A day in the life of a HealthyPetNet Rep

New way of advertising

2009-08-28T11:08:00.000-07:00

Facebook advertising is turning out to be a great resource for me. On one dollar per day, I can pick up four new customers per month. If I only run the ad Thur-Fri-Sat-Sun (so, $4/week x 4 weeks = $16/month), it's more than paid for by the Quick Start bonuses. On two dollars per day (so, $32/month), I've picked up six customers so far with one final weekend to go.

A handful of new customers per month might not seem like much but most of my warm market is already on this pet food so I wanted an easy way to attract new business. The way I look at it is: Pets stay on this food for life, so these are most likely customers for life. They're into healthy foods, they have multiple pets, they have friends who have pets. So there is potential for add-ons and referrals. And most of my good reps in my downline come from happy customers who have done other home sales before and know how it works.

If I pick up four new customers per month and I teach just four of my downline reps to do this, and they teach it to their downline, how will the numbers grow?

Assuming adding no reps at all, this is just me and four of my downline adding four new customers per month. That is 240 new customers added to my downline in a year.

The company says the average order is $60. My average order is more like $100 because my customers are multi-pet people that I pick up on the Internet. So this is, PER MONTH, from $16,000 - $24,000 in sales. That's regular, repeat, loyal monthly sales that reps from Tupperware to Avon to Mary Kaye to Pampered Chef would love to see... and they're all ordering off the toll-free line or Internet with very little more than a "thank you" card and an annual Christmas card from me. Not bad.

I don't even want to think about the numbers if we are all adding one new rep per month and showing them how to do this.

Busy running AND doing HealthyPetNet!

2009-03-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

What in the world happened this week? Wow! I've had so much going on with my Team in Training marathon group and with HealthyPetNet I can't see straight! It's FUN!

You know, runners are pet people. LOTS have dogs. So after last week's run, a few of us came in early and were sitting around talking and the topic of dogs came up.

Anyway, I had trial size bags in my car. I gave out 10 of them! Got responses back from people saying, Wow, my dog is picking out the new Life's Abundance (HPN) food from his old food. Then other people would get on the thread and say, Hey, my dog does that, too! (Course, I knew that would happen, it's what always happens :-)

I ordered another 16 for this week because everybody wanted to try it. Before I even get to my group tomorrow, I've already shared about six bags with other people. So I just got online to order another few sets of trial-sizes with a whole bunch of the small pouch size samples.

A friend I knew from another sales group called me. She has been on HPN for a few years. She shared it with a friend who also wanted to learn about doing it as a business.

Wow. Is it positive energy or what?! I love it!

Liveblogging HealthyPetNet Conference Call

2009-03-17T17:34:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, March 17, 2009 6:30 p.m. MDT

Dennis Berardi, company founder and former CEO is conducting this conference call.

Economy is scary

9/10 people said they are open to learning more about how to increase their level of security

We have a product people use every day. People don't lose their jobs and quit feeding their pets. The dogs and cats are part of the family.

We love this opportunity.

But first, Lindsay Andrew...

This lady lost her job a month and a
half ago. She has gone full-time at HealthyPetNet, her sales have increased
unbelievably. She had been in HealthyPetNet much earlier but hadn't really
worked it as a business. Her mother had been in it for years.
She makes cold calls every day. She's having great success. Her
sponsor, John Albrecht, has been helping her a lot. She gets on three-way
calls and conference calls. She has acquired many new reps. She
calls them to help them every day. She's treating this like a full-time
job. Makes a huge difference to make that relationship with your new
reps.
Her volume was $3400 per month when she started. The next month, her
volume was $13,000. She has new reps who are in pet professions, breeders,
etc.
Dennis observed that it makes a difference when you treat this as a
business.
The three-way calls are so important.

Now, we're talking about the reason for the call. Something new and exciting.

We have 3500 reps.

The key to this business is to build an organization. You need the J Paul Getty thing, I'd rather have the efforts of 100 people than of my own efforts.

March Madness Recruiting Promotion

It started yesterday!

If you sign up two executive reps by the end of the month, you will receive an extra $100 bonus. Then you get the Quick Start bonuses which is $86. If you are an Exec Rep right now, you would get two shares of the recruiting pool which is about $60.

Tell them about this promotion. That's a lot of money!

This should cause a lot of excitement within our group. Get on the phone and let your reps know. Do three-ways.

Set a goal for yourself that you are going to sign up two new reps by the end of the month.

What if you could imagine that you would lose your home if you didn't sign up two executive reps?! You would do it!

If this works great, he suspects that they will do this again.

Then he introduced our new CEO, Lester Thornhill.

Lester... Look at what Lindsay will do, she'll increase her sales as she
teaches her reps and gets more reps.
Promotion. You can do it multiple times. If you sign up four
reps, you'll get that extra money for them! No limit!
Lindsay's story should tell us that we can do anything. Take it
seriously! Work this business with a full-time attitude.
You don't have to do this alone. Use your upline. Do three-ways. If your sponsor can't do this with you, call the company, we'll get you someone who can work it with you.
The top reps were not always as confident as they are today.
Draw the line in the sand and work this thing with a full-time attitude.

Dennis: If you believe you can do it, you can do it.

They're going to post the winners on an email.

Visualize yourself being on that list.

Our goal is to double our distributorship. If we all signed up one rep we'd double our distributorship.

[So as I'm typing this, I'm thinking of the ten large sample bags I just gave out at my marathon training group. I've ordered another 12 bags for this week. Hmmmm.].

