Here is the completed transcript from an interview I conducted with the renowned Jimmy Potash on the subject of joint venture marketing…
Introduction and Background
Nathan: Tell me a bit about your background and what you do online
Jimmy: I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I guess the good Lord just made me that way. I love being in business for myself. I love marketing. I love teaching and sharing. I love helping other people. And the Internet is the perfect medium for all of that. I’ve said many times over the past couple of years that the Internet and Jimmy D. Brown are a match made in heaven.
But, I’ve always been an entrepreneur. I was the kid with the lemonade stand at age 5 out in the front yard…only kid at my school who was in business and in kindergarten at the same time.
When I was a teenager, I started buying Income Opportunities Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine and began searching for a home-based business that I could get involved in.
I’ve done just about everything since then — I’ve dabbled in multi-level-marketing, I’ve owned retail businesses such as a Christian bookstore, a fitness gym, an advertising agency. I’ve tried mail order. I’ve bought and sold baseball cards. I’ve been involved in a lot of different things.
But, it was the Internet that really changed my life. With these other businesses, typically, I only had a local customer base and lots of operating expenses — but with the Internet, my business is global and the overhead is minimal.
As for what I do online, I guess what I’d like to think I do is help other people build their own businesses on the Internet. I write information products to share my knowledge and experience. I’ve created several different tools and software programs to make some of the online tasks easier and even automate some of them. I speak at teleseminars and workshops – basically, bottom line is: I teach people how to do business online.
Why Joint Venture Marketing Is The Most Important Key For Quickly Building Lists, Generating Profits and Establishing Long-Term Success Online
Nathan: What do you consider the benefits of participating in joint ventures?
Jimmy: You know, there are so many benefits of JVs that it would be hard to even mention them all. I think there are several really important reasons, such as…
- FREE ADVERTISING – You gotta love joint ventures already for this reason alone. In the majority of cases (at least the ones we’ll be talking about) you receive 100% free advertising. You gain targeted promotion at ZERO cost to yourself. With the right joint venture you can *literally* get thousands of dollars in free advertising by just sending a few emails or making a few phone calls.
- FAST SETUP – Most joint venture offers are quick and easy setups. They take very little time and preparation (although preparation is critical as we’ll discuss later!). You can have a profitable joint venture in the works in just a few short HOURS.
- FANTASTIC RESULTS – I have *literally* made thousands of dollars in profits for a half hour’s work with a joint venture. You can see some absolutely tremendous results from JV partnerships. Not only in profits, but in many other ways as well: new subscribers to your mailing lists, new affiliates in your reseller program, name recognition, internet branding, future JV partners — the results can be staggering if setup properly. And we’ll talk about how to set them up properly later.
- FUTURE PROFITS – You know, I am still profiting some 5 YEARS later from a joint venture that I created when I first launched the Profits Vault. I continue to see results from that JV project. With these kinds of partnerships you can earn more profits through automated followups with your contacts (customers and leads generated from the JV), list-building (new subscribers to your mailing list), strategically placed backend offers (there’s always an additional offer!) and from future joint ventures with your partners (if your initial JV was profitable for them, then they will definitely be open to future JVs).
- FAMOUS BRANDING – Another great benefit of doing joint venture partnerships is that you get to brand your name and business name. The old saying is “familiarity breeds contempt”, but with joint ventures, “familiarity breeds recognition.” Think about it — just on the law of numbers, the more time your name is mentioned by someone else, the more familiar you become to those that person is contacting. That’s how I went from an unknown to one of the most recognized NAMES and that’s the key here NAME — but that’s how I did it in just under a year. And not only do you build recognition for your brand new, but also credibility. After all, when established folks in the industry who have a loyal following begin putting THEIR NAME alongside yours and endorsing you, then it gives you instant credibility that you couldn’t buy on your own.
Joint ventures are more than just something you should check into when you have time —they should be a priority of your online marketing campaign. Nothing else produces the kind of results that these do. And here’s why…
…you don’t need to build a large mailing list!
…you don’t need a high-traffic website!
…you don’t need to be a well known expert!
…you don’t need to have an advertising budget!
All you need is the right offer…and the right partners.
Most People Miss The Boat (And Throw Away Huge Profits!) By Making This One Common Mistake With Joint Ventures…
Nathan: What is the most important thing to consider when someone establishes a joint venture project?
Jimmy: I’m glad you asked that, because I believe that most folks don’t earn the maximum amount of benefit from their joint ventures because they are short-sighted in preparing for the project.
What tends to happen is this: The person emails their potential partners and says “Here’s my new product. I’ll give you 50% commission on any sales generated. Would you promote this to your list? Blah blah blah.”
And the offer is either accepted or declined. If its selected, the person generates a few sales, earns a few commissions and they move on to the next partner.
Wrong gameplan. If you do that, you’ve just thrown away a great deal of profit. But, if you want to invest a half hour or so of your time, you can maximize your profit by setting the right goal for your joint venture.
Here are the three goals that I set for every joint venture I participate in…
- Building an opt-in list.
- Securing lifetime customers.
- Recruiting new affiliates and partners.
Each of these goals are infinitely more important (and more profitable!) than earning some quick initial income. You need to engrain that into your mind. The goal of your joint venture is much, much more than to earn some quick, one-time profits — although those are nice too :o) — look at the big picture and use your JV project to earn profits for months, and even years, to come.
You do that by focusing on those three goals…
1. Building an opt-in list. The fortune is in the list. Repeat that with me, “The fortune is in the list.” One more time, “The fortune is in the list.“
Here’s your homework assignment. Each night before you go to bed repeat that 10 times 😛
If you’ve got a good list, then you can earn profits anytime you want. I routinely make five figures from sending out ONE email to my lists.
