Joint Venture vs. Affiliate Marketing Programs

If you’ve begun researching the world of JV marketing, you may find that joint ventures and affiliate marketing are used almost interchangeably in the marketing industry. However, there are significant differences between a true JV partnership and an affiliate marketing structure. This article will go through a few of those basic differences to help you determine which marketing approach is the best choice for your business.

What is Joint Venture Marketing?

A JV marketing partnership involves two or more businesses coming together with the intent of promoting one another’s goods or services to build a bigger profit and a healthier bottom line. In some cases, the businesses may be equally matched in terms of size and business volume. Other times, a smaller business may connect with a larger one in hopes of attracting new customers through the larger base of the partner. The businesses are typically related but non-competing, ensuring that both businesses find equal benefit from the arrangement.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing involves an established product or service, which affiliates sign on to help sell for a portion of the profit. The affiliate may pay a small fee up front to begin working with the company, and then provides the financing for marketing efforts like a website, mailings or door-to-door flyers. The company offers support in terms of credit card services, shipping and customer service. The affiliate also enjoys the benefit of marketing an established product with a familiarity that makes it much easier to sell.

Similarities

Both affiliate and JV marketing involve parties outside the original corporate structure to build profits. In the case of joint venture marketing, those parties are businesses offering related goods and services that can help grow a responsive customer base through their own collection of loyal customers. In the case of affiliate marketing, the outside influences are typically individuals interested in selling the product or service already established by the company with the purpose of earning a portion of the sales.

Differences

Despite their similarities, JV and affiliate marketing are also vastly different in a variety of ways. Affiliate marketing already has a product or service to offer, and the company has probably been at least somewhat established to customers within an industry.

In JV marketing, a newcomer to a specific industry might cash in by relating his product or service to another business that has already been established. In this situation, there is more than one company and therefore more than one product or service involved with the arrangement.

If you do not currently have a product or service to sell, but want to enter the world of sales to make a living through commissions or a portion of the sales, affiliate marketing may be the best choice for you.

However, business owners who already have a product or service on the market and simply want to build their customer base with the help of a larger, more established company, JV marketing is probably the smartest choice. Either approach can build a customer base and a healthy bottom line for the company, or companies, involved in the agreement.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free report on Joint Venture Marketing.

Leveraging Affiliates as Part of Your Joint Venture Marketing

Affiliate marketing has seen tremendous growth in 2009. People who are passionate about other products, as well as individuals who want a successful work-at-home business, are finding that affiliate marketing can give them the winning edge. With this in mind, you and your joint venture partner should consider leveraging affiliates as part of your JV marketing mix.

What do affiliates do? Affiliate marketing is when a third party agrees to market your product or service for a portion or percentage of each sale they make through their efforts. Affiliate marketers can make great full-time or part-time earnings by gathering a large Internet following and recommending products for their followers.

Benefits of Affiliate Marketing for Your JV

There are significant benefits associated with employing affiliate marketing for your joint venture.

• You pay only when a sale is made – One very nice benefit of affiliate marketing is that you do not pay any marketing or advertising costs until a sale is made. No money is paid up-front. By trusting that your affiliates will bring in sales, you hold onto your much-needed cash until each sale is processed. You can even agree to pay affiliates on a monthly basis, which allows you to leverage cash in your bank account even longer.

• Exponential sales potential – If one affiliate is bringing in an average of sales each month, then five affiliates could potentially be giving you 25 sales each month. Imaging what 100 affiliates could do! The more affiliates you have working the Internet marketing channels, the more you can profit!

• Let others do the marketing – Why not take advantage of others’ marketing efforts to sell your JV product or service? You and your JV partner both have your own businesses to run. By leveraging affiliates in your marketing strategy, you give yourselves more time to focus on improving and expanding your own businesses, or even focus on forming new joint ventures.

• New customer bases – Affiliate marketers can utilize their respective following to make sales. Affiliates may focus on specific market niches in their efforts, such as book clubs, video game player associations, auto clubs, and the list goes on. These marketing niches can be new customer bases for your JV business.

