Getting Maximum Leverage From Your First Joint Venture

Writen by Rockford Tapscott

Many of my coaching students have asked my advice on setting up their first joint venture deal – they have created a new product after doing market research to find a need, but they haven't yet built a customer list of their own, and they want to make the biggest paycheck they can for the least amount of effort possible.

While this a natural goal for most people to aim for, the problem is that they are approaching the deal with the wrong mindset.

The fact is, the person with the CUSTOMERS has the power in every transaction, while the person with the product has very little leverage most of the time when you are brand new to a market.

Finding and nurturing a responsive, loyal group of customers is much more difficult and time consuming that finding products to sell to them, and the customer list is where the power is in any business.

It doesn't matter what your product is, it can be copied, knocked off, simulated or plagiarized until the cows come home and there's very little you can really do about it unless you want to tie yourself up in legal action for a good part of your life.

The best way to approach a potential joint venture partner, especially if you are brand new, have a brand new product, and are inexperienced at doing JV deals, it to realize that you don't hold many cards and act accordingly.

What do I mean by this?

Well, remembering that you are basically being a parasite on your potential joint venture partner's customer base, you'd better be prepared to compensate them for helping you to get your product to market.

If you think you are going to be able to go to one of the big dogs in your niche and offer them a 50/50 commission split on a digitally downloadable information product, you're in for a rude shock.

Even giving potential JV partners 75% of the initial sale proceeds may not be enough incentive for them to promote your product to their list.

Many novice product developers find that by giving away 90% or even 100% of the initial sale proceeds (after processing fees) they create a compelling reason for potential joint venture partners to help launch their product and get it into as many hands as possible quickly.

But if you give away all the profit, what is the point?

Good question…there are many reasons you should consider giving the lions share of your initial product sale price to your joint venture partners. Here are just a few…

· You will receive the names, email addresses and often mailing addresses of every person on your joint venture partner's list who buys your product. This will give you multiple chances to offer these proven BUYERS additional, related products for months or years to come. A list of people who have purchased a product is the biggest asset any business owner can have, and your list will have cost you nothing to create

· Your product will be launched and in circulation much faster than it would have been if you had gone the traditional route and used pay per click campaigns, ezine advertising, traffic generation programs, SEO or articles to generate leads to sell your product to

· You can ask your list of buyers for testimonials which you can then use in your own personal marketing to generate additional sales on which you will receive the full sale price

· You'll know exactly what new products to create as back-end offers for your list of buyers because you'll be able to survey them and ask for their feedback. You'll get a much more accurate idea of what your market wants to buy if you ask BUYERS as opposed to prospects who haven't purchased anything from you

· Many of your purchasers will become affiliates and help you to sell even more of your product to others. You only need to pay affiliates the going rate of 50% to 65% and all sales they make for you basically cost you nothing to generate For these and many other reasons, it can be a very profitable decision to give up the early profits on a product to earn long-term back end profits from the customers you generate through your joint venture partnerships.

Something to think about…

Rocky Tapscott is the author a free 7 Part Mini Course "How To Build The Perfect Home Based Business Around Your Favorite Hobby, Pastime, Sport Or Skill" which uses 6 real life case studies to show how others have used a proven system to build profitable businesses around their favorite hobby.

Drop by http://www.hobbyandlifestyle.com/ecourse.html to grab your free copy.