31 – Joint Ventures: Get Other People to “Put you on the Map”

Tom’s script for Episode 31
Copyright © Tom Antion

Screw the Commute Podcast Episode 031
Joint Venturing: How to Be in Front of a Million Warm Prospects in the Next 90 Days
Remind them of Episode 030 David Riklan

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Our sponsor this week is me again and the Tom Antion Internet Marketing Retreat and Joint Venture Program This is a little bit different joint venture program where myself and my staff work with you for a year to either get you started in an Internet business or to use the Internet to take your existing business to the next level. I'll tell you more about that later and details will be at http://www.GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com which will be in the show notes at screwthecommute.com

Hello everybody. I'm here to tell you a little bit about why joint venturing can be so lucrative for you. This is perfect if you're just starting out and you don't have a big mailing list. If you’ve been around Internet marketing at all you always hear about the value of the list. If you’re established and have a big or moderate sized list, you still want to grow, so joint venturing is great for you too. The same rules apply. Instead of starting with a small or nonexistent list, you are taking your existing list to a new level so everyone who wants to grow their business should listen to this.

I'm going to give you the method of approaching joint venture partners. These are people that have already blazed the trail before you. Some have big lists and some have smaller lists. At any rate they're further ahead than you are. So, the first thing I want to talk to you about is how valuable this can be to you if you made this a priority. And I'd say in the next 90 days you could probably, if you did everything that I teach in this episode, if you did it right, you could probably be in front of a million people that never heard of you before through your joint venture partners.

And these aren't a million people like Facebook people that never heard of you. And it's not just people that have fleetingly heard about you. These are people that hear about you with a warm introduction from the list owner that they already trust. This can really jumpstart your entire online or offline business. So, that's the value of this. It can take you from zero to doing a hundred miles an hour in a very short period of time.

But you MUST do this correctly. The first thing I want to tell you about is finding partners. I.e. how do you find these people. If these people have a big mailing list you can be darn sure that there's plenty of places online to sign up for this list. So, the first thing you should do is get yourself a throwaway e-mail address because I can tell you all of the people that you might want to deal with are not going to work out for you. And many of them once you get to know what they're about you may not want to deal with them.

So, get yourself a throwaway e-mail address. This would be a Gmail or a Hotmail or Yahoo or something like that and sign up for their publication so you can get to know what they're about. If you just try to blast a broadcast e-mail out to a bunch of list owners, it will get deleted so fast your head will spin. It won't mean anything. You really have to play the game and approach these people on an individual basis and very carefully as I'm going to outline here. So, get yourself this e-mail address so that you can get on their list and start learning about what they talk about and what issues that they bring up and what kind of attitude do they have about things.

Some, like me, I'm kind of in your face brash but not to the point where it's obnoxious. There are some people out there who make it a point of being obnoxious .....that's part of their shtick. Other people are very low key. You need to know what their nature is and you can learn that just by reading their publications, reading their blogs, reading their e-mail newsletters and so forth.

Now to find them in the first place if you're just totally starting from zero and don't know any of the players in your field.

You would just want to type in your topic area and plus the term "e-mail magazine" or your topic plus the word "blog" or plus "discussion forum" and you'll immediately bring up people in your topic area that have lists or that have discussion boards or that have blogs or all of the above. You have to start hanging out there and see the comments that other people make to them and you need to really learning about them.

One of the overriding principles here is you must be patient because the people that have blazed the trail before you have people chasing them around day and night. I mean at any one time I have at least 19 or 20 people trying to make deals with me to promote their stuff. I couldn't possibly do all of it. So, you must do the things that put yourself at the top of the list. That way when someone like me is ready to promote somebody else you’ll be the first person they call. So, you must be patient.

You must do your homework. If you try to skip this step, the chances of success are very slim unless you're a really hot babe because I've seen several of them that have virtually nothing important to say make it. You know they get extra breaks just because most of the people in the Internet marketing field are guys and a really hot girl can get breaks that you can't if you're just a regular non-hottie. I’m not trying to be sexist here. I’m just giving you the reality of the situation. So, if you're a hot girl that's model material, well you don't have to listen to this. You can play other games.