Affiliate marketing may have downsides as well. Some affiliates may not bring in any sales or lose interest in your product when the next best thing comes around. That is why it is important to screen your affiliates and choose the ones that have the best sales potential. You should also offer the largest sales percentages to the best affiliates. Make sure they have an established web site and verifiable list numbers. Offer up to 50% of each sale to the best affiliate marketers. You may see less profit on each sale, but remember, your sales numbers can skyrocket and total profits will increase as a result.

Affiliate marketing could be a boon to your JV business. If you have a product or service that could easily be sold via affiliate marketing, consider this as a viable option.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report.

How To Make Money From Your Passions

To make money online many people jump right in before they are properly prepared. You know that to be a rocket scientist, a doctor, a brick layer, a construction worker, an office worker, a teacher there are prerequisites, things you must learn, before you can be successful, you don’t just jump right in unprepared.

The same applies to the Internet marketing industry even though there are unsavory people out there who’d have you believe it’s a “Walk in the Park” and requires no more than the belief that you can just do it.

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And I’ll have to admit, it is a walk in the park compared to what you have to put up with in the working world punching a clock being a subordinate to someone who does not have your interests in mind, but there are still rules you have to follow and pitfalls you must avoid to actually make Internet marketing work for you.

Most people will not make a dime online and yet there are others who will make more in one month than most people make in a whole year. Why is that?

My answer begins with the age-old chicken or egg question, “what comes first the chicken or the egg”? Personally I vote for, well never mind, each argument you or I make comes back to the same old conclusion – I have no clue and I don’t think many of us do either.

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But one thing I do have a clue about and know for sure is that to make money online you must first have Passion for the company products and/or service of any Internet business from which you expect to make money.

Passion in this sense simply means that you’ve researched and like the company and products or services. It is then that you translate that like (or Passion) into the education, excitement and work that usually accompany Passion.

I will have to say that many online entrepreneurs are so good at what they do that they ignore passion because they can sell anything. But I’m concerned about those of you who are not so knowledgeable at working an online business successfully.

Now, I’m not trying to make anyone believe that Passion is the only thing necessary. Because to be successful you must also have a good website, good marketing, widespread advertising, company support, effective keywords, and etc. Those things are often learned from the company you join – but sidestep Passion and you reduce your chances for success dramatically.

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It therefore follows that, if you have no Passion for the company and the products and services provided by that company, again, you won’t attempt to do the work you are being taught.

Internet marketing work is typically not all that difficult or time consuming but it does take motivation caused by Passion to get you off and running with a sustained effort so that you won’t stumble.

You have a great resource in the Internet search engines to search about the Internet Marketing industry for business opportunities, USE IT!

Your research should uncover a company that you like and have confidence in. It should be solid, founded on great principles, and easy to understand with great products and services that are sell-able for which you can have Passion. If you don’t find it move on,
You can find the right opportunity containing the attributes identified above.

Comments like, well, that one sounds good and the compensation plan is excellent so I guess I’ll start that business – does not sound like a decision based on anything near Passion. And remember when you hear that an Internet “guru” does that, don’t be tempted, because as I said earlier they are experienced and can sell just about anything, without being Passionate about the company products and services.

Note: By the way it’s your goal to get to the point where you can sell about anything online. That end skill and goal is a worthy one indeed.

Remember, there are other steps you must make before you step into Internet Marketing but if you don’t first find the right company products and services to be passionate about, all of those other steps may just cause you a lot of frustration instead of bringing you great success.

Not being Passionate about a company and products and services that has market proof that it will sell is a pitfall you simply must avoid.

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Two Types of Affiliate Marketers and Why You Need Them Both as Marketing Partners

If you are thinking about using an affiliate marketing program for your business, it might be wise to understand more about who the typical affiliate marketer is. Generally, affiliate marketers are entrepreneurial types who tend to take risks; they typically do not mind a trial and error method of succeeding in business. The early affiliate marketers were the first to take advantage of new trends and wanted to try to leverage new technologies on their behalf. You might think of affiliate marketers as the pioneers of Internet word-of-mouth marketing.

