With the economy spiraling downward, more and more people are looking for alternative ways to generate income and asking themselves “Is It Worth Joining A Network Marketing Business Opportunity?”  Most are looking for financial relief, while some are looking for a vehicle to create total financial freedom. Coupled with the fact that more and more people, from Warren Buffet to Richard Branson, are endorsing network marketing, it’s not too hard to see why over 175,000 people in a single week are getting involved with network marketing.

If you’ve looked into the industry, or researched a company, you probably wondered if it was even worth it to get started. In this short article, I will give you the good and bad of joining a network marketing business opportunity.

Network marketing can be a very fun and lucrative profession, but it can also be extremely frustrating. The network marketing industry, over the last 50 years, has created more millionaires than any other industry, but there is a staggering  failure rate in the industry. If you’re thinking about joining a company, it’s important to know what you’re getting into before you get started.

Many people got involved in network marketing only to find their friends and family started avoiding them like the plague because the word gets out that they are in a “recruiting thing” and they want to get them in the “recruiting thing” too. (see my blog: Network Marketing, Are you Hunting or Fishing)

During this time, many people are told that it’s a scam, pyramid scheme or that it will never work.

It’s true there are scams out there, but after looking at some statistics, you can see why so many people want to join a network marketing company. The average income in the U.S. for someone who graduates high school but doesn’t have a college degree, is less than $26,000 a year.   No Network Marketing Business can make any income claims or guarantees, but after taking some time to learn how to actually build a business, what could have been many peoples’ annual income turns into a monthly income. More important than the money, is the quality time Network Marketing allows you to spend with family.

So does that automatically mean you should join a business? No, the truth is you should join a business if you plan on learning how to properly do the business and treating your business like a business. Now, I’m not talking about joining for the sake of getting a discount on the products because you’re a consumer. That’s all fine and good, but I’m talking about if you want to build a business that will give you financial freedom and the time to enjoy that freedom.  And, yes, there may be a period where you are learning and not making as much as you would like. Just understand that statistics show that for anyone who is proactively building their network marketing business, the chances of earning an annual income of six-figures are significantly higher than any other profession in the world.

So the question you need to ask yourself is, are you looking to make a quick buck or are you serious about your long-term success?