Are you looking to make extra money, or better yet, need a second income, but don’t have the time for a second full-time job? Many have found the answer to this to be a career in direct sales. I have been with a direct sales company for three years and here are some of the things I have learned along the way.

First, know that your sales business is going to be what you make it. One of the greatest things about using sales as a means for a second income is that you can work as little or as much as you want. It is one of those jobs that you can work around your schedule. Most direct sales companies also give their representatives personal websites for the business, too, which means they have the opportunity to make commissions based off of online sales as well, without ever leaving the comforts of home.

Another thing to keep in mind is that whatever product you decide to market through direct sales, it needs to be something you are excited and passionate about, especially if you are using direct sales to generate a second income. If you enjoy and use a product, your excitement for it is going to show, and you are going to want to share it with others. If you aren’t your own best customer, it’s going to be hard to get other customers as well.

Direct sales is also a great way to earn a second income because you can often work just a few hours a week and earn a good amount of money. For example, with the company that I represent, if I have a 2 hour party that generates $1,000 in sales, my commission (income) from that single event would be $250, not bad for a couple of hours on a weeknight!

The multilevel marketing plan of most sales companies also allows for even more income, as team leaders can make residual income from those who have signed on underneath them. This is how those who are at the top of many direct sales companies are making five and six figure incomes. Those are pretty great numbers for something that probably started out as a way to make a second income.

With a little work, you can make enough for a car payment, a vacation, or even a few hundred a month to help pay down debt or save for retirement. Earning any kind of income is going to take some work and effort, but if you’re willing to put in some time, direct sales can be your ticket to a second income.

Stephanie Everette is a entrepreneur who loves helping people solve problems.

Maybe, maybe not. It’s not for everyone. If you’re a person that’s lazy, a person who is not a team player, a person who doesn’t understand the concept of leverage and how to use it, then no, network-marketing is probably not the best business model for you.

But if you do understand leverage and you do understand teamwork and the value and importance of personal development, then network-marketing might be the ideal business model for you. Now there are many companies in the realm of network-marketing, more often referred to as Direct Selling. Currently, over half of the companies available are in the areas of health and nutrition.

Don’t turn your nose up yet. There are plenty other companies that you can choose from. These include, but are not limited to the following: travel, cooking, jewelry and many more, but for you to become successful in your own business, you MUST find a company that offers a product or service that YOU can become passionate about.

If you’re not passionate about the product, then when times get hard or when you’re not producing the way that you were expecting to and you’re not as successful as some of the other representatives in your particular business, you’re going to get frustrated and you’re going get to the point where you want to quit and then you’ll quit.

These people shouldn’t be in network-marketing. So, if you’re a quitter and you don’t know how to take the good with the bad, I’ll tell you right now, don’t waste your time joining a network-marketing or direct selling company. For one, there’s a learning curve for people who are new to the business model and not familiar with how to make it work for them. Second, if you’re not humble enough or you don’t want to learn how to network with other individuals, this may not be the right path for you to take in working towards your financial goals.

If you’re not good at ‘networking’ with other individuals or if you would like to learn how to become a better networker and a better business professional, I would advise you to go to the trainings that your company provides. Your ideal company should provide you with the necessary training to prepare you for success in your business and success in life overall.

But yeah, if you’re a quitter, that’s not a good personality trait to have IF you want to be successful in business, direct selling or in life for that matter. Michael Jordan didn’t quit, Wayne Gretzky didn’t quit, Emmit Smith didn’t quit, Walt Disney didn’t quit and Thomas Edison didn’t quit. So why would you?

Direct marketing through the mail and direct sales tend to be some of the best ways to generate new business. First you’ll need mailing lists, names, addresses, and phone numbers to follow-up of all the potential customers you’ll be targeting. Now then, I’d like to use a case study for this point and I will use the example of an automated truck wash business and discuss direct calls and sales to:

All LTLs
Trucking Companies
Companies Hauling Their Own Goods

Why should you reach out to them, rather than allowing them to find you? Well, it’s simple really, you see, right now due to the high fuel costs obviously Trucking Companies and companies with fleets of vehicles of all types are very concerned with saving money. This is where a low-cost high-volume strategy comes in nice, and of course can be accomplished with a semi automated system. Thus, it gives the truck wash with robotic technology an advantage.

Some of the trucking industry might say that it is a disadvantage not to have human labor and a hand wash. And whereas that might be so for independents with very nice trucks, those who make the corporate decisions, such as the CFO of large companies are very much concerned with the cost.

It makes sense to talk to the local Walmart distribution center and get a flyer up on the bulletin board in the break room, and also talk with someone at the company to get a vendor number. In fact, regardless of the company anyone who has a distribution center within 200 miles of your truck wash should also be contacted. Personal visits should be made to any trucking company that has a depot within a 200 mile radius, or that runs routes up and down the freeway or Highway nearest your truck wash.

Indeed, the best way to get a list is to sit on an overpass, or nearby a freeway on-ramp, and write down all the names of the trucks that go by. Eventually you’ll start seeing patterns, and those are the companies you should call first. Whereas, this might sound like such common sense it’s ridiculous, you should also know that very few truck washing companies actually do that. I bet the top truck washing companies do.

It also makes sense to be on a first name basis with freight forwarders, less than load or LTL salespeople, dispatchers, and drivers in your local area. If there’s an agricultural area and you wish to also do washouts, and you have the reclaim capability to handle the extra debris, there is big business in it.

