©Joanne Zh | Dreamstime.com

If I had to begin my business again from scratch, I would look at forming strategic alliances and seeking joint ventures partners much sooner in my business growth plan. Asking a more successful business owner to help you promote your site or to form an alliance where you both benefit is one of the quickest ways to turbocharge your success, provided it's done correctly.

However, therein lies the problem. Most joint venture requests are made with

absolutely no planning and no forethought. Since I've had an online business for

many years, I get emails every week requesting me to promote or joint partner

with someone in some way. Almost all of the requests are immediately deleted

because the person making the request has simply not done his/her homework and

presents me with, at best, a very ill-conceived plan.

There are a few simple steps you should take BEFORE seeking out any joint

venture partners or strategic alliances. Here are 4 secrets to success in your

joint venture partnership request:

1. Product ties into target market. I'm always getting joint venture

requests from people who have products that make absolutely no sense for me to

promote. The most mismatched request I've gotten for a JV is with a portable

shuffleboard game business owner. No one has joined my list to hear about the

latest in any type of game, and undoubtedly my list members would wonder what

crazy pill I'd taken the day I send out an email to tell them about this

product. It's a complete mismatch for my list.

However, the promoter of this game just didn't get it. He continued to insist

that my list would benefit because everyone needs relaxation time, and this game

would provide that. Wrong, wrong, wrong. His interest in the JV was due to the

fact that I have a large list. A large list doesn't matter if it contains the

wrong target market. For successful joint ventures, approach businesses who

serve the same target market as you and who sell similar products.

2. Reliable tracking software. A second way to get shot down immediately

in your joint venture request is to tell your prospect, "Oh, I'll manually track

your affiliates when they write your name in the 'referred by' box on my order

form." Yeah, right. That NEVER works. The only way I'll joint venture with

anyone is if they are using reliable affiliate tracking software that provides

me with a unique affiliate link that I can use throughout any web pages I create

or emails I might send, as well as permits me to check on my affiliate

commission sales at any time. The most effective and reliable tracking software

that I've found is the affiliate tracking module of

GetMoreClientsCart.com. To successfully make a joint venture request, offer

your JV partner the ability to reliably track his/her success with the joint

venture.

3. Worthwhile commissions. "I'll offer you $2 in commission for every

sale that you make!" While this JV requester thinks this proposal should make me

stop in my tracks and hang onto his every word, a proposal this inconsequential

just isn't worth my time. Your product has to be priced high enough that the

commission option will be worthwhile for your JV partner to promote. To

determine what this might be, take a look around potential JV partner sites. At

what price ranges are their products offered? What commissions are they offering

to their affiliates?

I was in a teleclass recently with a well-known Internet marketer who said he

wouldn't even consider a JV partnership unless he received around $1000 per

sale. In this case, the JV requester's product will need to be priced at least

$2000 in order to award commissions of that magnitude. Can you play at the level

at which you're making your requests? A good JV partnership is born when the

requester and the partner offer similarly priced products and similar commission

structures. Make it worthwhile for your JV partners to promote your product.

4. Conversion rates. The worst thing you can do is say, "I don't know"

when your JV partner asks you the question, "What is the conversion ratio of

your sales letter?" Your JV partner has no desire to be your guinea pig and test

the success of your sales letter for you. You need to know your conversion

numbers before approaching anyone with a JV partnership offer. This means that

you should know that out of X number of visits to your site, Y number buys your

product, i.e. 1 out of every 100 or 50 out of every 3000. The higher your

conversion rate, the more likely someone will accept your offer to joint

venture.

If you don't know the conversion number, try some pay-per-click advertising or

start first with JV partners with smaller lists. This will allow you to tweak

and improve your sales letter page and thus increase your conversion ratio to

better prepare you to make requests to more powerful JV partners.

Joint venture partnerships are a very effective way to rapidly increase your

sales and grow your business. Do your homework and get your plan in the place

now so that you can add this strategy to your marketing arsenal.

Comments or questions? If so, please post them to the discussion forum.