I get quite a few offers for joint ventures daily… some of the ideas insanely stupid, some of them brilliant – most people that have been in online business for a while will have had the option of going into a partnership at least once. The problem with partnerships is that most of them involve startups – ones where you will often have to put in a lot of work, often with little or no reward. I used to think like that too – why should I help something that’s pretty dead get off the ground, especially when it would not benefit me at all? As I worked on some of my own projects though, I started to realise that contributing to a startup did indeed have benefits – why should you contribute to a startup?

1) Gain exposure for yourself

Although a website may not have a lot of traffic and exposure at the beginning, as it grows you will gain more and more exposure, especially if the people behind the startup plan to promote it well. By contributing to a startup, you can be listed as one of those that helped the project gain a foothold in the online world, and you should ask to be prominently featured, depending on the amount of work you do.

The people that you work with will be extremely grateful for the work you put in and will recommend your services should your name come up in conversation – I cannot count the amount of writing work that I’ve received through helping others with their blogs, either through a guest post exchange or just for filling in when a blogger needed help. By contributing to a startup, you will gain some exposure for you and your brand, especially if it goes big.

It is those that got in first that are best known these days – everyone knows how the founder of Microsoft was, while few know even the CEOs in it as of today; by getting in during the beginning, you ensure that you will make history for yourself should the project you’re contributing to become huge.

2) Make Money

Although most startups rarely make more than a few dollars in their first month, some manage to hit it off… and by joining in the beginning, you can make sure that you take a charge cut of that. Often partnerships will be worked on a revenue sharing basis, as at the beginning of a project the owner cannot afford to hire people – if it’s worked on a 50% revenue share basis and the startup earns $1,000 its first month, the half you take will be a lot more than you’d usually get being paid on a by-work basis, especially as most people in a startup don’t except to make money (and thus will pay less).

Of course, the chance that you will make nothing is far more than hitting the big time, but the chance of doing so is always there… and while it is there, you should capitalize on it – especially if you feel that the idea is a good one.

3) The person with the idea will have eternal gratitude

By helping someone with a startup, even if it’s a short mention the person behind it will have eternal gratitude; s/he’ll remember what you did and be more likely to help you in the future should you need it. By working with people you are building relationships, relationships that could prove very helpful in the long run – should the project run big, you will be rewarded – either in terms of insane exposure (see no1) or even money, as it is only fair that those who helped contribute be financially rewarded for the help and work they put in.

4) Gain reputation

In a startup, you can quickly become established – and future visitors (be it a blog community, website or forum) will see your as reputable. For example, in the blogging forum there are a few members that at their current rate of posting will have around 1,000+ posts by the end of the next few months – any new member joining will see them as reputable (depending on how those posts went) and will be more likely to approach them for projects / buy stuff from them. This is sort of a spinoff from point no1, but it needs to be stated as it is extremely important.

Why I wrote this post

Bloggers rarely, if ever write posts without an ulterior motive – anyways, my motive for this post was to get people to signup for Blog Premiere’s forums. As I have repeated spammed plugged them on here over the last few days, I’m giving you guys yet another reminder to signup – it is nearing 50 active members, 1,000 posts and quite a few visitors – numbers that will only increase as it continues to grow, so make sure you get in early to take advantage of the reasons mentioned above.

The above reasons are a bit broad, so let’s go more in depth – what are specific reasons you should join Blog Premiere?

1) You will not be ignored.

Due to the sheer number of posts on larger forums, sometimes requests often go ignored, or even worse – unseen. Be it a question you have, post you want to share or simply just network with bloggers, you will likely find someone interested in what you want – the less number of threads, the more members will most in them (relative to the total). At the very least, I will reply to your thread, so don’t worry

2) Steal your name.

A lot of you go by your website names on the Interweb these days, but Blog Premiere’s forums are young enough that you can go by your first name, or even a generic one (“Money Maker” is not taken for example). People are joining more and more quickly though, so make sure you get in.

