Joint Ventures – Three Best Practices for Online Marketing Success

Everyone seems to talking about the advantages of doing joint ventures these days. After all, becoming involved in a joint venture can not only be lucrative, it can increase your visibility, add to your product line and best of all, can lead to powerful relationships with your joint venture partners.

But how do you attract quality joint venture partners, especially if you’re just getting started? And, if you are more experienced, how do you know which projects are worth your time?

I’ve been involved in many joint ventures, from product creation to organizing teleseminar series with a dozen speakers and partners to hosting and marketing a live event, which attracted people from all over the United States and Canada.

Along the way, I’ve been fortunate to work with some of the biggest names in online marketing: Dr. Joe Vitale, Mark Joyner, Tellman Knudson, Kendall Summerhawk, Denise Wakeman, Kathleen Gage, and Willie Crawford just to name a few.

Here are three of the most important lessons I’ve learned, best practices, that if you follow them, will serve you well as you begin to think about how to implement joint ventures in growing your business:

One: Give before your expect to receive – Many beginners make the mistake of expecting they can just contact someone out of the blue, telling them that they have this great product and if the potential jv partner will simply send out an email and promote the product to their list, they will give them half of all the sales.

This approach is a recipe for disaster, guaranteed. Here’s the bottom line: People who have an email list don’t need you or your product. They can simply send out an email anytime they choose with an offer for one of their own products or services and keep 100% of the sales.

Here’s the thing: joint ventures are all about relationships. You have to give before you can receive. If you want someone to be a potential joint venture partner, get on their newsletter list, purchase their products, attend their teleseminars, retweet their stuff, comment on their Facebook and blog posts and go out of your way to meet them at a live event. But be sure to add value, and don’t comment on their blog just for the sake of getting your name in front of them.

Two: Grow your email list – if you haven’t put any work into growing your email list (and yes, it’s work!) then start today. Nothing, and I repeat, nothing, will give you more standing in attracting joint venture partners than having a quality email list that is highly targeted and responsive.

And keep in mind, it’s not all about gigantic numbers. Twenty-five hundred to five thousand targeted subscribers who know, like and trust you and who are responsive when you offer them a product or service are worth much more that a general list of twenty or even fifty-thousand people who could care less about your product or service.

Three: If you already have a list and have some visibility in your marketplace, chances are, you are already receiving offers to become involved in joint ventures. Make certain that the offers you do accept are worth the time and effort you will have to expend to make the project work.

There is nothing more frustrating than having someone email you and ask to talk with you by phone about a joint venture idea, but when you actually get on they phone with the person, they just ramble on without any clear idea regarding a specific project. In fact, they expect you to use your time to brainstorm with them about how you might work together!

Conversely, when you want to approach someone about a joint venture, have a specific, clearly laid-out idea in mind that benefits both parties.

Joint ventures can be a very fast and profitable way to increase your online business, whether you want to grow your list, create new products, launch a live event or workshop or all of these. The key is in being prepared: do your homework, create genuine relationships and craft a win-win joint venture proposal.