Affiliate since: 04/13/2012, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Andrew's 330 other Ask SC answers

Staring a Co-Op means you are on the line to generate a number of referrals every month to keep the participants interested.

To do this you need not only a Advertising Budget for things like PSA To Go and S-Builder positions but also a long term marketing plan like Article Marketing, Blogging, and Social Media. You don't want to have to continue to pour in what you make to keep pace with the growth of your co-op, so building web properties that do the recruiting and training for you is a great way to have your co-op grow with your team.

When you place an ad it gets a finite amount of results, but adding a page to a blog is a permanent, search engine indexed gateway to your advertising.

As you write new post you are adding new gateways to your business, to your co-op. Write 10 pages there are 10 doors to your shop. Write 1,000 pages and there are a thousand ways for your prospects to enter your business. You can even make it a team effort requiring each Co-Op member to add one good post per week or month to the blog in turn for their spot in the co-op or an extra share.

Get 10-20 writers adding a post a month and you could have a blog that publishes Monday through Friday every week of every month and grows by 300+ post per year. The traffic such a project can draw in is limitless. Within a couple years you could be showing a million plus ad views. I know, I have done this with a social network and a team of 5 people who wrote every 3 days.

The sky is the limits but the best bet is on the permanent development of your own fully hosted blog based website. Learn Search Engine Optimization, learn search marketing, learn social media marketing, learn how to promote your content through Article Directories and Press Release, but start building a blog so your business grows with each new effort, each small investment.

Have a safe and Happy New Year.

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Staring a Co-Op means you are on the line to generate a number of referrals every month to keep the participants interested.

To do this you need not only a Advertising Budget for things like PSA To Go and S-Builder positions but also a long term marketing plan like Article Marketing, Blogging, and Social Media. You don't want to have to continue to pour in what you make to keep pace with the growth of your co-op, so building web properties that do the recruiting and training for you is
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Affiliate since: 01/14/2013, Power Rank: 488 | Read Sule's 287 other Ask SC answers

Creating your own SFI co-op and starting a blog are both very useful to your SFI business but in separate ways. While your own co-op helps more to maintain your team and your business, a blog brings more exposure, traffic and leads to the business.

Specifically, your co-op adds value to your business by:
1. Creating an atmosphere for group efforts for individual benefits.
2. Helping weaker group members to tag along with substantial benefits.
3. Helping to keep all team members motivated.
4. Leaning on one another for collective benefits.
5. Helping to pool little resources together for bigger benefits.
6. Learning from one another as co-op members.
7. Creating a competitive spirit among team members.
8. Helping to build a formidable team by collective efforts.
9. Helping team members to achieve more than they would have achieved by individual efforts.
10. A co-op is a veritable way to help team members remain in SFI as a business.

Whereas when you start a blog, your business benefits by:
1. Having something of value to share online.
2. A blog creates an atmosphere of expertise which attracts the much-needed traffic/leads to your business.
3. A blog attracts to your business more PRMs and PSAs which are very valuable to the business.
4. A blog helps to build respectability and trust in your business.
5. It makes people want to relate with you and do business with you because they benefit from what you are sharing.
6. A blog gives the business owner a sense of usefulness and fulfillment because others rely on him/her for expert help.
7. Your business commands a lot respect online when it has a good blog.

While a co-op helps to maintain your business in a profitable course, a blog attracts more traffic and leads to the business thereby helping to grow the business in exponential ways. On balance, I believe a blog provides more value to your business than a co-op.

I hope this answer helps.

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Creating your own SFI co-op and starting a blog are both very useful to your SFI business but in separate ways. While your own co-op helps more to maintain your team and your business, a blog brings more exposure, traffic and leads to the business.

Specifically, your co-op adds value to your business by:
1. Creating an atmosphere for group efforts for individual benefits.
2. Helping weaker group members to tag along with substantial benefits.
3. Helping to keep all team
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Affiliate since: 11/27/2014, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Wayne's 2 other Ask SC answers