He told about a rep who has been on calls with him, she has signed up five new reps, added $2400 to her sales. And she is blind and in a wheelchair. If she can do it, you can do it.

If you go to that convention (in May) it will change your life.

Let's do this together!

http://www.healthypetfood.biz/

What to feed a dog with bladder crystals?

2009-01-27T12:32:00.000-08:00

I was working out with my trainer this morning. He has two adorable little Springer spaniels, young rescue dogs. One had crystals in his urine and was put on a special pet food. Justin was feeding them Canidae, I had given him a bag of Life's Abundance and I keep him in dog treats, but the little dog had a bladder problem (not related to the food) so the vet put him on Science Diet C/D.

Knowing that I'm a holistic pet person and animal rescuer, asked me what he should put his little guy on. He definitely wanted a better food because the little dog is not gaining weight as well as his brother.

I was cautious about putting him on Life's Abundance because in my experience with cats, UTI's can be deadly so you have to give them prescription diets. But I gave him a 3.3 lb sample bag that I had in my car just to get him off the Beneful and told him I'd do some homework.

I'm so happy to say that, as long as the dog doesn't have a chronic UTI problem or kidney stones, he can be on our food! Crystals don't lead to kidney stones in dogs the way they do in cats. And they're apparently quite common. It's all about making sure you DO treat any infection that is present.

I am not a veterinarian so you should always run these ideas by your vet.

Here is my homework:

From JustAnswer.pet -- answered by a real vet
http://www.justanswer.com/questions/xqw-causes-dog-urine-crystals

The main thing I see on the UA is the pH is high.

So now that I have some history...I will give you "my opinion" on this
problem.

Struvite crystals in a dogs urine...in the absence
of a UTI, don't mean anything...and don't lead to anything. Acutally the crystals
can form in urine as it cools. In any case, you can take the urine from 100 dogs with out UTIs and maybe 40% have crystals...doesn't mean anything. I do not agree that C/D is the correct food at this time.

Unfortunately, lots of vets treat these like they do cats, but the formula for cats, like acidifying urine and special foods...are not the treatment of choice.

Now, if this dog becomes chronic with UTIs, and struvite crystals progress calculi...then problems...but it will not be because she has crystals now...the issue
relies on the infections.

A premium food that is balanced is fine. Some of my clients will occasionally use cranberry pills...but the urine acidity is not as important in dogs as cats, but it can help alittle.

Here are some great natural tips to help your dog avoid crystals:

Once a diagnosis has been obtained from your veterinarian and treatment has been
implemented, it is important to adhere to these tips:

Keep fresh water available for the dog at all times, and encourage consumption of water. Keeping the kidneys and bladders flushed is of paramount importance to help prevent crystals and stone formation. Water consumption is very, very important!

Try and feed moist diets, such as fresh food diets, broths, canned diets and extra
water added to foods served.

Do not keep the dog confined, but allow access for urination at all times or as frequently as possible. Holding the urine causes concentrations that encourage crystal and stone formation.

Distilled water may be helpful in averting some cases of stone and crystal formation and check your own water supply for minerals if possible, especially if you have
hard water in your area.

Giving a B vitamin supplement may be helpful and has been indicated in use for humans with these problems. http://www.doctoryourself.com/kidney.html (good site for human stone problems)

There is also some question that high calcium, rather than causing stones,
may help dissolve them. This is also true of vitamin C. (See above link)
Source: http://www.b-naturals.com/newsletter/bladder-stones-crystals/

Yep, doubled sister's check and added $100 to my own!

2009-01-25T06:55:00.001-08:00

My efforts in December paid off. My sister's small check (normally $50) doubled to $100, which was my whole goal! But because I have a downline, somehow, my efforts added $100 to my own check! Nice!

I could tell that new blog articles made a huge difference. In fact, take a look at the stats from my pet food blog:

But we also did it with Christmas cards and thank you letters on new orders.

So far this month, I've added two new customers for one friend and six new customers for my sister. If I will be sure to write new articles for my blog at least three times per week -- on the hot topics (such as pet food recalls, ingredients, and health issues that can be resolved through nutrition) -- I'm confident we can keep attracting loyal new customers.

But this business only brings in modest money with customers. You really need to build a network of distributors under you. So I will figure out how to do that online, next.

Dog food for a friend with lymphoma

2009-01-16T14:15:00.000-08:00

I'm not someone who gives a traditional "welcome wagon" gift. Years ago, I was famous for taking a bowl of the cereal, Lucky Charms, to new move-ins in my college area.

So when I found out this morning that a dear friend was just diagnosed with a nasty blood cancer, lymphoma, what did I do? Well, first I cried. Several times throughout the day, in fact, as I told my co-workers about it.

But then I thought, well, she has dogs and cats. I'm not ANY good at taking meals. But I can take her some dog food?! Right?! I mean, I *am* a rep, I get the stuff at cost. Maybe I could boost my sales just a bit so as to dedicate a little bit to keeping her in dog and cat food.

And I can run. By the way, in case you didn't know, I run marathons for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's their Team in Training program, which was started 20 years ago by a dad who lost his beautiful daughter to leukemia. I blog about it over at http://SheCanRun.wordpress.com.

Anyway, we do what we can do. God bless her.

24,570 customers with the new selling system?

