Let’s move on now to the fifth and final part of this series. Of the big five (list, customers, affiliates, long-term customers, JV’s), your joint venture prospects and partners will likely be the least numerous of all your resources, but with the most stopping power per person. When you think that some of your JV’s might end up being seen by lists of ten to a hundred thousand or more, it suddenly becomes clear how important this is. Lets look at where to take your joint ventures with regards to the other four resources, starting with affiliates.
Turning Your JV’s Into Affiliates.
First up, you should keep in mind that most joint ventures that you receive after launching your fist two products will come from your affiliates anyway. As far as those who don’t, they’re really glorified affiliates only. As with the difference between customers and long term customers, you’ll find that even with those who aren’t your affiliates, you’ll be in contact with them pretty frequently anyway, whether they’re on your instant messenger list, or you just fire emails at each other when you each launch new products.
Building up a circle of contacts that act in this way is extremely powerful in itself, just it takes a little more time to set up when it comes to product launches. Maintenance won’t be a problem if you’re using good affiliate software, so in this respect, keep your joint venture prospects separate. They’re something special, and you’ll likely find yourself in contact with them even more so than your long term customers, and they will be your first line of attack when launching future products. So when it comes to turning JV’s into regular affiliates, don’t bother, because they’re all that and more already.
Turning Your JV’s Into Your List.
Secondly, turning joint ventures into your list. Not something to dwell on, because your joint ventures shouldn’t be a list themselves. They should be a selection of business people that have access to resources that are beneficial to your business, not a bunch of e-mail addresses that you fire out ads to. Some may be on your list already, those that like to see what you’re getting up to and when, and some may not. Either way, it doesn’t matter, and you should never be thinking of your joint ventures as just a list of e-mail addresses. Things should be far more personal than that, at a cost of set up time to you, but producing some major profits and massive resource building potential.
Not Turning Your JV’s Into Customers.
Moving straight on to the section I’ve been itching to tell you about, and that’s moving joint ventures over to become your customers and long term customers. It’s possible that some may have bought from you before, or even learned how to promote from you if your products are geared towards that way of thinking, however, your joint venture partners are way too important to go advertising to unless it’s in a ‘hey check it out, thought you might find it interesting’ kind of way.
Let me tell you a little story about how not to do this. I used to work with a few people when I first started, and we were getting along fine, we created a few sites, experimented and compared notes a lot, and things were going great until I decided to branch out on my own. At regular intervals over the next three or four months whilst I was working on building my affiliate software, I started to receive interesting e-mails and messages from these people. Now understand that we were business colleagues, kind of like the people you talk to and hang around with and take your lunches with and had a laugh with at work.
Unfortunately that all changed pretty quickly, and although I was still getting the personal one on one deals from these people, they were trying to hard sell me. You can imagine logging on to the net and receiving mails or Instant Messages from one of your old friends that contained sales letter patter and hard sell messages. This is not how joint ventures are supposed to be carried out. It’s inevitable, once you’ve been in contact with people for a period of time, you find yourself more relaxed and chatting more like friends, even though you both know business is the underlying subject.
So here’s the deal, no matter how short of cash you get, no matter how much you think they’re going to spend, don’t hard sell or give your joint ventures sales pitches. Remember what they’re there for. Mutual deals that benefit both your products and businesses. Remember, this doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t tell them about your new stuff or a new product someone has released, but watch the way you go about it.
It’s immediately obvious once you’ve been around a while when someone you know is trying to sell something to you in this manner. Sure, contact me, tell me about your new stuff, and show me the new mastermind you joined, tell me how it’s going and what the word is on the net, ask me if I’m interested in joining you, not a problem, but the moment you start talking to me about how much of a stunningly amazing deal I’m getting, and how it’s going to EXPLODE my sales by 400% overnight, guaranteed! Expect me to raise an eyebrow at you, turn around, and walk away. Moral of the story, watch what you’re saying and how you’re saying it if you want to keep your joint venture partners close.
To Sum Up…
Alright, do you now see how each resource can go on to become relevant in multiple ways and double the promotion power for you? At the same time you have to be very careful not to go over the top, or make a wrong move when trying to cross your resources over. If you follow these traffic secrets, the amount and quality of your free traffic is sure to increase exponentially!
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