The Social Network wars have begun!

This is going to be a short blog post. I've been having a discussion with a friend about... you guessed it... yet ANOTHER new Social Networking site.

Understand something, people, whether you're in Zenzuu, Peoplestring, Blastoff, ProfitSharingNetwork, Hello,Hello... (MAN! The more I look, the more I find!) your social network is never going to be 'the next big thing'.

Look, this is simple. MySpace was king of Social Networks. The mother of the modern format. Facebook simplified, clarified, and 'professionalized' the format, and has kicked MySpaces' butt off the top of the mountain. Everyone and their mother is on Facebook, and harassing their friends and friends mothers to be on there too.

These other networks, while they might have something great to offer individually, like Peoplestring has retrievable email (why didn't someone think of that earlier?), and that and Blastoff let you save money shopping... can we not all just realize that NONE of these are ever going to actually take on Facebook? They're never going to be 'the next big thing'!

If you're in one of these social networks because you joined through an MLM, then realize that the only other people who are going to be joining that network are other people who are in it for that same purpose. Which is fine, if you are just trying to socialize with MLM'rs. Nothing wrong with that. But an MLM must offer something to people outside of the circle of it's own business. What that means is that an MLM must have CUSTOMERS.

Take DUBLI for example. Dubli is a reverse-auction site that sells itself on the idea that the average Joe would just LOVE to 'bid down' items and get them for a fraction of their retail price. Now... why doesn't that work? About a year ago I ran a website that got about 30K uniques a day, and was advertising Dubli to a total of about 100K unique users a day for about three months. Out of all that time, and all those people, which was about 10 million views, TWO people bought tokens. And neither of them bought more than once.

That company exists on the business of selling it's business to others in it's business. Those outside customers DO NOT EXIST. It's a shell game, and it's making the people at the top a lot of money, and the suckers at the bottom a lot of grief.

Luckily, after a year, I could spend my $1000 worth of tokens I got for buying 'the business' buying down a $300 camera to $62, and buying it. Yes, I got a $300 camera for $1000 in tokens and $62 cash plus shipping. What a deal.

Anyway, back to the point, if these social networks do nothing but attract network marketers, then how will they generate the kind of necessary revenue to fill the dreams of all these young hopeful entrepreneurs? Short answer, it won't. Not for most of you, so please don't put all your hopes in the 'next big thing', unless it something that hasn't been tried half a dozen times already and failed. If you're just there to find other MLMers? Man, join a facebook group. There's thousands of MLMers you haven't met yet.

Granted, it's 2am and I can barely see the screen in front of my face... and yes, there are holes in my argument that you could probably drive a truck through... but what the heck, it's my blog, and I just felt like ranting a bit. And you read it all the way to the end? You must really love me. :)

It's the PRODUCT, stupid!

Not long ago my Mom's friend got me to sign up as a Monavie distributor. My wife already used the product, and she said she would build one of my legs because she had a huge network set up.

In one of our discussions, she said something I found very strange, but have since heard echoed numerous times in the MLM community... 'It's not about the product, it's about the business... the OPPORTUNITY'.

Now... I get that concept. I just think it's jacked. Yeah, people want a HBB and that means they need the business... but too often, it seems like someone or some group of people start up an MLM with the idea of 'I'm going to build an MLM, be at the top of the 'pyramid', and make billions... now all we need is a PRODUCT'. Enter: Fruit juice, health products, internet social networks and the like...

This drives me NUTS. If you don't have a product that would, by itself, be something unique and remarkable... then WHY on earth would you try to convince your friends and family, and the 'new' friends you make through your business, to SELL something for sometimes three times the price that they could easily get at Costco or on the internet???

That kind of salesmanship, in the real world, is called HIGHWAY ROBBERY. Coercing your FnF to do so to build a 'business' is no less smarmy, IMO. The fact that probably 95% of this industry is built on such disgusting profiteering is EXACTLY why MLM has such a horrible reputation in the 'real world'. It's why most of your FnF will roll their eyes at you when you bring it up.

I say it's time to STOP this self-destructive way of doing business. I say we BOYCOTT any MLM that isn't offering something UNIQUE. Something actually WORTH the money it's being sold for. Worth MORE than it's sold for, even!

Because damn it, MLM is a business... but it shouldn't be the business of selling business. It should be the business of selling a product that people want and need... and the opportunity for them to make some money selling it themselves.

