Getting leads in network marketing today does not mean buying leads (there are sooooo many reasons not to go this route and it will come up in a future post), and it also does not necessarily mean spending lots of money on PPC or other forms of advertising. I’m a big advocate of PPC especially, but I recommend that you start with that only when you really understand how it works, and you have a little bit of money to spend.

In the meantime, take advantage of all of the effective free MLM lead generation options that you can choose from. And there are hundreds of them! This article lists my favorite three at the moment, and I will be updating it as we go. With all of these methods, you must have three things in place before you even start.

1. Know exactly who your audience is. Is it for your potential customers (so you will create content that relates to a certain product that your MLM offers)? Is it for your MLM prospects (so you will offer some type of MLM training, for example)?

2. Know exactly what keywords you want to include, after having done the appropriate keyword research. For an in-depth look into keyword research, please visit

3. Make sure that your content is addressing a certain problem and offering a solution to that problem. It must be real, and it must be valuable to your audience.

With that said, here are my favorite free MLM lead generation methods.

1. Article marketing. If you do like writing, article marketing may be the perfect match for you. This consists of writing articles that interest your MLM customers, or your MLM prospects and then publishing them on free article directories. Your article should generally be between 400 to 700 words long and it must be targeted towards a keyword (keyword phrase) that you have identified in your keyword research. Include the keyword in the title of your article, include it often in the body of your article (it should be 3% at the most), and use it in the last sentence of the article if possible. Also, include a link from your keyword, if possible, to some relevant content.

Possibly even more important than the article itself is the resource box that you put at the end of the article. This is where you can promote whatever it is that you want to promote and link that back to your salespage, blog, or whatever you want your reader to go. This should be short and compelling, with a definite call to action.

While some recommend using article submitters to submit your article to hundreds of article directories (at a charge), I find that you can get similar results by just submitting your article to three main sites: EzineArticles, GoArticles, and ArticleCity.

Remember that you MUST “spin” your articles if you sumit them to more than one site. Change your article around so that it is at least 30% different than the original. Target the same keywords, but switch your title around as well. There are various free (and paid) spinners on the market, but I find that the article usually don’t make much sense after you spin them, so it takes just as much time to spin them and check them over as to rewrite them completely. But that’s just me.

Finally, I’ve heard time and time again that you don’t really need to be a writer to do article marketing well. While it’s true that you do not need to be an expert, it really, really helps if you like writing, so that you can submit content as often as possible. If you don’t, go the outsourcing route and look for someone to write content for you.

Article marketing serves two main purposes: it esablishes you as an authority or expert if you are consistent with your quality content, and it gets links back to whatever you are trying to promote. If your resource box sends readers back to your own blog or website, it can get ranked very quickly and very highly in the search engines because they see these links as a sort of vote for how good your content is, and they will reward you in your ranking.

2. Video Marketing. This is an extremely effective free MLM lead generation process because video is wildly popular right now. You can betch’ur bottom dollar that your customers and prospects go to YouTube, or any of the other video sites, regularly.

The steps of video marketing are similar to those of article marketing, but it is so much easier and faster to throw up a video which address your target audience than it is to write an article. If you’re putting your video on YouTube, it must be under ten minutes, so if you can regularly take ten minutes out of your day, then you’ve got it made.

Simply record a video with your digital camera or Flip (which is what is usually recommended although I just use my camera), and upload it to whatever site you choose. Make sure that your video content includes your keywords, and, of course, so should your video title, description, and tags. And, make sure you have the link that you want to promote at the top of your description.

If you really want to step up your traffic, submit your video through TubeMogul which will then submit it to all popular video sites at once.  Videos are a great way to establish a relationship with your potential customers and prospects. And the more they see of you, the better. If you don’t like doing videos of yourself, you can do a video tutorial which only shows your computer screen

3. Twitter. When I first started learning about Twitter, I hated it. So, I know how you feel if that’s what you are thinking. But, no matter what, you cannot deny the power of Twitter in terms of gaining leads, so get over your dislike or fear or whatever it is, and just get on Twitter.  And again, you want to be where your customers and prospects are–and they ARE on Twitter. It’s quick to set up, and, it’s yet another free MLM lead generation method that really works. You can follow my Twitter 101 tutorials if you need help with that.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of free MLM lead generation strategies–just my top 3 so far in the game! To get my personal recommendation with where you should start, and how to start on the right foot, take a look at the MLM Advantage Training. I’ve got a few free MLM lead generation tricks up my sleeve that have really helped to boost my visibility, and I’d love to share them with you!