Joint Venture Tip - Do Your Homework!
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 4:46 pm by Sarah Holland, AC Staff Writer
Before you start a JV you have to set goals that make sense for your business. Take into consideration your experience, the maturity of your product, and how stable your online income is right now.
If you’re struggling with monthly cash flow and have to scramble to pay bills, it’s not the time to embark on a full-blown JV. You can’t expect a JV to work an overnight financial miracle for you. There are costs associated with planning and executing a JV, and you need to be prepared to bear those costs upfront.
If you are a brand new entrepreneur with no list and no name recognition, you won’t be able to approach the biggest names in the business. You may have to build alliances with list owners who are just a little further along than you are. In fact, your first JV may not be about sales at all - it may be a loss leader to help you build your opt-in list.
Don’t become over-ambitious. We’ll say it again: you can’t hit a dozen targets at once! Keep yourself zeroed in on one or two tightly focused goals.
Set ACHIEVABLE goals. Better to have a goal you know you can reach - such as adding 1000 names to your mailing list while breaking even - than to fail to achieve a million dollar product launch on your first effort. It’s also demoralizing to your JV partners if you talk a big game but sales fall far short. Make the goal challenging - but not so far out of reach that it requires a miracle.
Do your homework. Subscribe to a lot of ezines - as many as you can find in your industry. Take the time to read them and study the offers they send out. Which offers do you find most appealing? Which products do you want to buy right away? Then try to imagine both sides of the deal. What possible attractions did the offer have for the list owner? What kind of offer would have appealed to him or her?
Do some networking before you begin. Make friends with a few list owners who seem open to helping newcomers. Once you have established these relationships, try exchanging notes about the product offers you see every day.
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