I get dozens of JV requests every week from people asking me to promote their products. Some of those are great products that have made me thousands of dollars. If done right, joint ventures are the easiest and most effective ways to rake in tons of sales for your products in a short period of time. Hands down.

It’s simple – You’re leveraging somebody else’s readership and reputation – two of the most important aspects when it comes to information marketing. The only other thing that beats it is if you have your own audience of subscribers. But that doesn’t happen overnight so if you’re desperate for cash you want to shortcut your way to success, joint ventures are the way to go.

However, most JV proposals that I get in my inbox just plain suck and delete after reading the first sentence. Here are the five sure-fire ways that will get me to throw your JV request straight into the trash can. Don’t make those mistakes:

1. Not Personalizing The Email

Or worse – getting my name wrong (I’ve had people calling me John in their emails – not a very good first impression). Never use a template or mass-mailing software that emails out to 300 people at once; people can tell right away whether you’re doing an email blast, especially if your email begins with “Dear Guru” or “Dear Website Owner”.

Personalization is the key. Your email/proposal has to speak directly to the potential JV partner. If you’re contacting 300 people, then it means you got to send out 300 individual emails – yes, making money online actually takes HARD WORK. Do your homework first to find out a bit more about the person – heck if you can’t be bothered to go read my bio on my blog, how do you expect me to promote your product and make you millions tons of sales?

2. I Don’t Know You

Introduce yourself! Tell me who you are and let me get to know you. If I’ve been in some kind of relationship with you before (e.g. you’ve talked to me on Twitter, you’re an affiliate of mine, you’re a customer etc) then it’s much more likely for me to say “Yes”. Every successful joint venture starts with a friendship. Take the time to build a relationship and get on my radar before approaching me for a joint venture. It could be in the form of a conversation or doing a favor without expecting anything in return. That way you’re invoking the law of reciprocity. People like to work with those they know, like and trust.

3. What’s In It For Me?

You can talk on and on about yourself or your product. But in the end, joint ventures are about win/win situations. Yeah, you might get tons of sales for your products, but what do I get out of this deal? You’ve got to give incentives. Not just the standard 50% commission that everybody and their mamas are offering.

For example, when I went out to recruit partners for the launch of my book – eMillions – I offered 100% commission. You don’t see too many affiliate programs out there giving away all their profits so that caught their attentions. Obviously, you’ve got to know you’re metrics very well and have a solid backend system in place to be able to do that. More about that in a future post

What’s your compelling reason or hook that differentiates you from the crowd? Some few ideas right off the top of my head:

• Reciprocal email mailings for their products?
• JV Contests? Prizes? (e.g. Macbook Pro for the partner that drives the most sales)
• Feature their products on your “Thank You Pages”?
• Offer your time to do an interview for their listeners? (providing them great content)
• Free exposure and publicity for them and their products?

4. So, Where’s The Product?

You’ve grabbed my attention, you come across as a genuine dude, you’ve offered me with great incentives. I’m on the verge of saying yes… but where’s the product? Heck, if you don’t give me access to the product then how am I suppose to provide a great recommendation to my subscribers telling them to buy your stuff?

5. Your Offer Is Crap

Make sure you have a quality product and a killer offer. I’ve made tons of mistakes in the past and one of those was recommending people products that turned out to be garbage. When I send people to someone, I want to know that they’re going to be looked after well – it’s my reputation on the line too. Ask yourself these questions:

• Are you offering a high quality product?
• Are you over-delivering value to your customers?
• Are you offering top-notch customer support?
• Does your salesletter convert?
• Do you have results to back your product up?
• Do you have results from people who have used your method/system?

Joint ventures are all about relationships – helping others and building trust. Master the art of networking with people and you’ll master the art of joint ventures. Master the art of joint ventures and you’ll master the art of making millions