How To Avoid Spam With Akismet

This Tutorial is Part of Atomic Blogging ( A Step By Step Guide to Blogging )







What you see above are the number of Spam messages I get so far on my blog! It's HUGE! Arent they ignoring? To avoid and prevent all this spam you must use Akismet - A Free Plugin to avoid spam for your blog.



Before I start, Akismet is a free open source spam program online to help fight spam for wordpress owners.



Just follow the following steps to get started to prevent Spam on your blog.

The MLM Conspiracy

I’ve been spending the weekend doing some research on our industry and I tell you what; it just seems to get more and more confusing here!! Talk about confused.com (An annoying advert here in the UK)

Everyone and his brother is claiming to be an ‘expert’ and whichever internet route I meandered through to learn more about attraction marketing I just kept coming up against ‘conspiracy theories.’ We have the ‘The 7 great lies of network marketing’ and all of those ominous sounding google ad words adverts that go with these endless conspiracies. You know the ones.. all about your nasty upline and what he or she doesn’t want to tell you. Golly and those upline guys seemed so genuine in every other way…. Is it possible these people are living a wicked double MLM life?

I absolutely love the principles of attraction marketing but all of this hype saddens me and confuses the socks off all the newbies. Not to leave it there though as the plot thickens. For those who can’t implement the ideas in Anne Sieg’s Renegade Marketer e book right off the bat, there is a next step… (Of course) Mike Klingler who seems like a pretty genuine and good guy to me, has come up with something called the ‘Renegade University’ which helps one learn how to implement the geeky stuff discussed in her book. It all looks pretty cool but of course what everyone seems to forget to mention is just how looooooooooooooooooooooong this stuff takes to implement. I was reading one of the mentor’s blogs and she wrote that it took her 6 weeks to set her site up. 6 weeks!!

If that’s not your cup of tea well you can always sign up with a secondary MLM as well, to ‘compliment it.’ That’s if you haven’t got your work cut out with the first one! Also don’t forget to check the company rules of your primary MLM because many don’t allow it, but the ‘online guru’ may forget to mention that as it would get in the way of income streams.

We have people in our industry whom reach the top level of the pay plan in 3 months. Is it just me or does the geek route sound like a recipe for showing someone how to get into the rat race?!! On paper, or on the screen, these systems of course always look really impressive with testimonials of guys sponsoring 10-50 reps a month. I’m not sure about you, but personally (i.e. personal enrolees…) I don’t think I could handle 50 reps signing up whom I have attracted to me because of my amazing IT and teaching skills. Of course I would always have to be on call as well. I have declared myself to be their saviour and superhero for all things they can’t understand or work out on their blog. (Lord help me – please don’t let it be a Word press or I’m stuffed! It’s all I can do to run my own.) So that kind of messes with my 4 Hour Work Week mentality!! Sorry Tim. In this industry if we build it once and build it right, we’re promised walk away income and freedom to travel the world with 24/7 residual cheques while we sleep. I don’t recall signing up to be an IT support engineer do you? Or perhaps a Virtual Assistant would be more on the money. I would certainly need to get outsourcing ASAP!! (I didn’t want the hassle of employees though did I?)

I have ranted slightly on my blog about this before because it irritates me that these guys use negatives to draw people into their own names’ list. They use standard adverts and really have no idea what each company or sponsorship line is teaching, but lump them all together in one ‘old school’ pile. I hear now they are under fire from the DSA for exactly this reason. If only they would go about implementing these new principles with more finesse that wouldn’t be necessary, but they seem to live and die by the philosophy that they are single-handedly saving the MLM world from the upline demons who don’t want to work on the internet all day, and insist on actually talking to people they know and trust about their business. Honestly whatever next?

The irony is that there are great principles and systems contained within both styles of marketing. To cut out the basics is like throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Likewise to say attraction marketing working doesn’t work is just plain silly. The guys who moan they ‘don’t know anyone’ when they do their warm list will be the equivalent of the guys who moan ‘I don’t know how to do all this IT stuff.’ The point being this is a challenging industry where we need to talk to people in one way or another. What concerns me is that many of the timid ‘I don’t know anyone’ people are hiding behind their computers, building websites and have been in the business with their new company (whilst their wicked sponsor calls them repeatedly, trying to work out why they haven’t exposed their exciting business to even one person yet) for months without getting into action. Meanwhile they are spending money faffing about learning social book marking and watching more gurus’ videos. By the time these poor folk work out how to generate a lead they’ll have lost heart and talked themselves out of their opportunity.

