In the winter of 2014 I was introduced to something that got me to sit up and pay attention.

I had briefly heard of network marketing before.

You know…

The usual suspects, such as companies offering gas and electric, the good ol magic pills and potions, and even one highly dubious cash back scheme.

Naturally, I had brushed them off as typical pyramid schemes and amidst all the hype, sales tactics and “earning potential”, it was pretty clear to me it really came down to how many people you could convince to join your team.

That was the bottom line.

So while the idea of network marketing was somewhat appealing to me, I was realistic about the time, effort and skill-set required to actually make money.

But this was different.

When someone showed me a fusion of MLM with internet marketing, I was optimistic about it.

I mean, this had all the earning potential of an MLM, but with the “recruiting” part fully automated online.

Everything was done for you, the selling, telling and following up.

All you had to was “drive traffic”.

“How could it go wrong?”, I thought to myself.

So I went out and spent around $2,000 on advertising.

I sent it to the funnel the company had provided and was looking forward to getting some sales.

None came.

Naturally, I was angry.

I couldn’t quite comprehend why this wasn’t working for me.

I was sending targeted traffic to the funnel that had been provided and everyone else seemed to be having results with.

So what was missing?

Well, I looked at things a little closer and noticed something interesting about all the top earners in the company.

They were all doing something I wasn’t.

They were branding themselves and perhaps more importantly they had a personal relationship with their audience.

They seem to have a real intimate and personal connection with their followers.

And that is the real key to network marketing.

And in many ways it’s a key component for any form of marketing.

After this, my mindset completely shifted.

I would never promote something without branding myself in the process, and leveraging the relationship with the audience.

I began to focus on providing as much value as possible to my audience. To become a person of worth in their eyes.

An easy way I started implementing this with cold traffic was through the use of a bridge page.

This was the way I learnt the hard lesson that in network marketing, people join people, they don’t really join the company.

And so this $2,000 dollar mistake taught me a pretty important lesson for the future.

Always focus on the relationship with your audience by providing true value, whether it’s through a sales funnel, Facebook page, email or Youtube.

The nature of the relationship with your audience is the real asset.

And that’s what you should harness.