What is a JV, or Joint Venture?
November 10, 2008
If you’ve been around Internet Marketing for even a short amount of time you have undoubtedly come across the term JV or Joint Venture. Joint Ventures are extremely helpful when you are looking into marketing your own product on the Internet or if have a large list of email subscribers you may be sought after as a JV partner.
Using a Joint Venture to sell your product
If you have a product to sell and do not have a method or medium to get the word out, a joint venture partner could be your answer. JV partners are often individuals that have large email lists or contacts that may have an interest in your product. Sometimes these are people that subscribe to your JV partner’s newsletter, other times they may be buyers of your JV Partner’s product.
Typically, you as a product seller will offer a commission to a JV partner that is higher than any other commission you would offer to some other affiliate. You may also cross promote their products and create a strong win-win situation for every party involved. The important thing to remember is that a solid JV Partner can get your product information infront of more qualified people. Often times a product launch supported by a JV can be the difference for your success as well.
The Art of the JV
Finding a JV partner is something that takes time, effort, skill, patience and honesty. There are some coveted JV partners online that started like everyone else. No huge email list, no product to promote and a lot of motivation. However, there are proper methods to go about getting a JV partner. Make a few of the critical mistakes and your chances are dramatically decreased.
You should first build a relationship and have something to offer your JV partners. Simply asking them to promote your product and boasting how good it is will defintely get you ignored. So, what are the best ways to get a JV partner? Start slow and steady, and have something of value to offer.
Joe Jablonski and Dustin Struckman are launching a new product called JVSource.com. This website and product will offer a great wealth of information for anyone interested in learning how to build strong Joing Venture relationships. Joe Jablonski is Mike Filsaime’s JV Manager and Dustin Struckman has been involved in several jv launches. Together, the two offer everything you need to know to build long lasting JV relationships with the biggest and best names in the industry.
Here’s a brief report on their upcoming launch of JV Source. It’s definately something that you must checkout. There are also some great free videos that will get you jumpstarted.
A peak behind the curtain of a product launch
September 2, 2008
For the last 3 months I’ve been working on a few products that I’m really excited about. Those that have been following my blog and twitterfeed know that I review quite a few Internet Marketing products each year. Well, I’ve seen some really good ones, and some really bad ones. What’s interesting is whether these people actually make money from selling their products, and whether they actually made money doing what they claim to have done.
So I decided to reveal everything I’m going for my upcoming launch to those that are subscribed to my newsletter. The reason for the newsletter and not here on my blog is simple. While I will openly share my strategies and earnings for these products with those that are interested, I only want those that are serious enough about the process.
I’ve spent the last 2 years learning the ropes of in the IM industry, subscribing to membership sites, reviewing products, networking and making mistakes. It’s now time to put all of that to the test. If you’re curious how it all fits together, then simply subscribe to the tips and tricks newsletter and you’ll see how it all unfolds. This is going to be exciting and quite revealing.
Even more, I’m going to tell each of my subscribers how they will be able to benefit from this launch as well.
Jeff
Driving traffic to your website and eBay auctions with Ads
December 10, 2007
Now that I have a few websites up and running, it’s time to make them work for me. Usually, anyone that works for you is going to cost you money and that’s not what we want with these sites. Our goal is to make money, right?
When I first started selling on eBay my goal was to just get the items to sell for a decent price, cover my costs, learn a few things and maybe make some extra cash. I soon learned that when you have more than a few auctions running, it’s all about getting traffic and getting those items to sell. You definately don’t want to continually relist those items and incur listing fees if you don’t have to.
After digging into eBay I learned that there are several ways to make money without having to sell anything on eBay at all. Yes, I’m talking about affiliate links. While the eBay affiliate program is a great way to make some extra money, you have to get people to your site and your auctions in order to find your links. That can be a job all by itself.
Search Engine Optimization, often referred to as SEO, is a requirement for getting traffic to your site and your auctions. Gone are the days of just putting up a web site, flood it with phrases and keywords and hope your site is picked up by a search engine. It now takes some work. Your website has to have fresh content, relavent content, inbound links, outbound links and keywords that people are searching for. All of that takes some work and time. Don’t be fooled by all of those auctions on eBay that guarantee traffic to your site by buying their eBook. Yes, some work as I mentioned in previous posts, but there is nothing that you can do overnight…. well, almost.
