Nuskin WealthNet Group

After having a discussion with my wife about whether and when to charge retail price (43% higher than distributor price), I did a search on Google and stumbled across some ideas presented as part or or inspired by the WealthNet Group (Nuskin distributors). Here's what I've gotten from my reading so far:

1. Some people can not succeed. Don't waste your time recruiting and training these people. Instead find people who can succeed.

2. Sell product at cost. With Nuskin you get paid based on volume, but it is diffcult to maintain high volume. "You will get more volume in your organization if people promote product, and get it out at their cost."

3. Ask friends if they know people who would be good for your organization. Then there is a "series of steps to follow, to walk the friend through the company, the complaints, the benefits, the interest, then the investigation of the company, and industry." In other words, be completely honest.

4. Help leads do their own research. You will never get a complaint from your friend that you've been bugging the person they introduced you to. You can still keep in contact with the person to see how their investigation is going.

5. Don't do anything that makes you uncomfortable (like cold calling). In fact forget all cold activity. Cold activity "separates the salesperson from the casual network marketer. From my studies, even the saleperson has difficulties keeping the pace, as attrition in his un-duplicable activity keeps him working to re-build his crumbling organization."

6. Warm market referraling is more sustainable because it can be duplicated. It can be duplicated because it doesn't make people uncomfortable.

7. People are not prospects they are potential contacts who may help you find business partners. "Helping people is a good basis for a strong series of relationships."

Little by little and investing

So the network is expanding. We still have the one loyal customer. Some of our relatives are interested (some already use Nuskin) and some are not interested at all. Some even laughed at us.

We've even had a few sales come in from outside the family and our first customer. One friend of ours has chapped lips, a problem that used to plague me until I started using Nuskin lip gloss. So my wife and I suggested she try it. She will.

Another friend has some scalp issues and his wife will be buying Epoch dandruff shampoo for him.

To become executives we need $2,000 for 3 months. With the month winding down, we're close but not there. The question is should we buy a little inventory to push us over the 2,000 dollar number. I think we're going to.

Learning from Vanguard

Vanguard's market share of mutual fund assets swelled from 1.7% in 1981 to 9.6% in 2004. John Bogle had this to say during a speech:

"Vanguard has never much liked to spend unnecessary money.... Indeed, at the very outset, I drummed into the character of our Vanguard crew that our first rule of marketing would be: 'Market share must not be bought; it must be earned' -- earned by providing superior investment returns, earned by excellence in investor services, earned by winning the trust of investors."


"The second rule was, 'market share is not an objective, it is a measure.' I not only had no interest in buying our market share with costly advertising and marketing campaigns, but no interest in building it by introducing new funds that simply reflect the fads and fashions of fickle stock markets."


"If market share grows organically, unforced by costly advertising and opportunistic marketing, that growth is likely telling the world that something good is going on: that investors like what you are doing and are willing to put their money where their mind is -- entrusting their hard-earned assets to your care."


"But there is one more thing that has fostered Vanguard's growth. I called it 'candor as a marketing strategy,' making sure that we carefully explain, not merely the rewards of investing, but the risks; not merely the value of investing, but the costs; not claiming superior ability to manage money but stressing the limitations imposed by the tough real world; and above all, doing our best to tell the truth -- the whole truth and nothing but the truth -- in reporting our investment results to our shareholders and in defining our strategies and our policy positions."

I believe that earning market share through honesty can apply to us network marketers.

Different Nuskin compensation plans and becoming an executive

As I've mentioned before, to become an executive one must do 2,000 in sales for three months (one grace month possible). Thigs are different in Australia where you can take a three month program: 1,000 the first month, 1,500 the second month, and 2,000 the third (with PSV - personal sales volume - and GSV - group sales volume combined).

Wow! Australia is much easier than Korea. I was told that it didn't matter if I signed up in America or Korea, but I suppose I have to check to see if that's true...

