One of the questions I get asked the most frequently is “What would you do if you were just starting out?” This is of especially strong interest to two groups.
The first group is people over 40 years old whose jobs have been replaced or feel burned out from the 9 to 5 grind. The second group is young people wanting to get off to a great start and not end up being another corporate wage slave.
So here’s my answer for both groups. This is the only thing I’d even consider doing if I was just starting out:
Broker joint ventures
Why joint ventures?
I would start with brokering JVs because there are so many factors working in their favor and none I can think of that work against them. So let’s take a look at a number of these factors and you’ll understand why I firmly believe that working with joint ventures is the best way for anyone to start a highly successful business.
By the way, if you’re a business owner or marketing director, you’ll also want to pay attention to this because all of what I’ll share with you here applies to any business.
Factor #1 – Joint ventures are easy to understand
Unlike other areas of marketing – say Google ppc or Facebook ads – there’s no mystery as to how joint ventures works. Put simply, a company sells your product to their list and you pay them 50% of the profits. Or, in the other direction, you sell the other company’s product to your list and they pay you 50% of the profits.
On the other hand, there are a lot of little details to coordinate when implementing a successful JV and it’s important that they all be handled properly. For this reason, there’s an endless supply of businesses that would be happy to hire you to set up and run their joint ventures.
Factor #2 – All assets are provided by your clients
Once you’ve found a client who wants you to set up and run their joint ventures, you have absolutely no cost and little or no overhead. That’s because your clients provide everything.
The product or service that’s being offered is provided by one of the partners in the deal. That same partner also provides all the credit card processing, order fulfillment, customer service and everything else that’s associated with delivering and servicing a product. And since their product is already being sold successfully with an existing promotion, the sales copy already exists, so there’s no need to create any copy.
The list that’s used, which would normally take years and costs thousands to build, is provided by the other partner. All the time, effort and expense that went into building that list is now under your control for the JV project. And here again, you have no list building or maintenance costs whatsoever.
So what costs do you have when brokering a joint venture? The only real cost you have is the cost of your time. And with a successful joint venture, you’ll be compensated quite well for that time.
Factor #3 – Joint ventures can be up and running in a very short time
This is a natural byproduct of the previous point. Because your clients on both sides of the deal already have all the assets in place that are needed for the project, the offer you’ll be making can be implemented quickly.
The only potential stumbling block is finding an available time in the partner’s schedule that will be sending out the mailing. But since it only requires one or two emails, the delays are never significant.
Factor #4 – The profit margins are enormous
One of the main reasons your clients will quickly come to love joint ventures is that there are few marketing initiatives with as high a profit margin. After all, the product or service that’s being offered already exists. And the copy that will be used to promote it is already being used successfully. So there are no additional development costs or production costs.
On the other side of the deal, the list that will be mailed to has already been built. There’s no need to run Facebook ads, ppc campaigns, banner ads, retargeting or any other traffic generation or list building efforts. So on this side as well, there’s little or no overhead to eat into the profits.
Because of these factors, joint venture deals have substantial profit margins. It isn’t uncommon to see a profit margin of 75% or greater with a physical product. And with online products, the profit margin can easily clock in at 90%.
Factor #5 – Every joint venture has “designed repeatability” built into it
You can easily multiply the value of every joint venture you broker for a client when you understand my principle of “designed repeatability”, which goes like this:
Nearly every Joint Venture project you do for a client can be repeated without any changes to produce the same results multiple times
To take this one step further, every offer featured in a joint venture can easily be sent out three months later (for a total of four times per year) and it will produce nearly identical results each time. Now, at first, it may sound strange to recommend to your client that you run the exact same offer you just finished running such a short time later.
But it really isn’t. In fact, this is THE most reliable way to multiply the profits you generate for a client with almost no additional effort.
Why? Because not everyone is ready to buy just because you’re ready to sell. And even a month later, that’s changed for a number of people.
Many people who weren’t ready to buy a month or two ago become ready to buy as their needs and circumstances change. Plus, new prospects have entered the marketing funnel during this period.
So making these additional sales by repeating the exact same offer you previously sent out is one of the easiest and most effective ways to increase a client’s profits you could ever ask for. And if you repeat the same project 3 times per year, your client’s profits and your fees can be reasonably expected to triple.
Plus, there’s little or no more work involved for either you or the client, since everything needed for the repeat project has already been done. So as you can see, this designed repeatability gives you a powerful advantage you don’t get from most other forms of marketing.
Wrap up
I hope the points I’ve shared with you here have given you a new perspective on joint ventures. This is by no means an exhaustive list of all the factors that make joint ventures an ideal way to create a profitable business quickly. But it’s a great starter list on why if I was just starting out, the only thing I would consider doing is brokering joint ventures.