So, let’s see. This week I continued my Squidoo campaign, put up a new YouTube video that I linked to my Squidoo page and also to my Inside919 profile. (By the way, Inside919 has been a great resource. If you don’t live in the 919 area code, don’t worry, they’re going to be releasing these sites nationwide soon). The first video I did has gotten 62 views, even though I only told about 10 people about it directly. When I went to my YouTube account page, I couldn’t help but notice that an old video I’d put up of my Toastmasters speech had 250 views. I wasn’t even trying to get that one out there. I was surprised!

Also, today I’m leading a focus group on Meetup, for network marketers who are burned out like I am. I’m going to fill them in on what we’ve done so far. We’ll see what evolves from there.

So, the top priority for this week is to get a lead capture page up there so that people can start finding me. I’ve got writing and videos scattered all over the place. So far, I’ve been using Ann Sieg’s pages, but that’s only temporary. I think that one of the keys to succeeding in this model is to create your own lead capture pages.

Oh, and I generated 10 new leads from people who downloaded the Seven Lies book, and made $50 in affiliate commissions from the Renegade e-book!

More to come as things develop!

Obviously, as an introvert, anything like YouTube has enormous appeal, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.  After all, I only have to do a presentation once, and it can be found by anyone this way!

So, I spent a whole day putting together a 12-minute video yesterday.  I had it all edited and ready to go, and then I found out that YouTube doesn’t accept videos longer than 10 minutes.  Curses, foiled again.  After I got over it, I realized that they may be doing me a favor.  People have short attention spans these days, after all.  So now I’m going to be breaking my videos down into shorter segments.

I’ve now come to realize that this makes life easier for me also.  There’s less to screw up, less re-takes, and a greater ability to break things down subject by subject.

This latest video is posted on my Squidoo page about the Renedage Network Marketing system.  Take a look if you’re inclined:

http://www.squidoo.com/annsiegrenegade

Being a loyal Seth Godin reader, it’s been rather blasphemous of me to go this long without making a Squidoo lens.  So, I finally bit the bullet yesterday and put up two new lenses.  My impression at this point is that a Squidoo lens is similar to a blog, but doesn’t need to be updated quite as frequently, and also contains more features.  You can add a number of different modules such as YouTube video embeds.  Plus, they allow raw HTML tags, which a lot of blogs don’t (or limit).

So, I put up two lenses about Network Marketing, specifically Ann Sieg’s approach.  I added my Toastmasters speech from YouTube to one of them.  I’ll be shooting more videos in the near future.

This one is about applying quirks to network marketing.  (It’s brand new at this point).

http://www.squidoo.com/quirkynetworkmarketing

And this one is about Ann Sieg and the Renegade Network Marketer.

http://www.squidoo.com/annsiegrenegade

After about a week of looking into this more extensively, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Renegade system is a GOLD MINE. Much more so than I’d thought before. Why?

Because of all the people out there doing network marketing, 99% of them are still doing it the old, stupid way. As a result, network marketing still has a strong negative stigma. Lots of people are completely turned off by the idea, fully convinced that they’ll never even think about doing network marketing. For a lot of THOSE people, it’s because they tried it before and found it what it’s really like.

That’s great news.

Since network marketing still suffers from a negative stereotype, people will be skeptical of anything they hear about it. Nobody wants to hear about “proven systems,” automated marketing machines, or anything that’s guaranteed to produce thousands of dollars in a short time. That’s even better news. Because most of the “Internetwork Marketers” out there are doing a lousy job promoting their stuff. They just have more of the same crap you hear from the old-school network marketers! Make zillions of dollars, no work, no selling, no calling your friends and family, blah blah blah. This isn’t MLM, this isn’t sales, this isn’t a scam, this isn’t a pyramid scheme, but NO MENTION of what it actually IS!

So, in other words, of all the people doing network marketing, few of them are actually positioned as solutions providers. Few of them give away any valuable information, and most of them sound exactly the same.

For somebody like Yours Truly, that’s FANTASTIC news. Stay tuned!

After thinking over my plans, I’ve decided that I’m definitely going to implement the Renegade System (created by Ann Sieg). She originally caught my attention a year ago with her free e-book, “The Seven Great Lies of Network Marketing.” She came out with a system subsequent to that, called “The Renegade Network Marketer,” which creates opportunities for generating MLM leads via the internet by selling them an informational product.

Here are the links:

The Seven Great Lies of Network Marketing

The Renegade Network Marketer

I’ve been interested in the idea all along, but I was confused about how to implement it effectively. I wasn’t sure where to begin, and I was a little bit doubtful about how well it would actually work if everybody did it. But after having thought it over, I’ve come to the realization that I’m falling into a classical Introvert trap: analysis paralysis. In other words, do nothing until I’m sure I have a plan that will work perfectly. So, I’ve decided that all there is to do is simply get started.

I also gave some thought to my skepticism about the duplicability of the model. After reading over it, and reading some success stories of the people who have implemented the system successfully already, I’ve come to realize that the way to be successful is to leverage one’s own unique strengths: something that traditional MLM uplines will tell you emphatically NOT to do. So, I think that if everybody did this, MLM would become a whole different ball game altogether. And while the Renegade system itself might not remain the gold standard forever, something else would surely emerge in the shuffle. And I’d like to be there when it happens. There’s nothing more frustrating than watching a year go by and thinking, “Gee, I wish I’d gotten on the bus in the beginning….”

So, I’ll be posting on this as my plan gels and develops.