Frequently Asked Questions
I already work long hours-I wouldn't have time to work in another business
How much money does it cost to set up?
I don't even have $300 to get started
I've never been a business owner-it sounds risky
What is your Upline Affiliate?
What is an affiliate-link?
What is the difference between Residual Income & Passive Income?
What is meant by downline?
How old must I be to register as an Independent Business Owner?
I don't have the skills to run a business like this
I am not sure that it will work for me
I don't want to change the way I do things
What say I do not like the products?
How do I get paid?
Can you work this business as a single person?
Is it networking?
What is e-Commerce?
What is an Order Consolidation Service (OCS)?
What is affiliate marketing?
"Because?" & "Just because-". Why are these words so powerful?
Q. I already work long hours-I wouldn't have time to work in another business
A. Most people starting out simply prioritize their time better-and find an extra 2 -5 hours a week until they see the money coming in. This may mean giving up TV one night a week
This business is so very time efficient. E-commerce is tarted as the business of the future. Currently nearly 11% shop on-line in Australia. Logistics & paperwork is mostly automated for you. You may enjoy the hunt for bargain, but do you really enjoy the stress of getting into your car and fight the weather & the traffic to get to a supermarket car park and wait in a queue at the checkout? The IBO (Independent Business Owner) needs to have the commitment & discipline of purchasing his or her own brand whenever possible. IBO's can shop without leaving home: this is time saving, environmentally friendly, and there is a lot less chance of having an accident!
As an IBO you get to choose the hours you work!
Time is actually one of the two main things that IBO's want out the business
Q. How much money does it cost to set up?
A. Setup for the IBO in Australia will vary. $300 is the norm, and this money is consumed primarily for educational material (often electronic) and affiliated-link rights. Should you so wish, your own web site can also be created within the same $300 budget.
Q. I don't even have $300 to get started
A. Save for it and make sure you do it as soon as possible because this business is the best investment you will ever make to secure your own financial future. This business is going to teach you how to make MONEY WORK FOR YOU!
Can't save?
What say you immediately START PAYING YOURSELF FIRST 1/10TH FO EVERY PAYMENT YOU RECEIVE! In other words, pay yourself this money FIRST before you pay off your everyday bills. This SPECIAL SAVINGS FUND could be used to finance your own passive income venture or ventures : this type of income is derived from ventures where money works for you. (Most people would be able to save $300 in 2 or 3 pay days.
If you would like to learn more about this basic philosophy based on a time honoured fable, then from the "Options for You" selection go for the book option "The Richest Man in Babylon" by George Glason.
Q. I've never been a business owner-it sounds risky.
A. The one on one business support system is 24/7 and only a phone call or email away. Mentoring & tuition from your Upline Affiliate is unmatched by any other type of business organisation anywhere in the world. IBO's do not carry or store stock for public sale or for other IBO's. Your only ongoing costs are for your own product & consumable purchases & education material.
Q. What is your Upline Affiliate?
A. Your Upline Affiliate (sometimes simply referred to as Upline) wants to be your teacher and guide and will be very happy to see you become a successful Independent Business Owner. Your Upline Affiliate is the person who you can call for advice 24/7 because he or she has been there first. The very nature of your commission payment ensures that if you make money your upline affiliate will also receive a small residual income or commission. Your upline sponsor is often a like-minded person to whom you would aspire because he or she has already done what you want to do. You are under no obligation to do so, but you may well even create a commissionable affiliate- link to your upline affiliate
A. Affiliate-link is describes the hierarchy of your commissionable sale or a new affiliate IBO downline of yourself. Income so derived is passive & ongoing and is the result of Affiliate marketing which is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts.
Affiliate marketing is also the name of the industry where a number of different types of companies and individuals are performing this form of internet marketing, including affiliate networks, affiliate management companies and in-house affiliate managers, specialized 3rd party vendors, and various types of affiliates/publishers who promote the products and services of their partners.
Q. What is the difference between Residual Income & Passive Income?
A. There is no difference between the terms Residual & Passive Income. In business, a residual payment refers to one of an ongoing stream of payments for the completion of past achievements. Historically, in the entertainment industry the use of the word refers to a payment made to the creator of performance art (or the performer in the work) for subsequent showings or screenings
Examples of Passive Income according to Wilkipedia :
Income from rental property
Royalties from writing a book.
