I was watching the SunTrust Indy Challenge at Richmond International Raceway this evening, and was excited to see network marketing companies Herbalife and MonaVie with their names on multiple cars and the pit wall. Add to that Amway North America, who pioneered new ground last year with television commercials and Amway Arena (the home of the Orlando Magic), and it is safe to say network marketing has hit prime time.

To see Amway, MonaVie, and Herbalife side by side with AT&T, GoDaddy and Target is a wonderful step forward for network marketers everywhere. Not only does it bring our company names into the public eye; it legitimizes our business model through association with these major sports organizations.

But with this new exposure comes new responsibilities. We must now conduct our business with the legitimacy and integrity that such efforts by our parent companies demand, otherwise we undermine these efforts. Let us all take advantage of this opportunity to obliterate the negative perceptions of network marketing and portray it as the true business it is.

I recently found it necessary to explore options for processing credit card payments for my business. There are many options out there, and I quickly found my head spinning with information about fees, rates, monthly minimums, etc. So I took all of the information, consolidated it down to some averages, and did some comparisons. I was able to narrow it down to two distinct options: PayPal and everybody else. I present the final comparison for you here.

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I cannot say enough about Akismet.

Before I had activated this plugin in my Wordpress blog, I would have numerous spam comments that I had to moderate. Once I did activate it, it put all of these comments into the spam folder and automated my workflow. It saves me quite a bit of time and works almost all of the time. In all my time using it, only one legitimate comment was marked as spam. Pretty good for a program, in my opinion.

And best of all, the Akismet plugin is part of the Wordpress core installation. All you have to do to activate it is head on over to wordpress.com, set up an account, and get an API key. Plug that into your settings and you are all ready to go!

Akismet Configuration

Things are temporary, but relationships last forever. Nothing can replace the time we spend investing in the life of another.

–Roy Lessin