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Ask Shawn Collins: Building a Downline

November 23rd, 2006 · 1 Comment

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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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1 response so far ↓

  • 1 Donny Gamble // Nov 23, 2006 at 5:57 pm

    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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