Earnings from Network Marketing
Earnings from Adsense or other Internet advertisement on your websites.
Earnings from a business that does not require the direct involvement of the owner or merchant
Dividend & interest income from owning securities, such as stocks & bonds are usually referred to as portfolio income, which can be considered a form of passive income.
Pension
A. Downline refers to activity that occurs any time after you yourself become linked to an affiliated business. Downline are the people who have similar interests & who have come to you & sourced your information or purchased product(s) or maybe he or she has become an affiliate IBO sharing your passion or even when a non-affiliate IBO has purchased from you indirectly via your links to one of your affiliate internet businesses
IBO's earn a commission based on the sales efforts of their organisation, which includes their independent sale efforts as well as the leveraged sales efforts of their downline. This arrangement is similar to franchise arrangements where royalties are paid from the sales of individual franchise operations to the franchisor as well as to an area or region manager. Commissions are paid to multi-level marketing IBOs according to the company's compensation plan. There can be multiple levels of people receiving royalties from one person's sales.
Q. How old must I be to register as an Independent Business Owner?
A. All Independent Business Owners must be over 18 years old in Australia.
Q. I don't have the skills to run a business like this
A. You need no special skills to be a successful IBO. You do need to get your attitude right to be teachable & motivated. This is exactly what your upline affiliates are there for. Your upline affiliate wants to see you do well
In this business there is nothing to stop you from making more money than your upline affiliate! In this business you are paid for your effort and not for your time.
Q. I am not sure that it will work for me
A. Is what you are doing now working for you? Are you making all the money you would like to make now? Is what you are doing now going to enable you to retire wealthy in 2-5 years? What have you got to loose?
Q. I don't want to change the way I do things
A. Fear is what motivates many of us. Fear is not necessarily a bad thing. If you suffer from a Fear of Failure-then you will never succeed because a successful person is someone who has failed first, learnt from the mistakes and started again. If you suffer from Fear of Change you can as an IBO learn to turn that fear around to something like "Fear of Working till you are 65" or "Fear of working until I die". (This can be an excellent motivator)
Think of your partner or would-be partner. To cohabit with a stilted or boring person who never changes is hard work. If you start putting some zest or purpose in your life and define a direction, you become interesting. Your life will be like one big adventure-you will be interesting to be with, you begin to sparkle with enthusiasm and attract people to you!
Q. What say I do not like the products?
A. The majority of Affiliate-linked products have an unconditional 90 day money back guarantee! Affiliate-linked products have the additional bonus of being assimilated into your own resource base ultimately helping your business grow
A. Depending on your linked affiliate, your pay is fortnightly or monthly directly into your nominated bank account.
Q. Can you work this business as a single person?
A. It makes no difference if you are single or a couple or a single partner in a couple. As a couple it is more usual that one partner initially fires up first about "his" or "her" passion & ONM business - seeing it as the saviour for the family's financial woes. The other partner usually comes on board when he or she "sees it working". At this point this couple becomes an awesome force as they can both work from home together as a team complimenting each other's skills. As a single person you can be a lot more flexible especially regarding your time-you can often achieve more quickly and because you have more control on domestic & family distractions you can be more focussed
A. No-in a nutshell, as "Networking" is antiquated terminology. Unfortunately many people in Australia today still loosely define "Networking" as "pyramid selling" primarily because they still associate it with a few notorious companies that were convicted for operating pyramid schemes in the 70's & 80's. Nowadays in the 21st century, all major Business Organisations are "Networks" of some form or other and they are all networking!
Wikipedia equates "pyramid selling" as "pyramid scheme"- A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, usually without any product or service being delivered. It has been known to come under many guises. Pyramid schemes are illegal in many countries, including Australia.
Wikipedia, nowadays does not therefore have an exact listing for "Networking" or "Business Networking". Wikipedia does however list definitions for modern network terminologies and this clearly shows demonstrates the true roots of the phrase "networking"Ð
Economic network or refereed network of independent individuals has
the primary purpose of making a strong community in order to gain strength and
perform as a significant player in relation to current market situation. Activities
of economic network consist also of recruiting new members to join, reviewing,
surveying, or providing a fresh perspective on existing community growth and
strength.
