I've experienced and successfully built very large teams via both the "old school" and the "new school" methods of network marketing. You could say that I'm not biased. I love network marketing, so if there are legitimate ways to automate and accelerate the process of building my MLM business - I'm all for it!

My purpose here is to set the record straight for all the innocent bystanders lost in the middle of the argument.

Online or off, there is a serious lack of good advice on the "marketing" side of network marketing. Traditionally this bad advice comes from your upline, where you can often go 10 generations up without finding somebody that actually knew what they were doing, but at least this way if you went far enough up you could get to somebody that was actually making money.

Now we go online and who do you trust?

I've had just about enough of all these Johnny come lately internet marketers (notice I did not say network marketers) telling everybody to "burn the list" and get with the 21st century. "Old school MLM is dead" is the common theme among these folks.

Here is the problem: these are the same folks that have never been successful in either the old school or new school. Frustrated by their past failure in MLM, they are now drawn to the "idea" of building a network marketing business online.

We'd all agree that the idea and concept of building online just makes so much sense. I mean, why talk to family and friends when you can get "prequalified" leads and send them to your automated presentation without lifting a pinky or vibrating a vocal cord.

Don't get me started on leads, that's another rant for another day.

How about email blasting 10 thousand people, there has to be a couple good people out of 10 thousand, right? Maybe Google will do all the work for us?

Have you ever seen these types of headlines?

"We do all the work for you"

"Make money while you sleep"

"Never talk to anybody"

"Never leave your couch"

"Stop harassing your family and friends"

Do you really believe them? If you're like me, no... but you still clicked, right... RIGHT? There is just something too irresistible about the thought of something for nothing.

Now don't get me wrong, SOME of these headlines are absolutely true. The irony is that the people that actually know how to make it happen are the last people that would ever run such an ad.

What we really have going on is a few good "internet marketers" that are damn good at marketing and prey on people wanting to know "the secret". Unfortunately in about 99% of the case, "the secret" ends up being to sign up as an affiliate of the guru who sold it to you so that you can turn around and sell "the secret" back to others.

What is the result of this insanity?...

... Legions upon legions of the blind leading the blind to online network marketing failure. No different than what we already have in the old school offline world of network marketing.

Just can't get around the old 80/20 rule.

About the Author

Shawn Cornett is an 8 year "in the trenches" veteran of the network marketing industry, co-author of the MLM Training Manual, and an official MLM Jedi Master