MLM Business Opportunities:

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a guy that was trying to apply an honest approach to MLM. The gentleman responded to the post with a comment, asking me why I didn’t link to his web site (I linked to the article) and why I didn’t post his entire press release.

Yesterday, I ran across this blog posting, A Mama’s Rant:

About a month ago I attended a Tastefully Simple party at my friend, Julie’s home (she’s a consultant). Tastefully Simple is one of those multi-level marketing things, like Pampered Chef or Southern Living at Home. It features gourmet food products that make your life easier – dip mixes, spices, jams, beer bread mix, etc.

I wrote about the party on my cooking blog, This Mama Cooks! I raved about the products (they were pretty darn tasty) and I provided a link to Julie’s consultant site.

After thanking me for the post, and getting a couple of sales out of it, she forwards me an email from the home office:

Hi Julie,

I received the following link from another consultant furious with this site. There are multiple policy violations on this site Julie. Even if this is not your site, you must talk to this individual and have her remove all Tastefully Simple Intellectual Property from this site. There can be no company name, product names, links to your website or to Tastefully Simple. Can I have you talk to this individual and have this information removed as soon as possible? I am going to check this again in 2 days to ensure that this information has been removed. If it is not, I am going to have to give out a policy violation to you since it is your name on the website. Let me know if you have any questions for me Julie.

Thanks,
Travis Bruns
HQ Office Live Coordinator
Tastefully Simple
travis.bruns@tastefullysimple.com
EXT. 1724

Obviously the first guy didn’t grasp the fact that I was posting his message to thousands of potential readers, and therefore thousands of potential customers for him. Understandable. He doesn’t get the net. But Travis Burns, the Tastefully Simple HQ Office Live Coordinator, has no excuse. Good press for any MLM or an individual within an MLM is hard to come by.

Wake up MLM. When someone says nice things about your product on a blog, thank them, put them on your Christmas card list, send them some samples and for goodness sake, take the free press!