Everyone has seen ads on websites that seem to be relavent to the site, most served up by Google. Those ads can both make you money, and cost you money. Google Adwords is Google’s program for advertising that will allow you to place ads on other websites and in the Google search pages. The beauty of Adwords is that you set a budget per day or per month and there should be no surprises when you get the bill. That’s were people tend to make their mistake, that simply key in some phrases, keywords and let the ad go. They believe that the traffic will start flowing in… boy are they mistaken.
Google Adsense is Google’s ad serving program that serves up the ads you created in adwords. The ads are displayed on sites that are relavent to your ad content. The site owner makes money for each ad this is displayed on their site AND clicked. Hopefully that click will drive traffic to your site.
Sorry to digress, but it’s important to understand how it all works together. So how to do you drive traffic to your auction with Ads? First, I’ll assume you have a website, have some fresh content on the site and keep it updated fairly often.
eBay used to allow people to use Adwords to place ads and have those ads directly link to their eBay store or Auction. eBay now frowns on that and in fact, will not longer give you affiliate credit if you do that. Instead, you need to direct users from another site(your own) to your eBay store.
Using Adwords can be a very good way to get traffic to your site and also send traffic to your eBay auction. Our main website, Webposter.com, uses eBays store tools to display our current auctions on the right side of our website. When users visit our site, they are immediately able to click one of our auctions and bid. Through the affiliate toolkit, we also are able to get a commission on any other items the user may bid on and win. We drive traffic to our site using Adwords ads and those promote the items we are selling on eBay.
Placing an Adwords Ad is pretty straight forward. Once you get your account setup, you create a new ad compaign. You’ll need a catchy title, some brief ad copy, and a place to direct individuals. You’ll also need keywords that are relavent to what you are selling. This is where most people make their mistakes. They simply add as many keywords as possible, set their default bid amount and let ‘er rip. HUGE MISTAKE.
Tomorrow I’ll take you through how to pick your keywords and get the traffic rolling to your site and hopefully the sales
How to build traffic to your blog
July 2, 2007
Getting your eBay business up and running takes a bit more than just having an account on eBay. You need product to sell, but just as important, you need traffic to your store. eBay has millions of users that hit their site on a daily basis.
So how do you get individuals to your auction or store? Having great auction titles helps, but marketing outside of eBay is also a good start.
We’ve just started our blog as you can tell (Post #4 here). I admittedly have discounted blogs in the past. While I did subscribe to a few, I never really saw the business value in keeping one. After researching how to get more traffic to our eBay store I have come across countless articles and eBooks about RSS and Blogs. Needless to say, I’ve reconsidered the importance.
To get traffic to your blog takes some finesse. While you can submit your blog to several directories, I’ve found that many require your blog to be a few months old and/or have at least 20+ posts.
Most of the articles I’ve seen all state the same thing:
Pick a topic. You’ll also need to have a specific topic or niche to focus on. Our blog documents our journey through setting up an eBay business. While we will digress from time to time, the core niche is there. You should do the same. Be an expert on something, track your progress on something, provide valuable information.
Publish your blog feed via RSS. I’ve looked into a few sources. Feedburner is a good start. They’d help you get some stats on your feed as well as help publish your blog. You blogging software should also provide an RSS XML file.
Keep your blog fresh. You’ll need to publish often. Even if it’s just a paragraph or two. Add content and make it worthwhile.
Ping the Blog Services. There are several services and directories that keep tabs on when your blog has been updated. Usually these need to know your blog exists first. Try pingomatic. Using this site will let the many service know you’ve made an update.
Link to your blog. If you haven’t created an eBay ME page do it now. eBay’s ME page is your spot on eBay to tell others what your about, interested, policies about your auctions and most importantly LINK OUTSIDE OF EBAY. Link to your blog here. eBay does have some rules about linking to sites outside of eBay, but these pertain to what is allowable within your auctions. See eBay’s policies for details.
Start sharing your knowledge and start a blog and the traffic flowing.
