How Many MLM Businesses To Promote At Once

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A Controversial Point!

Now, I don’t want to upset any readers here as this is only my opinion – and my personal experience. There are exceptions, and YOU may be one of them.

However, I was discussing the concept of networking businesses (MLMs) with another blogger, James McAllister of James McAllister Online, and he asked me a question that got me thinking:

“How many companies do people tend to promote at one time?”

And, from my personal experience, and from MLM training I’ve had (admittedly from MLM companies!) I had to answer that:
Successful people promote one business. Many unsuccessful people (which has included me in the past) try to promote more than one at once.

“There’s a saying in the MLM industry that if you try to chase two hares at once, you’ll catch neither!”

Of course there are exceptions and you can probably name some high-profile networkers who are successfully juggling two or three businesses and dominating the leader-boards.

But I bet they have a bigger budget than you and I, work those businesses full-time, and probably even have assistants working for them, just to keep all the balls in the air.

Also…. it may be that they have big teams who “follow their lead”, so the teams are doing most of the work at the coal-face, while the leader just hunts out the next “big thing” to move onto when those at the coal-face have have tired of not making enough money to cover their monthly costs.

Well done to them for having built up such a great following. They must be doing something right to have loyal teams.

Why NOT To Promote More Than One Business

Promoting two (or more) businesses doubles your costs and the effort you need to be successful. Two sets of auto-responder messages, two sets of squeeze pages, two sets of “thank-you pages”, two sets of business cards, two lots of traffic to buy / find – and so on.
What would happen if you put twice the effort into one business?
If you have the time, money and a loyal team – sure, promote more than one.
But statistics suggest that over 90% of networkers can’t muster all the resources needed to make ONE business successful, let alone two. It’s a moot point whether people “fail” or “drop out”, but whichever term you prefer to use, if a networker were happily making a profit, they would still be in the business!

OR… Should You Spread Your Risk?

Some people may fear that it’s too risky to put all your eggs in one basket – i.e. promote just one business. But all business by its very nature is risky. Over 90% of conventional entreprises fail too. At least with MLM the cost of failure should be manageable.

But who wants to fail? So here are three ways to minimise that risk:

However tempting they appear, steer clear of start-ups. They have a higher risk of failure in the early days. Go instead for a company that has a successful track-record of paying out affiliates over several years.
NEVER let any MLM business be the sole keeper of your list of contacts. ALWAYS add people first to your own auto-responder, and maintain a good relationship with them. A great autoresponder is GetResponse – take a free trial here.
Choose a company with achievable sales targets, so that if you need to take a break from promoting and purchasing due to pressures of work, time or money, you can leave the business for a few months and return when it suits you, having retained any rank you achieved before your break and continuing to earn from work done earlier.

What I tend to do is work on more than one business – partly because:

There can be ups and downs in any business, when one is in a bit of a lull you can do a little more work on another one.
Multiple streams of income are good!
What appeals to one person may not appeal to another.
As discussed earlier, I’ve been “caught” before when putting all my eggs in one basket.

A Main And A Second Business

I promote more than one business for all the reasons above. The businesses I promote work on the basis of “replacement purchases”, and – very important – you don’t have to make repeat purchases of the same old products month after month.

Some people also promote a second business that’s complementary to their main business – for instance a business that generates leads and earns you an income at the same time.

Having been let down by more than one MLM I’m no longer majoring in that type of business. However I am promoting a link tracker and shortening service that pays out on a variation of an MLM type pay-structure.

It’s too complicated to explain here – but rather neat. Go check out my review of SoManyHits.

Here’s why I recommend it to anyone who is already promoting an MLM.

It’s a useful service for already promoting another MLM AND it won’t detract from their main business.
They can promote it to their downline as a useful service and earn a secondary income.
If they later abandon their original business (and most do, because of tough sales targets and costly, monthly auto-ships) they may then decide to promote So Many Hits full time.