How MLM Marketers Can Be More Effective When the Wind Isn't at Their Back

In 1983 I was in college when my mother was introduced to Shaklee by a neighbor who lived across the street. She tried the products, liked them a lot, and decided to become a Shaklee distributor. I can still picture those bottles lined up on the kitchen counter with the morning light coming through the window.

That was my first look at network marketing. A year later I had my own eye-opening moment with Shaklee, which I wrote about in What a Drop of Blood Showed Me at 22: My 1984 Shaklee Story.

Fast forward to today and there is a lot more competition out there. Network marketers sometimes don't have the wind at their back, so to speak. It is more of an uphill battle finding new customers and new reps to join them in their chosen business.

I wrote about this a few days ago in Struggling to Get Leads and Sales in Your Home Business? Network marketers usually run into the same two problems.

The first is getting fresh new leads beyond the warm market, meaning the friends, family and neighbors they already know. Most people work through that list in the first few months, and then it gets quiet.

The second is cash flow. The products are usually a new monthly expense, and that is hard to fit into a budget that is already squeezed pretty tight. That is true for the rep and it is true for the prospect.

Obviously the answer is the Internet. What has changed in the last month or so is that The Home Business Academy opened up a blogging platform called Builder by HBA. Because of AI and the technology behind it, they have cut out so many of the usual costs that they can offer it for $25 a month. I laid out the full cost comparison against WordPress, Squarespace and Kajabi yesterday in Blogging Made Easy: Share Your Voice for $25 a Month.

For me it is the best place to start because it is inexpensive, it is easy, and honestly it is fun. Most of my posts are spoken into existence. I literally talk out what I want to say into a chat with Claude AI, and it writes the post, formats it and places it on my blog. This post was made the same way.

The attraction is sharing your voice. Almost everyone has something they want to say. Their beliefs, their goals, their values, the challenges they have come through. Every one of those things can be a help to somebody else who reads it.

Picture the neighbor across the street who has struggled with finances for a while. She might never sit through a product party or sign up with a network marketing company. But ask her if she has a story worth telling, or advice she wishes someone had given her at 25, and you will likely see her face change. Someone who has never once thought about an online business is suddenly interested, because everyone has advice, stories, or just some feel-good energy they want to share with the world.

My own blog covers all sorts of topics. I have written 100 Fun and Easy Blog Ideas Anyone Can Write, My Top 10 Bucket-List Travel Destinations, and The Day a Lion Named Joseph Ran Straight at My Camera. Your blog will be just as varied as mine, and that is the point. People come for the stories and they stay because they come to trust you. But I keep coming back to the same opportunity, which is inviting others to blog with me.

Here is how this helps with the cash flow problem. Everyone joins Builder by HBA for $25 a month and adds a $20 a month Claude AI subscription, because Claude works the best with this platform. That is $45 a month, and you instantly have a way to monetize your voice.

HBA pays an 80% commission, so each person you refer to the blogging platform pays you $20 a month. Refer two people and you are earning $40 a month, which covers your $25 membership and most of your AI subscription. Refer three and you are at $60 a month and money ahead.

This is upfront cash flow from people who are not customers of your network marketing company. They don't have to be in your town or even your country either. Builder by HBA is available worldwide, so you can earn commissions from someone in Australia or the Philippines who will never order a single product from your MLM.

At the same time, every person who starts blogging alongside you is someone who knows you, trusts you and has heard your story. Some of them may become customers or team members down the road, because you gave them something of value first.

I also have a free method that brings me an extra $400 or more each month, which more than pays for the blogging platform and the AI subscription. It uses three legal online sweepstakes sites, with no deposit and no credit card required. It is available in 36 U.S. states, and I explain it all at chaseswift.com/vgw. If you would rather read it start to finish, my ebook The Sweeps Coins Bridge covers it in detail.

The Home Business Academy has more than this blogging platform. The cofounders, Mike Hobbs and Paul Hutchings, are individuals like you and me. They joined companies that went out of business, companies that changed the compensation plan, and companies that made it harder after they had already joined. The passive and residual income they were told about turned out to be a bait and switch, because it never happened.

So Mike and Paul decided to become the change they wanted to see. They built an online platform that actually works for average people who want to earn extra income from the Internet. The Internet is the best place for that to happen, with its low overhead and the almost miraculous things it can do for a person and a business. They have been at it since 2016.

The Home Business Academy has a lot more than the $25 blogging platform. With HBA Premium, you can attend live Zoom calls with Mike and Paul every Monday through Friday at 11 AM Eastern. The calls are recorded, so if you live halfway around the world, you can watch the recordings at a time that works for you and still gain tremendous insight. You can even ask your own questions of these two men, who designed and built this successful business from the ground up and have kept it running for ten years.

That is rare. At most companies it is nearly impossible to ever speak to the founders, let alone the person who wrote the software. Mike and Paul didn't hire programmers to create this. They built it themselves because they had to. There was no other way to get ahead. They use AI to help a lot now, but a system like this would be virtually impossible to create unless the cofounders were programmers themselves. So when you ask a question on one of those calls, you are asking the men who wrote the code.

You can hear their story on my Turnkey System page:

So if you are a network marketer and you love your MLM company, my suggestion is simple. Blog about it. Blog about the other things you care deeply about too. Then share this blogging strategy with your team and with your future prospects.

One word of caution. Some network marketing companies have rules about introducing other business opportunities to your own team, so read your company's policies first. Sharing your blog with the public and with friends outside your company is a different matter, and that is where most of the opportunity is anyway.

If you happen to be curious about Shaklee itself, I wrote After 40 Years of Shaklee, Here's Why Vivix+ Got My Attention. I also put together a free Complete Health System Overview at chaseswift.com/health. Here is a quick look:

I put together a page at chaseswift.com/voice that shows you how to get a blog of your own. Sign up there and you will get five short emails that walk you through the whole process, step by step.

I have watched a lot of good people work their network marketing business for years, carrying a heavy load uphill. Proverbs 16:3 tells us to commit our work to the Lord and our plans will be established. I believe God still makes a way forward for ordinary people, and sometimes that way looks as simple as sitting down at the kitchen table and telling your story. If you have been tired and discouraged, maybe this is the break in the clouds you have been waiting for.

Feel free to leave a comment below or reach out with any questions. I very much appreciate you reading, and I wish the best for you and your entire family!

Chase Swift

Disclosure: I'm an affiliate of The Home Business Academy and may earn a commission if you join through my links, at no extra cost to you. Earnings examples are not guarantees. Your results depend on your effort, skills and circumstances. The sweepstakes earnings mentioned here are my own personal results, not a promise or typical result, and availability depends on your state and each site's eligibility rules. Claude AI pricing is set by Anthropic and may change. Shaklee products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.