Is network marketing the way of the future? That’s the question we will be answering in this post.

First let’s find out if you’re a fit for network marketing. Then I’m going to share with you the biggest question to ask yourself if you don’t do network marketing. Lastly I will share how to build a business from home right now. What’s working right now, which we are going to dive into.

How do you know if you’re a fit for network marketing?

Well one question is, are you easily influenced by the opinions of others? If you are then network marketing probably is not a fit. For network marketing, one of its greatest strengths and also one of its “handicaps” is that it’s such a low barrier to entry to start a business. With restaurants, you have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. With franchises, I had an advertising franchise, it was $40,000 to start. With most businesses, there’s a very serious upfront cost.

With network marketing, you’re typically paying a couple hundred dollars. Because of that, a lot of people that were not trained well entered the network marketing space, went to their friends and family and hyped them, chased them, bugged them, pitched them in weird ways or tried to trick them or do odd things. Years and years and decades and decades of that sort of phenomenon has led to, in some countries (and the United States is one of them) where network marketing has a stigma around it. People don’t like it or they think that it’s illegal or a pyramid or whatever else.

Understand that network marketing is just a form of distribution. It’s not any one product or anyone anything. It’s just “hey, we are going to pay you on people that you bring in that take the product and people they bring in that take the product, we will compensate you for that. That’s the model of of network marketing, but know that you’re not a fit if you’re easily influenced by the opinions of others. If you have to have acceptance, agreement and approval from your peers and your friends and family and you couldn’t possibly handle haters or trolls on your videos then you’re not going to be able to cut it, man. You’re just not. This is something that you have to have some tough skin if you’re going to build this business.

Now on the other side of that is amazing. I have a client right now, she brings home a million dollars a month as a network marketer, that’s take home not volume or anything. That’s take home a million a month and it cost her a couple hundred bucks to start that business. Yes, she pays a couple hundred bucks each month, but you compare that to any other business and that’s incredible. There is a very, very high chance of you making a lot of money, but not without doing any work.

That leads me to the second part…if you are wanting something for nothing, not only is network marketing not a fit for you but nothing is a fit for you. It’s not magical or mystical. You have to do the work. The work is reaching out to human beings and seeing if they are open to taking a look at what you have (product, service or opportunity). If you are not willing to do that and you are easily influenced by the opinions of others then you are in a perfect storm, of you are going to get hate in network marketing.

Here is the biggest question to ask yourself if you don’t do network marketing.

What’s the alternative? How else are you going to make extra money from home? Are you going to be a podcaster, are you going to be a YouTuber? Those are statistically very difficult to make big money in. There are absolutely examples of YouTubers that go on to make millions of dollars or podcasters who are going to make millions of dollars, but let me tell you, statistically that’s a very, very low percentage. Think about what you have to figure out. You have to figure out what are you going to sell. Are you just going to get advertising dollars?

Okay, then that means you need to trade a whole lot of time to get your followers up. You have to trade a whole lot of creativity and a whole lot of time to get your followers up to ever get to any kind of real money in advertising. Whether it’s YouTube or nowadays Facebook reels and Instagram reels or paying ads, right? It’s going to take you some pretty serious time and effort and creativity. Yes, could you possibly do that for less than it costs to do network marketing? It’s possible, certainly, with enough work ethic but think about this…

With network marketing, when people ask me for example, they say “well, Ray, how much did you make your first month in network marketing?” My response was “I don’t know because literally seven years later, I was making money off people I introduced in month one so how do you calculate that?” I got paid for anyone I ever introduced to that company whether as a rep or as a customer and whenever they bought product, I got compensated. Literally every month for years and years, I was being compensated off people I introduced many years ago. That’s very different than you trying to sell a product on a podcast or on YouTube.