2009-01-12T15:36:00.000-08:00

HealthyPetNet just released a new sample pet food bag for dog food and cat food that comes with some amazing trial run statistics. Out of 500 sample bags given out, over half of the recipients became customers and one in twelve became a rep.

The conclusion you can draw is this:

If you give out twelve sample bags every month, you're going to pick up six new customers and one new rep. And you do this every month.

If you teach your new rep how to give out twelve sample bags per month, it's likely that THEY'LL pick up six new customers and one new rep. And they do this every month. And you teach them how to support THEIR new reps.

And so on.

So I wondered what kind of money you could make if you worked the business like this? Because honestly, while I can rake in new customers and have quite a few good reps, I haven't made building a rep base my focus. I sure will now!

I had to figure it out in MS Excel. Correct me if you see something wrong, but I calculated based on me getting 6 new customers and one new rep every month, and showing every new rep how to do the same thing.

For contrast, if all I do is build it for customers and I get 6 new customers a month, times twelve months, that's 48 new customers.

This model allows for each of the new reps getting 6 new customers a month.

Total Customers Total Reps
1....... 6................. 1
2...... 18................ 3
3...... 42................ 7
4...... 90............... 15
5...... 186............. 31
6...... 378............. 63
7...... 762............. 127
8...... 1530.......... 255
9...... 3066......... 511
10.... 6138......... 1023
11.... 12282....... 2047
12.... 24570...... 4095

They say that customers average $80 per order but my experience is that it's more like $100 per order because there are so many multi-pet people. (And no, I haven't noticed sales dropping off with this economy. People who treat their pets this well are usually quite committed to high quality pet foods. They cut back in other areas).

So, say, $100 per month average order per customer * 24,750 customers = $2,475,000 retail sales per month throughout your downline.

Holey toledo! THIS is network marketing! Building an organization and earning a little bit based on your network's efforts.

I don't have any problem getting customers -- and by the way, if you follow my methods you can do it on the Internet without necessarily having to invest in the sample bags, although I do give them out often -- I just need to shift my focus to building a good rep structure. One rep per month EACH for myself and my sister. THAT's my new goal!

Are you with me? http://healthypetfood.biz

Orders, orders

2009-01-11T19:08:00.000-08:00

You might think, because I blog, that all of my customers come from the Internet. Not so! Just about EVERYBODY I know who has a pet is on this food! Most of the time, I send them to the web and they order whenever they want. They like that independence. But for some, I help them keep the cost down by having it all shipped to me.

People tend to order a day or two before they run out of food. I can't really stock lots of food at my house (I have some aggressive kitties who can even figure out how to open a bottle of the kitty supplements -- there's one at my side right now who is persistently ripping into a bag of hairball treats ). So I keep the 2 and 3 lb dog and cat sample bags in my car to give to people as they order, and then every two weeks I put in a very large order. When you order $500 at a time, S&H is free so that works out all around.

I came home Saturday to a long handwritten note in my mailbox from the neighbors to the north of me. It's a mom and her two adult daughters and an aunt, all living in this house with its basement apartments. They are GREAT neighbors! Woo, read my story on 16 cookies at my marathon running blog!

Anyway, they have a kitty and a new therapy dog. They were already great fans of the cat food and Instinctive Choice and after trying a sample bag of the dog food, they wanted to order a 60-lb bag and some treats and porkhide bones.

Then, some friends from church called and they need another case of canned cat food and a bag of Life's Abundance for their kitty.

We've picked up about seven new customers between Val and my friend Joyce and I this last week via the Internet.

So it's keeping me busy but I LOVE it!

The new large sample bags

2009-01-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

When I got home from work Monday, there were four large boxes sitting on my front porch. $500 worth of pet products! Three large bags of dry cat food, six cases of canned cat food, one case each of the new canned dog food that Dr. Jane just released, several containers of dog treats, a few bags of cat hairball treats, and most importantly, two four-packs of the new dog and cat sample bags.

Reps recently made the point that multi-pet households really need more than the tiny sample bags that we've had. So after a very successful trial run in a few cities, HealthyPetNet released these two and three pound bags. They come with a nice brochure explaining why you want your pet on an all natural food like this.

In the trial, where reps gave out 545 of these larger sample bags, more than half of the recipients became customers one in twelve became reps.

I can tell you, I'm prone to giving away bags of food. I gave away my last bag of dog food a few weeks ago. But out of it, I got an awesome customer who is now ordering dog food and cat food and canned cat food and both cat and dog treats.

So I'm excited to carry both the dog and cat large sample bags in my trunk. I happen to be training with a marathon training team -- we raise money for the Leukemia Society to help patients and fund research. (See my fun blog at http://shecanrun.com/)

Lots of runners are dog people and they ALWAYS ask if their pet food is safe. So I'm looking forward to giving away these larger sample bags and finding a lot of new customers!

A bag of food to a man with many cats

2009-01-10T20:10:00.002-08:00

As I was getting my emissions inspection, the man finishing up the test and giving me my certificate asked for my business card. He pointed to my "IsYourPetFoodSafe.com" vinyl in the back window and said that he did feral cat rescue.

I immediately knew that meant he had many cats, and of course, he told me the number. He had a LOT of cats.

It costs a lot to feed those cats and since the employment sign said that these workers started at $9 an hour, I knew he wouldn't ever become a customer. This food is too expensive for someone feeding a couple of dozen cats. My own food and litter bill is around $600. I can afford it. I earn it from this business and I also have a very handsome day job income.

