There is basically one major difference between offline and online MLM promotion: one-on-one approach versus one-on-many approach. In offline promotions, one-on-one approach and follow up on each lead is a very crucial factor. If you can follow up on a prospective lead and succesfully educate him about you MLM program, you’ve got yourself a downline. If not, you’ll have to wipe tears off your eyes and try your luck with next prospective lead.

An ideal online promotion in other hand, relies very little on one-on-one follow up. With power of internet, it is possible to find people who are already interested in MLM, willing to spend money on promoting it and train them about your MLM program all automatically. This way it is possible for you to have many prospective leads at same time, train them all at same time automatically and therefore makes your chance of recruiting downlines significantly bigger.

To do a successful online MLM promotion, it is best to know first what to avoid in doing it. Here are wrong ways most people are doing in promoting their online MLM program:

1. Promoting an online MLM in an offline media

By offline media, we mean regular magazines or newspapers you usually subscribe to or sold on bookstores. Some people may think that if they promote their MLM program in TIME magazine or Wall Street Journal, they will instantly get thousands of leads who will easily turn into downlines. Anyway, almost everybody read TIME magazine, right? True, but to tell you truth, almost nobody who is reading a magazine or a newspaper will put down whatever it is they are reading, dash frantically to computer and type URL you promote to check it out.

Most people will think "This may be OK to try. I’ll browse site when I get to my computer" then read on. When they finally get to their computer a few hours later, they most probably have totally forgotten about your ad.

2. Promoting an online MLM in an online classified ads site

There are two reasons why this is a bad move: First, because there are now literally thousands of classified ads sites on internet. None of them is a major player in field, which means you must try to post to all of them for maximum exposure. Second, because most of sites don’t charge anything to put ads on their sites, a lot of other people are also promoting there.

To get a decent number of people viewing your ad, you must put your MLM promotion ad in at least several hundreds classified ads sites. There are softwares out there that can do this automatically, but if everybody’s using a specialized software to do this, then your ad will be competing against tens of thousand of other advertisers’ ads, and as soon as your ad appears it will be pushed downward by other ads from other advertisers. The chance of right kind of lead seeing your ad in right time and right mood is very slim if you try this approach.

3. Promoting online MLM using free safelists

Unlike online classified ads sites, there are not as many free safelist sites out there. The companies who run safelist sites has actually spent time to collect names and email addresses of people interested in a specific topic (in our case MLM/online business) and these people are willing to receive offers related to their interest. When a paying advertiser put an ad, his ad will be sent to email of all people in safelist. Considering that all people in list are targeted, this concept is actually more powerful then two we discussed above.

Unfortunately, when you put your ads in these safelists using their free trial mode (most of them offer free trials), your ads will only go out to other advertisers who are also using free trial mode. In other words, your ad will only go out to other persons who are posting ads themselves. These people don’t expext to read ads from other advertisers. That’s why most of them use disposable email addresses like yahoo, hotmail or like. Your ad will stand almost zero possibility of being read, let alone acted upon.

If someone is shopping around for best price for a particular item, say a Cuisinart food processor, they would probably go to a site such as Ask Jeeves (at ask.com using Smart Search for Products feature) and quickly obtain a list of sources and prices for desired item. The "yes/no" purchase decision has already been made and it is simply a question of who to buy it from.

In case of network marketing, it is of critical importance to build a sense of trust with your team members. Network marketing is very definitely a relationship business and each relationship typically starts out with two complete strangers sitting at their respective keyboards.

The team building aspect of network marketing is of vital importance to success of each individual member and to team as a whole. Two key elements of team building are trust and confidence and these factors play a very large role, particularly for new team members.

As a team leader, you need to be knowledgeable about business (products, services, or whatever) and straightforward with answers to questions about business as well as providing timely and thorough support to your team members. These actions will cement relationship and build trust and confidence among your team members.

Network marketing has many aspects, but promotion, persistence, and patience are three key elements which are critical to achieving successful results.

PROMOTION is lifeblood of network marketing. Whether you are using online methods or offline methods, or a combination of both, you must constantly strive to get your offering in front of a targeted audience.