10 Things To Consider Before Getting Started Multilevel Marketing

Before you decide to sign on with a multi level marketing company, here are 10 questions you should ask before making a commitment to selling their products and services.

1. Does the company have more than 7 years in the business?

If you want your marketing efforts to succeed in the present and future, choose a proven long running company. Keep in mind that 90% of multilevel companies fail in the first two years. No one wants to invest precious time and resources, not to mention their future, into a venture that might not be in business tomorrow, next week or next year.

2. Is the multilevel marketing company well capitalized?

Does the company you’re considering have the money and capitalization it takes to grow, to maintain a solid infrastructure and to attract talented leaders? Are they up to date on technology? Most importantly, do they pay their affiliate commissions accurately and in a timely fashion?

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Blog Cross-Linking Dead

Back in the day (a few short years ago), blogs were the kings of link juice. All it took was a cross-linking strategy and you’d be the recipient of some major PR, which you could redirect throughout your network. That’s not the case these days, as blog networks appear to be virtually drained of much of their PR.

Now, there seem to be a few blog networks that are still getting by. But I’m sure they have a number of links from outside of their own network. In the past, it was relatively easy to have a blog network that consisted of a few “anchor websites”, which would then pass sufficient PR to all of the other blogs in the network. Now, that strategy seems to be dead in the water. Now it’s much more unlikely that blog networks will seek to expand their ranks.

From a searcher’s perspective, this is probably a good thing. Basically cross-linking blogs is a reciprocal link scheme in the classic sense of the term. If the easy money is out of blog networks, then you can expect a slowdown in the proliferation of blogs.

Blogs have long been one of the spammiest sectors in the search index, so it’s interesting to see if they end up being targeted for more penalties in the future. Of course a blog is just a form of content management system, but that doesn’t mean there are certain patterns concerning the business models of most blogs.

Blogs lost much of their status with the introduction of paid reviews and a massive proliferation of paid text link advertising. Of course bloggers flocked to these new programs because they wanted a way to monetize their content. Advertisers also flocked into them because they saw a way to manipulate the SERPs using the power of “the conversation.” Now, Google does what they always do: they implement a ham-fisted patch to react to the problems. Or at least it looks like they have.

As usual, when we speak about what Google is doing, we’re forced to guess. That’s what happens in a unilateral relationship.

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Google PageRank Updated

Google has updated the ToolBar PageRank. This recent update followed the pattern observed for the last few events. First Google seems to do a minor “adjustment” update, which affects interior pages mainly. They also assign TBPR penalties. Then they follow this with a major PR update which assigns PR to home pages and to new domains.

It’s safe to say that TBPR doesn’t work the way it used to.

One thing it’s easy to notice these days is how “PageRank blank spots”, at least visible gaps in PR exist in so many places. In the past, it was rare to see so many PR or “PageRank Data Not Available” pages. Now they’re very common. These days it’s very common to see PR0 web pages with many backlinks. Google pretty much just arbitrarily assigns values to pages, and they show what the want on their toolbar.

PageRank has no credibility

Due to the tricks Google is implementing for distorting PageRank, the basic integrity of the system is non-existant. Many PR0 pages still push PR to linked pages, which should clearly be a mathematical impossibility.

Firstly, webmasters abused PR and helped to destroy its’ credibility. Now Google is doing the same thing by intentionally manipulating the values they display. In any event, there’s no use getting upset. If you do suddenly have a PR0 page, check for some likely problems:

  1. Check all outgoing links for quality
  2. Check for any webmaster errors
  3. Check your backlinks. It’s likely that the websites that link to you have dropped in PR, also.

During this last update I also see some surprising values that seem over-inflated, as well. Either way, it should be about three months until the next update. Even if you’ve lost or gained, you’ll still need to get back to work and build your website. Whether your website has PageRank or not is of no consequence in the end. Rankings and conversions are what you need to make the most money online.

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Amazon Posts Best Holiday Season Ever

Despite weak consumer sentiment, Amazon.com, one of the largest merchants on the internet, is a beacon in the retailer storm.

While many other offline retailers rushed to sell inventory, sometimes at drastically reduced prices, Amazon posted record sales for the holiday season. The internet retailer reported a preliminary sales figure of 6.3 items shipped worldwide as of December 15, 2008.

In a statement released by Amazon, Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.com said, “We are extremely grateful to our customers. We wish everyone happy holidays and the very best for the coming year.”