The growing popularity of Affiliate Marketing

However, affiliate marketing has become more mainstream as people continue to search for supplemental income and “work from home” options. The popularity of blogs, personal websites, and online communities such as MySpace and Face Book continue to make affiliate marketing a potential opportunity for the average person to create passive income. Because technology is so readily available, it seems that affiliate marketing really has two main types of affiliates:

• The Casual Affiliate: This is an affiliate who is passionate about a product, service, or cause and will seek out companies who have a similar outlook. Many bloggers become affiliates by default, using affiliate programs like Google’s AdWords. Many of them feel that if they are going to take the time to blog, it might be nice to get something in return. This type of person is not attempting to make a full time income from affiliate marketing.

• The “Super” Affiliate: These are the people who generate $10,000 or more in commission per month. They are also people who have experimented with various forms of marketing. Much of their promotion of a product or service is via Internet marketing, but super affiliate marketers may also incorporate traditional forms of advertising as well. For instance, an affiliate marketer may have a website or a blog, but he may also send postcards or letters to his database on occasion.

Motivating Affiliate Marketing campaigns

The power of the affiliate marketer lies in his willingness to be paid for actual revenue generated for whatever company he happens to be promoting. Many new affiliate marketers adopt a sweat equity attitude, hoping to build a revenue source online that will ultimately work while the affiliate sleeps. It is a new way to do business and create income, and the early adopters are showing that it can be done. A new business model is emerging as the result of affiliate marketing, and any business owner would be wise to take note.

Overall, affiliate marketers see themselves as a strategic link between a company or product and the people that company hopes to reach. Most affiliates are resourceful and innovative. They often become students of Internet marketing by default, but as their commission checks grow, they find new ways to promote more products and services. There are even affiliate networks available for those new to the industry. When supplied with ample incentive, affiliate marketers can become one of your most cost-effective assets.

Affiliate Marketing: The New Word-of-Mouth

Word-of-mouth marketing is by far the most cost-effective form of advertising a business can have. Statistics demonstrate that the average person has at least 350 people in his sphere of influence. Granted, the average person is not going to talk about your business to all 350 people they know, but having them talk positively to even one can translate into a powerful and free ad that has a great return potential for your business. A friend telling a friend or acquaintance about your business is a bit like pushing a snowball down a hill. One friend tells another, who tells another, who tells another and soon, you’ve gained a valuable customer or two.

The psychology of Affiliate Marketing

Think about it. Would you be more likely to go to a new restaurant you saw advertised in your local paper, or go to a new restaurant recommended by an acquaintance or friend? Most people choose friend. Why? Even in an acquaintance-type relationship, there is a level of trust that has already been established. There’s a psychological value that stems from getting information from another person. We tend to believe that “real” people have our best interests at heart.

Enter Affiliate Marketing, which can be likened to word-of-mouth marketing via the Internet. Although this is not strictly the case, there are similarities that do exist. Affiliate Marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards people or other entities for creating customers or sales for that business via affiliate’s marketing efforts. In essence, the affiliate is spreading the word about a company’s product or service, usually using the Internet.

Capitalizing upon word-of-mouth marketing

Referral fees have been standard in business practice for years. Affiliate Marketing simply capitalizes on the concept, while expanding it to a worldwide marketplace. It’s the electronic commerce version of the traditional referral fee with a twist. Businesses have taken the concept of revenue sharing and answered the question, “What’s in it for me?” Because you no longer have to be a marketing or advertising executive with a degree and a slick campaign to cash in on the World Wide Web, companies now have access to an affiliate’s sphere of influence. An affiliate can be anyone with time, access to a computer, and a passion for promotion.

Affiliate Marketing could be viewed as taking word-of-mouth marketing to its outer edges. Often times, an affiliate marketer has what could be deemed as an acquaintance-type relationship with the person to whom he is promoting a product or service. This means the affiliate has attracted a database of warm leads that are looking for a particular type of product or service. Because of this “soft” relationship, affiliate marketing may seem to be less of a “sales pitch” to the consumer than traditional types of advertising. While this is not actually the case, it shows that affiliate marketing with its word of mouth twist is highly effective.

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