Both can be valuable tools in their own way. It is hard to say that one is better than the other. It really depends on what your talents are and how much time you want to spend. Both will vary on expense, and neither can offer "guaranteed" results.
If you don't have a lot of time, or are not very good at writing content, a co-op is the way to go. If you don't already have an idea of what types of advertising work best for you, you should spend some time investigating. The goal after all is to get new sign ups for the affiliates in the co-op. You don't want to spend time and money on advertising that will not produce any results. Also, unless you are advertising for free, the length of time that your ads will run are dependent on how much money you are willing to spend. The best part about a co-op is once you have placed your advertisements, you are done. You don't have to do anything more with it unless you want to renew the ads once they expire, or invest in more advertising for the same co-op. This is usually desirable for people who don't want to invest any more time than they have to.
A blog can definitely take your success to the next level, but will require more of your time and effort. You will need to set up a domain name, and web hosting for starters. A blog is no good to you if people can't find it on the internet. While some blogs can be set up for free, you can get a domain and web hosting for as little as twenty or so dollars per year, and you are in control of your blog. You have to write on your blog frequently, at least once per week if you want it to be interesting. Most of the search engines want good original content in order to rank a site high on their pages. The higher you can rank, the better the odds are that people will find your blog, and read it. You have to get traffic to your blog in order to get them interested in signing up for SFI. The best part about blogging is that you will pay a certain amount per year for web hosting, and your blog is always out there for people to find. Also, you can do anything you want with your blog. You can write about SFI in one post, and direct people to your SFI gateway. In another post, you can write about TripleClicks, and direct people to that gateway.
Personally, I have had better results with my blog. I spend about forty dollars a year on web hosting. I have plenty of time to keep the blog interesting and add new content so that is not a concern for me. I hope this answer helps you!
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Both can be valuable tools in their own way. It is hard to say that one is better than the other. It really depends on what your talents are and how much time you want to spend. Both will vary on expense, and neither can offer "guaranteed" results.
If you don't have a lot of time, or are not very good at writing content, a co-op is the way to go. If you don't already have an idea of what types of advertising work best for you, you should spend some time investigating. The goal
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Affiliate since: 05/03/2002, Power Rank: 290 | Read Mar's 582 other Ask SC answers

Creating your own SFI co-op and starting a blog about SFI are two different methods to help you grow your SFI business. Before you decide which one to focus on between the two or decide to do both, you need to be clear how each method contribute in positioning your business in the market and boost your revenue.

Creating your own SFI Co-op:

When it comes to getting the most for your advertising dollar, co-operative advertising can be your most powerful, revenue-generating opportunity. Here are the advantages:

- Effective tool to get increased exposure—at less cost. You need to inform your team if they are interested in participating your co-op and if they are willing to share advertising costs, while at the same time creating brand name awareness and acquiring new sign ups.

- Increase your purchasing power by pooling all co-op participants’ shares of the advertising costs. By doing this you’ll be able to employ services of top marketing agencies that bring results and widen your choices of media such as radio, television, magazine and newspaper.

- Using co-op advertising cuts down not only on your media costs but also on your ad production and creative expenses as well. A smart advertiser will factor co-op advertising, if available, into his or her budget.

Be careful to coordinate any co-op advertising you do within your overall marketing scheme. Only use co-op advertising if it meets your needs. If you’ve chosen a different approach in your advertising campaign, don’t switch in midstream just to take advantage of free advertising dollars.

Your SFI co-op is highly dependent on the number of participants in sharing the advertising costs and their willingness to commit. The more committed participants the better.

Starting a blog about SFI:

Blogging is a marketing tactic to get your SFI business more online visibility. When you blog, you’re increasing your online exposure – being able to be found and seen on the Internet. It is one of the most effective tools to help get your SFI business out in front of people looking for your products or services on the Internet.

Here are the benefits of blogging:

- Drives new traffic to your website

Create content around keywords you want to rank for in search converting site visitors into sign-ups. Updating your blog content more frequently will help you drive even more traffic, leads and sign-ups for your SFI business.

- Convert traffic into leads

When you write a blog post, you’re creating an opportunity to generate new leads. How? Just add a lead-generating call-to-action button to every blog post.

- Establish authority

Make your blog informative and educational answering common questions for your visitors. If you’re consistently creating highly informative and educational content on your blog which is helpful to your marketing target, your visitors will most likely keep coming back to your blog site and it will help you establish as authority in their eyes.

Use blogging as an effective tool in generating leads. You need fresh constant supply of sign-ups to expand your team through duplication and your SFI co-op and blogging may provide best solution to drive your business growth with long-term results.

Both methods are vital to your SFI business. Make use of them accordingly to benefit your SFI business.

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Creating your own SFI co-op and starting a blog about SFI are two different methods to help you grow your SFI business. Before you decide which one to focus on between the two or decide to do both, you need to be clear how each method contribute in positioning your business in the market and boost your revenue.

Creating your own SFI Co-op:

When it comes to getting the most for your advertising dollar, co-operative advertising can be your most powerful, revenue-generating opportunity.
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Affiliate since: 03/31/2013, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Tom and Diana's 69 other Ask SC answers

A SFI blog and a co-op are mutually exclusive. They can work together in a synergistic fashion to help grow your business.

The blog can, over time, attract new affiliates to your business and it is a great way to disseminate information to your growing team about any contests, rewards or incentive programs for the “movers” on your team.

