Simply put, in network marketing as in many more traditional businesses, the only activities which will make you money are selling and recruiting. If youre not doing one or other of those then youre not making money and youre involved in administration.

In order to maximise your earnings, and to grow your business as rapidly as possible, you need to minimise the amount of time you spend on non-value adding activities and focus on the important aspects of your business.

The selling process should be simplicity itself. You should have a website provided which allows your customers to place orders online. Depending upon the product or service that you provide, there should also be a suitable way to take orders off-line - a freephone order hotline number or, at worst, a simple single page order form which can be mailed to HQ or the despatch warehouse.

The product or service should be supplied directly to the customer. There should be absolutely no need for the product to be delivered to you and then shipped or hand delivered to the customer. Think about it - do you really want your spare bedroom full to the rafters with crates and boxes? Being involved in the delivery process might also tend to limit you to a geographical area - and why would you want that?

The same goes for returns. Obviously you want to have a good product which will have a low return rate - but a small percentage is inevitable. These should be returned directly to the company, not via you. After all, what value does handling returns add?

Handling cash is another big no-no. Its a real time waster and full of problems. Will you have the correct change? Is it safe to walk around with that much money? What if you get robbed or burgled - will your insurance cover the loss? The only cash you want to be handling is your commission cheque at the end of the month.

Some key points to consider are listed below:

• Accept orders on the net.
• Accept orders offline with a simple system.
• No need to get involved in the delivery process.
• No need to get involved in returns.

These points cover mainly the sales process - but you will also want to have a simple method for recruiting your own downline. Growing your team is essential if you want to have a reasonable sized business which can provide an alternative to a job.

Internet based businesses are ideal for this team building process and you should be able to advertise for your own team using a simple website and have them sign up online.

Use a simple website to capture the names and email addresses of potential recruits and then send them a series of emails explaining the details of your opportunity automatically using an autoresponder. At the end of the series, invite them to vist your signup page.

This puts your recruiting virtually on autopilot and allows you to focus on making money.