Encourage your ECAs to take advantage of TC on a local level. Increase your profits by helping your ECAs expand their market and income from local sales. Encourage your ECAs to liberally distribute your TC Gift Cards to their offline customers. They'll likely check out TripleClicks and the ECA's own online store and encourage their friends and family to do the same!

If money is real tight, there is a "totally" FREE way of advertising your Gateways and drawing affiliates to your downline!

First, create your own blog for free at Blogger.com, Blog.com, or at one of the numerous other free blog hosts on the Internet. Build it with your SFI business as your blog's theme.

Next, sign up as a free member at a manual traffic exchange (such as TrafficSwarm.com or SurfNexus.com). Promote your blog and/or Gateways through your traffic exchange to drive traffic to your SFI Gateways and blog.

By using this method, I have signed up 11 new affiliates this month—and one of those has already become an Executive Affiliate.

I currently use two blogs: one for all my Internet activity and one with just SFI as its theme, with environmental issues as the centralized point. In the past, I have driven traffic to my blog by writing and submitting articles relating to the theme of my blog.

Additionally, I always follow up with my downline at least three to four times per week and when one of my affiliates contacts me, I always reply within 24 hours or less. It is very important to sell yourself to your downline long before you try to sell a program or the idea of upgrading. If your affiliates trust you as a support person they can turn to for help instead of seeing you as just a sales person, they become more responsive sooner, rather than later.

Subject: How to help your new affiliates get started right
From: Paula Suddaby
BRIGG UK

I have no secret to success, and I am willing to share my methods with anyone...One thing I have come to learn pretty quickly is that what you put in your welcome message can make a HUGE difference.

My welcome message is short and sweet. I introduce myself as the new affiliate's sponsor, include a link to the SFI Getting Started training page and, most importantly, my e-mail address, and ask the affiliate to contact me. I have found that about one in 20 will reply to me with an e-mail. Once the affiliate actually gets in touch, I don't mention anything about upgrading. Instead, I build a relationship with my affiliates by passing along various important links and working with them to get started right. I also occassionally offer a gift certificate as an incentive to take action.

I feel that working with my affiliates and helping them get started is more important than worrying about whether they are going to upgrade. Once they get started and find out more about SFI, they see the benefits for themselves and often decide to upgrade on their own.

If you are getting no repsonse from your current affiliates, you may want to change your stategies. Take a good look at your welcome message, change your priorities, and concentrate on helping your people get started. Also, join some advertising sites so you can offer your affiliates places to start advertising right away. Remember, many people who join have no experience with anything like SFI, and tips for ad resources, etc. will be very appreciated.

Subject: How to invest now for future profits
From: John Dilbeck
NORTH CAROLINA USA

I've owned several businesses over the last 30 years, and I've learned what it takes to build a business that earns a profit. So, I understand that I have to invest work, time, and money now in order to get a future, larger return. It doesn't always work, but I've been successful more often than not.

That said, I think it is unrealistic to expect someone with no knowledge of marketing, advertising, and building a business to "get" the SFI opportunity quickly. A great resource for these new business owners (or experienced business owners, for that matter) is Cashflow Quadrant, by Robert Kiyosaki. It helped me.

When I read it a couple of years ago, I started understanding the huge differences between the left side of Kiyosaki's quadrant (employee and self-employed) and the right side of the quadrant (business owner and investor).

Employees and self-employed people trade time for money on a more or less static ratio that only changes if they get a raise, charge more per hour or per project, or find a way to reduce expenses. If you work, you earn a certain amount, generally several dollars per hour.

On the other hand, business owners and investors learn how to concentrate their efforts and money up front, receiving a larger return in the future as their investments are leveraged and compounded.

For example, as the owner of a marketing business run almost entirely online, I'm earning money for things I did last week, last month, and even several years ago, because I invested the time, effort, and money over time in the past. As a result, today I have several income streams that provide 100% of my income, letting me work from a cabin in the mountains about 100 miles from the nearest traffic jam. I really do earn while I sleep!

The patience required to keep building and looking for potential comes from my experience of building and owning past businesses and watching, over time, as my income from my marketing business continues to grow. Without that experience and an ever-changing mindset, I would have bailed out a long time ago because I didn't see the big picture and couldn't understand the potential.

