Introduction To Affiliate Programs
We have talked about affiliate programs earlier on, in module 1 where you sign up to be some merchants’ affiliate. Similary, if you are the merchant now, selling a product or service, you can make use of this tool to help you increase in your sales.
There are many benefits of having an affiliate program for your product. The first and also one of the most attractive feature of creating an affiliate program is its low cost of setup. The main visible cost is the purchase of an affiliate program system to help you to keep track of your affiliates and the sales they bring in and also, to pay them. You can of course, keep track of your affiliates manually, but the key in internet marketing and your online business is Automation. You want to automate all the processes as far as possible.
Alternatively, you can also list your product with third party affiliate agents where they will manage the payment to your affiliates for you. If you are just starting out, this is a good choice as it takes one important function of your plate, reducing your workload for a start. Also, if you choose to have your product up in the third party affiliate agents, your website is thus listed in their database for affiliate marketers to market your products and when they do, they are indirectly helping you to drive more traffic to your site.
When you create an affiliate program for your product or services, there is literally little or no advertising cost. In addition, you only pay your affiliates when they make a sale for you, unlike your offline business where you have to hire marketers to market your products and still pay them a fixed salary (in most cases) even if they do not help you to make any sale.
As you should realize by now, creating affiliate programs have more benefits than you can imagine and it will help you to explode the sales of your products. Go ahead and create one for your own product or services today!
Introduction To Online Joint Venture
What is a joint venture?
A joint venture is a personal business association between two parties with a common goal or business venture. It is well-known that just one good joint venture partner can add significant sales and profits to your online business.
The difference between an affiliate and a joint venture partner?
Unlike the regular affiliate marketing, where the affiliates may not be known to the merchant and the only association between the two are purely contractual, a joint venture offers a more personal association between the merchant and joint venture partner.
In many cases, the joint venture partners know each other and want to work with each other.
A joint venture partner is also usually offered higher commissions and free product samples, in addition to extra cash rewards for top JV partners – the reason being many joint venture partners are Super Affiliates and can help you pull in significant sales volume.
So treat JV partners like GOLD!
How to locate potential joint venture partners?
The best way to locate joint venture partners is to be familiar with the specific experts in the niche you are involved in and approach these experts and ask them to JV with you.
Another way to locate joint venture partners online is to go to Google.com and type in the search term related to your niche. If your niche is ‘fly fishing’, type in ‘fly fishing’ in Google and try to contact the webmasters of the top 10 websites listed in Google.
Don’t forget to spend some time searching for JV partners in forums and other online communities.
How to craft a winning joint venture e-mail
A winning joint venture e-mail should be brief but attract the attention of the potential joint venture partner.
Rather than try to explain how to craft a joint venture e-mail, I’ve created a sample joint venture e-mail you can use to approach joint venture partners.
I’ve been using this joint venture e-mail format for years and I can confirm firsthand that IT WORKS!
The sample joint venture e-mail can be found in the Appendix – or simply click here to view the joint venture e-mail.
The best way to approach a potential joint venture partner
To approach a potential joint venture partner successfully, you first need to grab the attention of a joint venture partner – and the best way to achieve this is to first ensure you have a winning product!
When I say a ‘winning product’, I mean a product that is: rich in features and benefits, attractively priced and come with irresistible bonuses.
Needless to say, your ‘winning product’ should be accompanied with an equally ‘winning sales copy’ – since it is the sale copy that has to convince prospects to whip out their credit cards to buy.
If you believe your product is merely ‘average’ and not a ‘winner’ , I recommend you NOT approach BIG TIME joint venture partners and use the traditional affiliate marketing model instead to recruit potential affiliates.
The reason is because you want to leave a great impression in the eyes of your joint venture partners. If you approach them with an ‘average’ product, they will unlikely want to promote it anyway. Offer them a ‘winner’ product and you’ll get a ton of JV partners backing you on your product launch!
Remember, JV partners are Super Affiliates – so save them for your ‘winner’ launch!
How to time your joint venture launch
JV partners are busy people.
Apart from creating and launching their own products, they have to allocate time slots to promote products of other JV partners.
Further, it is very likely there are other product launches around the corner.
What you don’t want to do is clash your product launch what that of other product launches – so be sure to research your niche and find out if other product launches are planned during the period of your own product launch.
In my experience, the best time to contact a JV partner is one month before the launch. In other words, you should contact your JV partner at least 30 days before your planned product launch – ensuring firstly that your product launch date does not clash with that of other product launches.
