The basis for sites like Myspace and facebook was originally made so that friends and family could easily keep in touch with each other. This is great if you already have a friend, but when if you are looking for a new friend, or what if you are looking for a long lost friend you once had? In these cases Myspace and facebook aren’t really your best bet, you would have to know either where they are living right now or you would have to search through 10,000 profiles to find them. Its pretty time consuming when you really think about it.

Of course you can refine your search down to sex, age, orientation but even then you still will have to search through a few thousand profiles to find the right person. Finding a new friend is a little easier because all you would need is age, sex, orientation, hobbies, etc. However, I don’t really like to use myspace as a way to find new friends, I just haven’t had good luck with it at all.

One thing I have had a lot of luck with is these websites called friend finders. These friends finders range from adult/mature, pen pals, online, offline, activity partners and much more. I have used a few of them to find activity partners for offline activities such as sports or just going out. You would be really surprised to see all the reasons people go on these sites, and all the different kinds of people you can find as well.

You have to figure there are 6.45 billion people on earth and there was about 729 million people in the year 2004 that had access to the Internet, so that’s a lot of people in one “place” all looking for different things and all interested in different things. You have a really good chance of finding your new best friend in all of this! And even if you don’t find a best friend, you could find some really interesting people along the way. Its sort of like visiting a new country every day. You won’t meet people from just the country you are in (unless you choose to do so).

You can use these for finding new friends, but you can also use other sites for finding old friends, its pretty simple too. All you have to do is enter in a first and last name (which myspace lets you do but it doesn’t work), and if you can figure out the age they would be now, that’s even better. Once you enter in those small attributes, you will be sent to a page with everyone that has that name and is that age. Chances are there will only be a few people or hey maybe you will get lucky and there will only be one! On a lot of these sites instead of friends name they will ask for something like high school you went to or group/organization you were a member of.

In this case, when you enter in first name and last name along with high school you are going to hit payload. Seriously if you actually find TWO different people with the same first and last name that went to the same school as you, it’s probably a mistake because that’s just about impossible.

I did a search once for myself just to see how it worked so I put in my first name, last name, and high school. I found one other person with my name but it was spelled differently, hers was Christie Amberose, so close yet so far away! It was kind of freaky seeing someone with a name so close to mine, but very different at the same time. Make sure you get the spelling right on the names when you are doing a search or you just might find someone you weren’t even looking for to begin with!

It doesn’t matter if you are a professional and have a business online, or you work for someone else doing something else offline, people are always looking for a way to find businesses for all sorts of reasons. Maybe you need to find someone to make business cards for you, or make you need to find a pest control company. Either way, you can easily, quickly and efficiently find these types of sites online by going to business finders. These finders will find any type of business for you as long as it’s a business. You can browse within certain categories to make your search even more efficient, for example, by looking under business location, distance, category or even by name.

These finders come in handy whether you know the business name, or not. If you don’t know the name or your searching for something within your area, then simply go to “location” or “distance” and it will tell you businesses located in a certain town or business located within a certain distance from you. Or if you know the category such as restaurant or airports, simply click the category name, and pick what you want. Of course if you know the name of the business this is really helpful, but I find when I use these things I actually have no idea the name of the business let alone any other info so I just usually pick category and go from there.

What’s nice about these finders is you can refine your search when you go to categories. So lets just for an example pick bakers. Once I pick bakers, then it goes to states, I’ll pick Florida then refine it to where you either are or where you think a bakery might be and you are going to be in the vicinity so you want to go to Boca Raton, and then refine your search even more to cake and pie shops, pastry shops, wedding cakes or donuts. Let’s pick pastry, now you have gone from 5,000 results down to 30 results and then up above you can pick A-Z if you wanted to.

Obviously it’s a lot easier to do than it sounds! Reading “directions” always makes things sound scary, but this is far from scary stuff and it will help you quite quickly. So why don’t people just use a phone book like they have for the last few hundred years? Personally for me? I throw my phone books away. They are too heavy, too big, and too inky! My laptop, however, is small, stable, quick and convenient and the Internet (unless you have dial up) moves super fast! Also, the results in your phone book, can’t or won’t tell you about the guy in Wisconsin who owns a printing business, or the lady in Texas who owns a restaurant you might be going to on vacation! But, the Internet? Has it all. You can search business in your town or half way across the world!

Submitting your site to web directories for SEO purposes is a tried and true way to increase your link popularity and ranking in the search engines. There are, however, some pitfalls to avoid.

