Whether you're succeeding in your online auction attempts, just getting by, or failing to make money; Joint Ventures Can, and almost certainly will, Multiply Your Income Without Spending A Single Penny!

Joint Venture, or JV, is a big general term for setting up creative ways to cross promote or cross market with other people Just Like You.

How do I know..? I'm living proof that it works and works well. Last year I made more than a quarter of a million dollars online that I can directly attribute to Joint Ventures. I don't have any employees or an office. I work in my pajamas, at home.

No matter what product or service you're marketing online. Possible JVs are all around you:

1. Find another seller that sells things that compliment your products and/or the other way around.

- I guess the first order of business is to get a general understanding of how many sales can be made in a very short amount of time by taking good care of your previous customer list and newsletter subscribers. Ever heard, "The Gold is In The List"..? This is a fact that had to be literally beaten into my head a few years ago and now I can't imagine why I thought differently. Trust me, other sellers have massive lists and keep those subscribers by taking care of them with free information contacts and taking care of them by always being on the lookout for offers that may be of interest to them.

- Complimenting products or services are easy to figure out once you really step into another seller's customer's head. If I bought my digital camera from seller "A", he should assume that I may want to hear about seller "B" who sells quality camera accessories. If I on webmaster "A"s website design newsletter list, she should assume that I would want to know about where some really good search engine optimization software sells for a fair price.

2. Think outside of the normal way of retail or real world selling and marketing.

- Advertising does not need to cost anything at all online! Cross promote each other to your own customer lists and link to the other sellers product with an affiliate link. I've found that the email or promotion of other products like this works very well if you show your emotion when describing the product's good points. It really should be personal or don't expect anything other than upset subscribers that feel wronged by some spam.

- Swapping testimonials for each other's products or services is a real good way to Joint Venture. It works on a couple of levels simultaneously. One, your partner will sell more because you say that he's trustworthy or worthwhile to buy from. And, two; your testimonial will undoubtedly contain a link to your website or ebay store which will tap into traffic and possible customers that you did not have otherwise...

- Even if you find a seller that doesn't realize the power of these kinds of exchanges, you should surely be able to talk he or she into swapping links to each other's store.

3. Take the time to really figure out what you want before approaching a possible partner. If the seller is worth venturing with, then he's probably very busy and if you take his time without showing him some quick results; he may not respond or just string you along without wanting a confrontation.

- When you first run a crossed a seller or an idea like this that gets you excited, be sure to dive right into researching that seller PRIOR to approaching them. If you email or call them without doing your homework you may be wasting his time as well as your own.

- If you feel like there is a real possibility of working together with someone, but the answers aren't obvious to you; go to Google and start looking for examples of scenarios. They are not as simple to run into as an Ipod would be, but the real difference between success and failure here is whether or not you give up.

Once you realize that this is a viable way of compounding your income with the least amount of work or advertising cash, a good rule of thumb for me has been, "If you can remember each JV you have off the top of your head, you don't have enough of them!"

Now be careful because, just like customers, your joint venture partners need to know that they are important to you.

Do yourself and your partners a favor by checking out the JV Contact manager that I had a programmer create for me when my rule of thumb started to haunt me; VarsityJV. It's the only one of its kind and its one of the lowest priced products that I've ever sold and I've sold thousands of products just in the last year...

Respectfully,
Chuck Mullaney