Joint Venture and
Affiliate Programs are Very Different!
by Mike Banks Valentine
New online business operators sometimes seem to confuse two
terms
that are *very* different arrangements! Joint Venture Marketing
and affiliate programs.
1) Joint venture or partner promotions in which you arrange
mutually beneficial trades of services and/or marketing to
complementary, but non-competing businesses in order to gain
traffic and business in a win-win situation of joint promotion.
This arrangement involves far more on your part than providing
a link or a bit of promotion.
You must interact directly with customers and provide
excellent service before, during and after a sale, you
must have a merchant account to accept credit cards
and you must make your joint venture partners look good
to their customers at all costs! You must provide enough
traffic and business to your partner to make the
arrangement mutually beneficial. One cannot profit at the
other's expense.
Make certain you have an equitable arrangement with joint
venture partners and be prepared to renegotiate if either
partner feels shorted in the exchange.
2) Affiliate programs in which you choose specific products
and services with already established programs where they
share in a percentage of profit with those who promote their
sites and services. You gain from this in that you don't
need to provide anything but exposure and traffic to the
affiliate program to earn money.
They provide products or services, they approve credit card
transactions, they ship, they provide customer service,
while you provide exposure and minimal advertising via your
web site or ezine/newsletter.
The internet has reached a point at which all websites must,
absolutely and without fail, provide extraordinary service.
Beyond the need to provide stellar service is the need to
gain exposure and visibility for your website.
So no matter which business model you choose, you must first
and foremost be concerned with one thing -- TRAFFIC to your
site! Joint venture partners will insist that you offer at
least a minimum number of views for their ads in order to
make the cooperation worthwhile for them. Affiliate programs
will just not generate a dime if you don't generate enough
web traffic to click on a few of your links or affiliate
program ads.
If your site attracts no visitors, your site generates no
business. I will always emphasize the tremendous
importance of search engine placement to gain the
necessary visibility.
I have created two pages at WebSite101 of particular
interest to the question of content. First is focused
on content and is at:
http://website101.com/Sharing.html
The second is a particularly valuable article in the
WebSite101 Reading List, archived at:
http://website101.com/arch/archive3.html
I'd also highly recommend studying search engine
techniques and submitting to the top search engines
each time your site changes or grows. You can study
those techniques at WebSite101 through another archived
article at:
http://website101.com/arch/archive50.html
in which Search engine placement is discussed with links
to places to learn more. The guest article included
in that same issue discusses learning the basics of
HTML code necessary to master those techniques.
If you don't want to learn how to do it yourself, then
definitely pay someone to optimize your site for the
search engines in order to rank well and show up in the
top 30 positions of a search results for your chosen
search terms. We offer that service at WebSite101! Visit:
http://website101.com/Optimization.html
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WebSite101 "Reading List" Weekly Netrepreneur Tip Sheet Ezine
emphasizing small business online http://website101.com/arch/
e-tutorial online at: http://website101.com/shortcourse.html
By week's end you're ready expand your business to the web!
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