The concept behind successful JV relationships is connecting with other entrepreneurs who market to a similar niche as yours. For example, if you are a dating coach, you would want to connect with other dating coaches. Collaboration is the new form of competition.
What you’ll want to do when you talk to your potential JV partner is identify if your messages are congruent and if he/she would be willing to promote your product to his/her list in exchange for a commission on any of the online sales.
A standard commission usually starts at 30% of the product price and goes up depending on the value of the leads your JV can send you. For example, if the product costs $1,000, the JV partner could make a commission of $300 per sale. Some JV partners will even pay you for the leads (people from your list who opt-in to their list after you promote them). The lifetime value of a good opt-in may be worth it to your JV partner.
Now, it’s not all about the money. Some JVs may support you because you offer something they don’t but that their list needs. I learned about joint ventures from Rich German and Milana Leshinsky. Rich is known as a “beachpreneur,” because he spends most of his days paddle boarding with dolphins in Laguna Beach, California, while he works part time as a co-founder of the JV Insider Circle (JVIC). His business partner, Milana, came from the Soviet Ukraine and was a classical pianist with zero knowledge of the business world, yet reached six figures in three years, and is now running a million-dollar business as co-founder of the JVIC, while working from home and raising her two children.
For example, Rich and Milana offer a product called the JV Insider Circle, and their top JV partner is Lisa Sasevich. Lisa specializes in sales conversion. Rich and Milana specialize in training JV partners how to approach each other; they offer a yearlong membership in a network of 600+ entrepreneurs who receive 8 weeks of training on how to JV. At the end of the 8 weeks, their clients should be able to have the tools to identify, connect with, and cross-promote other like-minded entrepreneurs in their niche. Rich and Milana don’t offer sales training, so they refer their list of over 100,000 to Lisa whenever she is doing a product launch. When Rich and Milana are promoting the JVIC, Lisa mails to her list and shares her affiliate link to the JVIC membership. At “cart close,” if anyone from Lisa’s list buys from Rich and Milana, Rich and Milana will pay Lisa a hefty commission ($500-$600 per sale). Because of the cross-promotional value and the relatively equal sized lists, the JV relationship is win-win.
So, what should you tell your VA to set up in 1S to do a JV? First, if you purchased the basic monthly version of 1SC, you’ll need to upgrade to the affiliate add-on features. These features will allow you to generate and track affiliate links for your JV partners so that you know how much commission to pay your JV partner and to whom.
Next, you can decide whether you want to set up a default affiliate link or separate individual affiliate links to separate products. There can be only one default affiliate link at a time, but you can change which URL that default link points to at any given time during your launch.
For example, if you are promoting a telesummit, at the beginning of the summit, ask your VA to point the default affiliate link to the summit opt-in page. 1SC can track the sign-ups from the free opt-in page all the way to the sale. So, if the upsell of the summit is lifetime access to all the interviews for $97, with a 30% commission, affiliates can share the free link and the browsers of their list will “remember” the affiliate ID in the cookies of the browser for a set amount of time. I like to set cookies to a year so the affiliate links will be good up to a year. Then, ask your VA to test the freebie to the sale of the affiliate link. Click here to see a video on how to run a test from the freebie to the sale.
Once you’ve confirmed that affiliate tracking is working, you can email all your affiliates at once. If you’re using the default affiliate link, you can email all the affiliates their individual links by asking your VA to set up a merge field. You can opt all of your affiliates into a list and even add them manually to an autoresponder.
It is helpful to send out:
- The username
- The password
- The default affiliate link
- Swipe copy for the promo email
- Swipe copy for social media
You can include all this info on one web page, write out instructions in a Word document and email it to affiliates, or you could even include the swipe copy directly in an email to affiliates with the default link merge code to populate the link in the email. That way the affiliate won’t even have to log in to get their affiliate link. They just share whatever is emailed to them.
One caveat: 1SC’s deliverability isn’t always the best, however every database has its drawbacks. If affiliates don’t receive or open the email with their affiliate links and instructions, ask your VA to make a spreadsheet of all the affiliate links of your affiliates so you can manually send their links in addition to sending the automated emails. Also, a personal email tends to nurture the JV relationship better than an automated one. Remember that the extra manual effort to make sure your JV partner has all they need to promote you is well worth it.
Also, since it is common for JV partners to forget to promote during a launch, especially if they have a big list, a gentle reminder can be helpful. But don’t harass your JV partner. They don’t get paid until a commission is made, so it is really up to them how often or how little they decide to promote you.
A word to the wise: if your first JV launch doesn’t yield the commission you expected, don’t get discouraged. It can be helpful to work with a coach or even keep networking with other JV partners until you have the list size and the support for a successful JV launch to pay off.
Good luck and let me know how you and your VA do with your product launch! If there is anything my team and I can do to support you, just contact me at Gina@techdoneforyou.com.
Happy promoting!
Gina
P.S. If you want my team to set up everything for you, please sign up for a free 1 hour discovery session so we can chat.[/text_block]
Training Video for Your VA:
- How to set the default destination URL in 1ShoppingCart
- How to Create Text Links to Free Gifts and Sales Pages in 1SchoppingCart
- How to set up a list for JV partners
- How to tell the difference between the default affiliate program and individual affiliate programs
Training Video for Your VA on how to add swipe copy to an affiliate program
Training Video for Your VA on How to Update Destination URLs to Swipe Copy for Multiple Affiliate Programs
