Branding, Webster's New Millenium dictionary defines this as: "in marketing, the use of logos, symbols, or product design to promote consumer awareness of goods and services."

What exactly does that mean to your network marketing business? It means that it is simply not enough to "sell" your program or company. You must sell the whole package, which includes YOU. You, as the sponsor, mentor, supporter or your team as the sponsoring team, mentoring team, and supporting/supportive team.

How do you "brand" yourself online? You make yourself available and transparent. Have your picture on any site you can. Create a "who is" page where your prospect can go to "meet" you. They can learn about your history and what you have to offer them. Don't worry if you don't personally have a ton of experience, you must have access to people who have experience, or possibly the team you've joined has a large amount of experience. This is called branding. I have my number, e-mail address, and website on every e-mail.

Now that you have branded yourself, you need to make yourself duplicatable. You need to make sure that your prospects can duplicate what you do.

Duplication is what makes your new members successful. No one wants to reinvent the wheel and no one wants to feel completely alone and that they have to figure things out on their own. Make sure that what you are doing can be done by your new members as well.

If you are offering something so outrageous that only you can offer it, then you are doing your new members an injustice. What will happen is that no one will want to join your new members they will only want to join you - so you will be successful until word gets out that no one who joined with you was able to duplicate your success.

Yes, you need to offer something of yourself, and that obviously can't be duplicated. But don't offer such a huge discount that no one else will be able to afford to give someone that same discount - thereby guaranteeing that anyone is going to want to join with you instead. Don't offer so much assistance in advertising (offering $1000 in advertising to get them started) that no one else can do the same - very few people JUST getting started can offer this. Instead, offer training, offer support, and offer some reasonable amounts of advertising help.

To recap, two critical steps to your success with an online business are branding and duplication. Branding means to make YOU and what you stand for clear and easily found online.

To make yourself duplicatable, make sure that whatever you are doing (advertising, offering advertising help, etc...) is not of such a huge magnitude that no one else can also offer the same thing, and therefore taking new members away from your members and guaranteeing their failure.