Skills and Tools for Network Marketers

You are going to need a website…and I'm not talking about the ones that are directly linked to your business or affiliate program, I'm talking about a custom website, for YOU, by YOU, and about YOU. The core concept is that Network Marketing is all about relationships. Not the product or service. Not the company. What you REALLY need to be marketing is yourself, and you had better make sure that you're worth the investment. If you're truly in this for the long haul, you'll have to establish some credibility in the marketplace. If all you have are a collection of flash pages linked to affiliate programs, no one will take you seriously...and there are so many copies of these pages that the search engines ignore them, which means that they wll never get indexed or ranked. I'll expand on this theme a bit more later on.

Don't let the idea scare you - there are a lot of ways to go about getting a custom website. You can build one from scratch using free tools and advice from a number of good sources on the internet. You can also purchase templates that make the job a lot quicker and easier, or you can pay for a turnkey webpage done by a professional. This last option could be costly, but if you're interested in exploring that avenue you can usually find some enterprising college student that will do quality work for a little extra spending money.

Regardless, you are going to have to develop some writing skills - and this is not as tough as it sounds. What is crucial to getting a website indexed and ranked is content. Content is king. It doesn't have to be grammatically perfect, but it should read well and contain keywords and phrases relevant to your business. More on that later...

Another key factor in getting your website indexed and ranked is linking. This is a process by which you and other websites catering to similar interests link to each other. The ultimate is to get others to link to you without a reciprocal link back - but for someone just starting out, that may be a little tough. Linking will make it easier for the search engines to find your website.

Your writing skills will serve you in a variety of ways. Articles and Blogging are ways to get free exposure in the marketplace, and will bring some long-term, residual income in the form of traffic to your website. Just write about something the same way you would talk about it. Do some research on the internet if you need to learn about a particular subject, and sit down and plunk away at the keyboard. I promise you it gets much easier with practice!

You will also need something called an auto-responder. This service provides a way to automatically send e-mails to people who sign up for information you've offered, usually about a product or service you're selling. You've seen the front-end of these on many webpages - the place where they ask for a name and e-mail address, sometimes even more information.

These are called "lead capture" or "squeeze" pages, and allow you to build a list of people that are interested in what you have to offer. There are a number of good auto-responder services out there, which will include the tools you need to generate the lead capture scripts for your website.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization is something you will need to know something about. You don't need to be an expert, but you should understand the basics. This is where keywords and keyphrases come into play - while your content has to appeal primarily to the human readers, it is also a good idea to include popular words and phrases for people who are conducting a web search for someone like you. Including the appropriate keywords and phrases will result in your website getting noticed by the search engines, indexed and ranked for the humans that are looking for what you have. Google will assist in keyword generation, or you can download a free copy of Good Keywords to install on your computer desktop.

Advertising your business will take many forms, ranging in cost from zero dollars to the-sky's-the-limit. Keywords/phrases will play a big part in how effective your advertising is, and how well the readers respond. Which brings me to another necessary tool for the aspiring network marketer - ad tracking. You need to be able to measure the response to each ad for every method you use to determine how effective it is. It may be possible to do this manually when you first start out, but when you get rolling you will need some type of tracking software or service.

These are the basic tools and skills that every network marketer needs to build a resilient organization. These skills should be acquired pretty much in the order presented, and will tend to build on one another…and believe it or not, there are thousands of experienced internet entrepreneurs out there that are willing to share technical tips, design ideas, etc. with the novice marketer. Tap into blogs and forums about any subject you want to research and you'll find more information than you could possibly imagine!

Don't be overwhelmed by the amount of stuff you need to learn about this industry - take it a step at a time, learn each element moderately well before you tackle the next one. You will gain skill with practice, and remember that the best way to eat an elephant is…one bite at a time!