Short Blog on "Test the Waters" close when sharing your business @RayHigdon

I love Ray's blog.  He has lots of insights into network marketing and shares them regularly


http://rayhigdon.com/3-ways-test-closing-will-improve-your-mlm-sponsoring/


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Bar Code Scanner and Deal Feed for MA Mobile App

As part of the constantly evolving improvements in Market America on-line shopping experience, the internet magazine eRetailer just released an aritcle about MA's mobile app for iPhone and Android phones.  The article indicates that you can fire up the MA App,  place your phone over a bar code on a product in a store and the MA App will show what partner stores offer the same product and what they are charging.   Here is a link to the full article.

http://www.internetretailer.com/2011/06/07/market-america-adds-bar-code-scanning-and-deal-locator-app


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ExploreMA -Market America mini-sites. Three different sign-ins

A recent addition to the Market America distributor's arsenal is a mini-website that describes Market America.  These are recruiting tools personalized for each distributor.  Since they are brand new, there isn't a lot of information out there yet.  These sites take advantage for the MAWebcenter platform. (Over 80,000 web sites active using the platform).  Here is one thing you need to know.

There is one required login and two optional logins involved in running an ExploreMA mini-website.

1.  Login to the web site itself.  https://s.explorema.com/login    Here you will be asked for the user name and password that you created when you set up your mini-website.

The two optional logins involve the optional Blogspot blog that comes with the website.

2.  Login to your blog (to edit and make new posts) - http://www.blogger.com/home   If you have a Gmail account and are logged into Gmail, the system will know who you are a take you straight into the Dashboard.

The last optional login involves Feedburner.  Feedburner is a free add-on that does a couple of things.   First and foremost, it allows you to create a link in your posts offering viewers an opportunity to follow your blog via email (they get an email every day if you made a new post).   There is another blog post here that describes how to use that.   Feedburner also has an option called "Socialize" that will automatically tweet the title of your post.  Again if you have a Gmail account and are logged in, Feedburner will know who you are and show you a list of Blogs that your have registered with Feedburner.

3.  Login to Feedburner - http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/myfeeds 

I hope this helps.


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Allowing viewers to follow your ExploreMA Blog with email

This is a revised version of this post.

The Market America ExploreMA mini-web sites (like this one), allow you to insert a Google Blogspot Blog into the site.   Several of us are still working to figure out the best ways to actually use and publicize these Blogs.  I talked to tech support (actually "live chatted") and they said that right now the Archive and About Me are the only features being exported.

One thing that is apparent early on is that many of the features that are available to a stand-alone Blogspot blog are not available when the blog is inserted into an ExploreMA mini-site.  You cannot allow viewers to search your blog or follow you by email etc.   You can add this feature to your blog, but it doesn't show inside the mini-site.

There is an alternative.

Google purchased a following service called Feedburner.

1.  Login - If you have a Gmail account, you can send your browser to http://feedburner.google.com.  There is a login area in the upper right hand corner of the screen.  You use the same login that you do with you Gmail account.
2. Click on your Blog - you should see a link to you Blogspot blog near the top of the page in large blue letters.   Click on it.
3. Now you have a set of tabs - click on PUBLICIZE
4. There will be a set of links down the left side.   Find "Emails Subscription" link and click on it.
5. Scroll down the page and you will find some code that you can cut and paste.  Use the second set of code (the short one).  This code is specific to your blog.   You can include it at the bottom of each of your posts and people will be able to sign up and follow your blog via email.

Here is what mine looks like.

<a href="http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/mailverify?uri=HaleAndRobynsMaBlog&amp;loc=en_US">Subscribe to Hale and Robyn's MA Blog by Email</a>

If I paste this directly,  I need to click on the Edit HTML link when creating this post in order to turn this code in to convert the < and > signs into their actually values - the pasting function converted them to the HTML equivalents which are things like "&lt;:  I can also click on the "LINK" link and insert it that way.  If I use that method, I need to put the "Subscribe...Email" on the "what people see line" and the "http://...._en_US" on the URL line.

Another way to get this link on ALL of your posts if to go into the blog editor, click on the SETTINGS tab and then of the FORMATTING link.    At the bottom of the screen (after you scroll down) there is a box called "Post Template"   You can paste the link you got from Feedburner into this box and the link will appear automatically every time you create a new post.   You will have to put your post above the automatic line if you want it at the bottom of your post, but it is already there and it is correctly formatted.