Australia also has a four month track: 1,000, 1,000, 1,500, and 2,000. And they ahve a very nice 6% commission based on level 1 sales (distributors directly under you) and 7% level 2 (your distributor's distributors). That 6 and 7 percent is even earned before you qualify as an executive. That's not part of the compensation plan described to me here in Korea, but I wish it was...

Why you have to keep customers loyal

You may have heard of the 80/20 rule: for some businesses, 80% of their business comes from only 20% of their customers.

Repeat customers are especially vital in fast moving markets, where customers may use your product on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. This, of course is the case with Nuskin and Pharmanex products.

Also, remember that netowrk marketing relies on word of mouth marketing. Who's more likely to introduce you to their friends, a new customer or a loyal customer?

The reason the introductions your loyal customers might make for you are so important is because of the difficulty of finding new customers. That's another reason you need to keep your existing customers loyal. It's easier to keep a customer than to replace one.

Add to that the fact that loyal customers are likely to make bigger purchases because they are willing to try new products you recommend if they trust you, and you can see that instead of spending all your time on new customers, it's essentail that you spend time keeping your current customers happy.

Repeat customers

So my wife's first demonstration seems to have resulted in not only our first customer, but also our first repeat customer. Our main focus now has to be on keeping this customer happy (and therefore loyal).

Now I'm sure some of you experienced network marketers are ready to object to the word customer: "Network marketing is not about selling!"

Yeah I've heard that before. It's about suggesting products, not selling products. Well as a linguist I'm aware of the fact that language can change, but for now, in English, when someone buys something from me, that's the same as saying I sold something.

And whether you say that she's buying or we're selling, the fact is it has to continue. To become an executive, you need 2,000 in sales for three months. To make any real money doing Nuskin you need to be an executive. For a little more about the benefits of becoming an executive, read an introduction to Nuskin compenastion.

Buying & setting up GWP (Global Web Page)

So my wife went to the Nuskin office in Seoul yesterday and bought GWP. It took us a while to find a name that we liked and was still available. We settled on FAQ, so our Korean Nuskin page is located at: http://faq.mynuskin.com/cgi-bin/gwpweb/igwp/splash/splashInit.jsp although typing in faq.mynuskin.com is just fine.

Now as I complained about before, Nuskin, Pharmanex, and Big Palnet web sites like GWP are pretty bad for search engines. Even for humans. If you want to switch languages, there's a drop down menu in Korean. So, if you want to see our page in English you have to read Korean! How stupid is that?

It is possible to add recommended links, and I'll try putting a link to the English version of our page there. It might not be easy though. A link to our English Nuskin page has a URL like this: http://faq.mynuskin.com/cgi-bin/gwpweb/igwp/splash/gwpFrame.jsp?BV_SessionID=@@@@1370046850.1100662382@@@@&BV_EngineID
=ccchadcmmikdfmecefecehhdfjfdfkf.0&cntryOID=185336&toURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nuskinusa.com%2Fcgi-bin%2Fnsweb%2Fhome%2Fen%2Fns_home.jsp%3FgwpID%3DCEEXEeCECCHDHFCIDEHGBOAYA88VTVEV3t&nextPage=%2Fproduct%2Fen%2Fns_shopOnline.jsp - Is that crazy or what? It does not work because of the session ID. That means I can't even link to my English pages (There may be a way, and I'll try to figure it out, but my point is that Nuskin makes it very very hard).

You might also see a broken image on our Nuskin home page. Well the image has to be 100 x 130 so I went into my graphics editor and resized one, saving it as a jpeg. Then my wife tried uploading it numerous times and kept getting the "try again" message. After about an hour the image uploaded and we went to bed. Something happened overnight; the image doesn't work anymore.

Nuskin charges a lot of money for GWP, and the monthly hosting fee is way too high considering how little traffic our pages are likely to get since they will never be indexed by search engines. Considering how badly they are overcharging us for this website, you'd think the least they could do was make it easy to upload a picture and then display it properly all the time.

