I thought 2008 was a tough year for many in network marketing, 2009 seems to have been much worse. While many where all hoping that the economy would improve, there is still little evidence to suggest that it has done anything more than stop its slide off a cliff.

It has left millions of people unemployed, with many of them still searching for employment. It is interesting how ones perspective can change from “I want to fire my boss to how do I keep my job!”

While many including myself have always believed that network marketing thrives during a recession, this was more of a mental depression than a recession!

This year brought many external changes that forced quite a few network marketers to constantly change their marketing tactics.

2008, brought an explosion into what we laughingly call interruption marketing. Which really gained momentum in 2009, when social network marketing replaced the 3 foot rule.

Early in 2009 Microsoft announced a new project that provides a valuable lesson for anyone in business. For years the only contact you had with them was via the telephone.

What Microsoft announced was they would be opening retail stores, a very smart move. No doubt they’ve been watching Apple’s success.

It just goes to prove a point, people like dealing with people! And that will never change, think about how irritated you get when you get into the endless loop of any companies phone system.

Early in 2009, the FTC announced sweeping changes that would affect network marketers, especially those that blog and use social media. The new law went into effect December 1st 2009.

This year we had new rules come into play by the FTC for marketers that use robocalls (auto-dialers) and with it comes some very stiff penalties!

As usual many marketers flocked to programs like Ibuzzpro and Scraper Pro which is really ironic as they’ve only elevated themselves to telemarketers.

The Media Attacks:

This year 2009 appeared to be the year for the news media to really attack network marketing. It seemed like not a day would go by without some reporter lunching a new attack.

Earlier this year one reporter went just a little to far “Did CNBC Reporter Distort Facts about Monavie” My gut feeling all of the articles are designed to get additional page views to their company websites.

And of course it is not just the media that goes after network marketing companies, state attorney generals do as well. Sometimes this is well justified, and other times you’re left to wonder, whatever came of it.

On the bright side
In Network Marketing in 2009

A few things actually got better. In January of 2009 I wrote about Leaders Clubs 7 Day test drive. 7 days of focused training that many of the top network marketers have been apart of yet, will not often tell you about.

And, this was followed up in February, with the release of the free DVD Solving the 8 Greatest Challenges In Network Marketing. Which later in the year was followed up by a reduction in their basic training subscription.

Frankly, I don’t know why more network marketers especially those who are trying to write a blog about network marketing don’t utilize their vast audio archives (over 500 audio and video) and hundreds of articles in their library.

2010 is shaping up to be an equally slow year for economic growth, and of course there will be winners and losers in network marketing. The real question is where do you want to be?

I wrote a post on Dec 5th titled the “Top 5 Ways to Become Unattractive In Network Marketing Today!”

Number 2 on my list was to use the software Scraper Pro. As I stated there the software is not illegal! But, how many are using and promoting it (auto-dialers) could land you in serious financial trouble.

Over the past few weeks, individuals are promoting this tool to network marketers as the tool that will allow you to generate unlimited network marketing leads.

And how to you do this? By scraping the contact information from websites “other network marketers who are already in a business!”

If that’s your target market well then it’s all good right? But is that really the target market you’re after?

What you’re going to really accomplish is having a bunch of pissed off network marketers who will forward your information to the FTC’s complaint section.

Even though on the Scraper Pro website you’ve been warned not to use auto-dialers, every phone call I have received has been using this method to promote this software…

…It’s obvious that some people either are just not that bright or totally ignorant of the law.

Here is the scenario, you scrape my phone number, plug it into your auto-dialer, make the call and you’ve just violated the Robocalls rule that went into effect September 1st 2009.

You’re no longer a network marketer, you’ve elevated yourself to a telemarketer and…

…Telemarketers Must Obtain Prior Written Approval from Consumers Who Want to Receive Such Calls!

Now, you face penalties of up to $16,000 per call.

And after a few dozen of these a week, don’t you think individuals are going to be really irritated and take the time out to file a complaint with the commission on the donotcall.gov website or call the toll free number?