As SFI sponsors, our challenge is to find a way to pass along some of this knowledge and experience to our affiliates who have a dream of building a home business but lack the knowledge and skills to make it happen—joining SFI and promoting TripleClicks comes darn close.

You also have to have faith and hope that your efforts will be rewarded. I decided that my marketing business won't fail. It has to succeed because that is the only outcome I will accept. That gives me the fortitude to weather problems and find ways around obstacles that would have otherwise defeated me several times over the last few years. In fact, I now earn more in one month than I did in my first two years, and it continues to grow. There are occasional downturns and some really horrible months now and then, but overall, the trend is upward.

Most importantly: act on your dream, and pass your enthusiasm on to others!

Subject: Getting non-responsive affiliates to respond to you
From: Janis Bradfield
NEW JERSEY USA

One reason behind non-responsive affiliates could be the powerful spam catchers used by most ISPs. Your Welcome Letter or other e-mails may not be getting through to their intended recipients as a result. (AOL is notorious for preventing ordinary e-mails from getting through, clumping them in with spam.)

Try taking URLs out of the body of your e-mail and put them into an e-mail attachment. When I did that, I was able to get more e-mails through. Another way is to disguise the URL by replacing the punctuation with words, so that the filter cannot recognize it as a Website address and mistake it for spam. For example:

http(colon)//www(dot)name of site(dot)com

This works so long as you explain to your recipient the reason why you have to do this—without using the word "spam"!

One more thing. Lack of response from new Affiliates may just mean more persistence on our part is needed to "woo" them. Keep in touch, e-mailing about once every week or two with an easy-going, upbeat e-mail. Let them know how excited you are to have them on your team, and include a tip about where to find something on the SFI Affiliate site, how to post a classified ad, or some other helpful marketing strategy that has worked for you.

As your new affiliates sense you are serious about helping them get started, they will be much more likely to become serious about taking action as an SFI Affiliate.

Subject: Feeling overwhelmed is NOT a requirement to getting started
From: Scott Barrett
CONDELL PARK NSW AUSTRALIA

I only started with SFI very recently, and I might have kicked things off a little differently than others. Essentially, I spent a heap of time just reading—reading SFI Forum posts, reading training manuals, copying, and noting things that I either liked or thought would be good to try. I might be a little slow off the mark in personally sponsoring people, but I figured I'd be much better prepared to support them when the time comes.

That leads me to something I've noticed in my Forum travels: from time to time, there is a post that exhibits a somewhat frustrated, or "what-am-I-doing-wrong" type of undertone. It's important to remember that every now and then, particularly when you're just starting out, there will be moments of frustration and times when you question yourself. Sometimes, you need to remind yourself of this fact. For everyone out there who is new and having a bad day, I suggest casually wandering through the SFI Forum.

Just cruise around, and you'll see some really motivating, inspirational snippets. If you find one that really resonates with you, click the thread poster's name to find other posts they've written. You're bound to find more of the same. Do a spot check on your level of confidence and motivation each time. If you're like me, you won't be feeling as low as before, and the sun will start to poke its way through the clouds blocking your potential from becoming a reality.

Another thought: When we're learning something new, it's very easy to get overwhelmed by all the information. Some of us need to let things sink in a bit. So maybe you just need to give it a bit of time. Stop trying to take it all in at once, and just focus on one thing. Or, look to your past or others' lives and notice how things tend to transpire. What are you good at outside of SFI? Can you take that skill and apply it to something within your SFI business?

For instance, single moms: You might have signed up to generate extra income so that you can spend more time with the kids. A little way into things, you might be a bit frustrated and start thinking it's not worth the effort. Instead, think about what you do well as a single mom. I'll bet you're organized, can manage things a million different ways, and have routines and systems in place to get everything done. So, put some of those single mom skills to work for you with SFI—get something organized, even if it's just your favorite posts or your marketing ideas; create some routines or systems to approach your new venture.

Just as important, every new affiliate should post something on the SFI Forum, and not just technical questions. From what I've seen of the posts from more experienced SFIers, they're not only successful, but they really seem to be good people with good values. I was initially nervous about posting my first entry, but I feel really comfortable with Forum members. I feel I could post something about having doubts or feeling a bit down, and there would be fellow SFI affiliate to prop me up again. They've been there and done that and can probably relate to what we're all going through.