MultilevelMarketing (MLM), now sometimes called
(networkmarketing) is a business model that combines direct marketing with
franchising. Multi-level marketing businesses function by enrolling unsalaried
salespeople (also called by MLM companies as Distributors, Independent
Business Owners, Franchise Owners, Sales Consultants, Consultants,
Independent Agents, etc...) to sell products and meanwhile earn additional sales
commissions based on the sales of people enrolled into their downline, an
organization of people that includes direct recruits, recruits' recruits and so on.
This arrangement is similar to franchise arrangements where royalties are paid
from the sales of individual franchise operations to the franchisor as well as to an
area or region manager. There can be multiple levels of people receiving
royalties from one person's sales.
Currently there is world wide dispute on the exact definition of MLM since the rapidly growing & often home-based business industry working as affiliate networks via the internet believe that MLM best describes their method of payment and should be distinctly recognized as not being aligned to the more traditional and physical one on one MLM businesses that has at times in the past given MLM a bad name.
On-line NetworkMarketing (ONM) is the correct terminology the type of business where the IBO utilizes Affiliate marketing which is a web-based marketing practice in where simply put a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. On-line is an adjective used to indicate that the aspects so described are carried out via the internet & the World Wide Web. ONM is legal, is willable and is linked to CPI!
A. E-commerce & I-commerce are one in the same One of the main requirements in e-commerce is the ability to accept a form of electronic payment. This form of electronic payment is referred to as financial electronic data interchange (FEDI). FEDI & PayPal has become increasingly popular over the last number of years due to the widespread use of the internet based shopping and banking.
PayPal is regarded as the most economic and safest e-commerce service business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. PayPal is simple to setup. PayPal serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheques and money orders. PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other corporate users, for which it charges a fee. It also charges a transaction fee (3.4%) on private individuals receiving money. On October 3, 2002, PayPal became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay.
A wide variety of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction's lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail as well.
A small percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for "virtual" items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. On-line retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is known as e-tail. E- commerce or electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e- business.
There is in fact an ever growing compendium of terminology used to describe a myriad of e-commerce transactions. Though further discussion on this topic is beyond the scope of this website, it is free to subscribe to the "TradeHabits News" which does contain links to and articles on various forms of E-commerce. See the Options for You page
Q. What is an Order Consolidation Service (OCS)?
A. OCS purchase direct from the manufactures in order to cut out the middle man (namely the wholesaler & retailer) in order to pass the cost saving onto the Consumer. More details about OCS in the 21st Century Retail Model page. Some OCS Businesses like Amway operate offline using one on one word of mouth marketing and will pay back Profit Share based on the level of performance (or Pin level) of their IBO affiliates
Q. What is affiliate marketing?
A. Affiliate marketing overlaps with other internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques like publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.
Affiliate marketing - using one site to drive traffic to another - is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e- mail and RSS capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e- retailers' marketing strategies.
Recently, the internet advertising industry has become more advanced. Online media has in some areas been rising to the sophistication of offline media, in which advertising has been largely professional and competitive for many years already. The requirements to be successful are much higher than they were in the past. Those requirements are becoming often too much of a burden for the merchant to do it successfully in-house. More and more merchants are looking for alternative options which they find in relatively new outsourced (affiliate) program management or OPM companies that were often founded by veteran affiliate managers and network program managers
It is free to subscribe to "TradeHabits News". This service will bring you regular reports & updates and articles on these topics. The Options for You page offers a free e-brochure with links on the rapidly changing techniques for on-line Viral marketing and viral advertising. This material also shows you how to go about mastering these techniques & "building a list" of potential downline IBO's exponentially & on autopilot.
Q. "Because?" & "Just because-". Why are these words so powerful?
A. It is all very well corresponding and emailing people on the internet, but we must never, never loose the basic art of how to talk to another person one on one & face to face. All said and done you may well choose to expand your online affiliate marketing business by talking to associates or strangers and directing them to your website with a business card, or telling people about an upcoming seminar where your or/and your upline affiliate have joint interests. To be successful in this business, you need to know how to direct conversation and discover if you are talking to a person who is genuinely interested in improving his or her income or lifestyle. You must get that person talking about him or herself. You need to listen and consistently prompt the conversation with Who? What? When? Where? How? Why? And if you cannot think of what to ask, simply prompt with "because?" or "just because-" and let the other person finish the sentence! There is this and much much more in the e-book "The Art of How to Read People Quickly & Effectively" See the Options for You page