Or to blog about it and expose it for the scam it really is!

Again I’ll State The Software Is Not Illegal…

It is how a few are using it that is. There are other companies that produce very similar software but.

If you use the software and actually pickup the phone and call a potential prospect you might actually get some where.

But, it goes back to requiring you to do something you don’t want to do in the first place cold-call right?

You’ll end up calling people who could really careless about your software and see you as more of an interruption. Or, you could call it distraction marketing!

Will it generate leads for your nutritional or cleaning products? I seriously doubt it!

Use it at your own risk… Now I have some phone calls to make!

Want to know “How To Stop Scraper Pro Users?”

On December 10, 2009 the North Dakota Attorney General issued a cease and desist order against the network marketing company Fortune Hi-Tech Marketing.

Attorney General Issues Cease and Desist Order

It appears that the primary reason for issuing this order was the failure of Fortune Hi-Tech to purchase a transient merchant license.

As many states suffer budget shortfalls during this “depression” the states are looking for any method to shore up their bottom lines.

As you read the article written at KSJB, released by the North Dakota Attorney Generals Office, it seems one-sided. There could be a valid reason they did not purchase a license, but there is no mention of it.

Or is it, the North Dakota Attorney General is up for re-election in 2010? And Fortune Hi-Tech looks like an easy target and free publicity that goes along with it? That’s for you to decide…

It’s quite interesting, the North Dakota Attorney Generals reelection campaign website has a warning placed on it by Google for spyware and malware, “visit at your own risk!”

It would be interesting to hear from Fortune Hi-Tech members the other side of the story… So we will have a balanced approach on the story that is not being told!

Just about everyday you can find a news article that trashes network marketing. The real question is why are they doing it?

Does it fall in line with the fact that they are losing market dominance in every facet of their business model? Or is it that we can no longer believe what they are reporting?

The evidence appears to be leaning in that direction. Stories that really matter are totally ignored for those that will drive visitors and ratings.

Today in the online addition of the Wall Street Journal an article titled Is Life Insurance a Rip Off appeared. In the article the author portrays the black sheep in his industry of using inefficient and patently corrupt distribution channels like “network marketing!”

I guess the new FTC rules don’t apply here, where is the proof that it is patently corrupt and inefficient? Is it opinion or fact?

Just yesterday, in the Denver post there was an article Ponzi-scheme suspect peddling new business. I guess we are now a country that you are guilty first and then must prove your innocence.

The day before that an article in the Las Vegas Review mentions multilevel marketing again another attempt to get more readers to read the crappy story.

Then there is the issue going around of news organizations trying to sort out the details of how they can charge for reading their online content since their add revenue is falling.

I’m sure their falling ad revenue is caused by us inefficient network marketers today.

Maybe they are finally waking up to the fact that the internet has leveled the playing field and they can no longer control what is and what isn’t news worthy.

It seems like only yesterday I was reading news about the hundreds of print edition news papers going out of business they no longer could compete as their readership dried up.

And, now they find that competing in the internet age is not as easy as they once thought or where lead to believe.

Personally I find it annoying going to a large news site that uses external sources for its ad content. Nothing like watch an hour glass spinning while waiting for the ads to download.

The chief editor must surely be saying can’t we through in something about multi-level or network marketing so we can get more visitors to our site?

And, then they wonder why no one clicks on the ads!

The new rules that go into effect on December 1st 2009 are already having a chilling and welcome affect on network marketing advertising.

The new rules or “Guides Concerning the Use Of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” An 81 page document which you can download here.

For years now, we’ve all seen network marketing ads and landing pages that use claims and testimonials that well lead you to believe everyone can expect these results until…

… You read the fine print (disclaimer) on these marketing systems?

The one I like “Results not typical!” Which means…

We took our best testimonials and dressed them up the best we could! So don’t expect anything close to these results!

Now we should not have to see ads that state your company and upline are lying to you! Now they’ll have to prove it!

If you know where and how to search you’ll see exactly which of these advertiser have changed their marketing tactics recently to meet these new guidelines.

