First of all, what is a downline club?
A downline club is a group of marketers that are collectively and actively building a downline in a particular online network marketing opportunity. So instead of being alone trying to promote a certain opportunity by yourself, you would promote the downline club as the marketing force behind your own promotions. This would bring new people into the club and eventually into your personal downline in the MLM that you are all promoting.
There are advantages in belonging to a group like this…
- Most people prefer to belong to a group as opposed to being on their own.
- You’d have a group of individuals to share marketing ideas and strategies with.
- You would (hopefully) have access to training materials and perhaps live training seminars or chatrooms.
There are, of course, disadvantages as well..
- The group could be stealing your signups without you knowing
- Some groups tend to ‘program hop’, which means you’d be forced into joining other opportunities based on what the group leaders want to do.
- You could be financially hurt by other hidden membership fees and requirements.
- You could encounter members that are just there to ‘freeload’ off the group’s efforts.
Joining a team can be excellent, team support and training can really help you build your business. Having a team that is supportive and is working towards a common goal can be fun and rewarding. On the flip-side, joining a group can also kill your business, kill you financially, kill your momentum, kill your enthusiasm, and kill your spirit.
One major ‘red flag’ you should be looking for is if the group guarantees you anything, whether it be signups or some sort of financial success. You have to watch out for that kind of salespitch. If the group is guaranteeing that you will see profit within a certain amount of time, or will provide you with a specific number of signups within a certain time, I would recommend doing some more research on the group before jumping in. There’s no harm in checking with some of the current members, or with the owner of the site directly. I know it’s hard to resist if someone is guaranteeing you success, but I’ve seen it fail so many times and it seems to end up collapsing and hurting a whole lot of people. Better check ’em out first to find out what their marketing plan is for the long-term.
Let me give you an example of how mathematically impossible it is for the leader of a group to provide unlimited signups for their downline. In this example, let’s assume that the group leader is “guaranteeing” that you’ll get 2 signups from them without you having to do anything..
- In the first month, they have to provide you with 2 signups. Fair enough, if you’re first in line that is entirely possible. There is a downline of 2 under you.
- In the 2nd month, they have to provide your 2 signups with 2 signups each (4 in total). A little more effort is required there and everyone is happy. You now have 6 in your downline.
- In the 3rd month, they have to provide your 4 downlines with 2 signups each, which obviously is 8 new people coming in…
Well guess what.. In this situation, the group leader has to provide every month, DOUBLE the signups they provided in the previous month. That’s right, the requirement doubles every month. Obviously this example is assuming that you are the only one joining in that first month, and no additional people are joining and there was nobody joining before you did. Get out a calculator and figure out what your group has to provide if there’s already 50 or 100 people in the group.
It’s impossible for one person to recuit that many people every month, don’t kid yourself. What happens next is because the signups aren’t coming in, the downline starts collapsing. People start quitting and getting angry. Negativity starts flowing freely through the message boards and through email, and everybody gets blamed because nobody wants to take responsibility for their own actions. Fun stuff.
Okay, enough about all the bad stuff.
Downline clubs can be very successful if they promote themselves correctly. There have been many downline clubs that have been very successful in GlobalNPN because in their salespitch they do not guarantee success in any way. Some clubs have been around for years because they grow slowly (realistically) and mature into excellent training resource sites, where their main goal is to train their members how to be successful on their own. THAT is how you run a downline club. Training should be the FOCUS.
I’m going to list off what you should be looking for when joining a team, and more importantly what you should probably try to avoid in this situation:
What to look for in a team:
– Focus is on training and building your OWN business, not on ‘guaranteed’ results of some kind from the group or the group leader.
– Access to ‘real-person’ support via email, skype, phone etc.
– Active members forum or discussion area, chatrooms, support schedule.
– Like minded individuals.
– Up-front requirements and commitments.
– No “join my downline” requirements to get support or help.
What to watch out for:
– Focus (or salespitch) is on some sort of guaranteed success where someone else is building your business for you.
– Lack of helpful training materials.
– No support forum or active support schedule.
– Hidden terms or requirements.
– Must join under a certain sponsor to participate.
I really hope this helps you out when deciding whether or not to join a group. As always I recommend that you work towards building your Global NPN business on your own – NEVER expect anyone else to build it for you. Be the leader, not the follower.
So.. what do you think? Are downline clubs worth it, or are you better off on your own? Why would YOU join such a club?
Have a great day.
– Geoff.
