Joint Ventures

Joint Ventures are an incredibly powerful way to get a lot of immediate traffic to your site, and sales for your products. Joint ventures are basically where two people (or more) come together, share their assets or resources, and come out with more than they had before, ie more cash in most cases, so both parties benefit.

Joint venture partners will usually have one of two things. Either a product to sell, or people to sell to, such as a database of subscribers. Therefore if, for example, you've just launched a hot new product, and you want to reach a large number of people, you could offer 50%+ commissions on every sale that is generated, and target people in the same niche with a large list. This is effectively a win-win situation for both parties because you will benefit from selling more products, and the marketer will receive 50% of every sale generated just from sending out one single email to their database of subscribers.

Another example could be if you have two different products, but two similar sized lists. For example, let's say that you both had a list of 10,000 people you can email to. You could simply set up a deal whereby you will both email your list recommending the other person's product. This should create more sales for both of you. As you can see this is an extremely powerful form of marketing, and the best thing of all is that it's completely free.  

Let's talk about how you actually go about creating these joint venture deals. Firstly before you even think about approaching potential joint venture partners, you need to think about what your targets and expectations are from a potential joint venture deal. This could be a sales or profit figure, or you may simply want to get your product out there if it's relatively new. You should also think about what you have to offer, whether it's a generous commission, or recurring commissions from each sale for example. Top marketers with large lists get proposals every day so make yours stand out, with an outstanding product, or very high commissions to make it worth their while.

So how do you find these successful marketers? Well there are a few ways. My first piece of advice would be to subscribe to as many newsletters and ezines as you can. Read their emails, and see which ones are offering good articles, useful information or quality products to their subscribers. You want to find joint venture partners you can trust, and who are respected by their subscribers, so this is a great way to weed out those that are simply full of hype.  

Another good place to look is through specialised joint venture sites. These act as a marketplace where people seeking joint venture deals can come together and find other joint venture partners. There are more and more of these sites cropping up, but the best one I've come across is JVAlert. It's not cheap, but here you will find some of the most famous internet marketers on the planet, most of whom have enormous lists. 

One free alternative, and generally just a brilliant internet marketing forum, is the Warrior Forum. Here you can find dedicated sections of the forum devoted to joint ventures, where you can advertise what you have to offer a potential partner. There are some very knowledgeable people on this forum, some of whom have very large lists, so this is a great place to find joint venture partners.

Another obvious way is through the search engines. You could search for "internet marketing gurus" for example, which would give you the sites of the some of the bigger players with the large lists. You could also search for "_____ newsletter or ezine" where _____ is your website niche.

When you have identified some well-respected potential joint venture partners, go to alexa.com or ranking.com and see how popular their site is. Also read subject-related forums and see what other people are saying about this marketer. If they have a large established site, with a lot of traffic (and therefore most likely a large list), and a lot of other people have good things to say about this marketer, then this sounds like an ideal joint venture partner.

I recommend trying to build up a relationship with a potential partner before you even mention your joint venture offer. For example, ask them how they got started in internet marketing, or what plans they have for the future. After you've built up just a basic relationship via email, you will have a higher chance of your offer being accepted, because the marketer knows you, even if it is only via a few email communications.

Then it's just a case of offering the deal and making it happen. As I mentioned earlier you should make your offer as appealing as possible, as serious credible marketers will only send out emails to their list maybe no more than once or twice a week, so there has to be a real incentive for them to accept your offer. It should be both financially profitable, and easy to carry out.

You don't need to make any joint venture deals full business arrangements, unless it's a major long-term deal, for example, but it's important to follow up and keep in constant touch with your partners to make sure that they have carried out their side of the deal.

Just one successful, well-executed, and profitable joint venture deal can lead to lucrative future deals with that partner, and also enhances your reputation, helping you get future deals with other marketers.