For the most of us, we have to do it correctly. So, to find them, start looking for their publications or e-mails or magazines or blogs or forums and get to know them first. That's the absolute main thing.

When you identify some people that you think you would like to target, how do you get a hold of them? Many of them ....I mean I'm one of the few at my level that you can even get halfway close to. And even my folks at my phone number screen my calls heavily. And I even have a phone number. Many of the places there is no way on earth you can call them. They hide from you. They don't want to hear from you. They don't want anybody to call them. I have a real business where I operate and we answer the phones. But still the people screen very heavily because people were chasing me around all the time and I know they really don't know how to play the game.

They don't have a good offer. They haven't listened to an audio like I'm giving you right now to teach you how to approach a joint venture partner. And so they're totally a waste of time. So, it's better that they get screened rather than me wasting time from my legitimate business and good partners to waste time on them because they didn't do their homework. And the same thing will happen to you if you try to contact me or anybody else. If you don't play the game right, if you act like you're a novice and you don't know what you're doing, nobody's going to deal with you. So, you're totally wasting your time.

When you do finally find some partners that makes sense ...and you won't know what makes sense until I go through the rest of this audio. I do need to tell you that you need to use multiple ways to try to reach them ...not just email. Probably phone is not going to work because so many of them hide and won't speak on the phone. Not many people have fax any more. Even if they have fax they probably get them through e-mail. Actually, now even snail mail is a legitimate way to reach people. Many people aren't used to seeing anything but junk mail so this can be a good way to reach people if you can find a good address.

I'll tell you one of the best methods. But you do have to be patient and invest in yourself is to go to their events and attend their live events. Many of them have live events and meeting them in person will go much further than trying to get e-mails through that don't even get to them where they have other people reading them or they automatically get filtered. So, going to live events and meeting them in person can be a good thing. However again you must be patient. And the fact that I tell you to go to a live event doesn't mean that they're going to have time for you if they're running a live event. It's a busy busy busy deal to run a live event. So, you can't be obnoxious about it and force your way to talk to them. You'll shoot yourself in the foot by not recognizing how busy they are. But attending a live event and being there when you get your chance puts you way ahead of the pack.

I just want to warn you, you may not get your chance at a live event so don't complain to me if you spend a thousand bucks for a hotel and airfare and then went to an event and didn’t get to pitch the person you wanted to pitch. At least I hope you got something out of the event and you may find way more people to make deals with at the event or maybe a speaker at the event would be a good prospect for you. But attending live will put you a lot further ahead. I can't tell you the number of deals that I've made and that people I know have made because they saw somebody in person. That person is more likely, if you do get to speak to them for a few minutes, to take your call or to keep that correspondence going, if you didn't make a jerk of yourself in person that is. It's just that way. It's the law of reciprocity and it's the fact that they know you and have seen you when you made that commitment to visit their event.

You get a little bit further ahead of the pack. Still doesn't mean they're going to promote your product yet because there's a lot more for me to tell you about.

Before I do, the next best thing to visiting a live event is to visit their online live events and make comments that make you and them look good. Get your name visible and memorable to them over time and it could grease the chute to getting your direct correspondence recognized by them and responded to by them.

OK. Now the next thing is you must give this person your product. Do not under any circumstances expect them to buy your product before they promote it. Some will do it or have their assistant do it just to check you out to see if you give good service to a regular customer but don’t count on them buying it.

I mean from my point of view and other influencer type people this is just ludicrous. If you really knew what was going on, you would never in a million years suggest that they buy your product. I don't care how expensive your product is because I have stacks of stuff in here that people give me begging me just to look at them. So do all the other really big joint venture partners. We have enormous numbers of people to pick from. If you expect us to buy your product just to help you promote it, you’re crazy. You'll get kicked out so fast your head will spin. So give the product to the potential joint venture partner. If it's a physical product, have it mailed as if it was going to a customer so that they could see what they're promoting. Remember this joint venture partner has a reputation to uphold. You might be brand new and you can screw up and nobody's ever heard of you so it doesn't make any difference but it makes it darn big difference to me who's sweated blood for 24 years creating a reputation online and you can't expect me or any other legitimate joint venture partner to promote something that we don't even know if it's any good. If some does agree to promote garbage, you will most likely get lots of returns and you’re most likely dealing with an unscrupulous person.