I offered to stop by the next day with a large bag of Life's Abundance so all of his kitties could sample it. It was my last bag and my shipment wasn't due in until the next week, so as I drove away, I kicked myself.

But I had read a scriptural thought that morning where "the gift without the giver is bare" and how you're not supposed to give "grudgingly", because if you do, it's like not giving at all.

So I softened my heart and went to his house with that precious last bag of cat food. And I pictured how delighted his kitties would be to eat it, and how happy he would be for the company.

Let me just say that, on visiting with him in his trailer home, which by the way contained a beautiful grand piano and an organ, it seemed that he was lonely and fragile and overwhelmed with the care of so many kitties, and yet they brought him joy and companionship. He picked up each one and told me how he'd found it and tamed it down. As ferals ran across his porch, he would call my attention to them.

He was about 64, I think he said, and just working for two more years until he could get his Social Security and move to where he has land in another state and just live with his kitties and never be bothered by animal control ever again. (Because they'd many times inspected his place and threatened to take his kitties).

Since then, I've watched for $10 large bags of 9-Lives and Friskies and I've picked up broken donated bags of food at my veterinary clinic and dropped them by his house. I haven't been able to stay and visit, which is probably what he needs the most.

But if in this business it's all me-me-me and we don't make room for the charitable moments, there really is no point being in business in the first place, is there?

Update: Doubling my sister's sales

2009-01-06T15:38:00.000-08:00

Dang, I forgot to note the total sales at the end of the month!!

But those evite Christmas cards definitely worked because three of Val's customers who haven't ordered since 2007 got online within a day of opening the card and ordered.

And then I'm helping another one of my friends and HER customers did the same thing, got online and ordered after getting their cards.

And somewhere, we've picked up four new customers for her and one new customer for me in the week since Christmas. That's five customers in a week, that's excellent! I would say these come from the articles that I wrote between Christmas and New Year's. Need to definitely write some more!

ZooToo

2009-01-06T15:28:00.000-08:00

Someone alerted us on the forum to a pet-people social network, so I went and looked at it.

This lady had no idea what kind of tool she had stumbled upon, but I did, and I knew right how to use it. It's like Facebook, of which I am a huge fan.

They allow free classified ads so I posted a nice one about the pet food. You can do product reviews so I reviewed Life's Abundance and Instinctive Choice and the supplements. You can write little journal stories so I wrote a story about Mr. Tree Kitty. People request friendships with you so I accepted. There was SO MUCH I could do in this forum, legitimately, just to network and connect with other pet people without really saying anything about pet food!

This business is all about just connecting with people. So this was a great little tool. Makes me want to go out and find other forums like this one and join them.

http://www.ZooToo.com

69 customers in 30 days

2008-12-25T15:01:00.000-08:00

From April 2 to April 29 of 2007, we were able to get 35 new customers for my sister; picked up 34 for myself. They all came through the Internet and this was right after the beginnings of the gigantic pet food recall of 2007.

What did I do and what do I think was the most effective?

Blog - Are you feeding your pets safe pet foods? *** This was linked all by different forums, 1300 hits per day
PlanetXMail Direct AD 30-days ***
GreenPeople Directory Listing - Premium *** This has always done well for me
Yahoo Answers
GotSafelist - 5,000 guaranteed visitors
MadVlad Safelist
Bulldog Safelist - Top Sponsor ad "What the pet food companies don't want you to know"
Craigslist Ad - Safe Pet Food

The top 3 were good, I wouldn't say much came out of any of the rest.

Take-home message is that the blog needs to be alive and well.

Submitted my blogs to URLFan

2008-12-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

You can blog all you want but if nobody sees your posts, you get no traffic. So I submitted both my Holistic Pet Food and HealthyPetNetRep blog to URLFan:

HealthyPetNet's BBB rating is A+

2008-12-25T12:04:00.000-08:00

Was just interested in this BBB report on Trilogy HealthyPetNet. They have an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau of Southeast Florida. Having been associated with them for three years as an indepedent rep, I already knew they were straight-arrow, but was glad to see it in writing!

http://www.bbbsoutheastflorida.org/BBBWeb/Forms/Business/CompanyReportExtensionPage.aspx?CompanyID=4005372&sm=

My secret life as a marathon runner for leukemia

2008-12-25T10:46:00.000-08:00

This is a "day in the life of a HealthyPetNet Rep", so I just want to say that I also have a maybe-not-so-secret-life as a marathon runner. It's my way of fighting leukemia.

My first season was last year and I went from old and out of shape to youthful and so fit and trim! More than that, it entirely changed my life. What an incredible way to give back.

One of my teammates runs for her five-year-old son, Mason, who has survived the first 52 weeks of a 100-week chemotherapy plan. See his blog at http://mightymason.wordpress.com/

I am coming back this year as a mentor, meaning, I'll help my little group of teammates learn how to raise money for their fight for leukemia.

I'm VERY excited and can't wait to run with my long-lost cousin and many others in the San Diego Marathon on May 31 of 2009!!

See my blog on my Team in Training activities at http://SheCanRun.wordpress.com

Guess what I gave all my friends with pets?

2008-12-25T10:15:00.000-08:00

Treats, of course!

I'm a practical person. My friends and family know this. I give generously but I give what is needed, like, boots for my sister or cute socks for my friend's daughter. And, I barely paste a bow on the gift! Wrapping is just not my thing.

BUT, what I GIVE is GREAT! Everybody wants to be on my gift list!

