What is a joint venture benefit? It has to be mutually beneficial for sure. But in regards to your own internet marketing business the main benefit you are looking for is more business. This should mean more customers, more sales, and more repeat customers.

We are going to go back to the thoughts of one of my personal mentors over the years, Stone Evans, and look closely at what he says about joint ventures in his eBook Dotcomology.

“Strengthening Your Joint Ventures

The best way to make your joint ventures truly successful is to use exclusivity. Offer your visitors something they can’t get anywhere else, even if it’s someone else’s services, and you make your visitors feel that they’re getting a real value by knowing about your site. Of course, if you want your partner to give something truly valuable to your visitors, you’ll have to do the same for them. You don’t have to give everyone gold watches, but you can offer them a discount or special offer of some kind.

For example, I get a newsletter every week from a marketing guru. Just about every edition he sends me contains at least one offer of a book or some other product at a bargain rate. Those products come from his joint venture partners, and I assume that he’s doing the exact same thing with his products in their newsletters. I get a lot of newsletters, but his is one I always read. I never know what sort of deal I’m going to be made next, and I know that I’m getting a real value in return for my free subscription. If you’ve got a good relationship with a joint venture partner, these are easy to arrange.

Track Your Joint Ventures

Whenever you enter a deal, whether it’s listing a keyword on a search engine, buying a banner ad, or entering into a joint venture, it’s crucial to track your progress.

The only kind of joint venture you should enter into is an equal one. There’s no point in sending thousands of visitors to a site that only sends them back in the hundreds. You’re going to wonder what you’re getting out of the deal and if you can’t get more somewhere else. In most cases, you probably can.

How you track the responses will depend on the particular joint venture. If you’re swapping visitors, any traffic-monitoring script should keep you in touch. Otherwise, you’ll have to monitor sales which is ultimately the best way to track your progress.

Joint ventures are one of the most enjoyable ways of promoting your business. Working from home can be pretty lonely. When you start to set up joint ventures not only do you get access to the customer bases of other entrepreneurs, you also build up a network of other people working in the same industry which can be very helpful.

Keeping Your Customers

The whole point of joint ventures is to generate customers. But even more important than getting them is keeping them. It’s much easier to sell something new to an existing customer than to sell something to someone who has never purchased from you before.

In fact, at the end of every month I sit down with my stats and sales figures, and try to figure out answers to the following questions:

.. 1. What percentage of my sales came from repeat customers?

.. 2. Do my customers believe that they are important to the success of my business?

.. 3. Did I go out of my way to learn all about my customers and keep them interested in my

.. 4. Did I check out my competitors to see if they’re offering customers something that I’m not?

.. 5. If a customer complained, how quickly and adequately did I respond?

.. 6. Were orders filled correctly and did I offer bonuses to particularly loyal customers?

.. 7. If I heard about a customer who went elsewhere, did I try to win him back?

It doesn’t take long to answer these questions, although it does take a bit longer to put new procedures in place if an answer comes up “no”. But it’s definitely worth the effort. I’ll confess, I got into this for the money, but I love getting letters from satisfied customers praising me for my service. The fact that it pays to do that too, is a real bonus.

Essentially, there are two golden rules for providing great customer service: punctuality and politeness. Always answer your customers as soon as possible and deliver their goods as quickly as you can. And always maintain a professional, business-like manner with them. It doesn’t matter how much they complain or moan, or how unreasonable they are, remember that you’re a professional and keeping your cool is part of your job.

So now you know of a whole range of different ways to promote your website. You know how to use search engines, buy advertising and build affiliate programs. You understand the benefits of newsletters and how to set up joint ventures with other people selling on the web. In the next two chapters of Dotcomolgy we’re going to look at precisely what you can sell online, starting with information.

Of course, you could read about making money online for years and never get anywhere. The key is to take action. If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and put the online marketing concepts you’ve learned about into action to start making money, click here to sign up for my Plug-In Profit Site service and I’ll personally set you up with everything you need to start earning multiple streams of residual income on the Internet within the next 24 hours.”

Thank you Stone! I like how he points out the benefit of overcoming some of the loneliness that is part of working at home on the internet. You can become pretty isolated if you are not careful.

For Team-Schuman.com the real joint venture benefit I am looking for is helping as many people as possible make money online. Then in turn I can make more money myself. Our content writer business is geared towards that. So is My Power Mall.

These are repeat business oriented and they are mutually beneficial. That is the real joint venture benefit for both of us!