Amazon operates both domestically in North America (Canada and the US) and internationally with Amazon.co.uk, serving the UK; Amazon.de, serving Denmark; Amazon.co.jp, serving Japan; and Amazon.fr, serving France. The company also operates a large scale affiliate program that allows web publishers to earn a commission on sales generated from visitors to their website.

Scandals on Wall Street, unemployment, credit freezes and home foreclosures are all being blamed as factors for decreased holiday spending in the United States, but Amazon bucked this trend.

Amazon reports their official fourth quarter earnings in January.

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Better And Faster Article Writing

Want to write articles faster while maintaining high quality?

Of course you do! Who’d choose to write slowly if they could choose to write quickly and well?

You’re about to read some important writing tips. These tips will help you produce better articles faster, meaning you’ll be able to free up time to do other things.

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The Real Problem With Multilevel Marketing

Multi-level marketing has had explosive growth over the past few years, but like any business venture, this method has both pros and cons.

Today we’ll look a little further into multi-level marketing and what it’s all about.

One common question that people have about a multi-level business is, What’s the problem with a multilevel business?

Before entering into this type of business, you’ll want to do some investigation about the multilevel business. Is it a pyramid structure? Pyramid structures offer tiered compensation, meaning that sellers earn commission while sales manager earns bonuses and potentially more commissions based on the sales of their underlings.

Entrepreneurs will want to beware of illegal pyramids and other scams. In these types of pyramid schemes, money comes from affiliates but little or no product is delivered to the consumer. Despite any perception that you may have, Amway, Herbalife, TNI, Agel and other affiliate style programs have sold millions and millions of products to satisfied customers, without a distributor, so they are still effective at Multilevel marketing tactics.

Membership or a start up cost is sometimes required to participate in selling products or services through major multilevel distributors, but this cost is significantly less that opening up a franchise restaurant or other bricks and mortar style businesses.

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Listing and Properly Marketing Your Items on eBay

eBay is the world’s largest auction site and has made plenty of people rich.

eBay is the biggest auction website on the web. The thing about eBay is that while some items go for some crazy high prices or bids, other items don’t get any bids at all. When you’re listing your item on eBay, you just need to know the proper marketing strategies that will lead to more viewers to your auction, which will potentially result in more bids.

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MySpace Launches “MyAds” Beta

Not one to get left behind in the competitive field of online advertising, MySpace just announced the beta launch of Myspace MyAds, a new advertising platform that allows advertisers of all sizes to target potential customers at their popular social networking website.

Their do-it-yourself platform gives advertisers the tools to create banners in various sizes and build an online advertising campaign. MySpace’s HyperTargeting technology analyzes ad performance.

MySpace MyAds

Screen Capture of MySpace MyAds Campaign Analysis Tool

“With MySpace MyAds, we’re blowing the lid off display advertising solutions for small and medium businesses,” said Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing for MySpace. “MySpace MyAds is a direct marketer’s dream – providing entrepreneurs with the most accessible, personalized, and targeted advertising toolkit in the market. We’re giving businesses better ROI ASAP and in today’s economy, that’s a must-have.”

Advertisers can choose a variable ad spend anywhere from $25 to $10,000 so it’s affordable for anyone looking to reach a broader market.

To find out more or to sign up up for Myspace MyAds, please visit Advertise Myspace

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Google Launches Adsense For Games – Beta

Google recently announced the beta launch of a new advertising product – Adsense for games.

The addition of this advertising product gives webmasters that publish or develop games a way to display video ads, image or text ads to their visitors in ways that are non-obtrusive to players. Publishers can define how and when they’d like the beta ads displayed, such as before a game starts, when a player advances to another level or after a game has ended.

In order to take part in Adsense for Games beta, publishers must have 500,000 game plays per day and have 80% of their traffic from the U.S. or the U.K. Qualified publishers can fill out an application
to the program here.

Adsense Blog

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Accoona Folds Their Search Engine

It seems that Acoona.com never quite took off as a leading search engine.

In fact, Accoona recently announced that their website would no longer be available. A statement at the site says,

Dear Accoona search users,
Due to an overwhelmingly competitive search market, Accoona.com and Accoona.cn will no longer be active.

We thank you for your previous support.

Sincerely,
Accoona Management

Despite plugs by former President Bill Clinton in 2004 and being selected as one of the 50 “Coolest Websites” by Time magazine in 2006, Acoona just didn’t have the steam to get the ball rolling. I guess that comes as no real surprise.

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