Moving to the internet in your marketing efforts involves taking on a whole new skill set. Some of the things you already do on a daily basis (like shopping online and looking at web sites) will take on new meaning as you learn the design and marketing techniques behind these sites.

As your skill increases and you develop a critical eye you gain insight on what a small minority of people on the internet understand. You get to identify within a few seconds whether a site is making money or not, what their sales process is, and how involved they are with their business, among other things.

It's this kind of insight that begins to differentiate those who live life on their own terms with the help of the internet and those who still rely on someone else to determine their worth and give them a periodic paycheck.

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It's fairly apparent to most people that a new and different skill set is necessary to effectively use the internet in building your network marketing business. Those that started their business offline and only use the internet to send and receive email have only the faintest glimpse of what is possible.

In fact, for some that glimmer of insight is so faint that they have no concept of how to use the internet as another tool for business growth. They have no idea of the social networks in play and the communities that exist with people interacting at all hours and all over the world.

One way to look at the network marketing community is to put us into two main camps. One camp says that the only way you can really build a strong, lasting organization is to talk with people live and in person. We'll call this the "OnGround Only" camp.

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Over Memorial Day weekend we decided to take a few days and head out of town to visit relatives. This was our first trip involving more than a couple hours of travel since we had our son eleven months ago. The whole trip went pretty well!

We first went from Bellingham to Preston, WA which was a couple of hours. We stayed there overnight with friends. We've taken road trips that have last a couple of hours before and so we figure there would be no problems with this first leg.

The second leg going from Preston to Walla Walla, which we estimated at about 4.5 hours was going to be the unknown and any potential challenges were going to come up there. Nathan doesn't really sleep well on the road, so we needed to be prepared to keep him entertained. Fortunately, between Dawn feeding him and watching videos with him in the back seat and his little bit of sleep, we actually got though that leg with minimal emotional trauma.

However, it's not something I would want to endure frequently or without several days between the initial and return trips. We stayed in Walla Walla for several days with Dawn's family and really enjoyed ourselves. They are excellent hosts and it was good to relax for a few days.

On the way back we stopped in Burien, which is just south of Seattle, to again break up the return trip and spend the night with friends. We made the last leg yesterday and now we're back into our home routine.

But as far as routines go, we're changing things up a bit to make sure we get in some daily exercise. I'm going to start getting on the bike in the evenings and work on getting my aerobic capacity back. I have put exactly zero miles on the road this year so this could be a painful transition.

One of the counterintuitive things I've discovered in internet marketing is that you don't really need to be super smart to make a big success. In fact, I've seen a lot of smart people who know as much (or more) than the "gurus" really struggle to make their business grow.

So if it's not about how smart you are, what is it?

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Just today I read a post in an internet marketing forum that implied network marketing was somehow beneath them. I can understand that from a certain perspective, as there are certain groups out there that just push what they call a "bizopp" with no regard to the product that is finally sold. They just focus on trying to get more people into their business plan and try to get them to do the same. There is no long term growth plan and these things only last a few weeks to a few months before they move on to the next one.

Kind of like locusts, but not quite as charming.

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You're excited! You're enthusiastic! You're ready to go!

But where are we going?

Whether you're just adding an online component to your offline business or you're starting from the beginning with the internet, there's one common component. You gotta have something to sell.

Aside from the obvious reason that it helps to generate short term income before the leveraging power inherent in the network marketing model really kicks in, it also weeds out the people who are really not serious about doing business with you. That business may be as a consumer for your product or a member of your business team.

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This weekend I made the nine hour round-trip drive from Bellingham to Port Angeles for a surprise birthday party for my uncle. It was good to see family again since I haven't been able to make this trip since our son was born. Of course they all wanted to see him, but that's just too long of a trip for an 11 month old kid to make. Heck, it's almost too long for me to make!

My uncle is actually looking pretty good, especially considering that he's still recovering from a knee replacement over the winter. Now both knees are artificial, but he's getting around really well. In fact he wants to do some commercial fishing on one of the weekends this summer. These days he just fishes for enough to put into jars and to smoke.

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Even though my business focus is on coaching for online network marketing and buiding up a strong business team, I keep an eye out for good "solo" projects as they come along. I get a *ton* of sh… er, cr…. er, stuff in my email on a daily basis and it usually gets ignored. But yesterday I had one show up from a reputable source that I decided to take a look at.

It turns out to be pretty darn cool. And sneaky.

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Working out of a home office can be an isolating experience. Certain personalities just can't handle it, while other do just fine. Personally, the transition from busy cubicle life with all the background noise and distractions to the relative quiet of the office in my home was pretty nice.

The situation has changed a bit with my additional role as a stay-at-home dad, but there's still a limited amount of personal contact with the "outside" world - and a definite lack of office colleagues. Except for my son of course, who at nearly 11 months of age has definite opinions how I should run my business. I'm just having challenges interpreting his advice.

So it just happens that I'm discovering the social networks that have developed (and are continuing to develop) on the internet and how they're not just for teenagers with self esteem issues. These internet based social networks have the potential to be a much more powerful implementation of the concept of business networking groups like BNI. The additional strength comes partly from the ability to easily refer business to others, and even make a comission directly from that referral.

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There's quite a bit of buzz going around the internet marketing groups about tapping into the online social networks to promote our products and services. As with anything else, there are a good ways and bad ways to go about this. Since I want to go about it the "right" way, which provides real value to those networks, I've been doing some ongoing research on how best to do that.

I came across a post on conscientious marketing which doesn't really address the topic I was looking into, but it did make a point that stuck with me. Recently Shaklee has been emphasizing their record on environmental activism with a relaunch of environmentally friendly cleaners, the news stories about their climate neutral building, the initiative to plant a million trees worldwide over the course of a year, appearances on Oprah for green household cleaners and high ratings in Consumer Reports for the quality of their water purification products.

The delicate balance to achieve is to find a way to relate the positive experiences and benefits of the products without really getting in people's faces. One the one side, you can just put your products out there by just mentioning them in an aside and hoping someone takes action, while the other side involves aggressive marketing that hits all of the "hot buttons", talks on and on about the products and demands action right now.

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