When doing sales, it makes sense to find the nearest metro areas, grab phone books, and start dialing up every trucking company, and every company in any industry which has a fleet of vehicles that are of the proper size to fit through your automated tunnel wash.

These trucking companies need to save money due to fuel costs, some companies are shipping a larger percentage of their freight through intermodal strategies, putting the truck trailers on a flat bed train and having the trucks pick them up when the get there – for instance in the Journal of Commerce there was an interesting article recently entitled; “Intermodal Volume on US Railroads Climbs 6 Percent,” by Mark Szakonyi, Associate Editor, published on March 8, 2012.

So, you need to contact these companies direct by any means possible and explain to them how you can save them money and solve their fiscal cost challenges. Indeed, I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

Multi-level marketing (MLM) businesses have been rapidly growing over the past decades. It is a strategy, which is also known as Pyramid Selling or Network Marketing, whose aim is not only to sell products but also to recruit members. A distributor of goods will not only generate or compensate money through his or her direct selling, but through the sales of his or her recruits as well. Recruiting will create a down line of distributors that will maximize the earnings of the original recruiter. Members of an MLM business are usually expected to earn money through word of mouth marketing. But because of modernization, members of an MLM business can now use technology, such as the internet, as a tool to boost their businesses. This is through internet marketing.

Internet marketing is a strategy of promoting goods over the internet, e-mail, or any wireless media. It is the usage of media in promoting products such as search engine marketing, search engine optimization, banner advertisements, email marketing, or mobile advertising.

What are some of the ways where I can promote my business online?

Internet marketing has many components.

The first and most effective form of internet marketing is publishing your business its own website. Here you can display every single product and services your business offers, its prices, or its benefits. You can place all of the information about your business that you would like your valued customers to know. It is a great form of advertising for it can be available to the market 24 hours, 7 days a week, and it can be a direct access to the global market.

Another component of internet marketing is the display advertising. This is the usage of web banners or banner advertisements that are placed to websites to increase visitors and online users’ awareness of your business. This is equivalent to placing advertisements on a local newspapers, magazines, or flyers.

Another great way to promote your business online is through the aid of the search engine marketing (SEM). Through this, your website will be greatly visible in search engine result pages (SERPs) by using paid placements, contextual advertisements, pay-for-inclusions (PFIs), or through the aid of free search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.

Another component of the internet marketing is the search engine optimization (SEO). This improves the visibility of a website in search engines through natural or un-paid search results.

You can also use the social media marketing. Social media marketing is the usage of different social media or social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Multiply, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and others to promote a business.

Email marketing is also a form of internet marketing. It is the usage of electronic mailing system to spread commercial advertisements in the form of message to a particular group of people. Several methods can be used with this component of internet marketing such as regular distributions of newsletters or mass mailing of offers related to the company’s product or services. This type of marketing is basically the online correspondent of direct mail marketing.

Under the email marketing is the online press release. Online press release is the placement of out of the ordinary stories about your company, its website, the people involved, its products and/or services on the online wire service.

Aside from the online press release, blog marketing is also a form of email marketing. Blog marketing can be done by hosting your own blog and by posting comments, suggestions, opinions, or inquiries in blogs that bare related to your business, products, or services.

Another great way of online marketing is the article marketing. Here, you create a particular article about your business and having them published online on article sites. These will definitely help your business gain a wider audience and increase your possible customers online.

But what are the benefits of internet or online marketing?

Internet marketing will help you find and draw possible customers who are looking for the products and services that you offer enabling you to gain new customers who are willing to have commitment in just a short period of time. It will expose your business to a wide and vast range of online users and visitors. These people might not be fully committed but being able to provide your web site or online promotion to them might just attract them in the forthcoming future. The internet can rapidly expose and bring your selling to customers around the world who are eager to buy from your business and not your competitors. Online marketing will focus you to concentrate on patrons who are vigorously occupied in searching for your products and/or services.

Internet marketing is far cheaper than having to promote your business entity through marketing campaigns. Online promotion can cut down your expenses when it comes to offline media promotion and advertisement and site rental fees.

Not having an office will free you from having to worry about insurance fees and monthly rental fees. Having an online site will expose your business venture on a global scale for it can go as far as the internet can reach in a jiffy. You will not have to worry about your business’ expensive advertising fees. You do not have to worry about publishing a brochure or a catalog to promote your business.

If you come to think of it, how much would it cost you when you place an advertisement of your business on your local newspaper, or over the radio, or even on national TV? See, through online marketing, you can save a lot of money which you can use for other necessities of your company that needs money allowance.

A customer will first be attracted to your website.

A good website must be prominent from its competitors. Customers must meet their expectations and must easily find the information that they need whenever they visit your online site. Having a lot of possible and committed customers that regularly visit and are interested in your website will let you know that you are generating leads and making sales.

A good and attracting website must be well-designed and created. It should be informative of who the marketers are and what the business is all about. A well-managed online site will be more inviting to prospective customers, increasing the chance of making them purchase the services and products that you are promoting. Not only that, it will also make them spread the word to people that they know adding possible and future customers to your business.

Another great thing about the online marketing is that communication between the marketers and the customers is easy. Clients can give their feedbacks, comments, questions, and suggestions in just a matter of time. Easy and faster communicating with clients will enable you to convince them more to buy the products or services that you are offering. No need to conduct a survey to know what the people has to say about your business for through the internet, honest and quick feedback can readily be available.

To sum it all up, internet marketing can build fast marketer-customer relationship, cut down or reduce expenses and increase competence or effectiveness, create an easy access to global markets. Internet marketing is simple, trouble-free, inexpensive, and efficient.

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