We've all seen the ads that tell us if we sponsor just two people and each of our two sponsor two, and each of their two sponsor two, etc. - we should have a couple kazillion people in our group by the end of the year!

There is nothing wrong with the math in such projections. The major reason that this doesn't happen is that we are dealing with people, not numbers! And people bring with them their unrealistic expectations, their biases and beliefs, and their impatience, as well as all the qualities that could make them wildly successful.

Many people never stick with an MLM program long enough to see this natural growth occur - which is really hard to understand, since it is really the only way an MLM group CAN grow!

I get emails all the time from people who wonder why they're not making money in two months, or why they have to put out money and effort to make anything happen, or who have recently lost their jobs and are joining our group so they won't have to get another one.

If you've been in this business for awhile, you may be smiling and shaking your head at this point. But for many of you, these are very serious questions.

You see ads all the time that promise that you'll be rich in a few months without any effort, and you may be quite upset to hear that it "just ain't so!" In fact, you may decide to quit and join someone else's program, only to find that what I am trying to tell you is just as true in any MLM program as it is in the ones that I've chosen to work.

Let's talk about what you can realistically expect from network marketing.

One of the big reasons people become disappointed in MLM is not because it doesn't work and isn't a wonderful way to do business - but because their expectations don't meet the reality of how MLM really works.

We have all heard a lot of hype and outright lies about this business. And as experienced as some of us are, we still want to believe it. But I believe that this is often what gets in our way of being as successful as we are meant to be. We are much more apt to do what it takes and to keep working if we know that we are making the kind of progress that we can realistically expect.

My heart goes out to those of you who have have lost your job and need money now, or you are on Social Security or a fixed income and need more money coming in. These are very difficult economic times for many people.

But I also want to make it very clear that the idea that you are going to be making a lot of money right away is not grounded in any kind of reality that I know - not unless you immediately have a lot of money to invest in promotion and advertising. MLM is a business, and like any other, it takes time and a continuous input of effort and money to grow into a successful venture.

That certainly doesn't mean that you can't make a lot of money in MLM. Many people have and will! The point is that it is not going to happen tomorrow.

I certainly wouldn't recommend that anyone quit their job or give up their income UNTIL they've replaced it with their MLM earnings.

I don't know why it is so easy to believe the hype and to just keep jumping from program to program in the elusive hope that the next one will mean instant riches.

The reality of the situation is that MLM is a wonderful business! The longer I'm in this business, the more I love it.

It gives you the chance to build a business for a lot less investment than any other that I can think of, but that certainly doesn't mean that it takes no investment at all. It also allows you to be your own boss, to create your own method of operation, to do it the way that "feels good to you!" It allows you to be independent, to work when and where you feel like. But that doesn't mean that you won't have to do any work at all.

For most people, it is going to take at least six months to a year for you to really start to make money at this business. And that is if you are putting out some consistent effort each and every month.

What do I mean by consistent effort? I mean that you are consistently advertising or buying several hundred prospect leads every month, and then you are working those leads to the utmost!

Consistent effort is not placing 1 ad in a small, obscure ezine 1 time and then sitting around waiting for the money to roll in. It will never happen!

Consistent effort means doing a reasonable amount of prospecting every month. It also means contacting each and every new person that you sponsor and helping them get started. It means treating your MLM activities like the business that it most surely is!

Part of the reason for this is that there is a time lag between when you place an ad or buy leads, and when they actually sign up for your program. As most email marketers are well aware, it can take 8-15 followup letters to generate a signup.

Another big reason is that the time you will really start making money is when your downline begins to grow exponentially. And that isn't going to happen until you have quite a few people in your group AND you've spent some time training them.

Think about the claim that I mentioned earlier - that if you sponsor two, and each of them sponsor two, and each of them sponsor two . . . and on down the levels of your program.

Let's look at how that works on a month to month basis. Let's say, just for sake of example, that everyone sponsors two each month. That means that at the end of your first month in your MLM program, you will have two people in your downline.

At the end of the second month, you will have 8 people - the 2 you originally sponsored, the 2 each of those 2 sponsored, and the 2 you sponsored the second month.

At the end of the third month, you will have 26. If everyone continues this trend, you will have 80 people in your downline at the end of the 4th month. After 5 months, you will have 242 people. And this is where things really start to grow exponentially.

Six months will show 728 people, seven months 2,186, and after 8 months of this kind of growth you should have a grand total of 6,560 people in your group!