The Co-op, however, could easily be one of those incentive programs of which I just spoke. After a PSA performs certain functions or attains certain goals he can be rewarded with one or more “shares” in your co-op depending on performance.

Also might I add that you can have as many SFI Co-ops as you wish. I have several. Some active. Some not. Unlike a blog they are not something you must monitor daily. Set it up, add or subtract recipients and you’re good to go. Whereas a blog really should be maintained on a daily basis in order to be noticed by the search engines (or anybody else, for that matter).

Hope this has been of some help.
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A SFI blog and a co-op are mutually exclusive. They can work together in a synergistic fashion to help grow your business.

The blog can, over time, attract new affiliates to your business and it is a great way to disseminate information to your growing team about any contests, rewards or incentive programs for the “movers” on your team.

The Co-op, however, could easily be one of those incentive programs of which I just spoke. After a PSA performs certain functions or attains
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Affiliate since: 06/27/2014, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Olawale's 109 other Ask SC answers

Hi Mary, both SFI co-op and your personal blog are important contributors in this business.
While getting a blog is free, maintaining the blog requires your input and commitment.
Equally, creating a co-op may be free, but you must get S-Builder to get value from it.
Honestly if money is not an issue, the advantages of co-op over blog is as follows:

1. Reduce advertising cost for your business by involving your team members.
2. You spend time setting up and maintaining your blog which is not required in activated co-op.
3. It is definite that co-op activated will bring you PSAs, but number of people who visits your blog do not determine the PSAs you get.
4. Activated co-op let you participate in worldwide campaigns while your blog is limited in its reach.
5. The use of co-op encourages team work while creating a blog is one-man activity.
6. Benefits of S-Builder co-op like action VPs and team success are not available when you use only blog.
7. With the co-op, you are within your business organization (SFI); contrary to blog that will take you away from SFI presence.
8. You can even use the co-op as reward to your affiliates for milestone achievements:
a) They maintain the rank of EA for 3 months and get 2 PSAs extra.
b) They raise a team leader for 3 months and get 2 PSAs extra for each team leader.
c) They become a team leader themselves for 3 months and get 5 PSAs.
d) They get their first customer sale and receive 2 PSAs extra.
e) They personally sponsor 20 affiliates in a month and get 5 PSAs extras
f) They make the top 10, top 20, or top 50 on the leaderboards etc for PSA reward.

In conclusion I will say that creating SFI co-op will give you more value compare to blog.

See you at the top.
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Hi Mary, both SFI co-op and your personal blog are important contributors in this business.
While getting a blog is free, maintaining the blog requires your input and commitment.
Equally, creating a co-op may be free, but you must get S-Builder to get value from it.
Honestly if money is not an issue, the advantages of co-op over blog is as follows:

1. Reduce advertising cost for your business by involving your team members.
2. You spend time setting up and maintaining
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Affiliate since: 08/29/2023, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Osaro's 206 other Ask SC answers

I think both are very different in purpose and function and it is like comparing apples and oranges, but one may support the other.

The main function of your SFI co-op is for the distribution of signups to participants of the co-op, who are also your PSAs, while the purpose is for team building.

On the other hand, the main function of a blog is to create awareness either for yourself or your business, so you are either publishing your business as in your case or publishing your self. So depending on how you want your blog to function, blog can be used to promote your SFI business by using it to generate signups, and to train, guide and support the members of your team.

As you can see from the above, SFI co-op and Blog are different, but you can use your blog to support the success of your SFI co-op if you decide to direct all or some of the signups generated by your blog to your SFI co-op.

Having said that, the one that provides the most value will depend on how you want to run each. If you intend for your blog to be for recruitment, training and support of your team, then it obviously provides more value than SFI co-op. This is because SFI co-op does not generates signups by itself, but just a receiver. More so, a co-op cannot perform other functions a blog does.

You may do without the co-op if you like any way, because the signups you may generate from your blog can also be directed to members of your team by reassignments.

To conclude, I am not suggesting that a co-op should be dispensable, but that there are other ways to direct signups to your team without it because its only function is distribution.

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I think both are very different in purpose and function and it is like comparing apples and oranges, but one may support the other.

The main function of your SFI co-op is for the distribution of signups to participants of the co-op, who are also your PSAs, while the purpose is for team building.

On the other hand, the main function of a blog is to create awareness either for yourself or your business, so you are either publishing your business as in your case or publishing your
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Affiliate since: 09/26/2014, Power Rank: 274 | Read Keith's 2 other Ask SC answers

This is a good question. Both methods are valuable for gaining more sign-ups and therefore both should be employed in building your business. However, the question is: "...which will provide the MOST value." In order to answer this question properly, we must define what is meant by value. The value of something is its relative worth, importance, or usefulness. The fact is that a co-op offers one kind of worth where a blog offers another.

