Whereas home-based network marketing can be difficult for anyone who is not an outgoing, natural "salesperson", network marketing online can be highly effective, since the internet solves many of the problems faced by the home-based network marketing entrepeneur. Network marketing online takes on a whole new face. It's a business tailor-made for the internet.

Unlike Affiliate Marketing, which is a completely internet-based business, the Network Marketing business (also known as Multi-Level Marketing, or "MLM") has been around for over 50 years. A Network Marketing business shares certain characteristics with Affiliate Marketing, but has its own unique twists.

Participants in a network marketing online or offline business stand to earn commissions from the promotion of products. In addition to earning commissions on your own sales, you also earn commissions on your "downline" of members that you have enrolled. You are usually expected to supervise and/or help your "downline", and in many instances, the commissions earned by network members are actually greater when sales are made by their "downline" than when the members themselves make the sales, creating a further incentive to recruit additional members to the MLM opportunity.

Certain factors unique to the network marketing business have tended to give it a bad name in some circles. First, unscrupulous MLM operators have often created "pyramid schemes" in which there was no real product for members to sell, except the membership itself. Second, because of the ongoing need to recruit new members into their "downline" MLM members have often tended to pressure family and friends with one recruitment offer after another. Third, there is tremendous pressure for the MLM member to "sell" both the product and the opportunity. Finally, successful members had to find a way to "clone" their sales tactics within their downlines, since the real income potential from many MLM opportunities relies not upon the success of the member, but on the size and success of the member's downline.

Those problems are remedied when you do your network marketing online. Instead of pressuring family and friends, the present-day networker can now post and advertise a web site which describes and sells the opportunity, as well as the products themselves. Instead of you going after new prospects, they come to you, via your web site.

Further, a web site can be used to offer training and support to downline members, resulting in a huge time savings to all concerned, not to mention the fact that successful MLM members can, in effect, "clone" themselves by teaching their most effective methods to their downline by way of a training and support web site.

Finally, the internet is an ideal medium for the constant generation of new network marketing leads which is necessary to keep a network marketing business going. In fact, leads are the lifeblood of a network marketing business, and a website is an ideal way to generate new leads, even if your intention is to remain primarily in home-based network marketing.

Whether you are struggling for success in home-based network marketing, or looking for your first internet business, you owe it to yourself to check out network marketing, which is truly ideal for the internet. Learn more about network marketing online.

If this may be the online business for you, check out my top picks for the best network marketing opportunities on the net.