Is this really how it happens? Most assuredly not! As I mentioned earlier, most people quit long before they have allowed this kind of growth to happen. And you must realize that everyone won't sponsor their 2 people each month. Some people may never sponsor a single person into their group. You will find others who will really go to town and sponsor 10 or 20 or more every single month.

What our model does show you is how MLM actually works. You will notice in the first few months that the growth is relatively slow. That means that your commission check is also going to be low those months. It's not until after 6 months that things really begin to take off and hundreds of new people get added each month.

The problem with quitting in your second or third month is that you will never give this a chance to happen!

Unfortunately, this is when most people quit. If they had only kept working a few more months, they would have seen the results they had already given up on. People who stay with a program long enough and keep doing the work seldom quit.

Why should they when they are enjoying the fruits of their labor? It is an old MLM cliché that at first you do a lot that you don't get paid for. But eventually, you get paid for a lot that you don't do.

One of the best things you can do to keep yourself on track is to sit down and put together a personal business plan and a plan of action. Decide just how successful you want to be and put down what it will take on paper.

Most people don't have the foggiest idea what it will take to create a specific income for themselves. But if you will work this out for yourself on paper, I can guarantee that it will keep you much better focused and will give you a measuring stick to gauge your progress.

Let's take an example. Suppose you would like to have an income of $500 a month in your MLM program. The very first thing to do is to take out your commission schedule and figure out how many people this will take.

Let's say that your particular program will pay you $10 per month per member. That means that if you want a $500 per month income, it would require 50 people in your downline.

You could spend the next few months prospecting like crazy to sponsor your 50 people. And there is certainly nothing wrong with that.

However, this is definitely not leveraging yourself. If you are training each of your new members to also sponsor, you will find that the number of people you have to sponsor on your own will be significantly less! And you will reach your goal a lot faster, and spend less doing it.

If you do some exceptional training, you should be able to reach your goal by sponsoring a few people, then training them to sponsor a few. For instance, you could sponsor 5, then train each of those 5 to sponsor 5. Then help them train THEIR new members. 5 is a much more reachable goal then going out and sponsoring 50 people all by yourself.

Even better, it gets every member of your group sponsoring and achieving their goals. And when that happens, your income is going to grow well beyond your $500 per month goal very quickly!

Once you know how many people you need to reach your goal, you can start working out a plan of action. And please keep in mind that your goals will change as time goes by. Once you reach one goal, you may then decide to set another one and start a new plan.

One of the most valuable reasons for setting up a plan and checking on your progress is that you will begin to really understand what it takes to be successful in this business.

So many people have the idea that if they just send one email out to a cheap list, that they should sponsor enough people to be making some money. As you can see from our example, it takes time and work and money to build an income. And it takes training the people you sponsor.

You will have to do some of your own testing to see what kind of response rate you will get from your advertising and your email prospecting letters. If you do some great followup work with your leads, you will get a much greater response rate than someone who doesn't. And if you really work at helping the people you sponsor, your downline will grow quickly from the work your group is doing.

You may find that it takes you $500-$1,500 to build a $500 per month income. You may be able to do it for less. If you take the time to plan what you are doing and figure out what works, you'll save a lot of money.

You may never have thought about this before and be totally shocked at these figures. You may think that a $500-$1,500 investment is way too much money to build a $500 a month income.

But I believe that it is very, very cheap compared to the alternatives. If you invested that same amount of money in the stock market and you did a great job of picking your stocks, you might see a 10-20% return per year - or $50-$300.

Your $500-$1,500 investment in your MLM program will eventually earn you $500 PER MONTH - and pay you back in 1-3 months time!

If you were starting a traditional business, it would most likely cost you upwards of $50,000 just to get started - and that's before you ever saw your first customer!

An MLM business is much cheaper in the long run, and has much more potential. And you can spread your investment out over time. Another plus is that eventually, a lot of the investment will come from your downline. Once you have a good group, you can spend your time working with them and your downline will continue to grow, whether you continue investing that kind of money or not.

You will find a similar investment required no matter what program you are working. Jumping from one program to another won’t change that. It will just waste your investment in the programs you’ve dumped along the way.

If you are seriously strapped for money, I would strongly suggest that you realize that it is going to take you a little bit longer to build an income than someone who has a lot of money to invest. That doesn't mean that you won't get there. It will just take you a little bit longer. But the reward is a business that will continue to grow, year after year, and bring you far more security than any job!