The goal of this article is to show you how to start and maintain a successful Joint Venture Program.
1. Choosing Good Partners One of the keys to a successful JV is to pick high quality and high traffic sites with which to partner. In this case, and below, we will be using the example of selling an Ebook that you have created. The topic of this particular Ebook is “Bass Fishing.” An easy way to find potential JV partners is to go to Google and type in the top three terms related to your topic. In our example we type in “Bass fishing” Large mouth Bass and Small mouth Bass. With the size of the Internet, and the searching capabilities of Google, you can write your Ebook on almost any subject and find a large list of websites that cover it. I suggest starting with a group of 50 sites, total, with which to work.
2. Choosing Quality Sites Look for Quality growing sites within your niche market. Once you get a list of sites (I suggest you break them down into groups of five) you should then go to www.Alexa.com and download their toolbar. Check each site’s overall growth rate and use the “wayback” feature to get an idea about how much work they have put into the site. Do not be surprised if there is no data available in a number of the categories; Alexa measures growth rates of only the most rapidly growing sites.
You want to find the highest traffic growth sites possible. Out of your first five sites pick the top two growth sites and put them to the side for future use. Take the other three sites and, using the downloadable Google tool bar (http://toolbar.google.com), find out the page rank of the sites. If the page rank is lower than five I suggest putting them into your “To contact later pile” If the page rank is five or higher put them into your contact file.
3. Contacting Smaller Sites First Contact the smaller slower growing sites first. The reason I suggested, putting the top two growth sites out of each five to the side is because you are much more likely to get a JV and reciprocal link from a smaller site when you are first starting out. Once your site has reached a page rank of five or above AND with at least 10+ back links to quality sites you can then contact the bigger sites. Lets face it, not only do the sites that sell your Ebook want to make a percentage of each sale, they also want to increase their PR ranking and number of quality linking partners. If you go to the bigger sites on day one you are much more likely to get a “no” than if you build your site rankings and links first. Big sites, above all, don’t want to have their rankings go down. So really do your JV homework and linking prior to contacting them. (OK I am finished preaching about that!)
4. Writing a Professional Contact Letter. One of the keys to a successful JV is to prepare a professional contact letter that clearly states the benefits (percentage of sale) that the JV partner will receive. Another key point to state is how many sites you are linked with and their average page ranking. (Remember: five or above). It is imperative that you make your letter short, concise and clearly stating the benefits to them. This is also the time to mention the fact that you will provide the partner site with all the necessary ad copy, pictures, banners and ongoing emails that they will need to promote your product so they can get paid. Before contacting the JV partner you will also want to set up an affiliate program through www.shareasale.com or www.clickbank.com. My point is: the simpler you make things for the JV partners the more positive responses you will have.
5. Making A Show of Good Faith. It is a very good idea prior to contacting potential JV partners to create a link on your site to the potential partner’s site. Try to use their logo or links they have already created. If there is a copyright notice on the site, create a test-based ad instead. Once you set up the link, preferably on your partner’s page or home page at the bottom, you should contact each site. See our www.Home-Business-Success.biz site for an example.
6. Follow up Follow up Follow up. It is extremely important to follow up until you get a definite answer, yes or no. I suggest that you give the prospective JV site a call the day after you send the email. One thing to remember also is that with spam filters today some of your emails will get filtered out. When you call do not be totally shocked to hear they did not receive your email. If they did not receive the email ask them if you can send a copy of the email to them immediately. Give them your email address and ask them to add it to their address book so future emails will not be blocked.
7. Notification of Sales Set up an automated email to notify the JV when they make a sale. It always blows my mind that people don’t do this. Think about it, if you got a short email every time you made a sale for someone you are JV partnered with, wouldn’t it motivate you even more to sell the product? I look forward to opening my email and seeing how many sales I made. It is like Christmas every day! Please do not overlook this simple but important and effective way to motivate your JV partners. Jeff wrote an excellent article on this specific topic which is listed on our website under “Jeff’s Opinion”. It is a great read and contains valuable information. I suggest you check it out.
8. Praise Where Praise Is Due When your JV partner makes their first sale, email them and congratulate them. This is an excellent time to introduce new products for additional ventures as well as a great opportunity to make some suggestions about placement of your ad. Both of you would benefit even more from your ad being placed in the upper left of the JV partners’ website. This is one of the top 3 grossing areas in which to put and ad. Your JV partner might not be as knowledgeable in some areas as you are, so go ahead ask for better positioning and assist them with any relatively quick tasks that you can to help them get more traffic.
9. Starting a Newsletter For Your JV Partners. This is an excellent tool for introducing new products. You can also use this tool to form competition between your JV partners to see who can sell the most of your products. It is also a great idea to include any new partner sites in your newsletter. This will help motivate the new JV partners. A newsletter is great for building a sense of community. When preparing the newsletter try to include at least one article about Internet marketing, one on your niche area, one listing any current specials, one listing new products you are selling for other people/sites and finally one open area for facts, questions, and suggestions from your JV partners. Remember, the more you involve your JVs and include them in decisions, the more they will want to sell your products. Post issues of the newsletter on a page in your site. The more content you have about your niche area the better. Also include any testimonials from both clients and JV partners. Please remember: high quality content is king! People need a reason to keep coming back to your site. Provide them with new articles at least every two weeks. If 100% necessary, you can go to a site such as www.isnare.com and find free articles to use on your website. I strongly suggest, however, that you write as many articles as you can yourself. JV partners like to read what you are all about. You can submit your article to sites such as www.Articlecity.com for more traffic and the search engines love content - the more high quality the better.
10. Contacting Larger Sites. Once your page rank is over 5 and you have 10+ linking partners you are ready to contact the bigger sites. You should adjust your JV request letter to reflect the successes you have had since you started your site. Include links in the letter to your JV newsletter page as well as your testimonial page. Be prepared to pay super-affiliates a higher percentage of each sale. The volume of traffic that the site brings you should make up the lost percentage. For example, if you pay your smaller site JV partners 40%, be prepared to pay the large sites at least 50%. A good incentive for the larger sites is a sliding scale JV partnership, such as: for the first 100 of your Ebooks that they sell they get 50%, for the next 150 they get 55% and so on. The key is volume of sales.
10A Always ask for backlinks.
www.H-B-S.biz is currently looking for high quality JV partners for both products and link exchange. Please contact us at steve@Home-Business-Success.biz if your page rank is 5 or above. We invite niche sites even if not in the Home Business area. If your PR is not five or above but you have some awesome products, we can still cross-sell products. I am not meaning to be rude, but please no contact from link farms. We will not exchange links with you.
Now get out there and kick some butt! You can do it! If you have any questions or comments please feel free to contact me at steve@Home-Business-Success.biz