My brother has three gorgeous longhaired Himalayans, all over seven years old. He brushes them every night. Skin and coat is very important for these cats, as is hairball control. Did you know that hairballs can become life-threatening in some cats? So they got the gourmet Cat Treats (this is a reformulation of the Hairball treats and it's much better, if you ask me).

They're going to swallow hair, that's a given. You just want to be sure that their fur is strong enough not to just fall out in clumpbs and that they have enough oils in their digestive tract to either barf them up safely or have them pass out safely in the litter box. Hence, the special ingredients in the treats and supplement.

I also brought him a bottle of the new Life's Abundance Wellness Supplement for Cats. It's a vitamin so you only let them have 5-7 kibbles. My rescued ferals really love it, I use it to help tame them, so I gave some to him. His kitties wolfed it down! Being older kitties with heavy nutrient needs due to their lavish coats, I think they'll do really well on this.

Last but not least, he wanted to try the new canned cat food. His kitties have been on the dry Life's Abundance for the last two years but he, himself, is not a canned cat food person so his kitties never even eat table scraps. But somehow he got into the Christmas spirit and he wanted to give them something special, so I gave him half a case of the Instinctive Choice.

Two of my other kitty friends, Starla and Konnelle, are getting half-cases of Instinctive Choice for their kitties.

Let me just tell you, it's a big hit!

My friend Natalya at work is a big fan of the porkhide bones and the weight loss food. She has a little Dachsund who just loves those bones. So I gave her a package of the medium size bones with a bow on it! Oh, she was so happy!

Rawhide is nasty, why do pet food manufacturers still sell it? Rawhide is often treated with harsh chemicals like ash-lye and bleach. That just can't be good for our pets. And it doesn't dissolve so they can choke on it. Don't even get me started on the plastic bones -- one of my friends had to dig a piece out of his dog's gums when a piece broke off.

But the pork, while a little pricier, is safer and is digestible, and Natalya's little guy sure loves them!

I have two other packages of the porkhide bones to give to two other friends who have medium-sized dogs.

I bought several jars of the Wholesome Hearts Baked Treats. These are low-fat and they also contain L-Carnitine so they're perfect for dogs who need to lose weight. Most of my other dog friends got these.

My trainer at the gym is also my chiropractor. He's ADORABLE and so are his two little Springer spaniels, so I give treats to his dawgs!! They got a nice jar of Wholesome Hearts this year.

And I will be keeping one of the very large 24 oz jars of treats in my car because when we get into marathon training season, I'll meet lots of people with dogs and I always like to give them a treat and a drink of water on a hot day!

30-day Mission - Doubling my sister's pet food sales

2008-12-25T09:12:00.000-08:00

My sister works three jobs and commutes an hour each way so I have been helping to get her HealthyPetNet business started. Remember, Trilogy/HealthyPetNet is a network marketing business and we are independent reps, not directly employed by the company. You could think of it like some of the cosmetics and kitchen and candle businesses out there.

Val has about 73 customers, some were just samples customers but others have remained quite loyal for the last year and a half. They all came through my various Internet promoting.

She would love to quit one of her jobs and work HealthyPetNet by blogging with me so we have a goal to increase her commission checks to replace one of those part-time jobs this year. For the next 30 days, I simply want to see if we can double her pet food sales. Right now, for the month of December, she has the following sales for herself and throughout her downline:

Considering that an 8-lb bag of dog food retails for about $17.26 per bag, and remembering that we set our customers up at the wholesale rates, that's a lot of dog food sales! And this is about her 20th month and she has never had a "pet party" or anything like that. You get a "quick start" bonus for the very first time a person orders a particular product so that also brings in the checks. So, we like this business!

Tracking what I do and how effective it is could help any of you.

1. My goal every month is to keep her PS (Personal Sales) at least $750. That ensures that she gets the maximum commission on her PCS (Personal Commissionable Sales) - 20%. In fact, so that we never accidentally slip under the maximum payout, I'd like to boost her personal sales to $2000 per month. That's very do-able, myself and two of my downline consistently achieve those sales.

I love this about HealthyPetNet commissions. They set a certain amount per individual product that is allotted to commissions, that's the Personal Commissionable Sale. This helps keep the product affordable for the customer and is a reasonable commission for the rep.

Many of the network marketing companies I've seen only pay you if you build equally down two legs (a "binary" system). HealthyPetNet's commissions are paid on each of your personal customers.

You only need to sell $50 per month and that is often what you might buy, yourself, if you are a multi-pet family, so it's not hard to qualify for commissions. Other network marketing companies require that you personally purchase $200 or more in product each month to qualify for commissions, and that you sell a certain amount. That $50 for HealthyPetNet doesn't even need to be your own purchase. In other words, you can work HealthyPetNet even if you don't ever buy pet food yourself. (I personally think you SHOULD know the products but the point is, this is probably the most comfort-zone-friendly business out there!)

2. At the moment I am not doing anything to boost her downline reps' sales. When I know that what I do can work for Val, I'll share with them.

3. So how am I sending customers via the Internet to Val? If you'll scan through some of my earlier posts this month, you'll see that I'm registering her website in various online "green" and "healthy pet" directories.

4. I also maintain a very popular Holistic Pet Food Blog -- all of the links in that blog go either to Val or to some of my downline, none go directly to me. Folks -- Blogging is THE BEST free way to build on the Internet. I can't wait until Val -- who is a professional writer and editor -- can do this with me!