So what’s the secret? As one of my very successful and surprisingly truthful (!!) upline said, ‘there are no secrets when there is a pay plan this good as there is no benefit to stopping your people doing well.’

If you’re still sharpening your pencil, picking up that heavy phone and putting it down again (after giving it a quick polish) and in confused.com land… I recommend not reading every conspiracy report that comes your way. It is a basic principle of this industry that mindset is a key element to your success, and so therefore dwelling on what you don’t have cannot be a positive thing. The sensible and sane thing to do is to follow the basic plan from your successful sponsorship line which is active in the field today and (most companies don’t have one so don’t be confused by those glossy brochures) Your warm list may be of great value to you and the people on it need to be told what you’re doing and given an opportunity to review a 3rd party tool. (Note 3rd party tools deliver the business message instead of you begging, pleading and whining!) Then you can focus on meeting new people as you go about your life, and learning the very complex strategies needed for online attraction marketing. The point being that you are already in action, whilst you learn. If you’re not excited enough to whiz over a video link to a friend to let them know what you’re doing then maybe you should rethink your career path!

The 3 foot rule does not exist anymore except for MLM psychopaths… this is a relationship business and if you focus on expanding your network both on and offline you will be moving in the right direction to becoming a Professional Network Marketer. Social Networking has opened up a whole new world for those who want to build online but also to keep it simple.

If you want to advance beyond the basics then I favour Mike Dillard’s attraction materials because in a confusing world they are simple to obtain and easy to absorb. They are also very good value for money, and Mike spreads a positive message. For more info on Magnetic Sponsoring and how you can apply it to the business of your choice click here:



Happy Networking until next time
Rachel

4 Hour Work Week Prospecting For Your MLM

So there I was in Eilat for 5 days, the idyllic holiday town nestling on the Red Sea on the southern point of Israel. I was keen to indulge in the pleasures Eilat has to offer; exquisite beaches, snorkelling (ok that’s not my scene but the kids love it!) and of course swimming, and grilling myself in the intense sunshine, after a chilly winter in the UK. On the other hand, as Anthony Robbins would say, it is inner civil war because I also wanted to maintain momentum in my Network Marketing business!

In preparation for my 3 week trip I’d been implementing some of the Four Hour Work Week principles and had been practicing checking my email only twice a day. Have to be honest though, I fail miserably in this and have come out the closet and admit that I have a serious email addiction, although on holiday with pc access limited I could actually adhere to these harsh disciplines and sometimes only checked my email every couple of days. (Gasp!!)

I had my laptop with me for whenever it was possible to use it so I could be in touch with the team via Skype or email every couple of days quite easily. I had my mobile for emergencies so I figured that side of things was covered. Hmmmmm …. But what about my prospecting? I know from experience what a mistake it is to let your ‘funnel’ empty completely because it is far harder to get momentum going from a complete standstill than it is to just keep it humming along.

No internet connection for my laptop in this cutesy hotel so I was working against the clock. Literally!! 10 shekels for 30 minutes and the timer was on. I managed to get into a little routine. Every morning after a full Israeli breakfast which makes British fry ups look quite shameful in comparison I would head out to commandeer my place in the hotel lobby and start my 30 minute prospect against the clock session!! It’s far easier than one might think really. Actually not much different than when I’m at home except that I was actually time efficient and couldn’t keep going into the kitchen to make cups of tea.

My usual goal is to invite 2-3 prospects each day to review my opportunity. Sometimes I spend the time generating new contacts to add to my list, others it just flows and I do 2-3
‘exposures’ as we call them in our company. Sounds quite rude really but is actually a very methodical process of inviting people to review a video. Goodness we even have a tracking facility these days where we know exactly what, or rather where, our prospects are up to! Ever since we got that it’s ruined me a little bit for sending out hard copies because then I need to call them to find out if they have reviewed, as opposed to knowing in advance. Well it has been said that I can be a bit of a control freak!

The pool was calling and the clock was ticking and my mouse click clicked through my emails and profiles. The trick is to completely ignore everything that is not of relevance to generating or following up with prospects in those 30 minutes. If you start replying to Aunt Matilda, and looking at Cousin Sarah’s new baby photos in the home feed of Facebook you’ve had it I’m afraid. No can do!!

