I gave a withering please explain what on earth are you getting at look!
Well, he asked me if I was marketing internet schemes or using the internet for marketing real usable product to end consumers (including their pets).
This was like peeling onions! What was he getting at? What he was getting me to realise is whether all my effort over the past 5 years was really geared to recruiting others to recruit others to recruit others with the end-user product (e.g., the dog food or health juice) being secondary to any money incentives.
Then I realised what he was getting at. He was right of course - until recently, when I came across affiliate marketing for information products. Even here, his gentle needling was relevant as most information products which, when applied, just do not work (e.g., some dog food, though well packaged and marketed to humans, is just plain ignored by the dog because it smells and tastes bad - to the dog.)
Well, after much searching, downloading, reading, cursing and discarding I have found a real information product that does work extremely well when applied. This product was developed by Nathan Stark, who has earned the right because he has adapted for the internet the same proven offline marketing disciplines that ensured his success in marketing, wait for it ... pots and pans ... prior to his internet ventures - which are now extraordinarily successful.
When I downloaded his ebook I was pleasantly surprised, then tremendously excited, because the content did what its sales page said it would do - plus more! This is because it provides a clear path for anyone to follow to generate short-term cash without a website or product and then, building on this, how to generate long term residual cash and which can fund experts to set up your site for you - if you want to go that far.
It's brutally honest and warns you that you have to work your heart out, at least in the initial stages, to set it up to generate cash in the short-term. What I particularly liked here is that with the specific, clear directions my workload will be results, not task, driven. Worrying about downlines, keeping them enthused, getting them to conference calls and phoning them will be no more. The only website I will want to look up from now on will be my account in Clickbank telling me commissions earned - and to see this growing exponentially. No doubt you would like to be in this picture too.
So if you wake up in a cold sweat wondering if you are really in the internet recruitment business rather than the internet marketing business, ask yourself these questions - will the end consumer compensate me happily with a well-earned commission? Can I get a never-ending supply, and an increasing supply, of such people? Or am I sweating on my downlines keeping their monthly subscriptions up to date and not slink off into the night and kill off my income?