ORGANIZE a Joint Venture
If you’ve been an Internet marketer for a while now, you’re probably familiar with the idea of joint venture partnerships. In fact, you may have even been involved with one or more JV partnerships in the past.

Not surprisingly, joint venture partnerships can also be used effectively to drive traffic to blogs; however, doing this correctly requires some thought and a good plan.

In the remainder of part 3, I will detail the 4 essential steps you must take if you want to maximize your chances of:

a) finding a joint venture partner,
b) convincing him or her to work with you,
c) having a successful outcome.

Let’s take a look at how…

Step #1: Create a List of Prospective JV Partners

Remember: the sole purpose of finding a JV partner in this situation is to get traffic.

This means that group of people you’re looking for should:

a) have a means to drive a lot of traffic to your blog; and
b) be willing to do it.

Now, when it comes to finding a joint venture partner, things can get difficult. This is why I suggest that you start by creating a very broad list of potential partners. That way, when the inevitable rejections roll in, you won’t quickly run out of options and get discouraged.

When creating your list, you should always start by combing forums for potential partners. This works especially well if you already post on forums regularly and are well-established in certain forums.

To get started here, you should create a spreadsheet to keep track of potential JV partners. Jot down important notes, such as the URL of their site, their name, their niche, their email address, and their approachability on forums.
Once you have finished locating potential JV partners on forums, you can also look other places. For instance, you might look at websites in your niche and try to find the owner of the site through the “contact us” page.

Note: If you’re into this niche for quite some time, you can easily list top 5-10 authorities of the niche without doing any research. Honestly, these top names are the ones you should be going first.

At the end of this process, you should have a spreadsheet that contains detailed information for at least 10-20 potential JV partners. You should also sort it according to which partners look promising.

Step #2: Come Up with a Pitch

Above all else, coming up with a good pitch is the most important part of finding a joint venture partner.

If you don’t do this part well, it will be all too easy for everyone you contact to decline your offer.

When writing your pitch, there are two important things to do.

1.    The first one is to put yourself in the position of your potential JV partner. Think about who that person is, what she does, and what she sells.

2.    The second thing you must do is think of something tangible and realistic that you can offer that person that she cannot reject.

As far as offers go, you have a lot of options:

>    You can offer to let the person be a guest blogger for your blog.

>    You can be a guest blogger on their blog and provide an exclusive content just for their blog readers.

>    You can offer to give them a portion of the revenue you receive from advertising and sales related to the visitors they send you.

Step #3: Draft a Plan

For each partner who agrees to work with you, you should draft an informal agreement. The purpose of this informal agreement is to ensure that all parties involved with the joint venture have the same expectations of each other and of the outcome.

In this agreement, you should include the following:

1.    An Event Timeline. This will detail what should happen in each phase of the project until it is completed. It will also specifically detail what each person should do.

2.    A List of Desirable Outcomes. This will explain what each party hopes to get out of this venture, so that the other party understands this and can work towards it.

Once you have your plan ready, you are ready to begin the partnership.

Step #4: Communicate with Your JV Partner(s)

Now that you’ve located partners, pitched to them, got successful responses, and drafted a plan, you’re ready to carry out the JV.

The only catch now is that you have to ensure that you continue working towards your goals; and that nothing goes wrong on either site of the JV.

In general, a good way to ensure that this is the case is to keep the lines of communication open. When you have questions for your partner, let her know. Also, let her know that she should feel free to tell you if anything isn’t going well on her side.

At the end of the day, if there’s a problem, you should correct it immediately, rather than letting it linger. And communicating with your partner through the project is the best way to do this.

Conclusion

There are four important steps involved in any successful joint venture partnership.

These also apply to partnerships that are designed to generate blog traffic. When soliciting JV partners and working with them, keep the guidelines in mind that I’ve mentioned here.

If you do this, you’ll be sure to attract more partners; and complete more JVs successfully.

Related Blogging Articles

• Getting to Know the Top Bloggers in Your Niche (best-tutorial.net)
• Guest Blogging For Fame And Fortune (shoutmeloud.com)
• Make Money Blogging (wonkie.com)