There is a catch to this.  The automatic link does not sent you to your mini-web site.  It sends you to the stand-alone blog page.  This page can include the missing features I mentioned above.  On the other hand, it is not part of your mini-recruiting web site so it sort of defeats the purpose of the blog.

Again, there is a way to get around this.   Place links back to your mini-site in your profile and in the header text for your Blogger page.  You won't see either of these when the blog is shown in the mini-site.  Here is an example:

This shows my blog as it appears in the mini-site.

You can see that there is a blog post and a way to view previous posts on the right.  The top of the screen is the main menu for the mini-web site.

Now - here is the same blog when viewed as a stand-alone blog.  This is what the automatic feedburner link placed in Twitter points to.

Note that the banner image and the menu options from the mini-site are gone.  I drew three red arrows to on the page to show where I put links so a reader could be sent to the mini-site.   These are "call to action" links and they are critical.  Without them the reader is lost.  They can read your post, but they can't do anything.   The bottom arrow points to the link I inserted using feedburner to invite people receive an email every time I add a new post.

Last but not least.   Here is a shot of the "Design Page" in Blogger.

The read arrows point to "widgets" that I added by clicking on the "add a widget" link.  I also dragged and dropped them to put them in the order I wanted.

To include the link back to your mini-site you are going to have to put a little HTML code into your text.   Here is the text from my profile.

I have several degrees and have found that running a home based business is MUCH more satisfying than working a job. See more about what I do at <a href="http://make-money-with.us"> http://make-money-with.us </a>

Note that you will replace the "make-money-with.us" with the URL for your own mini-site.

I certainly hope that you find this useful.

Subscribe to Hale and Robyn's MA Blog by Email;

Hale

Selling Motives - New short video

Yesterday I mentioned a 40 second video aimed at introducing Cash Back to people.

Here is another very short video.  This one introduces Market America's make up line - Motives

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVb6ib1jV2M&NR=1


Hale

New short Cashback Video

Market America has one of the best cash back programs anywhere.  Shoppers who start at a Market America portal and then go to any of thousands of stores will receives between 2 and 50% cash back.  This is money being returned to you for things you were going to buy anyway.  For example, we print egift cards before we go to Home Depot and get 4% cash back.  We spend $96 and get $100 worth of merchandise.

This cash back program is a major attraction to our home based businesses.

Here is a link to a new short video talking about the cash back program.  You can cut and paste this link into emails and send it to your friends and family.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8mv1kvAuKY

Hale

Selling a product on-line and personally handing it to a customer.

Today's tip came from April Ritchotte and David Sacks (both recently held training in the Orlando area).

 All Market America distributors have a web portal that competes head-on with Amazon.com and other major e-retailers.  We want customers to buy through this web based shopping system and at the same time, it is nice to hand them a product from your personal stock.

Here's how you can do that. 

1. First, you must have subscribed to iTransact (our enhanced credit card system)
2. Second, you sign the customer up as a Preferred Customer so that they qualify for cash back and their future purchases will be credited to your portal.
3. Hand your customer the product.
4. Have them purchase the product through your portal.  (Search, add-to-cart, purchase).  You can do this on-the-spot or take their information, go home and sign them in and send them an email telling them hour to purchase the product.
5. iTransact will send you a notification that your Preferred Customer purchased a product.  It will ask if you want Market America to ship the order or if you want to fulfill the order from your stock.  You indicate that you will fulfill the order (since you have already given the product to the customer).

That all there is to it.  You have a new customer who has purchased on-line and the customer has their product and has started earning cash back from their purchases.

Market America Resources

As a rock solid and constantly growing 19 year old company, Market America has many facets.  A while back I created a web site where I list the various resources as I find them.


The site is http://your6figureincome.biz/   You can look under Resources to see a list of web sites.  Some of these are training (recorded webinars), some contain scripts or other tools.

I hope you find the site useful and I value any feedback.

Hale

Interesting Numbers from Market America

Market America has been in business since 1992.  It has an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau and its marketing plan pays very well.

 

As of March 31, 2011, Distributors and UnFranchise owners have earned the following since the company's inception:

Total estimated retail profits earned: $1,141,655,311

Total commissions earned: $1,140,157,018

Total Distributor earnings:$2,281,812,329

Estimated Accumulated Retail Sales = $3,990,549,564

With the purchase of SHOP.COM, Market America is poised to move from the 54th largest on-line retailing company (up from 66th last year) to one of the top five.  Since experts estimate that in the next few years over 50% of all purchases made in the USA will be made on-line, Market America and those involved with them are really leading the parade.

