How's your relationship?

I'm not prying into your personal life, so no need to worry. it's\rjust that lately I've noticed something about most network marketers\rwhich got me thinking.

Let me start with some background on these thoughts I had. \rOne of the reasons an internet business seems so attractive is \rbecause of the ease with which you can communicate. \rThis lends itself well to marketing, and in particular network \rmarketing.

With me so far?

So we all jump into network marketing and mlm style business opportunities\ronline to seek our fortunes, but this is where it all seems to go wrong.

The thing I've noticed myself and a lot of others doing online is just\rpromoting our businesses.

We don't build relationships.

Network marketing is about networking with others, and I have heard it\rreferred to as relationship marketing. \rBut are we doing enough to build those relationships?

A recent example was a new style messaging system I was introduced to\rat http://www.profitmessaging.com/invite.php?f006bcd3bb . There you can\rinvite "buddies" to message you, and add other buddies from the system \rto your buddies list. Then you can send them all a message safely from\rwithin the system. \rAn Ideal opportunity to build a relationship or two.

Instead of getting to know each other, almost everybody jumped in and sent \reach other an advert for their business.

The result?

No one reads any messages.

No new relationships are formed.

It becomes another wasted opportunity to form relationships.\rThere were one or two more savvy marketers who attempted to build relationships, \rbut their efforts got lost in among the hundreds of \r"make more money than you can spend" ads.

In our personal lives we create many relationships, but for some reason\ronce we start an online business, we forget to speak to people and instead \rsend ads through the machine. \rWe stop building relationships with people.

This has got me thinking, and I am going to try to break some habits, and start\rmarketing myself, instead of the opportunities I am involved in.

I'm going to start building relationships.

It won't be easy, almost every other article, or ebook seems to be about\rhow to promote your website, or your business, but rarely how to promote\rrelationships. But it is possible, and we have all the tools to start\rbuilding relationships.

For starters, we all have email addresses whhich could be used to start a\rconversation with someone. We have instant messengers, Yahoo, MSN and AOL\rto name a few, you can even use the software from Imvite \rhttp://www.imvite.com/dougyt which has a payment plan built in and can\raccess most of the other networks anyway. And then there's Skype\rhttp://www.skype.com for voice chat which is as clear as a telephone, and\rfree to download.

So we have the tools to form relationships, lets start doing it.

It can only be good for business to get to know each other and form\rfriendships, partnerships, and trust. In the offline world you wouldn't\rdream of greeting a new potential customer by saying "Earn Millions Today"\rso lets stop doing it online.

Doug Titchmarsh\rOnline marketer, and real life person.

Doug Titchmarsh runs several sites including \rhttp://www.cashinonline.info and\rhttp://www.titchmarsh.com \rHe also publishes an e-zine for marketers \ronline and off which you can get by sending \ran email to\rdouglastitchmarsh@getresponse.com