George Fourie, the owner of http://thatMLMbeat.com, is a very savvy Web 2.0 strategic thinker. One of the best I’ve come across, actually. His concept — and his promotion of it, using the Top 50 MLM Blogs awards — is nothing short of brilliant, and I’m just glad that I spotted it and its amazing potential right from the start.

If you’re interested in using Web 2.0 tools and strategies to build your network marketing team, this is where you should be. Seriously.
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Social networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace are the lead generation focus of the new wave of network marketers using the Internet for sponsoring.

I’ve been using the Internet for prospecting since 1996. I like to think that I stay on top of most of what’s taking place, but last week I was genuinely surprised to discover that a little-known browser (amongst Internet and network marketers, at least) had just passed 3 MILLION users on Facebook alone… just 3 months after hitting 2 million users on Facebook.

It’s just released version 2.5.6, it’s specifically optimized for social networking, it’s fast, it’s available in Windows and Mac versions, it’s from Mozilla — the folks who brought you Firefox browser — and it automatically imports all your Firefox settings, including bookmarks.

It also uses the same add-ons, plug-ins and extensions as Firefox.
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As more and more network marketers flock to the web, most are discovering what the veterans of online MLM have known all along: unless you REALLY know what to do and why, plus how to do it properly, as a way of finding hot, new prospects eager to listen to your sponsoring or product pitch, the Internet SUCKS!

The typical pattern goes something like this:

• You arrive online and start looking for the best ways to find hot new prospects.
• You read everything you can find on all the latest ways to do it, including blogging, article marketing, forums, social networking (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Ning, DirectMatch, BetterNetworker, etc).
• You spend a small fortune on ebooks, special reports, webinars, autoresponders, membership systems, software, mentoring, web hosting… or, if your budget is tight, you squander weeks and months trying to learn how to do it all yourself.
• You realize that it’s all too hard and slow and frustrating and you sign up for coaching with one of the many “attraction marketing” programs.
• You reach the conclusion (mostly accurate) that you need web traffic in huge numbers to find even a trickle of qualified prospects willing to explore YOUR opportunity (the other 99.95% all want to show you theirs, naturally).
• You sign up for every passing Internet marketing “guru’s” mailing list, buy their ebooks, reports, videos, courses, webinars to learn how to build a list, improve your page rank, optimize your sites for Google and other Search Engines, how to rite irresistable articles, how to generate traffic, how to avoid losing your shirt on PPC networks (Pay Per Click) like Google Adwords, until, months later, you begin to wonder why it’s all so hard and why you have less money now than when you first started, but few, if any, new people in your downline — despite all those breathless, adrenalin-pumping promises of riches beyond your wildest dreams, just by sending a few emails to your list or a few Tweets on Twitter about your newest article on your blog.
• You continue to cling to the security blanket of “Blowfly Logic” until your money runs out (or you drown in debt).

It’s an increasingly familiar story if you bother to step back for a moment and inspect the digital landscape (or window sill) littered with the dead or dying dreams of hundreds of thousands of hopeful network marketers, lured to the online world of so-called “New School MLM”. (Even that reference to online network marketing is deceptive, as you can see here.)
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In recent years we’ve seen more and more “hybrid” compensation plans appearing on the MLM scene… usually with the pitch that “we’ve taken the best of every plan and combined them all to create the highest-paying plan in the history of network marketing”, etc etc etc.

Then the imitators all jump on the bandwagon to try to capitalize on the “buzz”.

(In case you haven’t put 2 + 2 together to make 4 yet — not the 22 that the promoters typically claim — “buzz” is usually synonymous with “hype” and “spin”. It should trigger very loud warning bells any time you see or hear it used.)
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Christmas and New Year are upon us once more, so before I forget here’s wishing you the very best of Christmas cheer and a prosperous and happy New Year for 2010 from my family to yours.

The photo is missing our son, Josh (who lives in the USA with his family), spouses, partners and grandchildren, but since I don’t have a photo of everyone, this one will have to do.

Thanks for visiting my blog during 2009. I look forward to reconnecting with you in the New Year.