5. Since Val has about 73 customers, I sent them all holiday greetings and will send Thank Yous every time they order. Simply improving sales among the existing customers can do a lot to boost Val's business.

6. Referral business is huge. I also let all of our existing customers know we will give a wholesale discount to any of the friends that they refer to us.

There are a few other things that I've done in the past (such as Yahoo and Wiki Answers). One of my very best reps came from a Yahoo Answers discussion. If I do any of those and get results, I'll post it here.

The take-home message for you is that, If you don't have a goal and a plan, you can't achieve it. I'm very excited for that day when Val calls to say to me, I can't believe the size of the check I just got!

Holiday Greetings through Evite

2008-12-25T08:49:00.001-08:00

For the Christmas holiday, I sent a cute animated kitty cat ecard using evite. I sent them also for my sister Valerie and my friend Joyce.

I sent out the following:

Joyce - 25 cards
Valerie - 73 cards
Me - 98 cards
My reps - 12 cards (first-line only)

I reminded everyone that we set them up as wholesale customers so they get 20% off if they log in, and I gave them the website and my phone number. Evite keeps track of who opens the card so I want to see if this is effective and will also be interested to see if there is an increase in orders.

I am using evite to send Thank Yous after each and every order, as well. It's all part of my customer service goals for this next year.

Got my shipment today - 12/22

2008-12-25T06:46:00.000-08:00

I order about $300 worth of product a week ago Monday, on 12/15. Normally, a Monday order would be delivered to my house by Thursday or Friday, but with the holiday slowdown at UPS, it didn't make it until Monday.

Naturally, I ran out of canned food, dry food, and treats! I try to always keep enough on hand but just didn't this time.

I had bought some holistic food in the interim -- there are a few that are affordable and that I trust. And they're fine, the kitties eat them without digestive upsets for the most part. These are not my favorite foods, by the way. HealthyPetNet is the only food I am loyal to... I hope they stay in business forever because I absolutely do not know what we would do if we had to shift.

But let me tell you, when I brought in those two heavy cardboard boxes and turned my back to hang up my coat and put my laptop away, the kitties tore into the box with the dry food in it and had the corner chewed off by the time I got back to it!

That stuff must smell amazingly good!

How many kitties does Teresa really have?

2008-12-21T19:02:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of time this week at parties and music gatherings with my friends and the No. 1 question people always ask is, How many cats do you have?

Well, I never tell the number any more because people who don't have pets or who only have one or two freak out to hear of any more than three, and I DO have more than three! I do rescue work with the help of a friend who owns a cat clinic and I have a $600 per month holistic pet food and litter bill, need I say more? There are CATS in my house ... along with electric catboxes. It's tidy and clean and most people come in and say, Gee, you can't really tell you have cats here. So there!

The take-home message that surfaced was really that I need to help people understand rescue, so I steer the conversation to what kind of rescue work I do. One friend (who has gossiped about my kitties) said she didn't even know that I did rescue! The nature of rescue is that you take in special needs kitties, get them better or socialized or whatever, and adopt them out.

So I talk not about the "numbers" but about the "work" and the "quality", you know, like, two months ago someone brought me a little kitten that someone had locked in a carrier and thrown away in a dumpster, and I'm helping that kitten to calm down and be ready for adoption... and right before Thanksgiving, a sick cat went up a very tall tree and was stuck there for a week before the fire department came and shot it out of the tree with a high-powered firehose. (Don't worry, they caught him in a net!). THAT kitty is doing much better and will be adopted out probably after the first of the year.

It makes for a much healthier, less gossipy kind of conversation.

HealthyPetNet listing renewed in GreenPeople.org

2008-12-20T07:19:00.000-08:00

This listing has consistently provided very loyal customers who are interested in doing everything they can for their pets, including adding high quality fish oil to their diets. They provide stats and show that since Mar 31, 2007:

1477 people viewed your listing.
493 clicked through to your website.

To have 1/3 of the people who see an ad click through to it is really impressive.

What's cool about this directory is that they're for real. In order to list a pet food with them, you have to meet the following criteria, and of course, HealthyPetNet qualifies:

CRITERIA FOR LISTING ACCEPTANCE
Disallowed ingredients include : Animal Grade Animals (too sick/diseased for Human Consumption), By-products (feet, bones and intestines, etc.), Fillers (weeds, hulls or chaff), Meat meal, Bone meal, Rendered fats, GMO ingredients, Chemical preservatives (BHA, BHT, ethoxyquin), Sugar, Propylene glycol, Ethylene glycol.
Product Ingredients :
Meat, Chicken, Eggs : Any meat, chicken or eggs must be organic or at least from free ranged animals.

GreenPeople averages over 11,000 visitors per day

alexa.com shows Traffic Rank for greenpeople.org: 93,743 (1/06)

Google page ranks is a 6-7 out of 10 (and 1,110 sites link to us)

linkpopularity.com shows- AltaVista says 1018 sites link to GreenPeople.- HotBot says 1189 sites link to GreenPeople.

You can post free ads or you can post a variety of paid ads and banners. I usually pay for an annual Premier Green Star listing which includes a clickable URL ($29.95 per year).

Free tool to submit your website to search engines

2008-12-20T06:57:00.000-08:00

Here's what I used this morning. This is a free tool, there's another one I use that costs about $4.95 per month.