My 2 cents.

The Juice Wars

Nearly a decade passed since my experience with Amway had soured me on MLM's.  But still, that logical business model still made perfect sense to me.  I had often been heard saying 'If I could just get someone to build an Amway business for me!'... but alas, that could never be.

Daniel was a friend of mine who had attended a few Amway meetings with me back then called me out of the blue, excited about a 'miracle juice' called Xango.  It was my first 'miracle juice'... 

He was telling me all these amazing testimonials about people being healed of this and that... I think one person had psoriasis or something... I forget.  But he was jazzed about the stuff, and going on and on about it.  He told me what was in it, and I started doing my own research into this 'Mangosteen' miracle juice.  Granted, it did seem like some powerful stuff.  Very high in anti-oxidants, vitamins and the like.  Around that time I also ended up having an amazingly painful back/shoulder spasm after about a week of overworking to make a deadline.  Like knives digging into my shoulder kind of pain.  Not good for someone who has to lean over a drafting table all day...

I went to a chiropractor, I popped pain pills... not much helped.  NO, this is not the part where I tell you Xango made me all better... This is the part where I went to an Alphabiotics center where a guy named Steve basically poked, pushed and pounded my spine for about two hours... Acupuncture, acupressure and chiropractic techniques like I'd never dealt with before.  So how does this fit into the 'juice wars'?  Well, he sold me a bottle of Xango to help with the inflammation.  I woke up the next day swollen.  The day after that, I felt great.  Did that have anything to do with the Xango?  Don't know.  But it did pique my interest a bit.  That is, until I went to the Japanese market.

There I stood in a Japanese store face to face with a bottle of Mangosteen juice.  And not nearly as pricey a bottle of Mangosteen juice as I paid for at the Alphabiotics center either.  Next to that bottle, was a bottle of Goji.  A bottle of Noni.  A bottle of Acai.  A bottle of Mangosteen, Goji, Noni and Acai mixed together... A plethora of 'miracle juices', all for less than any MLM you could shake a stick at would ever sell them for...  So the concept of my plunking down more than I had to for this stuff from an MLM... well, let's just say it wasn't first on my list of things I wanted to do.

A couple years later, Daniel and his wife Erika moved closer to us, up in Orange County.  Laguna Beach to be specific.  And she met another gal who was into yet another 'miracle juice' called Monavie.  She wasn't particularly moved to get into another juice, especially so soon after the whole Xango thing flopped for them...  but then her friend told her about some actor from General Hospital who was having a Monavie meeting at his house.  Well, far be it for her to miss out on a chance to hang out with a real live actor, so she went.  And she got sold on joining Monavie.  She dug the product too.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not harping on ANY of these great juices... They are all really good products with lots of health benefits... And to prove it, she gave a bottle to my wife.

As I mentioned  in my other blog, my wife had had excema on her hands and arms for years, cracking, bleeding, itching, scaling... it was not pleasant.  After two days of drinking Monavie, it was GONE.  Nothing the doctors, or nutritionists could give her, be they pills, lotions, powders, cremes... nothing worked, but two days into drinking that 'miracle juice', and it was GONE.  God bless it.  Well, not willing to buy into another MLM, we decided to start buying the Monavie from Erika.  Eventually we even signed up to order it directly from the company.

But then I found myself at Costco, staring at another bottle of Acai berry juice called 'Fruita-vie'.  It was 9 bucks.  I had a case of Monavie at home that cost me $120, and I could buy this stuff for less than 40 a case?  I cancelled my autoship.  We're still not out of Monavie, but when we do run out, we'll be trying the Fruita-vie instead.

The juice wars for us weren't nearly as painful as it might have been, had we actively tried to build a Monavie business.  What with all the competition in the MLM Fruit Juice wars... Xango, Monavie, Noni, Goji, Zrii, Mandura, Zija, Limu Plus, Xelr8, Efujion... it seems like there's a new one every month... well, I can't see where you'd ever get someone to leave one juice company to shill for another, so you cut off HUGE numbers of possible prospects right there... And the fact that this juice or that juice... frankly, ANY juice can be produced for far less and sold in Costco or Walmart... to any struggling warrior in the Juice Wars... it can be just too much of a temptation to stop losing money every month and buy your 'miracle juice' from the big box store.

Or the Japanese Market, for that matter.