First Nuskin demonstration

So my wife gave her first Nuskin deomonstration yesterday and it went pretty well. She compared Nuskin cosmetics to her old Clinique stuff (so much worse than Nuskin that she wanted to throw it out; it was my idea to save it for demonstrations) and her student's mother's Sisley stuff (Sisley cosmetics and skincare products are very expensive).

The demonstration showed that Nuskin products were beter than Sisley and Clinique and my wife ended up with an order for Face Lift Pack, Bodybar, and Epoch foot cream. Liftpak removes wrinkles and improves skin tone (its effects were very clear during the demonstration), while Bodybar is fancy soap. Bodybar combined with the foot cream is effective for Athlete's foot.

My first question was why no other cosmetics? I think that throwing out the very expensive Sisley didn't occur so she is going to finish them before switching to Nuskin. The difficulty is finding people who want demonstrations, because once a demonstration is given the products themselves are very impressive.

Network marketing book

I've already decided to try Netowk Marketing, but if you like to do lots of research before making a decision here's a book that may help (I'm not recommending this book; it's just an advertisement I saw that some of you may be interested in):

Publisher description: Understanding Network Marketing is the key to deciding if you want to become involved with this type of business opportunity. You find everything you need to make that decision right here!

My own philosophy was "Why not?" It's free to sign up and there's no better way to see if you like something than to do it. I'm not sure that reading that reading about Network marketing will really help you understand how it will make you feel, or how well you'll do at it.

Nuskin distributor Big Planet websites search engines

I don't mean to brag, but I know quite a bit about search engine optimization. I figured that by optimizing my Nuskin web site, I could do well with the search engines, drive traffic to my online nuskin store, and earn more commissions. My upline said this would be no problem; I'd have total control over my web site and be able to host it anywhere I wanted.

I started investigating the various options: GWP - Global Web Page, DWP - Dynamic Web Page, and eDWP - a fancy version of the DWP.

I figure I'd have a big advantage over other Nuskin distributors; every single site I visited had session IDs. Without getting too specific, session IDs stop search engines from checking out your site. Generally, it's not too difficult to ad a snippet of code that removes session IDs whenever a search engine visits your site (you still need them for real visitors).

I contacted Big Planet tech support and asked them what my options were. I asked the following questions:

1. the cost for hosting the site on Nuskin servers
2. if I can make adjustments to the shopping cart script to remove session IDs for search engines.
3. if there is any way to set up a Nuskin product site on my own domain with my own host that is completely indexble by search engines.

I got these answers:

1. The monthly cost for the 4 websites is $24.95.
2. No you cannot edit the shopping cart scripts or remove the session ids
3. No, that would violate company policies.

The answers were not at all what I was expecting. If we're supposed to believe that Big Planet is a high tech company, than we have to believe that they know how to remove the session IDs. The fact that they won't allow me to remove the session IDs got me angry.

What bothered me most was that I couldn't host the sites somewhere else. One, most other web hosts are less expensive. 24.95/month is outrageous considering how few visitors these sites will receive without search engine traffic. It seems that Nuskin is increasing profits by overcharging distributors for their web site hosting.

The second thing that bothered me was why Nuskin didn't want the product information indexed by search engines. Don't they want their distributors to sell products? Isn't that how they make their money? Well they do want distributors to sell products, but only face to face. The fact is Nuskin does not want its distributors to attract general search engine traffic. Why not? Nuskin has its own web pages about its products and these are fully search engine optimized. Nuskin wants people who search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. to find the company product pages and buy direct from Nuskin. They make more money when people buy from the comany than through a distributor.

I don't like the fact that Nuskin is competing with me and other distributors for search engine traffic, handicapping me by not permitting the removal of session IDs, and making me pay expensive web hosting fees for an ecommerce web page that's really designed to fail. Sure, getting people to visit your site through word of mouth and possibly other forms of advertising can help, but the key to succeeding on the internet is traffic and search engines are the best source of traffic.

