Risks vs. Rewards: Should You Try an Herbalife International Business?

Posted in Herbalife

Herbalife is an international business, with almost two million distributors working in 73 countries. But should you try to market your own Herbalife business internationally?

Of course, at least in some ways your business is already international in scope if you’ve taken it online. There are more than 500 million people in the world who speak English, and the vast majority of them are on the Internet. An English-speaking person in South Africa, for example, is as likely to be able to find your Herbalife online business through an online search as someone in the US.

And two million distributors for a potential 500 million-strong market is a very, very tempting number. If you’re fluent in more than one language, there’s a good chance that you’re adding several hundred million more to that number. So why wouldn’t you want to take your Herbalife business international?

Before making the decision to intentionally go worldwide, though, there are some important things to consider. One of them is language differences.

English is spoken differently in every country where the people speak it. Anyone who’s read Canadian or British English, for example, is familiar with some of the spelling differences. And any American who’s watched British TV knows that sometimes it’s hard to catch exactly what the people are saying – not just because of their accents, but because they’re using colloquialisms that don’t exist in the US.

Of course, most English-speaking people make ample allowances for these differences. A British visitor to an American Herbalife site isn’t likely to think the American is ignorant just because the American doesn’t spell “neighbor” with a “u.” There can be trouble, though, if a British business owner uses words or phrases that other English-speaking countries consider offensive – and vice versa.

Multiply these potential linguistic landmines by the more than twenty countries where English is a primary language, and the potential pitfalls become pretty obvious.

There are two other potential difficulties in taking an Herbalife – or any other network marketing business – international. One, of course, is that each country has its own currency. How many currencies are you willing to deal with, and how are you going to account for the exchange rate?

There are software packages that simplify the process, and many Web businesses require that everyone doing business with them use the same currency – generally the US dollar or the Euro. Still, it’s something to keep in mind.

Finally, different countries use different systems of measurement. You may find that Herbalife is packaged differently – or at least the amount in the packaging is labeled differently – in the different countries where Herbalife is distributed. It’s best to get these kinds of details worked out before going aggressively international with an Herbalife business.

So those are the potential difficulties.

Now let’s remember the potential benefits:

A potential market of hundreds of millions of people. Only two million distributors. And Internet tools that will help you sift, sort, and direct people to your Herbalife business whether they live next door or a few continents away from you.

Really, if a person is sensitive to differences in the way different countries speak and write a given language, it’s quite possible to take an Herbalife business worldwide and do remarkably well.

And if someone only wants to promote their Herbalife business to people in their community, state, or region, it’s entirely possible to do that using geotargeting. You might even be able to create affiliate agreements with Herbalife distributors in other areas where you receive a small percentage of the sales from anyone in their areas who comes to their business through your website!

Yes, there are potential pitfalls to aggressively marketing your Herbalife business worldwide using the Internet. But there are risks involved in anything worthwhile. You took a risk by becoming an entrepreneur; you took other risks when you chose Herbalife from among the many network marketing opportunities out there. Why not, then, take a further risk and put your Herbalife business out there where anyone who speaks your language is likely to see it?

With a market in the hundreds of millions, the risks you’d be taking are more than outweighed by the potential rewards!