Now I’m not bashing those things but I want you to understand comparatively anything that you want to do is going to be difficult. The difference with network marketing is you have a lot of things figured out for you. You have the product figured out, you have the shipment figured out, you have the compensation figured out, you have the research, the trademarks, the patents, the supply chain, the currency conversion, you have the human resources, you have your own customer support, right? You have a lot of things figured out versus you be the solopreneur and you do everything. You troubleshoot whether they got the product or not, you track their shipping for them, you make the product and wrap it…you have a lot of things figured out.

Now, a lot of people use network marketing as a springboard to other things. I have no problem with that. For some people it’s a gateway to being an entrepreneur. They learn the skills that they would need in any business: promotion, marketing, prospecting, closing, follow-up. They learn those skill sets and they apply them in a future business. When you are evaluating, “should I do network marketing? should I not?” Look at your alternatives and ask yourself “is that really easier, is that going to take me more time, same time etc. but I have to figure a lot of stuff out.

This is why I really do believe that network marketing is an absolute great way of the future.

Let’s hear from you.

Before I get to my last point, I would love to hear from you. I do read and respond to every single comment on this blog. What other businesses have you tried? Have you tried any other businesses? Have you tried you eBay? Have you tried being an affiliate marketer? What else have you tried? Drop me a comment in the comments. You probably have tried some things that I have tried because I have tried about everything. I would love to see your comments. Okay, let’s get to that last point.

How can you grow a home business with what’s working right now?

Well I will tell you the top of the marketing food chain totally changed about a year and a half, maybe two years ago and that is when TikTok came out. Whether you like TikTok or not, they have absolutely altered the landscape of all marketing. When TikTok came out, they did something very, very different.  I figured this out because I had a friend tell me, “dude, you need to learn TikTok because I have people in my team that are non-influencers that could never make Facebook work that went over there and they’re making thousands of dollars a month.” I’m like, “hmm, so these were non-influencers?”

Now if someone tells me that there’s a way for non-influencers to make a bunch of money and that they have struggled in the past, I’m all ears. I always know that there’s more non-influencers than influencers and I want to help the person with the lowest level of skill. The person that has yet to create any kind of success. I love helping that person because I really identify with them. I remember how long I struggled.

I went over to TikTok and started an account, started testing out different videos. I started seeing videos get way more views than I had followers. I remember one particular video where I was responding to someone and I had 300 followers at the time. I went around (it was on a Saturday) and I’m chasing my kids and I come back and I look and it has 20,000 views. Now think about this if you’re on Facebook. Think about Facebook live or any kind of videos you have ever uploaded (we will talk about Facebook reels here in a second) but think about standard Facebook marketing or Instagram standard, not reels because reals both came after TIkTok, think about that….

Did you ever have a video with more views than you had friends or followers? I don’t think I had and so I look it’s 20,000, I thought it was wrong, I refresh, it’s 22,000. I look 30,000, 40,000, 50,000. I had over 50,000 views with 300 followers. That breaks the mold of the standard algorithm because what they have always done, what Facebook, Instagram and all of them have always done is they take what you post and show it to a small section of people that follow you or are friends with you. If it does well, they’ll show it to a little bit more but that’s it. They will never show it to 100% of people that you are friends with.

What TikTok did was take your content and say “who might like this whether they know them or not?” That is a game changer. That’s what Instagram reels copied, that’s what Facebook reels is copying.

We have Facebook reels on my profile, on my personal profile (no ads) that have over a million views, we have multiple of them. You are in a marketing era where whatever it is that you do, you have a much better chance of getting your video in front of more people that don’t know you than ever before in mankind’s history. If I’m marketing anything whether you do the podcast route or the YouTube route or network marketing, I would absolutely be doing short videos.

What your reels to take off? 

Speaking of short video, I want to help you really get these things rocking and rolling. We have a free training that’s a three-step launch: how to crush it on Facebook reels, Instagram reels and even TikTok. Here is the link Higdongroup.com/3steplaunch, feel free to click that and you will be able to register for this absolutely free training. It’s going to show you how to do our three-step launch to really crush it with short videos.

Ray Higdon

Play Bigger. Make An Impact.


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