I know I sound angry. I am. But I'm not quitting. I'll just have to put my SEO skills to use some other way.

Free Multi Level Marketing Report review

Ferguson claims that he will reveal some big secrets in his report. He comes close by getting off to a good start but by the end he begins sounding like scam artist. Now I'm not saying he is, but he keeps promising to show people how to add 20 or so people to their downline every week. He never delivers.

He says he's writing the report because he's a nice guy. He doesn't want to recruit anybody, he justs wants us to elarn from his mistakes. The end of the report says you have to talk to him on the phone to get the information that he promised would be in the report. If he lies about what's in the report why trust him to start telling the truth when you have him on the phone? If he doesn't want to recruit us or sell something why do we have to talk to him on the phone?

The first secret is that your upline will never tell you the whole truth about how they succeeded (however we're supposed to believe that he will). I can say that I was misled by my upline. They said it was free to start a network marketing business, but it's not quite. They said I'd have complete control over the web site, but I have very very little control. Those are my only two complaints, really. I think they're significant, but my wife thinks they were just mistakes that are too small to worry about. For really accurate information keep reading this blog or email me at jtrotta@gmail.com

The second secret has to be interpreted, but I think I have it figured out: Your upline will want to be introduced to your recruits because they are up to no good.

Introducing your recruits to your upline benefits the upline but not you. Network marketing has a 90% failure rate, and every time someone bows out the recruits they had been wroking on go somewhere else. If the person who drops out has introduced the potential network marketers to someone who's wildly successful, the recruits might join that persons organization making the rich person richer.

Why is that bad? I mean if you drop out what do you care where your recruits end up? You should care though. You look less credible when you have to bring someone along to "hold your hand". You might lose your recruit to someone who looks more confident, independent, succesful, etc. I think I actually agree with this one. I'm perfectly capable of working independently. If my upline has nothing to do they can stay home as far as I'm concerned.

Secret #3 is that you have to be a marketing expert, not just an expert on your company's compensation plan and products. I think the secret's out. I mean how could the fact that marketing is an important part of network marketing be a secret?

Secret #3 is also the one Ferguson keeps harping on. I'll teach you how to market, how to create "tons" and "thousands" of prospects, etc. etc. But after droning on for a few pages he still hasn't revealed what he has promised to teach us. No, for that we have to email him our phone numbers so he can call us.

As I said in the beginning this is not the type of person I want to give my phone number to. If you really want to read the report the URL is here: addreps.com/pdf/FreeReport.pdf

Is starting a Network Marketing business free?

No. It's much less expensive than starting a traditional corporation or operating a Franchise but there will be a monetray investment. The question is how much. According to brainyencyclopedia.com/encyclopedia/m/mu/multi_level_marketing.html:

"Critics contend that some companies produce revenue primarily by attracting new participants, as opposed to selling products. Amway (the world's leading company in network marketing, with annual turnover exceeding USD $1 billion) in particular often receives criticism for generating considerable revenue from selling instructional and motivational materials to its participants. The United States Department of Justice indicted the company, but Amway secured an acquittal."

In my opinion, Nuskin is better than Amway in this regard as the training materials are generally quite cheap. Still before you can honestly recommend Nuskin products, you have to try them. No free samples, and Nuskin products are not cheap. My wife and I spent about $400 dollars on Nuskin products and training materials the day we signed up.

Nuskin compensation plan

If you want to make real money doing Nuskin you must become an executive. In order to become a Nuskin executive you must sell $2,000 worth of merchandise for three consecutive months (although I'm told one grace month is possible).

Executives are eligible for a 9-15% "executive bonus" depending on sales volume. This is in addition to the normal commission for selling a product. You will also want to recruit some more executives. You get a percentage of their commissions too. The more executives you recruit, the more commisions you earn. You can earn commissions not only from your executives, but also from your executives' executives. This system is the reason people talk about exponential growth when they talk about Nuskin compensation.