3) Be part of the exclusive club

I have setup a section on there specifically for blogger networking and exclusive guides to succeed online – only registered members will be able to see that. At the moment, the second section is a bit dead, but I will be adding information to it shortly, which will not be published here – one of the things I will be adding is how to get a niche website with as little as 50 visitors a day to become worth $1,500 with a simple change. If you don’t join, you’ll miss out.

4) Win stuff.

I promised you guys that there would be no contest for April on TUK, but that does not hold true for Blog Premiere. Although it will certainly be hard to surpass totals here, I’m working on a few prizes, including cash. One of the largest prizes will go to the person with the highest post count, so make sure you get in early and start catching up on those with a head start.

What are you waiting for? Head on over and signup!

Speaking of prizes

I apologise for this, but I entirely forgot – I had a mini-contest on here to promote Blog Premiere and promised a couple things (albeit small) to those that helped. The winners:

One review: Christine Senter from this post.

One hour consultation: Living On Adsense from this post.

$5.00 Paypal – Chiong for the eBook idea.

As I mentioned in that post, you can give away these prizes (in a contest), bribe someone with them, flog them on eBay… it’s up to you. I would not think talking to me for an hour would be too much fun, but hey – different people, different likes

For the above people, just post below letting me know about details (website / contact / Paypal ).

As for the ultimate blog contest, bear with me – some prizes had more than one winner, and obviously I cannot keep emailing sponsors again and again, so will only do that when I have a list of all winners – I believe that John has already paid the Paypal amount he sponsored (thanks!) and I just got an email from Adii telling me that he sent the winners their prizes (cheers!) – everything else will be sorted out slowly. If you won a prize and haven’t claimed it, go a couple posts down and do so – I’m not going to chase people around. Those of you that have claimed yours but haven’t gotten it yet, please be patient as I will get around to doing it, and those of you that sponsored prizes and are waiting for my email, I will get around to emailing you (all) people have claimed them.

I need hosting again

Sadly, HostICan’s dedicated server hates my IP address – UAE’s Internet s known to do that. i will always recommend their shared hosting to people (get the Tera Host plan at $40 off if you use the coupon code University-12) but their dedicated server just wasn’t right for me.

Due to that, I’m in the market for hosting – I sent a couple emails to Top Hosting Center after being told that they were brilliant by all and sundry, but what I’ve received so far has been far from that – the first email I sent, not replied to at all; the second an inflated price of $200 given to me (I believe it is inflated as this website only received 20,000 visitors last month – I know shared hosting plans that will allow that, and although I wanted to get on Digg a couple times, I do not believe it should cost so much – the websites in total only used 7GB bandwidth last month, even with Digg. My second email, asking them for the reduced dedicated server (as well as the option of sponsorship, because I’m a cheapskate ) was… ignored.

I need to move from Hostican quick so am in the market – I would prefer a dedicated server but if you can promise me uptime and the possibility of a swift upgrade should I need it, a VPS will be fine.

Three things I am looking for – price, reliability and experience. Obviously I do not want to pay insane amounts of money, so would prefer something affordable – something reliable, that has as much uptime as you can guarantee would be great. I also want to go with a host that has been around for some time – although you may be brilliant having only been around for a couple months, I have no way to guarantee that so would prefer someone that has been around (and their specific website offering hosting) has been around for a year or more. I also need the host to move the website + emails, as I have no clue how to.

If you have any recommendations that fit the above, feel free to let me know. Someone that has MSN/Yahoo and you have personal experience with would be great, however obviously a larger company will probably not be able to do that so that is not a must. The above three features, and someone that will move the files is of utmost importance though – if you have good recommendations, I’ll gladly signup through your affiliate link. Please do not spam the comments section with affiliate links though, I will contact people before I signup should I decide to go with one of the suggestions.

I think I’ve covered what I needed to, anyways here’s the link to Blog Premiere forums (again ) and if you have any questions/queries/suggestions/feedback/abuse to hurl, feel free to comment