Does that mean these marketing guru’s where lying to you? That’s for you and now the FTC to decide!

I’m quite sure a few marketers will continue to try and push the envelope with their advertising, and they may get away with it for awhile.

For years, I’ve placed links on this site to various products and service from Leadersclub of which I’m an affiliate of.

In the past I did not disclose very often that this was a business opportunity.

My reasoning was that it was not about Leadersclub or me, it was about you and your success in network marketing.

Now based on the FTC rules, I must disclose that this is an affiliate program. And I make a decent living pointing you to a resource that can actually teach you how to market smart and never have to worry about changing your marketing methods.

Which is not really bad at all, Leadersclub will not have to change their advertising since they’ve always stated it as it is.

So keep watching, lets see who radically changes the way they market.

Last year saw a resurgence of network marketing support companies “yeah right” began to push marketers to utilize auto-dialers in their marketing.

It is really sad that quite a few network marketers got sucked into these systems, lets face it no-one likes to prospect, so we’ll try to take the easy way out of it.

I wrote a post last year in October “Autodialers the Scourge of Network Marketing!” I wrote the blog post out of frustration after receiving quite a few robocalls from different network marketers.

Quite a few individuals really had been suckered into purchasing these systems, and they really didn’t know it would affect their business. A few of the individuals where actually quite rude, know-it-all network marketers who saw absolutely nothing wrong with using them.

One of the companies “Ibuzzpro” I actually sent an email to them stating that I would be posting a blog post on this site should I receive another robocall from their system.

What I was going to post was how you could make a killing out of taking these individuals to court, it was allowed by the FCC.

Fast Forward To September 1st 2009

A new law goes into effect the really has some teeth. Essentially this is what is beginning:

Beginning September 1, 2009, prerecorded commercial telemarketing calls to consumers – commonly known as robocalls – will be prohibited, unless the telemarketer has obtained permission in writing from consumers who want to receive such calls, the Federal Trade Commission announced today. Read More…

Before this the penalties where $500… now they are going to be $16,000 per call. Ouch that is going to hurt, I just wonder how many individuals really know how much they are hanging it out there?

If you’re using one of these systems I really hope you’ll re-think what your doing! It truly cold lead to financial ruin in less time then you think. No one starts a network marketing business to go broke.

Today in the news was an article by CNBC Reporter Darren Rovell about Network Marketing company MonaVie’s sponsorship of Tomas Scheckter who competes in this weekends Indy 500.

In what appears clearly as a blatant attack on MLM – Network marketing by the CNBC reporter, dissecting it shows this article is total crap, “Is MonaVie Endorsement Risky?”

First Darren indicates that he is not going to get into whether or not Acai is good or bad, he is going to talk about the numbers game.

This gets interesting since anyone with a brain can do a little research and find out that it does not cost $1,800 for a case of Acai. I’m sure that they will say “oh we just forgot a zero and a decimal point!”

My guess is they’ll have this corrected soon…

The research they did “or supposedly did” is off by 10 times the amount than what the product actually costs…

…If they where off by this much, it totally invalidates the rest of the numbers as well! Unless we are using some kind of CNBC fuzzy math.

I found his statement that after talking to one former distributor “the only people who make any money came from previous network marketing backgrounds or got in on the ground floor!”

I guess we could apply that analogy to any industry or business today right! So you might as well give up on designing the latest widget to compete with XYZ company.

If we follow this ill conceived logic, we might as well not do anything at least until a new network marketing company pops up. Or we have gained the necessary experience!

Was the real reason this article was written, purely to bring readers to the CNBC web site! Readers who otherwise would not have read the article or visited the web site in the first place.

Wow Foxnews, CNN or a dozen other online publications must really be causing them grief…

Are times getting so difficult for reporters, that they have to create controversy where it doesn’t exists, or they are just getting lazy? Sure it could have been poor editing, yet the whole tone of the article indicates otherwise!

I really like the part at the end of the article where it was stated “I hope he knows what comes with the logo on his car.” Maybe they looked at it and decided that it was much better then a CNBC logo Or a MSNBC Logo

Either way crap reporting is still crap reporting, and the more people that call them out on the crap the better society will be!

