Robert Kiyosaki (of Rich Dad, Poor Dad fame) is fabled to have ridden to success on the coat-tails of the ‘network marketing’ (a.k.a. MLM) community, who are said to have distributed his books to ‘downlines’ by the millions … or, so the story goes.
But, it is true that RK is a fan of MLM, as this video proves; the (justifiable, in my opinion) reasons that he gives is for the business education that it gives you …
… and, I agree. My only issue with MLM is that you are putting your future in the hands of the MLM company: you build a huge profitable business generating millions of dollars a year in passive income (as my wife’s old school chum does!), but what happens if they change the rules or, worse, close their doors or shut down the MLM distribution arm of their business?
But, I do think that if you simply substitute the words: “part time business” – better yet, “part time online business” into Robert Kiyosaki’s video, then you will have all of the benefits of MLM in a much more ‘new millennium’ platform.
It could be:
1. An information products site,
2. A web 2.0 (i.e. the “next FaceBook”) business,
3. An eBay business,
4. ??????
Of course, there are still risks: for example, you could build a massive e-Bay business and have your account suspended on a ‘technicality’ (as happened to my son a few months ago); risks abound but if you start small, cheap and see what develops, you will at least gain the #1 objective that TK mentions: a business education 🙂
There are a lot of potential online businesses outside of your short list. To be honest with you items number 1 and 3 are really dependent on the niche that you choose. You could potentially spend a lot of time for no more than a couple hundred a month. The other thing is that that you still have to invest a fair amount of time and an ebay business isn’t passive income.
I believe there are loads of opportunities online and the biggest step to actually succeeding with any of them is trying them out.
The latest trend I’ve been seeing is a lot of influential bloggers talking about membership sites (which is kind of ironic since they were going out of style back 7 or 8 years ago).
MLM ,in My Own Opinion, is a total rip off. Only ones you ever see getting rich are the ones who started this MLM in the first place. No one else ever seems to make anything .
@ Matt – You’re right! But, let’s not discount the value of the business education; my son’s eBay business produced a few extra bucks a week for him – which was nice – but, the value of the business education for his future, in my opinion, will be priceless (if not exactly priceless, its ‘value’ will be a good chunk of his future Number).
@ Steve – I have a couple of acquaintances who seem to have done very nicely with MLM, thank you very much 🙂 But, I agree, very few are successful … but, that’s the case with all businesses.
To me, the money in MLM tends to be in the recruitment, not in the selling of product. So if your strength is in the close and the relationship, you could do well.
I had a few friends (and a former boss) that tried to recruit me, but I was never that interested. My early business attempts were more about trying to build a product to sell (and later learning that I really needed more skills with sales and marketing).