2007 December

Downline Integrity Will Stunt Your Growth December 4, 2007

Posted by Soren Jordansen in : Articles , add a comment

You have two choices in Internet Marketing you can take the safe road, follow the herd and make a little money. Maybe enough to make a car payment or if your really lucky make your house payment.

Or you can take the less safe road and build your business first, and recommend other products and services second. This allows you full control over your prospects, leads, subscribers or members.

Downline integrity means the first choice, lets list some pros and cons and see how they stack up.

Pros.

It feels safe because every one you personally signup has to follow you into the next program. You have in theory a guaranteed downline in the next money making program.

If your not good at promoting things and your new, then it means you don’t have to start from scratch every time the team joins a new program. Downline builders also help by giving you only one thing to promote, all you do is promote the DLB and hope everyone joins all the programs in there under you.

So far so good…

Cons.

By using the 2 by 2 into the ark and blindly following everyone else may feel safe, but it has some very disturbing downsides, the worst of which is if you concentrate all your efforts into promoting a program or downline builder in order to get people to join other things under you, your completely dependant on that DLB sticking around.

If it closes for any reason, you lose everything. all your hard work down the pan. A huge example of this was Profit Rally. Huge amounts of effort and money was expended by a great number of people building their down lines. It all went great for about a year, then the owner just up and disappeared. People were left with huge downlines and commissions trapped in a program that was no longer there.

Conclusions…

If those people in ProfitRally had spent their money time and effort building their own business and list first and then recommended ProfitRally. When it vanished, all they had to do was mail their list explain profit rally was no more, and recommend a new alternative.

No wasted time or effort, no starting again, and most importantly a whole lot safer.

And finally…

Beware of people who claim that anyone who doesn’t preach downline integrity is stealing your downlines. This is a deliberate attempt to blind you and keep you within their sphere of influence, be your own man, build your own business, keep control of your own referrals and you can build a bigger, better, faster, more profitable business in the long run.

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If you want learn more about Robert Puddy and find out more about how to build a real business then register for one of the $20 half day workshops in 2008. Details can be found here: Focus Marketing Seminars Live

Why Downline Integrity Will Stunt Your Growth! December 3, 2007

Posted by Soren Jordansen in : Articles , 2 comments

By: Soren Jordansen

Lately there has been a lot of controversy and debate about the concept of downline integrity. Normally I wouldn’t care, but since the proponents of this idea have started tossing around words like unethical, illegal and downright calling other business owners thieves - I thought it was high time that someone put a few facts on paper. This article will be very traffic exchange centered. Not because I want it to, but simply because exchanges are the only place where anyone has embraced the idea of downline integrity.

Traffic Exchanges aren’t special.

First of all you need to understand that traffic exchanges do not differ from any other kind of affiliate program. It is the same basic principle, you promote an affiliate link and when some one enters the program through your link you get paid for your efforts, either in credits, cash or both. Although residual commissions are common, the owner/affiliate contract ends when the new members steps through the door. Just as it does when you sell a Clickbank product. Think about it, would you expect Ewen Chia to refrain from selling to his list of customers? Would you expect him to sell stuff to them using your link? Of course not, you got paid for the sale and that is the end of it - and traffic exchanges aren’t any different.

How any affiliate program decides to monetize their site and backend is their business, if you don’t like it then you don’t promote it. But a traffic exchange owner mailing his list is no different than a CB vendor mailing his customer list…period. In fact here is an interesting quote from Mike Filsaime’s Butterfly Marketing Manuscript:

“The way it works is this. It is my site and I offer you a free service. I am entitled to monetize the site in exchange for my free service”.

The downline mentality.

Believing that downline integrity is necessary naturally implies that building downlines is the best thing since sliced bread. And that notion is exactly what will stunt your growth.

There is a good reason why everybody tells you to build that all important email list - and that is because it works. Build a list and build a relationship with your subscribers. They then become your personal downline and a pool of traffic you can send to all the products and programs you want to. You don’t care how the owner monetizes your people when they sign up, because 1) you have been paid 2) you still have them on your list 3) you already have a relationship with them (after all they followed your recommendation), so you have an advantage over the owner you sent them to. On the other hand, if you don’t build a list you will forever be at the mercy of product/program owners. And worse, you will fight a constant uphill battle to build and replenish that downline - that is a battle you can not win because your efforts can only take you so far. The only people that win from that approach are the program owners, and that is why the downline mentality will stunt your growth.

So why have affiliate links?

Most of what I do is centered around list building and I try to pass that on to people at any given chance, and a prominent downline integrity crusader have started asking the question. “Why do you have affiliate links then?”

Well duh, if people are building a list and they wanted to use that list to promote my products and programs they would need an affiliate link wouldn’t they?

Furthermore, even though I would like nothing more than having all my affiliates building huge lists and using those lists to promote me, I’m not stupid. If affiliates want to promote my business directly I’m not going to stop them - I will provide them with everything they need to do so, anything else would make no business sense whatsoever.

Team, business model or cult?

There is one thing about this whole downline integrity debate that really bugs me, and that is the fact that people can’t see that it is just a clever business plan some owners use to keep people in their place. Downline integrity is not about sticking up for the little guy, it’s about keeping the little guy in his or her assigned place in the downline structure. So they don’t run around joining other things, or *gasp* break out of the shell so they don’t need to be a part of a given program any longer.

It’s about making you believe that you are part of a team or community, nothing wrong with that per se. But you need to understand that a program owner does that to build loyalty and in the end to get you to spend more money and/time with the program.

These exchanges become useless.

In my opinion traffic exchanges that actively pursue downline integrity are useless. Think about it, if members are trained to join everything from inside the downline structure, what is the point in advertising to said members?

These exchanges become a gathering of yes-men that stick together and are happy to live off the scraps that falls from the owners “downline table”.

On the other hand they are forced to go out in the real internet marketing world to advertise their little club in order to bring in new people. When they do so they are forced to face the harsh reality of a marketing world that does not play by their rules. And because they have been lulled into the false sense of security their downline integrity program gives them, they start crying foul play.

But there is nothing wrong in internet marketing, these people have just been kept in the dark for the benefit

Final myths and points.

Some of the downline integrity people will try to tell you that the fortune is the follow up, but they are only telling you half the truth. They want you to do the follow up and relationship building from inside their programs because it benefits them and prevents your ability to promote other things.

Build your own list and do your own follow up. Don’t rely on a traffic exchange to do any of that for you. Use the downline mailers and PM systems in traffic exchanges as they were intented - an extra perk that will help your relationship building, not do it for you.

… and finally take a good look around the internet marketing scene and see what the successful people are doing. Following the path of downline integrity will lead you down a certain path and that path won’t end anywhere near where I am!

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Soren Jordansen is the owner of the popular Dragon Surf free traffic exchange. A place where you will experience real results without being lulled into the downline trap. Feel free to distribute this article in any form as long as you include this resource box. If you are a member of the Dragon Surf manual traffic exchange, you can even include your own affiliate link.

Welcome To The Downline Integrity Blog

Posted by Soren Jordansen in : News , add a comment

Welcome to the blog and thanks for stopping by. This is site is dedicated to bringing you the truth about downline integrity and to exposing the myth promoted by the Downline Integrity Brigade - a myth that is essentially a flawed concept designed to keep you at the bottom of the food chain so the owners will benefit.

In the top right menu you will find a list of traffic exchanges where we can guarantee you that you won’t be lulled into the false sense of security a downline mentality creates - instead you will get top quality traffic and result, plus sound advice from some of the most successful people in internet marketing.