Industry Trends Update
At the beginning of every month the Industry Trends page at MarketWaveInc.com is updated HERE. As most of you already know due to previous commentary, I’m not a big fan of using a specific company’s web traffic as an indicator of a growth or decline in popularity. However, the number of people searching for information about a company, or any aspect of network marketing in general, is a good indicator of rising or falling interest in the business model, and public opinion of it.
For example…
Searches for the synonymous “MLM” or “Multilevel Marketing” are also gradually trending down. However, this does not necessarily indicate lessening public interest in specifically networking marketing. Check this out…
It would appear that there is a gradual, and strange, lessening of interest in home business ventures entirely. What’s most bewildering is that the sharpest decline in Google searched for the term “home business” began during the sharpest decline in the economy. Did you notice the other interesting trend in the above graph? Searches for “home business” was always at its annual lowest during December, and always spiked in January.
Paradoxically, the number of unique visitors to the Wikipedia entry for “Multilevel Marketing” over the last 4-plus years, presumably as part of one’s consideration of the industry, looks like this…
The bad news is that back around late 2008 the Wikipedia page devoted to Multilevel Marketing ceased to be neutral. It is now controlled by a clique of Wiki editors who are demonstrably anti-MLM.
So how about some good news! There are several thousand trend analysts, better known as stock traders, or residents of “Wall Street”, who seem to be very optimistic about the future growth potential of our industry. I’ve been tracking an index of the dozen largest publicly traded network marketing companies, which I call the “MLM 12”. When comparing the growth of this index to the S&P 500 (an index of 500 of the largest, mostly U.S. based, public companies) here’s what we find…
The MLM12 has outperformed the overall market in six of the last eight months (and 22 of the last 36). In March the S&P grew by 12.0%. The MLM12 grew by 19.8%. Over the past 12 months the S&P has risen 5.7%. The MLM12 has grown 23.6%.
EpicNetwork.com domain name for sale.
I have received an inquiry regarding the purchase of this domain name, which was originally used for my ill-fated attempt to launch my own network marketing company back in 2005 (yes, I’m 0-for-2 in my corporate ventures, but hey, I’m 2-and-0 in court against my ex-partners!). Before selling this domain I thought I’d give my subscribers a shot at it first. This will also help me appraise its value. The average provided by five different free appraisal services peg the value at $3,621.50, however the range is from $17,002.50 down to only $170.00. That doesn’t give me a lot of confidence in free appraisal services. I paid GoDaddy to perform a formal, detailed appraisal and they came up with $623.00. However, within GoDaddy’s domain name auction site bidding for CoreNetwork.com is up to $70,000 and IntercomNetworks.net is going for $50,000. Wouldn’t EpicNetwork.com – with fewer characters, no plural, and .com instead of the much less valuable .net – be worth more than that? Surely it’s worth more than the hyphenated Clan-Networks.com, which has a high bid of $10,000! If EpicMeals.com and CheckOutNetwork.com are both going for $1,000, EpicNetwork.com has got to be worth several times that amount – right?
Please tell me what you think. If you would like to purchase this domain name, make an offer. Either way, what do you think it’s worth? Thanks for your help.
Len Clements
Founder & CEO
MarketWave, Inc.
About Len Clements