Just from the friend requests and emails from Facebook, Plaxo, Ecademy and Linked In I found myself with a steady stream of possible candidates to review my video. The liberating thing about having a deadline is that you just can’t mess about. Straight to the point and on to the next. Anyone can do this kind of prospecting with the phenomenon of Social Networking threatening to overwhelm us with sheer numbers of possible networks to be involved in, and ways to contact people online.

Before you whiz off on holiday be sure to build up your profiles on your chosen networking sites so that they are of interest to visitors and will entice them to want to connect with you. Let your personality shine through and add some applications that interest you and will attract people with similar interests. That way you will never run out of candidates who become friends and/or business contacts. Some of these people will join you in your business. (If you are nice of course!!)

Don’t be tempted to change your ‘system’ just because you’re away from home. Online networking knows no location. It is absolutely irrelevant to your new prospect where you are based that week. We went from Eilat to Jerusalem to Tiberias and back to Jerusalem and I’m quite certain that my prospects neither new nor cared where my internet connection was. That fits completely with my vision of working from a lap top under a palm tree. (And I don’t mean the one that has mysteriously flourished in my cold British garden either!!)

Keep up the tempo, let all the stuff that isn’t important pile up in your inbox and just stick to the basics. I recommend 30 minutes ‘work’ done, preferably in the morning, as I found that the most efficient way of working and it didn’t interfere with my afternoon siesta and early evening cocktail habit!! On top of that of course you will have a prime opportunity for making contacts in the ‘real world’ and exchanging business cards which you can follow up on later.

Warning!!! Don’t try this when you have just started or are still quite new in your business because it can seriously damage your mental health, and the momentum created from launching your business may disappear in a puff of smoke, never to be seen again. You need a solid foundation before you can downgrade to temporarily working 30 minutes per day, and this should not be sustained for long periods unless your volume is so bullet proof that your downline don’t care whether you ever work again, and you are already an MLM Rock star!
So did I make the 4 Hour Work Week? Just about but I have to confess that when relaxing by the sea of Galilee, which is absolutely hands down the most gorgeous water I have ever swam in, I got cold turkey as there was no internet connection for my laptop and I didn’t discover the computer in the lobby until I checked out! Still on a bright note it forced me to get to grips with my Blackberry and actually download emails (which for some bizarre reason I hadn’t done in the whole year since I bought it for that very reason) and guess what? Yes you got it. These days we can even connect to Facebook on a Blackberry. So how does it go? ‘Dear John…. I don’t know if this will be something for you but I do think you need to check it out…..’

If you enjoyed this post stay tuned for the next one about prospecting on a shoe string budget. Find out how I kicked my former ‘advertising habit’ that cost me £300-£500 per month with my former company, prior to being taught by the pros how to network and business build without having to re-mortgage the house.

MLM is Easy!

Today it suddenly occurred to me that there are very few elements of my MLM business that are not easy to do. If that is the case, I pondered, why does it take some people so long to get their heads in the right place to become successful in this industry?

I wondered about this for some time and it has indeed been in the back of my mind for an extremely long time. And then it came to me like a flash of light….what the industry gurus and icons have said over and over again is absolutely true. It is not the destination - It is the journey. Of course that is it. That is the reason that so many people with amazing promise join this industry only to underfulfill their potential.

The business is simple. Or at least it should be. My previous business with another company was anything but simple and in fact was a full time job so I had little time to occupy myself with soul searching. I was too busy dealing with customers calling me up to tell me about their bowel movements and the weekly measurements of their thighs! Well I am eternally grateful for no longer having to deal with that but now that I have time on my hands with an effective business model that doesn’t require every hour of my day just to keep it running, dare I say it? I have become an MLM philosopher!

Anyway getting back to the point. As long as we have a business model that is simple to duplicate and is repetitive by its very nature all we need to do is invite people to check out our opportunity by reviewing a DVD or whatever, follow up with them, and help them to get started and to repeat the process if it is right for them. Easy hey? Especially with all the 3rd party tools we can utilise these days, and the incredible technology at our fingertips. No more driving round town just to get a new team member started. In fact there isn’t really all that much to do at all so why do people make it so difficult?

