A lot of people have joined multi-level marketing programs and have made a fortune from their efforts. Anybody with just a smattering of ambition and energy can still join up and attain financial freedom.

However, unless you know what you're doing and how to do it, you'll probably never make much more than your expenses.

First off, be sure of the MLM company you hook up with - make sure it's all it claims to be, and that it will not only make regular payments to you, but that it will ship the merchandise to your customers and is going to be around for years to come.

Secondly, be sure that the product you're promoting has a mass appeal - does it sell itself and will people stand in line to buy it? A lot of well-meaning advertising writers advise you to select a product, devise a selling plan and then to work your plan - but, this will only put you into the shoes of an Eight-Days-A-Week Sales Person.

The one product that sells itself, and for which people the world over will stand in line for, is "How-To Information" that explains to people wanting to get rich, how to get rich.

Thirdly, make sure the program you decide upon can be adapted to sales by mail. Believe me, selling by mail is the least expensive and most efficient method of selling there is.

Look at all the ads in the trade papers and magazines. All those trying to sell multi-level programs - what are they missing? Can you adopt your program to "have to have" advertising?

Amway could go with a direct mail circular starting out with something like: Get paid for cleaning your home!

Yurika Foods could go with a circular like: Receive a 25 cent rebate for every dollar you spend on food!

What I'm advocating is that you make up a direct mail circular to pull in new prospects. We've used such a circular for 3 different MLM programs; We sent out 10,000 circulars asking for $2 for further details of our program, and in each instance, we pulled in more than 4,000 first line distributors.

Get yourself a mailing list of 10,000 or more opportunity seekers; make up an advertising circular that whets the appetite of the recipients, then get these circulars into the mail. When the orders for more information come in, send them a sales letter along with your program join-up brochure.

You can have thousands of these brochures printed and mailed to everyone in your area - even to names from the phone book. Or to people all across the country. But to be really effective and bring back a profit for you, you should have a complete mailing package.

In other words, your MLM Advertising Circular asking for $2 in exchange for further information about the best MLM Program yet devised can be your door opener -then, you should include other things that should also interest the prospect. In other words, not just a single sheet of paper.

Our own direct mail package usually includes our current MLM Advertising Circular, then our current special of the month: sometimes mailing lists at greatly reduced prices or a special book and then a listing of our How-To Informational Reports.

We figure that with this direct mail package, if they - the recipient - doesn't want one thing, he'll want the other. In a great many cases, we get orders for the whole package which sometimes runs to several hundred dollars. The thing is, we've been very successful with this mailing package, most of the time pulling in better than 10% orders per thousand packages mailed out. And, our MLM conversion rate - people who send in $2 for further information on our MLM Program and then end up joining the program under our sponsorship has been running better than 30 percent!