Virtual Products for MLM
Let’s look at a few examples of virtual products that have been sold using Multi-Level Marketing and Network Marketing.
Education
This is one of the most compelling and profitable virtual products. It has been my experience that there are a great many experts who have a wealth of knowledge but absolutely no way of connecting with their potential customers. These people land up placing their valuable information on sites such as Udemy or Lynda and then hope that someone finds their course among the thousands of courses. Let’s take the stock market as an example.
You could create an MLM business that:
1. Teaches normal people how to trade on the stock market via an eLearning platform
2. Tests the learner and provides certification
3. Provides daily tips on hot stocks
4. Provides monitoring and management tools that maximize profit and limit risk
For many years I've had a client that provides this type of education. He assembled several online experts to provide the content for the course, to answer questions, and supply tips and analysis. He aligned himself with a registered brokerage that handles the stock transactions and drives the network to sell courses.
The quality of the course is excellent, and he acquired a great many referral letters that help in the recruiting process.
Pricing
The course costs $3,000 and there is a $99 admin fee that provides access to various software and reports. At last count, he has approximately 35,000 members. This means that he banked $105M in course fees and is receiving over $41M per year in admin fees.
Subscriptions
Another example of a virtual product is a subscription. We have a client that has a national dining discount club. It’s simple. You subscribe to the club and you get a 50% discount from affiliated restaurants. The cost of the subscription is $25 and 50% discounts for the month are worth up to $250. This is a great deal for the members and the restaurants limit their risk by only giving a limited number of discounts per month. Again, everything is automated. The member signs up on a cell phone app and redeems his discount in the restaurant by entering a pin into the app. Simple, effective and lucrative.
Software
This is my personal favourite. You write the software once and then distribute it thousands of times. You don’t even need to be a developer. There are thousands of applications that require marketing. Software developers are normally excellent at developing systems and terrible at marketing them. With a little imagination and some legwork, you could identify a software solution that addresses a need and train your distributors to sell it.
An example of this is an app that allows people who rent homes to store their snag list with photos. A friend of mine created such an app and then marketed it to every real estate agent in his area. The agents, in turn, sold the app to other agents and their clients. The app gained traction fast and there are now hundreds of downloads taking place every day.
SaaS
The better option is Software as a Service. In this model, the customer does not purchase the software, but accesses it online and pays a monthly fee. Many companies are moving to this model. Adobe Creative Cloud and Office 365 are examples of this model. NetReady is such a system. The cost of developing the solution was huge and buying it would be out of reach for most of our clients. We, therefore, provide the system online for a monthly fee. The advantage to the client is that they are not having to make a massive upfront investment and the advantage to NetReady is that we receive a stable monthly annuity income. The annuity nature of the income allows your multi-level marketing team to earn residual and ever-expanding income.
There are a great many software solutions that could be sold using the SaaS model. Again… seek and ye shall find!