While you're here, go ahead and submit your website for free:

HealthyPetNet listed in EcoFriendlySites.org

2008-12-20T06:32:00.000-08:00

I maintained a premium listing on a green site last year and received lots of good new customers from it. So this morning, I am seeking out green directories and adding my HealthyPetNet link to them. In most cases, it's free.

My target customers are people who are already committed to the health and wellness both of the environment and their pets.

Evite Thank Yous

2008-12-15T07:29:00.000-08:00

It's a free service, it's well-respected so it's not SPAM, and the cards are very cute.

It took me a little while to copy and paste 100 names from my customer lis but that's all done. I'm not going to send the Christmas evite cards until I have all of my sister's customers entered, but I *am* starting to use it to send thank you's for every order. I sent the first one off this morning :-)

In the card, I included my contact info, my website, and the toll-free order number from Trilogy. I also let this brand new customer know that I set her up as a Wholesale Customer, which means she will get 20% off on all orders except for the Clay Essentials line.

Val and I prefer to have lots of loyal, repeat customers who send us their friends than to get that 20% markup. We earn plenty on the volume, so we set everyone up as Wholesale after their first order. If they Autoship, we would lose that percent, anyway, so this just helps us build customer loyalty.

Tracking hit statistics on your blog

2008-12-15T06:25:00.000-08:00

Once you set up your blog, you want to track hit statistics. What is the point of writing every week if no one is coming to visit?

I use the free hit counter, Http://StatCounter.com. They have good instructions on how to set them up and you get a good-sized log for each "project", totally free. You can set it up to email you your statistics every day. I've used it for years.

I started my new blog yesterday and wrote several articles. This morning, I added an invisible StatCounter to the blog. At this point, since there's no traffic, there's no point making the numbers public.

The goal is to begin to check where your visitors are coming from (the referring page), you know, how did they find you? If they were using seach terms on Google, what terms were they using? Then you can expand where you promote your blog and write articles that you know people are interested in.

Setting up a blog

2008-12-15T06:16:00.000-08:00

I am very fond of blogging. It's free and, done right, it can really help you capture interest. For me, there are so many demands on my time and everybody needs my help, blogging gives me a forum to share what I've learned.

This particular blog is set up on http://www.blogger.com, also known as BlogSpot. Blogger was the very first blogging tool that I ever used. It's run by Google and it allows you to use your own stat counters. It also allows you to post via email or text message.

For my larger blogs, I switched to another provider for one simple reason, and perhaps that reason has now changed, I don't know. It's that Blogger did not have templates that allowed you to create Pages as well as Posts. I needed Pages to help me organize my topics (take a look at The Holistic Pet Blog and you'll see what I mean).

The service I switched over to was Wordpress. I like WordPress but just know that they do monitor the blogs and if you are just using the blog to drive traffic to an affiliate or MLM business, they'll shut you down.

Just be safe. Use your blogs to express yourself and to educate. If it sends people over to look at your business or product, great, but make sure you have "value added".

How the Life's Abundance Wellness Supplement is helping me tame feral cats

2008-12-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

I stumbled onto a great training tool and wanted to share it.

Little Carrier Kitty

Two months ago, someone brought in an adorable black and white kitten who had been locked in a carrier and thrown away in a dumpster!! It was so sick and traumatized, poor thing. But while I was transferring it to a clean cage it got out into my house. I haven't been able to trap him so I've just been working on calming him down.

He's afraid of humans -- no telling how he was mistreated before whoever had him threw him away -- so he won't get too close to me for regular Life's Abundance dry food or the canned Instinctive Choice.

BUT he LOVES the new Life's Abundance Wellness Supplements. I buy them with the large bags of dry cat food so it cuts the cost a bit. You're only supposed to give kitties about five pieces per day. This stuff must be delicious because the cats go wild just over me shaking the bottle.

And this little guy comes RACING into the room to get it! Doesn't matter if I'm in the room or not, he does not want to miss out on these vitamin-treats!

If you know anything about handling feral cats or severely traumatized cats, you can't be forward with them, you have to be laid back and very gentle. So I don't try to grab at him. I just occasionally reach out to pet him. Slowly, slowly, he is calming down.

Mr. Tree Kitty

Then, right before Thanksgiving, someone called me about a cat up a tree. He'd been there for days and one fellow was even shooting a BB gun at him, supposedly to try to scare him out of the tree. He was at least 60 feet up in the tree and would only climb out further if anyone climbed up to get him, so they'd exhausted all efforts to get him. It looked like he'd been sick or injured before he climbed the tree because he was staggering and falling before he got up there. It was getting to be quite wet and cold in Denver and we had to get him down or he was going to freeze to the tree limb.

Long story short, after seven days in the tree, the fire department came and fired a water hose at him and blew him out of the tree. Two firefighters stood under the tree and caught him in kind of a trampoline-blanket so he was panicked but not injured as he fell.

He was a beautiful, small male, orange with white throat and paws. Animal control took him and determined that he was feral, he was so mean and vicious. They were going to hold him three days to see if anyone claimed him, then put him down. They don't adopt out ferals. But the people who called me had launched a letter-writing campaign and got animal control to release the kitty... uh... to ME!

So my friend and I picked him up the evening before Thanksgiving. Animal control put him in the carrier and brought him out hissing and spitting. They maintained he was mean. But they'd neutered him and microchipped him and adopted him to us for free.

We got him home and could tell right away that he was tame, or at least, had been tame at one time and had maybe been abandoned and was going feral. He calmed right down in my peaceful, cat-loving home. I guess he could tell he was in kind hands.

