Leverage Your Way to Profit with Joint Ventures!

You can't conduct business on the internet for very long without hearing the term "Joint Venture", but do you really understand them or how and why a Joint Venture works?

In broad, simple terms -- a Joint Venture is partnering with others to create a win/win situation for everyone involved.

But how do you put that into action?

How do you identify a good Joint Venture situation? Where do you find the heavy hitters? How do you approach a potential Joint Venture partner? How do you structure the partnership so that everyone wins? And of course … where do all the deals take place?

At the very heart of Joint Ventures - what makes them work, and why they are more effective than other marketing strategies - is something called leverage. So understanding leverage is the key to transforming great ideas into tangible success.

Joint Ventures are a way to leverage someone else's money, customers, opt-in lists, marketing muscle, credibility, products, influence, whatever - to create benefit for both.

The most sought after benefit is probably immediate revenue and profits. But that's only one goal and your aim might be to:

Build your credibility,
Increase your subscriber base,
Increase brand awareness,
Reduce or share certain costs,
Reduce or share your workload,
Gain valuable information or skills,
Or any number of other objectives.

The following examples have been included to spark your imagination. Whatever you do, don't be limited by them. They are just examples!

Most joint ventures are unique, and the best joint ventures will be created by applying your own imagination and creativity to form the best win/win situation for you and your JV partners.

Each of the following is just that, an exchange of one partner's assets for another - to the benefit of both.

#1 Trade for advertising

This could be a straight swap with you running a free Ad for someone in your newsletter, in exchange for them running your Ad in theirs. You each get exposure to a new list of viewers at no cost.

Don't publish a newsletter? Trade a copy of your product for an ad in someone else's newsletter, or offer to promote their newsletter from your web site.

Alternatively, you might negotiate a free Ad from a publisher by offering a percentage of sales from the Ad, instead of paying the publisher's normal advertising rate.

#2 Trade for links

A link swap is probably the simplest form of Joint Venture. Very easy to arrange and to implement. Banner Ads can be swapped in the same way.

#3 Trade Web-site or Newsletter Content

This can be as simple as allowing a newsletter(s) to publish your articles in exchange for the free publicity that will result. You can also trade your articles for articles from other authors.

An article that solves some problem can be a valuable resource for someone else to offer their visitors. Beyond the free publicity you receive, the article can link to an autoresponder series that offers more free information on the same or related topic, and upsells your related product.

If you have a useful tool that is accessible from a web form, you could ask others to link to the web page from their site, as a helpful resource for their visitors, or even allow them to "wrap" your web page in a frame on one of their web pages, so that it appears they are offering the resource directly.

#4 Co-Create a Product

You could co-author a book, or co-create a software product, or a service. Profit splits can be tailored to recognize the amount of contribution of each contributor. jvAlert.com, itself, is an example of this type of co-creation.

#5 Trade Reprint Rights to Information Products

Reprint rights can be purchased for many products, but these rights are much more valuable when fewer people have the rights to any given product. If you do not normally offer reprint rights to your product, those rights can be a very attractive asset to trade for the reprint rights to another product.

#6 Trade a Product/Service for a Product/Service

For instance, one "netpreneur" recently advertised a Joint Venture opportunity where they were looking for someone to do a voice over (to read and record a short script of 300-400 words), in exchange for a piece of software, an ebook, and some SEO consulting.

#7 Cross Promote a Product(s)

Find a product(s) that targets your own niche. Offer to promote the other's product in exchange for the other party promoting yours. To make this work - to insure that each party receives the full effort of the other - commissions are exchanged based on the amount of product sold.

That way, if you get unsatisfactory results from the other party's promotion of your product - you still reap the benefit of commissions from your promotion of their product.

#8 Listing In an E-book for Promotion

You've seen the e-books that consist of interviews of respected "experts" in a given market. The author's product consists entirely of content provided by another. What was the benefit to the person being interviewed? Why did they consent to the interview? They get exposure, and their interview is chock full of links to their related products. The interview becomes one large sales letter.

The author gets free content for their book, and draws on the name and reputation of the person(s) being interviewed to increase sales. The more sales, the more advertisements are distributed, so everyone benefits from promoting the book.

#9 Customized E-book for Giving It Away

In a variation of the above, the links in a book can be "re-branded", so that each promoter gets credit (and thereby commissions) for the sales made from any links in copies of the book that they distribute.

These are often made available to endorsers to distribute free to their lists, with the links re-branded so that the endorser gets credit for any sales made from the distribution of the free book to their list.

#10 Product Review for a Link

Need inbound links to your web-site? Offer to review a product and supply a testimonial, in exchange for a link from the testimonial. You reap the benefit of the inbound link to improve search engine rankings, increased exposure, and possibly even a little additional traffic from those that follow the link.

#11 Trade Autoresponder Ads

Whether you already have an auto-responder series in place that could be used as a vehicle to promote another's product, or you have to create the auto-responder series specific to this purpose, this is a great way for two entrepreneurs to cross-promote each other's product.

Both partners advertise a free resource (their auto-responder series). Since it is free, and has perceived value, the response to these ads is high. The auto-responders then up-sell the other partner's product, and each partner benefits from their own sales of the others' product.

... and the list goes on!

In fact, this list started out as 30 individual bullet items, and was edited like crazy. Some of these you have seen, but didn't recognize them as Joint Ventures. Or, if you did, maybe you didn't see any way you could put together a similar arrangement.

There are any number of ways to leverage other's assets to benefit your sales efforts. The trick is to find partners with a reciprocal need, and to find or create a way to satisfy that need - so that it is a win/win situation.

At jvAlert.com, you will be able to search for existing Joint Venture offers, post your own offers for others to respond to, and participate in the member's only forum to get fresh ideas or have your own ideas critiqued.

Leverage Your Way to Profit with Joint Ventures!

by Sid Hale