Affiliates & Joint Ventures
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Ben Moskel is a true super affiliate minus the ego that usually goes along with that title. Ben has recently done a number of appearances at large affiliate conferences in addition to occasionally taking the stage to lecture at seminars and workshops. The above interview covers managing affiliates, keeping them motivated, and touches on pay per click marketing so you may have seen it in the “Pay Per Click” section of the training grounds and other appropriate sections as well.
Recruiting JV Partners
There are two types of people who are going to greatly increase your chances of getting your site seen by the masses. These two types of people are often confused with one another and I want to start this section off by helping you make the distinction.
First type of person: A Joint Venture Partner
Second type of person: An Affiliate
Joint Venture (JV) partners are people who you decide to work with for the long term. A joint venture is not getting someone to drop an email promotion to their list of newsletter subscribers. A joint venture is not someone running a Google AdWords campaign for your product. No, no, no! You see, a JV is much much more than that…
When you have a true JV, it’s a partnership that will last for a long time to come and will produce dramatic long term results. A joint venture would be if you team up with another marketer to produce a website and product together.
A joint venture could even be stretched a bit further to consider a contribution made by one marketer towards another marketer’s project (i.e. if I compiled a series of audio interviews with several well known ‘experts’ in a particular field one might be able to argue that I’m joint venturing with each one of the contributing experts).
I would even consider someone who takes major action to help you ‘launch’ your site a JV partner. I’m talking about more than just promoting the site for you.
Here’s a more specific example. A JV partner signs up for your two-tier affiliate program and lets you know he wants to seriously build up his downline before the launch. He explains that he would like to use some of your content to attract some of his friends in the industry to sign up beneath him so he can make 2nd-tier commissions. You give him special permissions and he keeps up his end of the deal and builds up his downline, at the same time building your affiliate base.
This is what many JV Brokers do in the internet marketing industry to include people like Mike Merz and Reed Floren, two friendly fellas who can really help you have an explosive launch.
Joint Ventures can significantly help you increase your bottomline profits in several ways, but before we go any further I just wanted to clear up the confusion and common misconceptions many people have as to what a JV really is!
A JV is not an affiliate promotion to an email list or a link from someone’s website to your product. A joint venture is much more than that. It’s much like a long term partnership between you and another party where the two (or more) of you combine to form a new entity.
Rewind
Sometimes joint ventures are the best way to start out.
Let’s rewind a few years back…
I was an eBay PowerSeller and had a strong knowledge of how to put together an advertisement for eBay auction purposes. I also knew a little bit of HTML & coding for creating my own ads, but for the most part I had my minions do the dirty work for me 
.
I came across another eBay PowerSeller who had a great strategy for getting social network users over to his eBay auctions. We chatted a bit and got aquainted over a several week period.
Together we “Joint Ventured” and created a new partnership, a legal entity, a.k.a. an S-Corporation, and we named it “Black & Blue Marketing, Inc.”. Using this partnership, we then created a membership site all about generating traffic using social networks and Web 2.0 marketing techniques.
The deal we put together consisted of my partner being responsible for all of the content creation since he was the “knowledge” of the two of us when it came to the actual nitty gritty of the first membership site we created.
I, on the other hand, was responsible for the more technical stuff such as putting the site together, installing the necessary scripts, writing the sales page, recruiting affiliates, etc…
I was the one who told him we could take his knowledge and put it into an information product and sell it for top dollar. He did all the dirty work surrounding content creation for the eBooks we created together. I did all the dirty work as far as setting up the site and doing the “marketing” related tasks.
This is what a joint venture really is and it’s a great way to get your foot in the door if you can offer a particular skill or have a detailed knowledge in a certain niche.
Relying on others can be scary, but be sure to use your own better judgment as far as who is possible JV material and who is not.
Take the time to actually get to know someone before you do a joint venture with them and, more importantly, don’t rush in and spend loads of cash on a joint venture with someone you hardly know.
This business is all about building strong relationships and the same goes for creating joint ventures with other like-minded entrepreneurs. Introduce yourself, build a rapport, and then and only then start looking at JV options.
If you’re not yet participating in the ProFromGo online discussion forums, you are already missing out on one more opportunity to meet your next possible JV partner who could possibly help put a lot of cash in your pocket by filling in the gaps for you.
Take a few minutes to go introduce yourself to the other PFG members at our private member’s only discussion forum. Also, create a member’s profile to let everyone know a bit more about yourself!
Here’s the link to the forums: Discussion Forums
Here’s the link to edit your PFG member’s profile: Edit/Update Your Public Profile