I kept him in quarantine in the back bathroom and he just slept and recuperated for days, it even took him awhile to want to eat. I started him on the canned Instinctive Choice, it's smells wonderful and is chock-full of nutrients. He wasn't in a condition to use the prescription canned foods, but I would have put him on those if he'd turned IC down.

But like the little trash-carrier kitty, Mr. Tree Kitty just LOVES these Wellness Supplements. I'd go so far as to say they have been helping him recover since they are so full of healthy ingredients and antioxidants. He growls and scares everybody out of the way so he can eat an entire plateful of supplements, so I just sprinkle out a few on his plate so he won't eat so many!

I try to keep several bottles on hand -- you get an additional discount if you buy them by the case, and shipping is free if your total order is $500 or more. Most people wouldn't use this volume but as a rep and someone with many kitties to care for, this type of volume is normal for me. I just try to order as economically as possible.

It's just so cool that if I have a rescue kitty who needs some accelerated socializing, the Wellness Supplement is so darned effective! It's making it so much easier to help the kitties get well and tame down so we can adopt them out.

How one of my friends set up a free website using Microsoft Office Live

2008-12-14T19:41:00.000-08:00

Holy toledo, look at this! One of my friends, Sherry Klemme, set up a website for free using the Microsoft Office Live Small Business tools. It's FREE website hosting from a very reputable place! Unbelievable.

They give you free professional templates, free support, free emails... I'm a professional Internet Project Manager and have done the web for 20 years. Let me tell you, this is very cool. I may drop some of my GoDaddy hosting and try this out.

http://safehome.health.officelive.com/

That was the site that she set up. Here is the link for you to set up your own free business website:

http://www.officelive.com/free-website

HealthyPetNet Business Goals for 2009

2008-12-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

I've sort of flown by the seat of my pants these first three years. I didn't even work it as a business for the first 18 months. I just shared it with about a dozen friends. The income potential didn't matter to me, my kitties just loved the food and treats and it was the best thing I'd found, so we stayed on it.

When the pet food recall hit, I was just in reaction mode. I signed up about 70 customers in 10 days and the growth was very good for several months afterwards. My blogging attracted a lot of interest but I can't say that was a GOAL.

After having trying many other MLM's and affiliate programs and work-at-home businesses, I found out what works for me and what doesn't. So that is going to drive my goals for 2009.

HealthyPetNet in 2009

Write an article per week for The Holistic Pet Food Blog
This is the best advertising so I'm cutting out all other methods to focus on this one
Provide stellar customer service (for Val and Joyce and I) by
a. Send an evite Thank You card for every order
b. Send an email and evite Thank You card for every new customer
c. Send hardcopy Christmas cards to every customer (Dec 2008)
d. Send evite cards to every customer (Dec 2008)
e. Build relationships so that our customers feel confident getting their questions answered
The purpose of this goal is to work with existing customers to increase sales
Attend the 2009 Trilogy HealthyPetNet Convention in Florida
Double my personal customer group's sales numbers
Add three new Executive Reps in my downline, with at least two under Valerie

I'm not comfortable with home parties so while Trilogy folks do them, I never have. I might do one this year but I'm reluctant so ... gosh, I guess part of this blog is going to be that you CAN stay within your comfort zone and still make money!

See the products: http://USHealthyPet.net

See the business: http://healthypetfood.biz

Coming up on fourth year with Trilogy/HealthyPetNet

2008-12-14T18:19:00.000-08:00

I signed up for HealthyPetNet on 1/1/2006 and am coming up on my fourth year as an Independent Rep with Trilogy/HealthyPetNet. My group sales have consistently ranged from $7000 to $8000 per month for the last year and a half, pretty good considering I work a very busy day job. It's something that I've stuck with and can't imagine being without so I thought, for this year, I would keep a blog on sort of "A day in the life" to show how much I learn, how much fun I have, and how I work it as a business. I also do animal rescue so I'll throw those stories in, as well.

My sister signed up as a rep on my team. We put all new customers in under her and I work the business for her, sending them thank you cards and answering their questions. My sister loves animals and does rescue work, herself, but she works a handful of part-time jobs and commutes an hour each way to her main job, so this is a way that I can help her. The way the pay structure works, we both earn money, so this is a good plan for us.

We've seen a LOT of activity over the last two years! We had the major pet food recall of 2007 and some pretty significant pet food recalls last year. My sponsor, Judy Bishop, who is a top rep in the company, was hit by Hurricane Gustav and ran her business via generators and a Verizon wireless card for several weeks!

I ran a year-long ad in Animal Wellness Magazine and also got lots of experience with various online advertising. (Don't call the phone number, hardly anyone used it, they preferred web contact, so I discontinued it).

I've maintained a Holistic Pet Food Blog ever since the pet food recall of 2007 and it has been a very popular blog!

I've learned how to share this pet food with others. Just recently, a neighbor and a friend from church started their pets on HealthyPetNet. It's all about genuinely caring about animals and it shows when you visit with other people and their pets. (It also helps if you put a handful of their old animal food in one hand and a handful of Life's Abundance in the other -- anyone can see the difference!)

I hope to blog about my business goals, my rescue work, new products, things I learn about healthy pet, people, and planet products, how I help my team, and the convention that will be held this Spring.

To learn about healthy pet food and to see if this is the right food for your pets, go to http://www.ushealthypet.net/

To see if this might be a home-based business that you could work and be successful in, go to http://healthypetfood.biz/