Network marketing, or multi-level marketing (MLM), is big business and a lot of people have made a lot of money from it, but a lot more have not. According to Networking Times "
- You need to buy the products
- You can't advertise the products
- It is difficult to advertise the business opportunity
- It takes work
- You need an enroller/sponsor who is active
- You need to be coach-able
- You need to practice what you preach
- There are technical issues (in my opinion)
- A lot of emails get blocked as spam
- Some would say it's not really free
You need to buy the products
This is probably the most important advice I can give you - buy the products! You need to try them and tell people how great they are (if you agree that they are great). It doesn't matter if you sign up one person or a million people, you won't make a penny unless they buy something. You need to convince them to buy the products and you can't do that, if you are not willing to buy them yourself. You don't have to spend $1000s buying every single product, but you need to buy at least one, preferably more. If you are not willing to buy some products, there is no point signing up because you will never make any money and it will just be a waste of your time. There's a quote that I've heard a lot. I don't know who originally said it, but they're right: "People don't buy from companies. People buy from people." People will buy the products, if they trust you and you are enthusiastic about them. How can you be enthusiastic when you have no idea if they are any good or not, because you have never tried them?
You can't advertise the products
When I first signed up to CTFO, I thought selling the products would be easy because I could just advertise them on Google Shopping. I was wrong; Google, and other mainstream advertisers, like Facebook and Twitter, will not let you advertise CBD products. Google won't even let you advertise a website that has CBD products anywhere on it, even if it isn't on the page you are linking to, so you can't even advertise the non-CBD products. You can post about the products on social media, but you can't boost the posts and over doing it can get your account closed. I have not found a way to advertise the products, with paid advertising, anywhere on the internet. If you have, please let me know where, in the comments.
It is difficult to advertise the business opportunity
There are a few specialist places, like
CBD Lead Store that let you advertise the business opportunity, but at 85c a click, it's a lot more expensive than traditional online advertising (Google, Facebook, Twitter etc) would be. As mentioned above, you can't even link to a non-CBD page, like the
Immune Boost business opportunity page, because other pages on the same website sell CBD products. You can get around it by creating a separate landing page and I can help you with that, if you
join my team, but it's not as easy as you might think to advertise, so you should be aware of that before signing up.
It takes work
You can't sign up then just sit back and wait for the money to come rolling in. It doesn't work like that, and no legitimate business does. If you could sign up for free, do nothing and earn an income, don't you think the whole world would be doing it? You can't build any business, without investing time, money or both into it. That's true of everything, not just the
CFTO CBD MLM business opportunity.
When you sign up to CTFO, you get the following websites for free:
The
CFTO business opportunity is advertised as turnkey, because the above websites are built for you and the sign-ups, sales, shipping and customer service etc are all handled for you. The part that isn't done for you is getting people to visit those websites, in order to sign up or buy. And that is the same with any turnkey business. The turnkey part is the running of the website, not driving traffic to it.
You need to drive traffic to your websites. If you don't, no-one will sign up or buy anything and you won't make any money.
Paid advertising can help with that, but as mentioned above, it can be difficult and if you're not willing, or able, to invest money in advertising, you need to invest time in promoting your website in other ways: blogging, posting on social media etc. And you need to do it consistently and regularly. It takes time to get your blog into the search engines and to build a following on social media. Both those things only happen if you post regularly, over time.
You need an enroller/sponsor who is active
This was probably the biggest mistake I made when signing up. I found and old post on social media and signed up, but the poster was no longer active in CTFO, so they did not contact me, reply to any of my emails, or help me in anyway. I was new to network marketing, so had to learn everything for myself.
There is also the potential for spillover, if you have an active sponsor. You can
download the full compensation plan details from the link at the bottom of this page. In short; You can only have 3 people in your top level. If you recruit more than three, they get put under your first three. If your sponsor is active, there is a chance that their recruits will be placed under you. There is almost zero chance of this, if they aren't actively recruiting. This doesn't mean you should just sit back and let your sponsor fill your down-line for you, but it can help kick start your business.
Even if you are experienced at network marketing, your sponsor, if they are still active, will be more experienced with CFTO than you, so can still help you.
How to tell if your sponsor is still active
Look and when they last blogged, or posted on social media. Was it recent and are they still promoting CTFO? Try DMing them. Do they repond? Don't rely too much on email because a lot of CBD emails get blocked as spam, but if you have sent a couple of DMs and been ignored, they're probably not active anymore.
You need to be coach-able
Following on from my comment above about your sponsor being able to help you, you need to let them. The more money you make, the more money they make. So it is in their best interest to help you; let them.
Even if you are an experienced network marketer, they will still have something to offer you. For example, there are tips and tricks for getting extra discounts on the products that I share with my team because I want them to make the most money, while spending the least. I earn less commission that way, buy I help my team build successful businesses while keeping costs down. You will work these things out for yourself eventually, but it helps to be told straight away.
You need to trust your sponsor and be willing to learn from them.
You need to practice what you preach
This ties into my first point about buying the products, but there is more to it then just that.
You need to lead by example. You will only be successful if your team is, so you need to help your recruits to succeed. To do that, they need to buy the products and share them on social media and with friends and family. Paid advertising will also help. When they do recruit a new associate, they need to help them. So you need to do the same. You need to buy the products, share the products regularly, advertise and help anyone you sign up to do the same.
There are technical issues (in my opinion)
I find the lack of stats and inability to add your own code very frustrating, but I used to be a web developer. Others are probably less bothered by this. I would like to know exactly where my site visitors are coming from, so I know which advert or social media post is the most successful, but there is no way of knowing that. You can set up
landing pages like this and share them instead of sharing the CTFO pages directly, to give you some stats, but it won't tell you who actually signs up or buys, after visiting that page.
A lot of emails get blocked as spam
A lot of emails with CTFO or CBD in the subject get blocked as spam, so if you email your new recruits, they may not receive it. If you don't get a reply, try again. If you know their social media handle, try DMing them. If you have their mobile number, try texting. I send three emails to my new associates; one from my personal email, one from Hub Spot and one from the CTFO back office.
Some would say it's not really free
As I said in my first point, you need to buy the products. I'm surprised by the number of people who think they can sell the products without trying them first.
The CFTO business opportunity is free.
You do not have to pay to join and you do not have to pay any ongoing website fees. You also do not have to buy a certain amount of product each month to earn commission, although you will earn more, if you spend $47.47 per month*. The products themselves are not free, but the business is. All similar business opportunities that I looked at had a sign up fee and/or ongoing website fees and you had to buy a certain amount of products before you could earn any commission.
*You earn commission on direct sales regardless of how much you have spent on products. There's extra pay types, like profit share, that you only get if you are 'qualified' and you need to be 'qualified' to earn commission on your recruits sales, but you do not need to be qualified to earn commission on direct sales, like you do with other programs. You can find out more about qualification in the
full compensation plan details, which can be downloaded from the link at the bottom of this page.
Some people say it's not really free because you have to buy the products. Technically, you don't 'have to' because you can earn commission on direct sales, without buying products. However, I would agree that you need to buy some products because you can't convince other people to do something that you are not willing to do yourself, so you will not make any sales, if you don't. However, you are getting the products with that money. It's not like you are paying business fees and receiving nothing else in return.
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