Are you marketing natural products as a direct sales representative? Are you gathering your own leads and marketing yourself with a website? If so, congratulations. You’re going to get a huge jump on the competition. If you’re not, give me a few minutes to convince you why not having a website of your own, or relying on a company replicated site, is a huge mistake. Two Words: Free Traffic, Free Leads Ok that’s four words, but the point is the same. When you’re an online marketer, traffic is the name of the game. Free traffic is especially nice! If you have your own website, you can design it to be search engine friendly so that it will get lots of visitors from natural search results. Replicated sites generally don’t get listed in search engines. Why turn down a wonderful source of new recruits and sales? And if you’re currently paying out cold hard cash for recycled leads, forget that! You can generate tons of leads for free with your own website. And they’re actually interested in what you have to say instead of just having filled out some “work at home” form somewhere that they quickly forgot about. Branding How are you going to separate yourself from the hundreds of other people marketing natural products online? By establishing yourself as an expert and developing your brand. An excellent example of this is my friend Diana Walker. She markets Chinese herbal food products made by a direct sales company, but to make herself unique she is branding herself as the Cravings Coach. Now isn’t that just a touch more interesting and memorable than “xyz company rep?” You can do the same thing if you have your own website. Leaving Money on the Table If you have a website of your own, you can make money even when people don’t buy your products or join your opportunity. How? One way is through affiliate marketing. If noone wants your essential oils, they might still be interested in an ebook on massage, which you can offer them and get a commission on the sale. You can also earn money with the Google AdSense program… but not on a replicated site! Changes What if your company goes out of business? It does happen you know… and if you’re using a replicated site, there goes your marketing efforts down the drain. You might also decide to change companies at some point if the company makes some decisions you don’t agree with. If you’re gathering leads for yourself, they stay with you no matter where you go. Every direct sales company has different policies on marketing the business online. Check with your company and see what they allow. And then get your own virtual storefront going today.