Six Different Streams of Income in Market America.

It is interesting to note that Market America has six different streams of income that they pay to their distributors.  I thought I'd list them off - just ot give you and idea of how different this company really is.

1. We have over 2,500 Market America Branded products.  When we sell one of these we generate Retail Profit.   We are encouraged and trained to use one-to-one marketing to generate 10 to 15 regular customers and we get retail profit when they buy a Market America Branded product.
2.  We get paid Volume Bonuses based up total sales from our customers and the customers and business partners that are in the sales organization that we create.   This is leveraged income since there are other business partners working to make many of these sales.
3. We get between 2% and 50% CASHBACK when we start at our web portal Shop-online-247.com and purchase from over 3,500 partner stores.  These are the same stores we were already buying from when we make on-line purchases (Home Depot, Travelocity, Best Buy, etc, etc.)  (Our customers also get the same CASHBACK.)
4.  We get 1/2% REFERAL CASHBACK on the purchases made by anyone that we sign up as a preferred customer on our web portal.  Interestingly enough, our customers can also quailify for this 1/2% if they refer someone to our web portal.
5.  We get paid Incentive Business Volume Bonuses based on the volume of sales made through our web portal from the thousands of partner stores.  IN addition to the cash back that is paid to all customers that come through Market America, the partner stores return a percentage of each sale to Market America and this is distributed to the sales organization that generated the sale.
6.  Advertising done by major stores on the Market America web portals, is also applied  toward the Incentive Business Volume Bonuses   We are getting paid because Market America is generated Advertising Revenue.

 Right now the first two are the largest money generators, but the last four are catching up fast.  When Market America purchased SHOP.COM our internet sales and revenue being paid to distributors based on internet sales and advertising took a huge leap forward.

I don't know any other Network Marketing company that pays six different ways.

How We Got Started in Market America

Hi,  my name is Hale Pringle and I'd like start by telling you how Robyn and I got started with Market America.

Like, many people we started with a product.  In our case it was the Transitions Weight Management and Lifestyle program.   We have both had problems with weight and had tried MANY things.  None of them resulted in permanent weight loss.  Several friends recommended a nutritionist who had great results with a program called the Transitions Lifestyle System.  We went and the program was a real success.  I lost 90 pounds in six months and Robyn lost 45.  Two years later we have been able to keep the weight off and are losing weight again.

After the class, we were approached about the business behind Transitions.  This business is Market America.  Robyn and I were in a very large MLM, years ago for six years and finally quit because we couldn't look people in the face and say "you can do this."  We swore that we would never join a Make Little Money (MLM) again.

We really didn't know what the meeting with the nutritionist was about until we got there.  If we had, we probably would have missed the opportunity, since you have to look at the program before you can see how this is Network Marketing, but not Multi-Level Marketing (MLM).   I will say that we were sick and tired of being sick and tired.   We did learn from our previous experience that we needed to create some type of ongoing income and our efforts to date had not done that.  When we say the way that the Market America compensation plan was structured, we became excited.  The program looked like something that met several vital criteria:
1.  It was stable (over 19 years old - this is NOT a start-up with a high failure potential)
2.  It was successful - 74 consecutive quarters of growth - VERY few companies can say that today).  It also has an A+ (the highest possible) rating with the Better Business Bureau and one of the top executives in the company is on the local BBB Board.

 3. The compensation plan was stable - every change has been to put more money into the distributor's pocket. 
4.  The products (and there must be more than one or two) are high quality and need to be purchased over and over.  - The products are of the highest quality, science based, market driven.

The part that really sold us was a concept called vertical marketing.  The way that sales organizations are formed virtually forces business partners to help others in the organization.  This is huge.  Instead of fostering competition, this company fosters cooperation.

A couple of other factors entered into our decision  First, the volume needed to earn checks is very low compared to many other plans.  Second, volume does NOT disappear at the end of every month.  You have a year to reach enough volume to qualify for a check.  Third, training is either free or is done on a break even basis.  The cassettes that we paid and paid for in our previous experience are free. Market America has the largest not-for-profit training system in the US (after one in the government). Last, but not least, the people at the top can and do place their volume at the bottom of the organization.  Since 100% of the volume goes up each organization - to infinity this is also huge.  That concepts deserves more time later.

The bottom line was we found and home and a couple of years later we are more excited than ever.  Market America allows you to generate a life time, willable income on a part-time basis.  This is the ultimate "work from home" business.