I’ll say it again, “The fortune is in the list.“
So, you want to have building a list as your #1 priority online. In fact, everything you do online should in some way be utilitized in building your list. Every marketing “tactic” you put into motion should work towards adding more subscribers. It’s that important.
Which begs the question…
…“Why is it that important?”
You’ve got to realize that a quality list enables you to profit month after month after month. A quality list allows you to build relationships, to build name recognition, to build a brand. A quality list allows you to profit from multiple streams of income — I.E. promoting 2, 3, 4 or more different products, services and programs simultaneously.
A quality list allows you to earn profits anytime without any additional expense in time or money.
So, it’s important that you build one. And, if you have a good list, to continue growing it through all of your marketing efforts.
And joint ventures are no exception. So, in advance, you have some system in place to capture emails. Whether it’s a mailing list, a free course, a free report — whatever, just make certain you have some way for visitors to your site to opt-in for future contact from you. That’s goal #1 of every joint venture project. Not generating income, but generating subscribers.
2. Securing lifetime customers. This goal is like the twin sister of goal #1. You want to secure loyal customers who continue to do business with you for life. One of the biggest problems in many joint ventures is they focus on selling to the customer one-time, rather than seeing that the lifetime value of the customer is much, much greater.
Instead of focusing everything about your joint venture to sell the customer a $29.95 product that you profit from ONCE, wouldn’t it be much better to be able to sell that customer a $29.95 product, and then a $49.95 product and then a $19.97 product, and then a $97.00 product, and then a monthly membership product of $29.97 per month, and so on?
Unless you don’t like extra income, of course it would!
I always look at the initial profit from a joint venture as the BEGINNING. It’s just a down payment of what’s to come. It’s just the first installment of many more profits that will begin to make their way into my wife’s checking account. :o)
That’s why I am so adamant (as we’ll talk about later) that you don’t be afraid to LOSE BIG on the initial joint venture offer itself, because you will WIN BIG in the long run if you play your cards right.
Several years ago a gentleman came into my retail shop and stayed for hours. We’ll call him Mr. Gill. Mr. Gill didn’t buy a thing. He just talked and talked and asked questions and took up a lot of my time. I could have brushed him off. I could have said, “If you aren’t going to let me profit from you now, then get out.” But, I didn’t. Each of the times Mr. Gill came into my shop for the first several months I knew him, all he did was talk and ask questions. No purchase.
Then, one day a young red-headed kid came in. He spent several hundred dollars with me that day. Told me that Mr. Gill had told him about my shop. It was the beginning of a lifetime of profits from this young kid.
He went on to spend thousands upon thousands with me during the course of the next several years of my business.
And then, Mr. Gill began to spend money with me. Apparently, he had been in a financial bind when he first started coming in. But, once he got through that, he began to make purchases.
These two guys spent untold thousands with me and continue to give me business up until the day that I sold my shop to work full-time on the Internet.
The point is this: You gotta look beyond the initial investment and see the end results. Now, I don’t have a crystal ball for you to look in and see Mr. Gill spending a lot of money with you. I didn’t have that luxury myself. I’m just saying this: if you structure your joint venture properly going in, then you’ll find that there are a whole lot more Mr. Gill’s in your future than those who just want to talk.
See the big picture — you want customers who will do business with you for life. You want a system in place that taps into the lifetime value of your customers. Build relationships and you’ll build your business.
3. Recruiting new affiliates and partners. Every single month I earn thousands of dollars in profits from my reseller program. But, it wasn’t always that way. As I mentioned in the “300 Percent” report…
For several years I struggled with how to advertise online. What techniques should I try? Where should I spend my advertising budget? What works and what doesn’t? I wanted to try everything, but realized very quickly that this was impossible.
Then, the almost burned out light bulb begin to flicker a bit and a light went off in my mind. I need affiliates. I need hundreds of affiliates promoting my product for me. I need affiliates who will try all of the different techniques that I don’t have the time or money to try. The reality of the web is this, an affiliate program is THE absolute best way to see significant growth in your sales, hands down. Nothing else comes close.
One of the biggest goals you can have in your joint venture is to recruit new affiliates and future JV partners who will promote your products for you. You’re only one person. There is only so much that you can do. However, if you have dozens, hundreds or even thousands of folks like yourself who are willing to market your product, then you’ve got the potential to reach thousands of customers that you would never have been able to reach on your own.
That’s the power of an affiliate program.
And that’s why it should be paramount among your goals for any joint venture. Ultimately, you want one of the results from your JV to be the fact that your reseller team grows as new affiliates join and begin promoting your products and services.
Don’t have an affiliate program? Get one. The Free Advertising System is one of the most informative manuals ever created on building and using an affiliate program. Click Here for more information on the Free Advertising System.
Not interested in developing an affiliate program? While you will be missing out on an untold amount of profits, you can use your JV to bring in additional partners for future JV projects. Always think long term and future growth.
So, those are the three goals you need to have for your joint venture project.
How To Quickly Find The Best Joint Venture Partners For Your Project, Including Super Partners Who Can Absolutely Skyrocket Your Online Business
Nathan: Where do you find your joint venture partners? Any suggestions for those just starting out?
Jimmy: There are a lot of different ways to find partners. You can do a bit of research at your favorite search engine and find out who is already promoting products and services that are similar to yours, or who has a website that is compatible with the joint venture project you are wanting to launch. Go to Google.com and search for keywords. Look for folks who are compatible, but not directly competing.
If you are selling pets, find someone who sells pet supplies or pet grooming or pet obedience or pet care. Your best partners are those who are reaching the same target audience that you are, but who don’t offer the exact same product or service that you do.
That’s just one way of finding partners.