And No I don’t work with MonaVie!

Since the beginning of 2009 there have been quite a few news media articles written about network marketing.

There has almost been at least one a week since the beginning of the year that places MLM – Network Marketing in an unfavorable light.

I wrote a post along these lines last month titled “Are You Helping Or Hurting Network Marketing Today?” From the 1st of April until the May 16th there have been literally dozens of negative articles tying our chosen home business to pyramid schemes or scams.

In just the past couple of days these articles surfaced, “YTB’s “Pyramid Scheme” Stopped by California Attorney General” and “Illinois wants to shut down YTB.”

With the numerous comments on these articles, bringing up the surge in what we could now call social media spammers. Are we really beginning to piss off a lot more people, then ever before? Yet, most of this is being done by a minority of marketers…

This is really unfortunate since, simply because they are follow the advice from self-proclaimed guru’s. Individuals who glamorize it with statements, you’ll make a fortune this way.

Maybe if these individuals had tapped into the right network marketing coaching, instead of following these “Guru’s In A Can” they would not be tainting this industry in such a fashion.

Network marketing is already tough enough without all of these shenanigans. They clearly could careless about other people, which is truly sad!

I still can’t get over the fact that when someone follows me on twitter and I follow them back the believe they have the permission to pitch me their offer. What is truly sad is many of them are referring to my former downline.

If they only knew the whole story and where the material came from, they may or may not have second thoughts about the validity of the information they are being provided.

As the economy continues to struggle, with more people losing their jobs almost on a daily basis you can see it spreading to all forms of online marketing. The more it continues to decline the more hype and spam these marketers generate.

You don’t have to promote with hype!

… in order to be successful in network marketing today, yet many still feel this is the only way to do it. One marketer who shall remain nameless was even found chasing down negative articles so he could comment and provide links back to his web site. How lame is that?

You really have to ask yourself, and do some soul searching. Do you want to be a respected professional or is it all about the money, no matter what damage you do to yourself or the industry as a whole!

Whether you like it or not sweeping changes maybe coming to network marketing and the way we advertise and promote, which in many cases this has been long over due.

When we look at the material many network marketers blog about today, under the new rules they could be held legally liable.

Often, they repeat claims of others yet have absolutely no way of verifying if it is even true.

If I cannot prove the claims myself, this should raise an immediate red flag! Truth in advertising is it long overdue, if we where to buy a product and it was proven to be defective, generally legal action ensues.

Then it brings up an even bigger question, could search engines that display the pages, whether by pay-per-click or static sites also be held to the same standards.

Amazon recently made some changes concerning affiliate pay-per-click advertising. The search engines would have a more difficult time, yet Google could probably employ the same technique they did with buying links or spam.

They could implement this very easily via the web masters tools, making it self policing, or maybe this is only wishful thinking? The bottom line is that the search engines will not be held liable, yet it is also possible that they would not want the distraction of legal action either.

Yet it is disturbing the increasing number of news media outlets writing articles such as: The Feds To Push For Truth In Social-Media Marketing we need to take this to heart and clean up our act or someone will step in and do it for us!

In what seems like so many years ago, when I worked as a aviation electronics technician I would often work for a customer that was never happy with any work that was done. His favorite saying was fake it until you make it.

Even though, I had 18 years of experience I was working on small airplanes that where completely different as far as the problems that had to be solved. No longer did I have a wealth of technical data to work with, the wiring diagrams where vague and no two airplanes out of 25 where exactly a like, talk about challenges.

What I specialized in where autopilots and radars. After several years working in small airplanes I became quite proficient at fixing any problem, to the point that customers would fly their small planes 8 to 10 hours, bypassing numerous other places to get repaired.

Many of the ancient and I do mean ancient autopilot systems where barely supported, yet I could find a few old school “retired” technicians that could provide sound advice. The challenge was in knowing what and whom to believe! I could get lots of advice that would do nothing more than to lead me on a wild rabbit chase.

