Joint Venture Jiu-Jitsu - How To Win As A JV Partner
From Willie Crawford.
When we in Internet marketing speak of „joint ventures” we are often speaking of what Jay Abraham refers to as a „host-parasite relationship.”
One party to the relationship has an asset that another party want to feed off of, generally a large email list, but it could also be a busy website or just that person’s credibility.
The other party in the relationship (the product owner) would then be the parasite, though that label is not as unseemly in this instance.
Realize that you, as the owner of the list in this host-parasite relationship, have the upper hand today. In many niches (Internet marketing in particular) there are MORE people launching products than there are list owners looking for new products to promote.
By the time many Internet marketers build a large list, they have also been around long enough to have become prolific at product creation. When they promote someone else’s product, it is often at the cost of not promotion one of their own ready-to-market products.
That means that YOU as the list owner may have room for negotiating on that joint venture.
My friend Rosalind Gardner first introduced me to the idea that commissions are always negotiable in her best-selling ebook „The Super Affiliate Handbook.”
Rosalind was speaking of affiliate marketing in general, and pointed out that when you are responsible for a major percentage of any affiliate program’s sales, you SHOULD point that out to them and asks for a commission increase. I personally had never considered that prior to reading it in Rosalind’s ebook.
Since then, I’ve discovered that sometimes the product owner may have less room for negotiating on the commissions due to their margins. In those cases there are a TON of other things that you can negotiate on.
Some of them are:
1) Negotiate for a reciprocal mailing to the entire database of buyers. This is a HOT list of people who have often just made a major purchase. They also often have a high degree of trust in the marketer that they just purchased from, so an endorsed mailing of your product can produce incredible conversion rates!
2) Negotiate to be included IN the product. If the person launching the product hasn’t already 100% completed the product, maybe they can include a chapter, or MP3 interview of you, in the product. This puts you in front of those HOT buyers, and in the interview you should be afforded the opportunity to soft-sell one of your products.
3)Negotiate to have your product promoted on the download page. Ask them to promote one of your complimentary products on the download page (using an affiliate link so that they benefit too). Since they have already secured their sale, many marketers launching products will be open to this suggestion.
4) Negotiate to have your product promoted in a follow-up autoresponder. Many marketers follow up with customers via autoresponder, teaching them how to properly use the product, offering them additional bonuses, and offering them complimentary products. Just suggest that they add an email written by you to the end of their autoresponder sequence. It costs that marketer nothing, and if they use an affiliate link in that autoresponder message, it could add thousands of dollars to their bottom line AND to yours.
5) Negotiate for help with your launch 3-6 months later. Negotiate an explicit promise to promote a product that you have in the pipeline. Of course, your product needs to be top quality and something that the market wants and is willing to pay for, but you CAN negotiate a reciprocal promotion.
Point out to them that you are putting off promoting your own product at this time to promote theirs and that you only consider it fair for them to help with your launch later. Many savvy marketers will agree to this.
If you are the one seeking to tap into a large list owner’s list, you do need to make an irresistible offer! You need to answer the unverbalized questions that you now know they are thinking. You may even want to suggest some of the perks that I’ve covered in this article.
Negotiating a joint venture deal does often involve some give-and-take. It is a form of mental jiu-jitsu. Now, you are better equipped to score in that jiu-jitsu match.
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Willie Crawford is a seasoned joint venture broker with 12 1⁄2 years of Internet marketing experience. He is founder and Executive Director of The International Association of Joint Venture Brokers - an organization that many product owners and savvy affiliates use to announce and track product launches. Get a free Silver IAJVB membership today at: https://IAJVB.ORG
To help you succeed Willie has created The Internet Marketing Inner Circle, a membership site where he frequently brainstorms solutions to problems such as those discussed in this article. Join that discussion for your success at TheInternetMarketingInnercircle.