Marketing your products on the Internet can be difficult due to the immense competition, especially if you are in a popular niche such as Internet Marketing. Netcraft Research showed a total of - 676,919,707 - sites in their April 2012 web survey. That’s a lot of websites online fighting for exposure and consumer attention on the internet.
Looking at those numbers, it’s not hard to see why your website can be so easily lost cyberspace. Gaining an audience and traffic can be difficult, and sometimes it pays to hook up with someone else to expand your exposure. That’s where partnerships and joint ventures come in and can help you establish a strong presence on the Internet. Join forces with someone else.
Partnerships and JV’s with other sites is a good idea as long as you are not selling similar products. You need to look for sites that target the same audience and get in touch with the webmaster. There are different ways to create a partnership; you could simply feature each others’ content on the two sites and share it on social networks, or establish a stronger partnership (JV) and offer interesting deals to customers who purchase products from your partner.
These strategies are ideal to reach out to a broader audience and launch a business, especially if no one knows about your brand yet. If you need to build your customer base, ask your partner to distribute free samples of your products to everyone who orders products from his or her site. Do not ask any online business owner to share or sell you the contact information of their customers with you; you will be considered a spammer and this is illegal.
If you do not wish to establish a partnership with another site, think about starting an affiliate program and recruiting Affiliate Partners. Get customers, bloggers and webmasters interested in selling your products by offering them rewards and a percentage of the sale (commission). Provide your affiliate partners with as much guidance and marketing tools as possible. Give them information on Internet marketing and SEO techniques and let them have free products so they can test them, take pictures, make videos, and write reviews.
Ask your affiliates to recruit more bloggers and/or webmasters to help you sell more products and give them a small percentage of their commissions as payment. Affiliate marketing is a good solution if you can afford to pay your affiliate partners enough to keep them motivated along with helpful information and selling tips. This solution is also a good way to create an online community around you and your products.
Partnerships with your competitors can be interesting and even fun in a few specific cases. The main goal is to improve the image of your brand and hopefully convince part of your competitor’s customers to try your brand. You can either organize a friendly competition between your respective customers to win prizes, for instance by getting people to create content about their favorite brand and share it on social networks.
If you do not think a friendly ‘battle of the brands’ is a good idea, think about a partnership for a good cause. You could work together to raise funds for a charity. The main message here is that you are able to go beyond the usual competition and unite for an important cause. Taking part in charitable activities is a good way to improve the image of your brand, and this kind of partnership is the ideal solution if you cannot afford to launch a major campaign by yourself. Plus you’ll gain more exposure and a larger audience and help others at the same time.
Remember that partnerships on the Internet do not have to last forever. They can be short or long term contracts for mutual success. Get in touch with potential partners and communicate openly so you can find an agreement that satisfies both of you. Be sure to document and create some kind of written contract so as to protect yourself legally that states all of the agreed terms. And above all, make sure your business ethics and goals are the same and avoid suspicious or questionable marketers and businesses. The wrong partnership can destroy a business just as easily as a good one can create success.
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