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11 Joint Venture Ideas To Get You Started On The Fast Track To Quick Profits

by Liz Tomey

1. Find someone in your target market that either publishes an e-zine or has a website. Ask them if they would like to join your affiliate program and promote your offers in their e-zine, or on their site. In return, you'll give them the product at no charge, and if you have an e-zine or website, offer to promote something for them. Remember to make it an irresistible offer for them!

2. Use your own visitors and subscribers. Give them something free that has some sort of small advertisement of yours on or in it. It doesn't have to be a flashing sign. Just a subtle ad with your URL or subscribe e-mail placed somewhere visible. By using this method you could have your little ad all over your entire market! It takes a snowflake to start a snowball! Your visitors and subscribers will be happy to get something for free, and they'll be even happier that it doesn't have ads ALL over it. DON'T get greedy. Give a little and get a lot! Find someone else in your market that does the same thing. Offer to give their "giveaways" out if in return they give your "giveaways" out.

3. If you can't beat 'em...Join 'em! Round up several others in your market who you think there would be a mutual benefit to partner with. Have a "Joint Venture team". Your team could pool your resources and beat the "big guys" in your market. Those in your "Joint Venture team" could cross promote each other's products, services, and/or programs also!

4. Find 5, 10 or however many e-zine publishers who are in your target market. Offer them all discounts to their subscribers on your offer. Give them your product for free also. Let them know that you are partnering with other e-zine publishers for your discounted offer, and that you will give the e-zine publisher who produces the most result a bonus. Just make sure your bonus is GOOD! Make it something unique and semi-personal. I've always thought when rewarding someone I do business with that I shouldn't give them a "business gift". Try giving a semi-personal personal gift. You may not really know that person, but there are sites online that will tell you the gifts women like and the gifts men like. Use those sites to find semi-personal gifts (please note that this does say semi-personal. Business is business, so make sure your gift/bonus is appropriate).

5. I saw a site the other day at: ThankYouAds.com. This is a WONDERFUL idea. The basics of the concept are placing other people's ads on your Thank You page. What a great time to send your customer off to your most trusted JV partner while the customer still has their credit card out! You'll want to be careful when doing this though. Make sure you've already sold that customer all that you can before passing them to your Joint Venture partner.

6. Contests are a WONDERFUL way to market, and you can conduct them for any type of market. Contact an e-zine publisher or website owner in your market. Offer to hold a contest giving away an item or items you are offering. In return for this, ask that they run your ad, or place your ad on their website. If it's a really good contest, ask that they run your solo ad, or put your ad in a very prominent spot on their site. Another way to use contests is by doing a "contest swap". Let them know you'll promote their contest if they promote yours. If they don't have one offer to come up with one for them. Explain the benefits behind having a contest. Offer to have one for them. Let them know you'll donate the prize (it doesn't have to be anything really expensive) if they would like, and show them how to set it up. This is relationship building at its best. The next time you approach that person with a JV they will trust you because you were willing to go out of your way to help them.

7. We all know that article writing is one of the best ways to market. You show people that you know something about the topic you are writing on, you are automatically giving them something (your article), and it's a viral way of marketing. Your article could go all OVER the place. Online and offline. If you know an e-zine publisher or website owner who publishes articles on your market topic, ask if they would like to swap articles. You promote their article, and they will in turn promote your article. The best thing about this idea is you can do it with many people, and you can do it over and over by writing new articles.

8. Another writing idea would be for you to write a column on your market and offer it to an e-zine publisher or website owner. I would suggest that you write unique content for each e-zine publisher or website owner if you are wanting them to advertise you or for you. I know e-zine publishers and website owners would go for this idea because as an e-zine owner and website owner, I am currently seeking several people to write original content for my many sites and e-zines in exchange for free advertising.

9. Swap business cards with others in your market. Your hand out your joint venture partners business cards and they hand out yours. This is just like word of mouth advertising, which is the best kind around. Business cards are a wonderful way to put your advertisement in someone's hands. Putting it in their hands in one of the keys to selling.

10. If publishing and e-book, you could offer part of your e-book for free. Offer one chapter to potential customers, so that they can "test" your e-book. Find other e-book publishers in your market and ask if they could do the same with their e-books. If they agree you could advertiser their free chapter, and ask that they advertise your free chapter in return. This can also be done with membership sites. Offer a 3-day free trial. Find others in your market that offers memberships to their sites. You advertise their free trial, and ask that they advertise yours. What about software? Many people offer free trials for software. If you offer a free trial to your software, go to download.com. Search for software related to your market. When you find software that isn't in competition with yours, but that would compliment the other person's software, contact them and ask to do a JV where you promote their software and they promote yours! I'm sure you can think of a way to do this with your product or service.

11. Survey swap? You bet! Surveys are hot right now. Sometimes you have to offer your visitor or subscriber a little bit of an incentive to do it, but the information you will get is well worth it. Find others in your market that asks their visitors or subscribers to take surveys. Let them know that you also ask your visitors or subscribers to do take surveys. Ask if they would put a link to your survey on their site, and in return you could do the same thing. If you are asking for personal information on your survey be sure not to share that with the other website owner. If you do, make sure that it is noted in your privacy policy or you could lose visitors or subscribers!

Liz Tomey has been involved in Direct Mail Advertising since 1998. She runs a network of over 25 sites related to Direct Mail Advertising.

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