It’s all about what’s going on in our personal lives and our heads. It’s all about feeling motivated and being able to continue with revenue producing activities even though we may be feeling really bad about what’s going on with a member of our family, or about our partners. There are so many things to do with the children and so many minutaie to take care of on a daily basis that it is the easiest thing in the world to just allow ourselves to get distracted.

I fall prey to these distractions also and have to work very hard on myself to stay productive in my network marketing business. The way to keep MLM easy is to spend time every day working on ourselves so that we can keep that million dollar attitude which fuels us to operate the business in a super productive way. One hour a day spent working on our business with a million dollar attitude is worth more than 5 hours just going through the motions so I highly recommend setting aside at least 30 minutes each morning to read or listen to some kind of personal development, whether industry related or not.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rachel Henke coaches people to work from home with a proven system and millionaire mentors. Find out how you can escape the rat race at her website: Escape The Rat Race Free Tour

How Useful Is 3 Way Calling For Your MLM?

3 way calling is a key skill that in some network marketing systems is completely overlooked. Here are the reasons why I use 3 way calling on a regular basis and classify it as one of the key Rainmaker activities that deliver growth in my organisation.

Where is that place in between travelling all round town to meet with your downline and their prospects and between leaving them all to themselves to fend off the ‘forces of evil’ and try to enrol people into their business entirely on their own. No matter what anyone tells you at some point you need to pick up the telephone to connect with your prospect and provide the human element. Even the master attraction marketer, Mike Dillard, encourages this. The only time you’ll enrol someone into a serious network marketing programme that is not one of those free deals or under $50 deals will be if a deadly serious prospect is looking for your opportunity and by whatever means they have reviewed the information online and have deduced that you can connect them up correctly for success. Other than that forget it…..

You will need to TALK to your prospect! You will need to learn about them and why they are looking for a home-based business. This is where the 3 way call comes into the picture as a major player. I have read some weird and uneducated opinions about what 3 way calling is supposed to be about but here is how it works for us with the Randy Gage Team:

1)Enables our team members to introduce their prospect to their business partner who has experience and has achieved success in the business even if they have themselves only joined 24 hours ago.

2)Shows the team member instead of tells them how to do the business in real life and how to talk to their prospects.

3)They can edify the upline leader which gives them credibility, and in turn the upline leader edifies the team member as someone who is serious about their business and an asset to the team.

4)Introduces the prospect to a system and training infrastructure that helps them feel confident about joining our TEAM if it is right for them.

5)Adds a much needed ‘human element’ to an increasingly automated business.

6)Eliminates the deathly fear that a new team member often has by provided professional coaching and support as they grow into a leadership role themselves.


What the 3 way call is not:

A pressure tactic to introduce people who are not looking to be introduced.
A way to take credibility from the team member and place it further up the chain.
The upline’s job to sign up the prospect. The call is handed back to the team member who then takes the next step in the process.

I don’t know about you but my major purpose is to build an ever expanding and increasing network of empowered business partners who are able to function without me. I want to work myself out of a job and the only way to do that is to provide real life leadership training.

Want To Learn More About Our Leadership Factory Visit Leadership Factory Free Tour

Want To See How To Evaluate Legitimate MLM Companies and How To Spot The Scams and Pyramid Schemes? Visit Here: Randy Gage MLM Rockstar Audio

I Object To Dream Stealers and Negative MLM Campaigns!!

It has come to my attention lately that more and more wannabe online marketers are using a very negative spin on their adverts to attract prospects into their marketing funnel. Whilst I am in favour of innovative marketing and understand that shocking headlines attract more Google adword clicks than tame ones, I feel it must be pointed out that these dream stealing ex network marketers and copycat MLM gurus are casting a very unfavourable light on this wonderful industry and ultimately are shooting themselves in the foot.

Since I became a committed network marketer 5 years ago I have done everything possible to always build up and edify the industry so I find it extremely irritating that these guys are cashing in on every MLM company name out there, trying to position themselves as experts with all the answers whilst at the same time building their own list for their own supposedly magical business which is usually teaching people how to do MLM (even though they obviously didn’t make it themselves or they would be banking their passive income cheques and drinking out of a coconut as opposed to stealing reps from successful companies…) but in a much easier way because they never ‘have to pick up the phone.’ There are some strong words I could use to describe these dream stealers but I will resist using them in such pleasant blogging company!!