In a co-op you are joining forces with others on your team to purchase advertising with the goal of attracting new sign-ups to SFI. Your success will vary depending on the effectiveness of the ads you run. Ads, in general, must be brief and to the point, highlighting the benefits of SFI. Many times people will sign up with SFI due to a well written ad, but once they get on the affiliate site their perception changes because of the immensity of material they are faced with. At first sight, and without patience and desire, the SFI website can be overwhelming. Writing a blog is a different way of advertising.

When one starts a blog, the goal is the same as for a co-op; to attract new sign-ups. However, with a blog you have the opportunity of attracting long-term readers, that is, if you have something interesting to say. Unlike ads, with a blog you can develop ideas, tell stories, and give illustrations about the benefits of SFI. You can talk about TripleClicks, PriceBenders auctions, games and contests, as well as the compensation plan. In this way, it can be more effective in enticing people to become affiliates. When they finally join and enter the affiliate site, they will already have an idea of what to expect because of what they learned from your blog, and perhaps, be less intimidated and find it easier to get started with their new business.

So, to answer the question, in my opinion a blog offers more value. You may attract fewer PSAs, but those you DO attract may tend to be more active.
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This is a good question. Both methods are valuable for gaining more sign-ups and therefore both should be employed in building your business. However, the question is: "...which will provide the MOST value." In order to answer this question properly, we must define what is meant by value. The value of something is its relative worth, importance, or usefulness. The fact is that a co-op offers one kind of worth where a blog offers another.

In a co-op you are joining forces with
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Affiliate since: 02/16/2014, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Philippus's 100 other Ask SC answers

The advantages of forming an advertising co-op come in the form of savings on advertising costs for everyone involved in the co-op, because of sharing the costs or by having more resources available for advertising. Mr Gery Carstens also stresses the importance of advertising co-ops. We however have to differentiate between SBuilder Co-op of SFI and your own SFI advertising co-op.Some of the authors could not differentiate between the two.

Participation in SFI’s SBuilder Co-op will bring in some PSA’s and PRM’s by itself every month you have shares. On the other hand, your own advertising co-op won’t bring in any affiliates on it’s own. You have to get signups by other means like purchasing them from ECA’s at TripleClicks, buying some shares in SFI’s SBuilder Co-op or by promoting your SFI business through advertising of your gateways on- and off-line, promoting your website, maintaining a blog, promoting on social media,etc. Your advertising co-op is just a means to maybe share the advertising costs and manage the division of the signups between all the participants in the co-op.

Starting and maintaining a blog is a totally different component of your SFI business and equally as important as having your own co-op. As mentioned above, maintaining a blog can be and should be used as a means to promote your business and recruiting new signups for your team. But you have to find a way to drive traffic to your blog, whether it is by way of promoting it actively or posting articles of value with good content on it so that the search engines’ crawlers can find your blog and rank it high on their pages. That way people will find it easily when they search.

Use both components in your business and you will get a lot of value.

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The advantages of forming an advertising co-op come in the form of savings on advertising costs for everyone involved in the co-op, because of sharing the costs or by having more resources available for advertising. Mr Gery Carstens also stresses the importance of advertising co-ops. We however have to differentiate between SBuilder Co-op of SFI and your own SFI advertising co-op.Some of the authors could not differentiate between the two.

Participation in SFI’s SBuilder Co-op will
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Affiliate since: 12/18/2011, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Manohar's 240 other Ask SC answers

Dear Mary
Creating your own SFI Co-op and starting a blog about SFI are two different things and they have different advantages/disadvantages and have provide different values.

1. Creating your SFI Co-op:

You can and must start your own SFI Co-op, but it will be meant for the members of your own SFI team where you can all pool your efforts/money/resources to attract new affiliates from all over the world and distribute among yourself depending upon who has contributed how much. It has advantage for the whole team of active members and provide value to all participating members.

2. Starting a blog about SFI

The main advantage of this blog will be possible only if most of the active members of your team participate on the comment wall & start asking you queries and read your blog regularly. You can also use your blog to advertise your SFI and TripleClicks business by posting relevant banners and then exposing your blog on traffic exchanges and other advertising places.

In a way both are equally good. You only need to use them correctly. Wish you all the best in your SFI business, Mary !
Cheers, Have a nice day !!

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Dear Mary
Creating your own SFI Co-op and starting a blog about SFI are two different things and they have different advantages/disadvantages and have provide different values.

1. Creating your SFI Co-op:

You can and must start your own SFI Co-op, but it will be meant for the members of your own SFI team where you can all pool your efforts/money/resources to attract new affiliates from all over the world and distribute among yourself depending upon who has contributed how
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