One last thought: If you are still doubtful about SFI, just go for it. It's all too easy to procrastinate on the basis of "I'm still checking it out." If you decide its not for you, then at least you've looked at it properly and given the system a chance.

Subject: What have YOU done?
From: William Hughes
COLORADO, USA

Jim Rohn says, "You will Pay the Price IF you believe the promise."

Gold mining requires digging. There are more ways to advertise FREE on the Internet than I could count, if I dedicated all my time to finding them. In fact, I locate three or more such resourses daily.

What have you done today to build you business? How many ads have you placed this week? Do you have access to a printer? Can you find bulletin boards to put flyers on?

Did you complete the SFI Internet Income course? When have you revisited this series? How often have you asked your sponsor or other upline for tips, hints, or assistance?

NOTE: By the way, the IAHBE is a GREAT resource for anyone, including affiliate marketers and network marketers, and there are many tools there that can be very useful to building your business. Also, a membership meets the VP to qualify as EA each month.

Don't think negatively. Find the positive. Whatever you put on center stage in your mind, magnifies itself.

And keep in mind—it is possible to get VersaPoints via retail sales rather than personal purchases. Where are your sales ads? Are they in the burn pile with your recruiting ads? Isn't it time you pick up your shovel and walk to the mine? You can not mine any gold lying in bed.

One great master once said, "Let the dead bury the dead." Are you like the dead? If not, get up and get busy!

Subject: Back-linking can increase traffic
From: Jim Golding, CALIFORNIA USA &
Cornerstone Ventures, LONDON UK

Participating in forums and leaving your SFI Gateway(s) as part of your signature block can be a good way to increase traffic to your Website.

However, the point with this method is not to sell or recruit a great deal from these links. The real benefit comes from increasing back-links to your Website, and that means your page will rank higher in generic search engine results because of it—and THAT could mean bigger profits and more prospective team members for you!

You'll need an original Website (a blog can do), NOT an affiliate URL to use this method; or, you could simple use a free URL masking service. An effective, fast way to get thousands of forum back-links is to find forum members who have thousands of posts and nothing in their signature. Offer them a fee ($20 to $50 a month maybe) to place your ad and link. Almost overnight, you could have THOUSANDS of backlinks!

Subject: Follow-up—a personal experience
From: Adam Levine
FLORIDA, USA

To follow up or not to follow up? This has been a question I have seen debated a few times in the SFI Forum. Some say "Do it often" or "Do it once then wait for them to reciprocate." Some say "Don't bother, if they want to succeed they will get involved themselves."

Well, like everyone else, I now have an opinion to share. My purpose is to motivate those who feel "left in the dark" when it comes to getting training and getting started as well as to tie this in with the merits of following up with your team.

First, a little background: I joined SFI 273 days ago as of this writing. I jumped in with both feet, became an Executive Affiliate, started reading, and then fired off some questions at my sponsor. Unfortunately, as many of you have experienced for yourself, I got no answer. After going up the line, I got one reply from several levels up, which referred me right back to the training I had questions about. I was discouraged to say the least. Nobody from my upline would contact me, I never got any team e-mails and some of the training was a bit confusing to someone with little to no marketing experience.

So I gave up, but kept my Executive Affiliate rank in case I wanted to "come back" later. Every few weeks I would get motivated to learn something new and dig in for a little while. A few months later I had a few ads on sites targeting work-at-home parents, as well as a few "paid-to-read/paid link" sites and referrals starting coming in. Eventually I moved on to pay-per-click and built some Web pages for sales letters. The latter was just in the last two months or so.

The biggest thing to remember is that during all of this, I kept stopping for weeks at a time. The upline was no help for me with the learning curve and answers via the Forum often take time to get. This can be very frustrating and discouraging...I know.

Now we move forward (nearly 300 referrals later) to just a few weeks ago:

Now money was spent and my team was dead in the water. So all that was left to do was master the "helping others" aspect of a successful home-business strategy. I had performed some follow ups but never with any real sincerity or consistancy, and it was time to try it for myself and see what happened. So here is the thought process that ultimately came to fruition in my mind.

1) Forget the debates roiling among other affiliates and just start TRYING things. If there was agreement about a topic, perhaps I would follow suit and apply the tried and true, but there was not. So the only option was to try for myself. Really try.

