Joint Venture Formula Revealed

Edition #44 – 5/3/2006

Are you interested in discovering the formula for a $100,000 product launch?

Well it just so happens that I did $100k of sales in one week during my recent product launch… AND it just so happens that I’m going to tell you how I made it happen!

To put it plainly, it happened as a result of strategic JV’s.

Now, if you’re already an experienced internet marketer, you’re probably thinking you already know all about JV’s. On the other hand, if you’re new to this business, you may be asking yourself… what IS a JV?

Regardless of which pair of shoes you’re in, please keep reading because I’ve got news for you!

First for those of you who are new to this…

What is a JV?

JV stands for joint venture, and it’s a broadly used term in the internet marketing world to describe pretty much any form of helping each other out. There are several different types of JV’s. We’re going to look at a few forms of JV’s that were a part of my product launch…

Co-promotion

Seven years ago I worked for a newspaper, and they were constantly doing co-promos to sell more newspapers. For example, they made a deal with a coffee shop to include a newspaper with the purchase of a large coffee.

They sold the newspapers to the coffee shop at a deeply discounted price. While the profits were minimal, it still counted as paid circulation, which is very important in the newspaper business. They also did some promotional advertising within the newspaper itself, which created extra publicity for the coffee shop.

The coffee shop was happy because of the publicity, and because their customers received an extra benefit and incentive to buy coffee. The newspaper was happy because of the added sales volume.

It was a win/win situation.

In my recent product launch, co-promotion was involved. You might have noticed some “unadvertised bonuses” on the download page. Some of those were contributed by my JV partners. I agreed to add the promotion for their site, and they agreed to promote my launch.

Care to guess how much it cost me to land those JV’s? Zero. That’s right, it didn’t involve any money out of my pocket and that’s part of the beauty of JV’s.

Endorsements and Affiliates

When most internet marketers hear the term “JV”, they instantly think of email/newsletter endorsements. That’s probably because 99% of the JV proposals they receive are asking for just that: an email promo to their lists. Some would say that’s not really a JV, and I would agree to a point.

What makes it less like a “JV” is the fact that there is typically not any work done “together”, and the marketer is getting commission for the sales generated by their list, so it’s really just a form of affiliate marketing.

Regardless of what you want to call it, it’s a profitable and very effective form of marketing. Again this was a huge part of my successful launch, and again do you know how much it cost me to land these JV’s?

Nothing up front. Of course my affiliates made good commissions, but it required ZERO investment out of my pocket because they are paid for their performance after a sale is made (after I’ve already collected the money).

Joint Business Ventures

This is what I would consider to be the purest form of a JV. It’s exactly what it sounds like; a joint venture.

When considering whether you want to form a strategic partnership, a good place to start is by examining your own weaknesses. In what areas of business do you lack?

Perhaps you’re not a good copywriter, so it would make sense to partner with someone with excellent copywriting skills. Or maybe you’ve got the marketing skills, but you don’t have your own product to promote.

These are exactly the kind of things I looked at when I formed a partnership with a programmer for my recent software product. I had the idea for the product, but I don’t know much PHP code, and I don’t have time to do tech support. So it made sense to partner with a programmer who was also able to provide customer support.

Likewise, my partner on this project is a great programmer, but lacks in the area of marketing, which is my expertise. In this case, we actually share ownership of the business. Sharing a business is kind of a big commitment, but it’s also a great way to make more money than you would be able to make on your own.

Once again, how much did it cost me to strike up this deal with the programmer? Zero. There was no investment required, because we share the profits only after the sales are made.

Zero Investment Required

Hopefully by now you can see that this is something that can be done WITHOUT having a lot of capital to start with.

In most businesses, it takes money to make money. In fact, that’s the way it is for most of my other online ventures. For example pay-per-click marketing. I make a ton of commissions by promoting products as an affiliate via PPC marketing, but that wouldn’t be possible without investing money into those PPC ads.

However, JV’s allow you to generate money through work without an initial investment. The only money we spent on the Motivated marketing System was for the domain and a script to run the site. The rest was pure sweat equity. And don’t get me wrong–there was a lot of work involved; over a month of hard work.

So if you’re looking for a way to make a LOT of money, and you DON’T have a lot to invest, but you ARE willing to work hard… JV’s may be your answer!

Yes there really is a “JV Code” and if you stay tuned to Eric’s Tips, I’m going to reveal how you can learn to crack that code for your own business.

That’s all for today.