Here are some tips that will prevent you from “spinning your wheels”, as it were, in the directory submission game.

First of all, do not fall for offers to “submit your web site to 10 thousand web directories for only $24.95!”. The submissions are usually done using software, and the majority of them will be rejected by the directory owners for being in the wrong category, not following the guidelines, etc. Even if they happen to actually hand-submit (yeah, right) the directories are always completely useless from an SEO standpoint.

Unless you happen upon a brand new one, they are almost always saturated (meaning they have too many pages of listings that the search engines will never crawl deep enough to find).

In most cases the directories will only be around for a short period of time. They usually stick around just long enough for the owner to get tired of rummaging through the submissions before realizing that there is very little profit from it, then letting the domain expire.

Besides the above reasons, the search engines do not favor these directories at all, and even if they somehow manage to find your link among the numbers it will not count for much.

Now that you know what to avoid, here are some tips for finding quality directories. First, we will talk about the “elite” directories that everyone knows about- The Yahoo! Directory, The Open Directory Project (Dmoz.org) and Best Of The Web (BOTW.org). These directories are well known, and the search engines love them for sure. These are the three directories any serious webmaster needs to have a listing in.

The only one of the three above mentioned that is not a “pay-per-inclusion” directory is the Open Directory Project. The problem with the ODP, however, is it’s lack of reliability. It is run by volunteers who receive no compensation for the work they do. Therefore, many of the thousands of categories have no volunteers, and because of the lack of compensation many of the volunteers often neglect the project or are just plain lackadaisical about it altogether. Needless to say, getting a listing in the ODP is a crap shoot. But it is definitely worth a try, as many of the search engines put a measure of trust in sites listed in the ODP.

The Yahoo! Directory is another one that grabs Google’s attention for sure, some believe more so than the ODP. A listing in the Yahoo! directory is quite expensive, however. At the time of this writing it will set you back $300 yearly. But if you are serious about your site, it is worth the investment.

Last but not least, we have the Best Of The Web directory. This is an old directory (started in 1994) with lots of high quality inbound links, and is a favorite of many SEO enthusiasts. At the time of this writing, there is a one-time review and inclusion fee of $240. Another great investment.

Now that we are familiar with some of the top general web directories, let’s talk about finding other great directories. There are plenty of lists out there, just Google “list of directories”. But before spending any money for inclusion fees, here are some things to look for.

First of all, the age of the directory should be looked into. You can usually obtain this information by finding out when the domain was first registered. The older the better in this case.

Next, make sure the directory has plenty of quality inbound links from other authority sites, because some of this “link juice” will be passed on to your site. Lastly, make sure the directory is “SEO friendly”.

If the link to your site utilizes a tracking URL, the link may not be counted by the engines. Also, watch out for saturated directories and ones that use the “nofollow” attribute.

These same principals apply to niche directories. Niche directories are great because they are on-topic, and there are a lot of authority niche directories out there. To find these directories within your web sites niche, Google your keywords and put “directory” after it.

Rule No.1: The most important part of every business is PEOPLE; and the second most important part of every business is PEOPLE. Not the product or service being offered …. but People.

As you grow and develop your Network Marketing business, the people actually become even more important than ever!

Yes, they now need nurturing and supporting; encouraging and inspiring; teaching and leading; guidance and challenging; and they need to know that their team leaders (you) have their interests at heart.

They may develop fears; they may hessitate until they are convinced that what they’re doing is full of integrity; they may simply be slow starters requiring that encouragement and support mentioned above; they may be keen but nervous or shy; they may be full of bravado and talk but show no action; …. you will be challenged by this whole concept of being a support ‘rock’ for your team. But, even though it may be a challenge, you can do it!

Like every good leadership role: teach and show people how to do it right by being a great example!

In other words: be the change you wish to see in the world; and the same in your business. If you can show your team or network that what you’re doing is actually easy, then they will learn that it is easy and replicate what you are doing. They will mirror you and your actions!

Remember that they will also mirror your lack of actions, if that were the case.

Stay in regular contact with the closest members of your team or network, and if you teach them to do the same, then your regular contact will be able to be regulated and minimised to a handful of key players; then they will contact their key players; and so on. Remember the rule of Duplication is happening here: your team members will mock or copy your every move, unless you’re extremely lucky to score a freak MLM Lion who runs their own race regardless of anybody else. Every now and then that happens, so if it does, embrace it and consider yourself very lucky.

Remember that the MLM Lion may well become your best teacher if you’re willing to learn.

