you. Blog Comment Poster will increase your traffic, backlinks and earnings dramatically! Sounds cool? Yes, it is cool! It’s the best automated comments posting tool on the Internet with many advanced features. Check it out!
Did you try to run online business and failed? Your website makes only a few hundreds of dollars per month? Want to know how to make more? I will teach you how! AdSense Money Maker is the best software on the Internet today that builds Google AdSense ready websites automatically. It has slow building feature, lots of different templates, builds AdSense TOS compatible pages and is completely automated. You must see it!
Post comments on websites automatically using automated comments posting software. Get thousnads of backlinks per day, increase your sales and earnings. Automated comments poster is the best way to build backlinks and promote websites automatically today!
Post trackbacks and comments to remote blogs automatically with Trackback Submitter! This tool will submit your comments to millions of blogs automatically. Trackback Submitter – the most powerful tool on the planet to submit trackbacks automatically!
Friday I was searching for sites related to Marketing and specifically multilevel marketing lead and I found your site.
Thursday I was searching for blogs related to Web Promotion and specifically business multilevel marketing and I found your related blog.
Search Engines Parser is enormously fast, 100% automatic search engine results extractor you were dreaming about for many times. Search Engines Parser can extract results from all search engines at the same time, parse titles, descriptions and links automatically. You can specify which search engine(s) to use and what kind of data to parse. Search Engines Parser can output results to screen, export to MySQL database and write to CSV file.
Automatic Scuttle Submitter is 100% automatic social bookmarking software designed to submit your domains to thousands of Scuttle sites. Not only Automatic Scuttle Submitter creates accounts and bookmarks sites automatically, but also parses meta tags for each URL and runs itself in background without any user interaction.
Post comments on websites automatically using automated comments posting software. Get thousands of backlinks per day, increase your sales and earnings. Automated comments poster is the best way to build backlinks and promote websites automatically!
I never believed I would need to know this thank goodness for the web
What an excellent blog, I’ve added your feed to my RSS reader.