2) Just be helpful in general. Not just to your downline, but adopt a willingness to help other affiliates whether you actually SEE any benefit or not. I always thought I was a helpful person, but when it came to SFI, I was hogging my time to do things and help people I thought would benefit me most.

3) Do my best to show my team (and others) that I was willing to give more of myself to them than to myself. That includes time, effort, and even money. Why? I would refer you back to "If you are successful, then I will benefit from your success," a popular follow-up line. In ANY network, the OTHER GUY MUST BENEFIT FIRST. A store must make sacrifices for the customer FIRST (provide a building to shop in, employees to help them, etc.). Any business must make sacrifices to its employees (provide a paycheck, supply a break room, provide uniforms, etc.). The point is that the guy making the money never, ever comes first in the relationship, but he does have a responsiblity to make the first effort.

With those things in mind, I began looking for every excuse possible to "talk" to my team. It started with reminders about SFI features I personally found useful and included the fact that I, as their "leader," use this feature myself. Communications quickly moved on to offering contests with Gift Certificate rewards for just about every activity that had to do with building their SFI business. These were presented in the form of contests and challenges. I never expected some of these challenges to be met, but I was perfectly willing to reward and support them for the effort.

Another personal, favorite "excuse" to contact my team is questions I see asked on the Forum. If two or three people ask the same question, that's the perfect opportunity to reasearch the answer yourself, answer it for those who asked the question on the Forum, and then send out a letter to your team. I usually open such letters with "A common question among new affiliates is, "How Do I XXXXXXXX?"

I now have more excuses to contact the team than I will ever need, and over the last few weeks I've sent out several letters each week. Guess what happened?

I started getting questions and e-mails from affiliates. Some of whom have been members for a long time. They didn't contact me right away, but started trickling in one or two at a time. I now usually have the pleasure of communicating with individual affiliates on an almost daily basis. I had no idea that some of them were so hungry for interaction. Furthermore, the number of daily logins has gone from two or three every day or two, to as many as a dozen per day. All because I went from "Yell if you need me" to "Hey, I'm still here and will be everyday!"

It gets better. One morning I checked my inbox and there was an e-mail filled with credit card information. With it was a note explaining that the affiliate was having difficulty getting an IAHBE standing order set up and requesting my help. After a few extremely difficult-to-understand (due to communication barriers) communications back and forth, I had all the information I needed to help this affiliate out and SFI support kindly took care of the order processing for me. That guy is now in my own co-op and eagerly asking both myself and his sponsor for ad copy and help getting started with his own promotion efforts.

A few days after I initially received the e-mail I mentioned above, I received ANOTHER e-mail with SFI log-in info and personal bank account information with a similiar request as the previous affiliate. That has yet to be completed, but here is the point I was ultimately coming to:

People want help and they desperately want to be involved...so desperate, in fact, that as soon as trust was established, they were willing to throw extremely sensitive information my way just to accept the help I was offering. So, it is my experience that people want to become involved—almost desperately. And they want to follow someone on their journey getting there. However, they will only follow you if they trust you. And of course, building trust DOES require communication—regular communication, including following up.

It is my opinion and just my opinion that if someone really doesn't want to hear from you, they will opt-out. If they have ANY desire whatsoever to build a business, but they still find your e-mails annoying, they will merely delete them. Most of your affiliates want to hear from you, though. Not once or twice, but often because they want assurance that if they need you on any given day, you will be there.

Don't abandon an entire team of people just because you're afraid that one or two might be annoyed. SFI is an optional business. Nobody is forced to do anything they are not comfortable with, but they are far more likely to follow the follow through with this business if there is someone out in front leading. To me this means: Walk out front, get seen and let them hear your voice over the crowd. In other words - Lead, and it's nearly impossible to lead quietly.

You can take the above however you will. If you did not get the support you felt you should have received, you are the only one who can break the cycle. You can complain about the lack of a sponsor or you can do the extra work, learn it yourself and save your team from experiencing the same letdown you experienced.

P.S. Need a more personal learning resource? Try a2a. Locating team leaders who speak my language fluently and asking questions have proved very valuable to me. That's what it is there for. Use it to your advantage. A "sponsor" could be a simple a2a letter away.

For more valuable tips, advice, and direction from fellow SFI affiliates around the world, stop by the SFI Forum.