For anyone who’s under the misapprehension that starting an online business is easy, I thought I’d share some of my previous disasters – and what I learned from them.
I won’t bore you with my efforts dragging boxes of physical products round shows, to try and sell them on stalls that cost more to hire for an afternoon that I now pay for a month of my program. That was in the dark ages, before the Internet was accessible to so many people.
No… my first online venture was with an MLM and it was a great success for me, and for many friends I still remain in contact with.
I had a team of about 2,500 members paying me every month for a service they enjoyed. And I was growing that team, and my income, by purchasing more leads.
The good times
I really thought I had made it online.
At my best I was earning a four-figure sum each month that was more than I was earning from my part-time job and my offline business put together.
Happily, I used that income wisely to improve my house and pay off my mortgage.
Because it disappeared overnight.
The disaster
I still remember that night when everyone received an email to say the company had been sold to new owners and the affiliate program closed with immediate effect. Fellow distributors gathered in an online forum stunned and heart-broken. Many had lost much larger incomes than mine, and I still had my part-time job and a fully paid-off house.
To add insult to injury, the new company owners started emailing everyone on their list selling a look-alike program.
Remember – that was a list of contacts I, and fellow distributors, had PAID to build by buying leads for the program.
Lesson I learned
Always build your own email list, not the company’s. And the same goes for social media marketing. If you upset one of the ‘giants’, make sure you have your own list. (In fact just today Facebook is starting to get ‘iffy’ with me.)
What it means for you
The most important thing to learn about starting an online business is to listbuilding.
And you have, with NPN, the perfect system – Click here to learn more.
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