So Glenn, what the h**l does this have to do with network marketing?

Here are a few examples from today:

Hi .  Check out this site I found online today.

Hello,

Discover how YOU can make $495 per week with a HOT new part-time
hme buziness.

Grab a TOP position in our famous “Profit Share System” that is
Making People RICH.

No recruiting. No marketing. No special skills needed. Just get
in line and GET PAID.

See you @ the TOP

Rachel L
TOP INTERNET MARKETER.

$100,000/year without money, a website and a list of customers.

Yes! You Can Change Everything In Just One Day… And This Is Your Oppor tunity

Dis cover where everyone else has gone wrong…
inside this first, simple module I will answer every question you have and more.

Unlock the secrets to copy/paste simple online ca sh…
I’m NOT going to make you hunt for keywords or “profitable” niches.
Inside I’ll show you EXACTLY where to go to grab your ca sh!

How to start with nothing and be on your way to making your
first $100,000 per year in as little as 7 days…
(Yes! This is my personal path… follow me and you will not have to struggle!)

Never again will you need to wonder “but HOW do I do that?!?”
Inside I will take your hand and show you EXACTLY who/what/where/why/how…
Everything.

But you have no product? You have no site?
NO PROBLEM! Inside you will unlock the secrets to having OTHER PEOPLE make your products FOR FR EE…

Everything inside is 100% copy/paste/drag/drop simple… you will be not only provided with my personal cash-sucking templates -
I’ll even take you by the hand and SHOW YOU EXACTLY how to use them…

60 Money Back Guarantee no Questions ask.

PS. Discounted price is for 50 people only, so hurry…

Can you smell a pyramid scheme in the making?

Then there is the proverbial chain letters, such as:

Is this Microsoft’s desperation our your own?

From: Cammy Stubbs [cammyXdesignmydestiny.com]
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2009 7:05 PM
To: asantana13Xcomcast.net; apringle, apringle1; Calhoun, Dan; cortes, wilson; Gerena, Jose; Gonzales, Yvette; Gonzales, Yvette; Goya, Eddie; Jim; Lambert; Lugo, Danielle; Lugo, Jorge; Maria; Mason, Steve; Montalvo, Marisela; Newageoffers; Porters, Arron; Rodriguez, Fernier; Santana, Harry; Santana, Sophia; Santana, Zenaida; Shadai; shumone; WillieConga

Subject: Write yourself a check for thousands of dollars

“Bill Gates sharing his fortune ……
For every person that you forward this e-mail to, Microsoft will pay
you $245.00 For every person that you sent it to that forwards it on,
Microsoft will pay you $243.00 and for every third person that receives
it, You will be paid $241.00. Within two weeks, Microsoft will contact
you for your address and then send you a check.”

Please… do you think millionares are just giving away money?
That is why they are wealthy and the other 98% of American’s are not.

If you want to litterally earn thousands of dollars learn click here
and If you really want to help others earn thousands of dollars
forward this email to them so they can learn this secret too.

You only have money to loose….

Cammy

In this day and age with all the trojans and viruses out there just do a blanket broadcast to everyone in your address book, real smart and really professional looking.

Thanks for increasing the amount of spam already out there on the internet and doing your part to ensure that the internet slows down for everyone equally!

Just the other day, one of the companies I work with got an email that went to their webmaster account “can you smell spam:”

Subject: AGEL: why did you fail?

I found the answer to that question and to many more right here:
ht://smaxxx.therenegadenetworkmarketer.com/

Enjoy reading.

Regards from

the smartermlm team

Now here is another group that is taught to fake it till you make it and while your at it spam the h*ll out of everyone! Network marketers and companies of all kinds are failing today at alarming rates.

Yet some companies and network marketers, that know what they are doing are still succeeding without giving away the store. More people are searching today for viable alternatives, yet 99 percent of what they find are scams like those above.

The question you have to ask yourself is do you want to build a solid, sustainable business or be a part of the “Fake It Till You Make It Crowd?” The choice is yours only the odds are that you won’t make it if you fake it!