Have you been involved in an MLM/network marketing company either recently or before you became interested in building an internet business?

It never ceases to amaze me how many people I talk to in this business that had some kind of experience with MLM. It seems that network marketing was the business of choice for opportunity seekers before the internet kicked in.

Many so-called "gurus" talk about their life in MLM before they got successful on the internet. James Brausch posted about why he thinks MLM sucks yesterday, for example.

Even Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad/Poor Dad fame suggests starting an MLM business in many of his books.

I suppose it makes sense - network marketing has a lot of the same advantages as internet marketing.

It's relative inexpensive to get started. Pretty much anyone can start their own business. You can work at it part-time, around your full-time job.

Most of the people who were involved in MLM have bad feelings about it, however. Myself included.

Why is that?

I think it's because many of us were sold on a dream of how easy it is to make a bunch of money that is residual - you get paid whether you put in the hours of work or not.

Of course, the percentage of people that are actually successful at it are pretty low, mainly because there actually is a lot of work to build a network marketing business that can support you. Once they get a taste of the work it takes, they lose interest.

If the people recruiting new distributors were honest about this, it would mean a lot less people in their downline but I have a feeling it would be full of successful people.

Internet marketing is much the same. Plenty of people promise the world - how much money you can make with little or no effort.

But of course, it isn't any more true here than it is in network marketing.

If you want to be successful, you're going to have to work at it. Put in the hours and the effort, and you'll see success.

But if you're waiting for the magic button that makes money spew out of your computer, it's just not going to happen.

And that should be one of the criteria you use to judge any product or teacher/guru that you choose to learn from. If they tell you there's no work required to make a lot of money, put your wallet back in your pocket and run away.

The people who are honest about the amount of work it's going to take are in it for the long haul. They're not going to get as many people buying into their offer, but those that do are going to be a lot more likely to succeed.

It will be interesting to see how people talk about the whole "internet marketing" world in 10 or 20 years.

I wonder if it will be the example that gets held up by all the unsuccessful people the way MLM is now, when something new comes along promising to make you rich with little or no effort.

"This new deal is nothing like that internet marketing stuff we all got sucked into back in the day."