I receive emails and phone calls throughout the week from individuals who have joined programs and need advice on how to market or advertise online.
Often the case is that the person making contact has joined a program designed specifically to address the questions they are asking me. In the back of my brain, I'm often thinking, "What's not right with this scenario?"
In order to be considered a viable program or service online, the website owner is required to provide something in return for your hard-earned dollars. Typically, that something is information. Information in the form of ebooks, software, or training are the most common kinds of membership sites.
As you explore all your various choices online, when it comes to picking a membership (or product or service), ask yourself (at a minimum) these two questions:
1. What is the program giving you in return for your money?
2. Other than promoting that program to others will it also show you how to make money online for any business?
Hence the dilemma presented above. This person arrived at the membership site sales page. They had predefined reasons for hunting for a membership in the first place. Then, hit with an offer they cannot refuse (vast amounts of cash for telling others about that membership) they totally forgot why they needed it in the first place.
Sad but true. Somehow, somewhere along the lines of reading an action packed and powerful sales letter, the hunter forgot what he or she was hunting for - direction to help him or her build their own business online.
I've only begun to scratch the surface here. The problem is further complicated because after parting with the money to join the membership site (or purchase the product, ebook, what have you), the buyer skips over all the fine points of what it is and jumps right into trying to tell others.
This is the background painted for you, but the problem does not stop there. In the rush to tell others about their wonderful find, they totally neglect to educate themselves on the finer points of what that program (membership or not) has to offer.
As I talk or write back and forth with someone, I can tell from the conversation whether someone is - harsh as it may sound - lazy or hard working and determined.
Keep your priorities firmly in mind. If you joined to learn how to build your own business, sure tell others about your membership, but use the tools (assuming the site delivers the goods) to do just that... build your business.
Do yourself a favor. When exploring all the great membership sites and products, software and services available online remember your first objective. If it was to find out how to build a business, then use that membership (assuming they really do have the goods) to educate yourself and build your own thing online.
If your reason for joining was just the allure of making money with that membership or program, then at the least learn everything there is to know about what you propose to sell. When others join under you, I would hope that you'd agree that you have a moral responsibility to that downline individual to help them succeed, too.
You can't do that if you don't know what or why you joined.
