Industry Trends Update
This month’s industry trends update is a mixed bag of good news and bad news.
First, the good news…
As has usually been the case for most of the last decade, our M.L.M. stock index (comprised of the 12 largest public companies by market cap) has out performed the overall market by 3.36% over the past three months, and 11.02% over the past year. The biggest gainers over the past 90 days are USANA (24.95%), Nu Skin (24.86%), and Mannatech (9.72%).
Although the overall amount of internet chatter regarding M.L.M. decreased significantly, and for only the third time in the last 15 months (by 10.4%), the ratio of positive comments to negative ones increased from 1.94 to an all time record of 2.53! To put this in perspective, over the 40 months I’ve been tracking this ratio it has exceed 2.33 only twice, with the next highest being 2.395 back on September 3rd of last year. The lowest it’s ever been was 1.60 on July 1st of 2009.
What’s just as promising is that the number of Google search hits for the combined terms “MLM” and “Scam” has dropped for the third consecutive month to (albeit a still too high) 10,900,000. This is down from an all time high of 14,800,000 back on June 3rd, and hopefully signifies the beginning of the end of this contemptible, foolish, foot shooting practice of promoting our opportunities by rhetorically asking if they are a scam (i.e. “Is ABC Network a Scam?”).
I’ve also been following what I think is another good metric for tracking interest in our industry – the number of unique visitors to the “Multilevel Marketing” page on Wikipedia. Here’s what it looks like for the last 46 months:
What’s interesting here is that about this time last year a small but diligent anti-MLM contingent of Wiki editors assumed control of the Wiki page. They skewed its depiction of your industry so far towards the negative that I began counting it as an anti-MLM site in these monthly trend stats. Note the downtrend in unique visitors beginning right about the same time.
The only other negatives to report would be the drop in pro-MLM sites among the top 20 Google search hits for the term “MLM”, from 14 to 13, and among the top 100 from 86 to 84. The number of anti-MLM sites increased from 4 to 5 and 10 to 11 respectively. Certainly nothing to cause anyone to believe the M.L.M. sky is falling.
Although, it does beg the question… There are only about 6 or 7 anti-MLM critics who’ve developed full fledged anti-MLM exposé websites, and there are over 10 million of us. Why are almost all of their sites among the top 20 when someone Goggles “MLM”?
Actually, I know just enough about SEO to, well, know that Search Engine Optimization is referred to as SEO. But amongst my limited knowledge on the subject I do know that how many other sites link to yours is a major factor in determining search result rankings – and the anti-MLM crowd tends to concentrate all their linking on these very few sites. When we have several hundred generic, pro-MLM sites to link to the focus gets spread much thinner. So, here’s what you all can do to bump these ignorant MLM smear sites out of the top 20. Get as many others as you can to add links to these generic, educational or advocate websites, which are currently outside the top 20 (some just barely):
MLMWoman.com
MLMInsider.com
FirstClassMLM.com
MLMLegal.com
MLMLaw.com
MLMAtty.com
TheMLMAttorney.com
MLMHelpDesk.com
MLM-TheWholeTruth.com
MLMIA.com
TheANMP.org
DSWA.org
DSA.org
MMMonthly.com
NetworkMarketingPro.com
FortuneNow.com
TheGreatestNetworker.org
DirectSellingLive.com
And last, but certainly not least, MarketWaveInc.com.
There are several others within the top 100 that you might find link-worthy as well. If even 1% of us referenced these sites on our own site, I’m betting these one million new links might have a positive effect.
In fact, I just thought of another good one. Nexera.com. This is Michael Clouse’s training and information site, where he is currently conducting his annual “Favorite Trainer” poll. If you feel like voting for that guy who did that amazing seven part training series last month, please, feel free 🙂
Thanks for your support.
Len Clements
Founder & CEO
MarketWave, Inc.
P.S. If you plan on doing any Christmas shopping via Amazon.com this season, please use THIS link, or the one at the bottom of the MarketWaveInc.com home page. You’ll have the exact same shopping experience (same screens, same prices, etc.) but MarketWave (okay, me) will earn a small affiliate commission for each purchase. However, 100% of this affiliate income will go straight to the Salvation Army’s Angel Giving Tree program. Check it out.
About Len Clements
