What is the best way for an affiliate to build a downline?
At the risk of sounding snarky, I’d say the best way to build a downline would be to understand that you’re engaging in multi-level marketing (MLM) or network marketing, and not affiliate marketing.
While there can certainly be legitimate MLM programs, the concept is often associated with illegal scams such as pyramid or Ponzi schemes.
As the name suggests, individuals are compensated based on their leads or sales, as well as the leads and sales achieved by those they bring into the business. The original referrer can be compensated for multi-levels of people recruited into the business, hence the name.
Anyhow, it’s something of a gray area, as affiliate programs sometimes have two tiers. But programs with more than two tiers, regardless of what they call themselves, are not affiliate programs.
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They are not often actually the same – a minority of mainstream affiliate programs have more than one tier.
They can often be confused because they are actually often the same. MLM companies reward you for selling a product and anyone that you recruit to sell a product – just like an affiliate program that pays 2 levels deep.
You made a good point about building a downline involves MLM programs. To expand on that idea, I believe if you want to build a downline, the best way to do it is to create some type of three step system that your downline can virally produce. I think this is the very best way to build a downline beacuase you are simply replicating everybody into your same unique system.
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