I just wish some of these earnest marketers would stick to what they know (I’m not sure what that is really though!) and just because they didn’t make it as MLM Rockstars in their company doesn’t mean others won’t. Instead of being positive ambassadors for the industry they sound like cheap losers who can only attract traffic to their site by attacking others.

Is it just me or does anyone else think that Google should regulate their advertisers’ copy more? Freedom of speech is one thing but the internet seems to have become a web of lies in some cases, and anything can be published without even passing it under the nose of the editor! How come these guys can get away with using trademark company names in their defamatory adverts? The adverts go something like this.. ‘Find Out The Truth About ‘Company X.’ It is laughable really because the same advert is running for most of the other company keywords which of course means that it is highly unlikely that the composer of the advert would know the truth if it jumped up and bit them on the nose!

I had a wonderful and enthusiastic new business partner join my team last month. It didn’t take too long before a do gooder friend sent her a report written by an evangelical ‘expert,’ about Pyramid Schemes which ridiculously included names of some of the billion $ companies which have been in business for years. Of course this expert is stuck in 1950s mode and conveniently hasn’t bothered to research the facts of the industry today. Still it amazes me that smart people spend their time writing such negative nonsense. In the report this expert derided the Direct Selling Association as if it was of no consequence at all!!

Why? Well I guess it helps that he earns royalties by playing to people’s fears with his negative work. I find it all very sad and hope that prospects evaluating the network marketing industry will be able to see through some of these thinly veiled attempts to simply syphon prospects into lists to market their business and services to, whilst stealing from under the prospect’s nose what could be their million dollar opportunity.

Want To Work With Millionaire Creator, Randy Gage?
Escape The Rat Race Tour

Does Mike Dillard’s ‘Building on a Budget,’ do what it says on the tin?

Mike Dillard is well known for his ground breaking training materials in the arena of MLM attraction marketing. His Magnetic Sponsoring course has opened up a lot of doors (mostly in my mind!) and has shown me how to position myself as a leader in the industry and attract the right people into my organisation.


I was very interested to learn about his new course and although I wavered before purchasing because I’ve been going back to basics and sponsoring some really good people whom I actually already know…gasp…, I took the plunge. After all I know that readers are leaders and that even if there was one good tip in his course it would be worth every penny and can accelerate my business. I am careful to avoid distractions though as I have mentioned in previous postings.


The crisp and beautifully bound book arrived within a couple of days and I dove into it with glee. I am nothing if not a good student committed to lifelong learning! Settling down to read it, which is such a pleasant change from hunching over my laptop reading e books, I found that true to his word Mike delivered more than he promised.


The claim of the course or handbook is to teach us winning strategies to drive traffic to our websites on a budget of $500 or less. There is a whole chapter on using Video which even a technophobe like me could understand and follow. Other hot topics covered in detail are how to advertise your opportunity effectively on Craigslist including how to automate your advertising. Blogging is really the hot topic of the Web 2.0 wave and the book covers how to research and plan your blog, how to physically set it up and which blog platforms to use, how to brand yourself with your blog, how to drive traffic to your blog and the list goes on. For anyone thinking, ‘I should start a blog,’ this will inspire you into action.


Many other things are covered in the book and there is a bonus copy of his new monthly Newsletter, ‘The Magnetic Sponsoring Inner Circle,’ which reveals ‘the latest online marketing and recruiting secrets for Home Based Business Owners.’ As Mike so rightly says and as I have mentioned in my article ‘The Myths of Online Networking,’ the internet, and Web 2.0 changes so quickly that it is very difficult to stay on top of things. The newsletter will keep all serious online marketers up to speed in bite size pieces so that they won’t be the last to discover things that can drastically affect their online results. I particularly enjoyed the ‘Web 2.0 Traffic Secrets,’ and found that to be a very useful step by step guide.


The other awesome thing about the entire Magnetic Sponsoring ethos and service is that upon purchasing the book you receive an automatic membership to the affiliate programme which is a hassle free and profitable way to build your rolodex of Network Marketers, and to pay for your own education.


More details here:




Word of warning… Randy Gage, AKA the Millionaire Maker and my upline mentor, has some sage advice for us that I heed: He says to do online or other activities only ‘in addition to’ the basics. If your company has a strong duplicative system whereby you can grow your business month on month by teaching people to take a few simple actions then take care to follow that system. It is there for a reason. Online marketing takes a lot of consistent effort and many people joining your team may not have the time or the will to become online gurus.