Supporting the members in your team actually means taking responsibility, teaching by example, being there for them, and showing endless courage and determination towards your own success, and theirs too!

You may choose to hold regular team meetings, depending on geographical locations of course.

You may also make use of skype or any other technological tools now available to reach the world at either no cost or minimal cost. These methods are extremelyh cost-effective and efficient in their method of use.

One suggestion that we have is to form a ‘local’ social networking group of other like-minded MLMer’s, where you can actually mastermind your individual needs or questions requiring local knowledge and experience. Masterminding is actually bringing topics to the table where trust and integrity are used openly within the group to answer that specific topic or question.

This trust and integrity level of any group takes some time to establish, so be patient and nurture the needs of the group members as you grow. Trust creates more trust; and integrity will promote more of itself; in time.

Regular contact with your people (the most important part of your business) and teaching them to be in regular contact with their people, will grow and develop a team with sustainable goals and desires, and a team who will be a lesson unto themselves!

The support and nurturing of any group of people requires these important traits: Persistence; Courage; Patience; and total Determination to succeed in what you’re doing.

At times you will need to challenge some of your team; this is part of your role so do it with respect. Be the change you want to see in the world, and in your network, and you will see that change happening around you with wonderful regularity.

Happy Networking!

This is about discovering and using the most important of all the basic network marketing strategies.

If you know anything about network marketing you know that the success of your business falls solely on only one network marketing strategy: Prospecting.

That’s what makes network marketing very simple for some and very hard for others.

Prospecting (definition): searching for potential clients, customers or candidates!

Q: What kind of people is network marketing extremely hard for?

A: Those people who do not understand the importance of prospecting.

Q: What kind of people is network marketing extremely easy for?

A: Those people who do understand and practise the art of focused prospecting.

Therefore, if you want to be successful in your network marketing efforts you have to learn how to prospect, and how to prospect in the most effective way.

We will look at some of the basics here, but to really be effective at prospecting you have to have continual and progressive prospecting training and then put it all into action! Yes, practise, practise, and more practise!

Prospecting means going out on a limb for some; and for others it is a simple act of socialising with potential team members, and having a short, extremely concise description of your product or service, and an appropriate ’story’ regarding same, and using it without fear or an attachment to a particular outcome. Some people will show interest; and others won’t. It’s that simple!

Develop a systematic approach; keep records of the people showing the slightest sign of interest (develop your listening skills here) and stay in touch. N.B. Actually tell them that you will stay in touch; and lightheartedly let them know that you will be the ‘dripping tap’ until they show any signs of disinterest. That’s being authentic, and showing integrity (and tenacity), and you will be respected for it.

If you believe in your product or service; show genuine interest in telling others about it; and systematically contact your potential team members: you will develop a strong and repeatable habit of ‘knowing’, that without being offensive or an absolute pain in the arse with your friends and family, will start to work for you. In turn, you can then show others how to do the same, and they can do the same …. and so on.

This is developing a strong and sustainable team or network.

Here is a simple method of putting together two separate prospecting lists:

Firstly, put together a list of everyone you would invite to a personal and private party or function. Then contact them one at a time to tell them about your new venture. Don’t beat around the bush - be direct and open with people. Remember: Once you’re talking to them, go easy on family and friends by respecting their right to receive some information, but back-off the second you detect any negative reactions to your efforts.

Secondly, put together another list of business associates or sporting team members, or any organisational contacts you may have, and then do the same methodical talking to each of them, one at a time.

Show confidence, rather than arrogance; and remember that some will show interest, and some won’t! Of those who show interest, you will encounter a variety of different levels of research and information required before they will show commitment; in some cases, a HUGE difference! We are all different, and some of us are convinced quickly and will make decisions accordingly; others won’t! They may even frustrate you in how much information or convincing they require; but while there is still interest there is still hope.

Remember that golden rule: “I will be the dripping tap until there are any signs of disinterest”! Also remember this: People who require research and more convincing aren’t necessarily showing signs of disinterest, and you must learn to know the difference, as this is often the difference between winning Gold, Silver or Bronze medals in anything that we do!

Just in case you don’t know what the ‘dripping tap’ significance is: A dripping tap will eventually wear away even the hardest of surfaces under the point where the drips hit the ground (including concrete) and will eventually create quite a significant hole if left to continue dripping. People can be the same when put into any situation requiring follow-up, and if you actually tell the other person that you will be the dripping tap until told to be different, you will develop a strong but comfortable relatonship with them. That relationship will be based on respect and openness.

All business is about people: and the relationships with those people!