Anyway, I want to see the product the same way it's going to go to a customer. I want to see it from the same shipping company or fulfillment company and the packaging and all the stuff so that I can know what I'm going to be promoting to my list because if it's garbage and I promote it, then they're never going to trust me again. And I'll tell you no matter how much I could make on your deal, it’s not worth it when it's going to kill all the rest of my deals for years. So, it better be good. Don't expect me to buy it because I can just say heck with you. I got 20 other people here begging me to promote their products. OK so give them your product.

Now another thing you can do to entice joint venture partners. And sometimes you’ll also hear them called “Super Affiliates” which means they have a power in a group or power over a group or control of a group of people and they have the ability to sell enormous amounts of stuff. You can be a super affiliate in one field and not in another. For instance, I would never be a super affiliate for parenting type products because you know even though people on my list are parents they're not on my list because of that. They're on it because of public speaking and Internet marketing. So, I wouldn't be a super affiliate for parenting products.

If you had a parenting product, you'd want to go to people that have parenting lists with a big number of people who are on the list because they want to be better parents. That list owner would be a super affiliate for parenting products, but that same person who has a list of people wanting to be better parents would never be a great super affiliate for my public speaking stuff or my internet marketing stuff. Because the people on their list that are interested in parenting are most likely not interested in public speaking and Internet marketing stuff.

So, you have to make sure that your stuff is appropriate for the list and keep in mind, if I promoted a parenting product to my list of people interested in Internet Marketing and Professional Speaking, I’d get cussed out in 18 languages and 5000 people would unsubscribe that day.

Commissions
Let’s talk a little bit about commissions. In general, list owners aren’t going to promote you unless they get a commission on the sales they generated for you. You may have a regular commission schedule for you affiliate program. I’ll be doing a future episode all about affiliate marketing where you either give a commission to somebody else or you get commissions from people that you promote.

If a person is a super affiliate in your field and has a big list of people that are well known for buying stuff, you may want to offer that person an extra commission above what you'd normally give as an affiliate commission. And this is very common in some cases up to 75 percent commission. There's even cases where you give the person a 100 percent commission maybe for a limited period of time or something like that to really set yourself apart from the pack. And sometimes you just give a permanent higher commission. I even heard recently that someone was paying a 300% commission to be absolutely sure he got chosen as someone to promote.

Why would a person give the affiliate more money than they even got from the customer? Smart affiliates have way more things to sell the new customer and anything they lose on the front end to pay the super affiliate is more than made up for on the back end when they sell lots of other stuff to that new customer.

They also know that there's a lot of competition to get the super affiliate to promote them and if they only offer 50 or 40 or 30 percent, the super affiliates don't want to bother with them because they can go to some other product and get 65 percent 100% or that crazy 300%. You don’t have to rise to this level right away especially if you are just starting out and have only one product or service. But as you improve over time, you would want to get an array of products to sell on the backend and start upping the percentage you pay which will attract more super affiliates.

Patience and Demeanor
I mentioned it earlier but you’ve got to be patient because a lot of times a joint venture partner will have things scheduled three or four months in advance. They might have product launches in the works that are eating up every available e-mailing. And many people don’t send big promotions every day so you have a limited number of slots available for them to email their list.

So, you can't decide that you want to approach a person and think that they're going to immediately next week sell your stuff.

You must be patient. You must be easy to work with. Again, you always have to keep in mind you're one of 20 or 30 people that's chasing that joint venture partner at any time. You're in competition with them. Not only does your deal have to be good, you better be easy to work with because why should they pick you if you're a jerk and pushy and obnoxious? They can go and find somebody that's easy to work so it just doesn't make sense for you to be hard to get along with. They really are doing you a favor.

And what many newbies do is they don't have a clue of the life of a big influence, joint venture partner, super affiliate or whatever you want to call us. All they can think about … and they're almost like little kids…..we call them newbies or babies in the industry because all they can think about is themselves. “Oh, I have a great idea. I created a great product you should promote it's because the world needs it.”

Yeah well, we've heard that thousands of times and it's a big joke to us. And if you come with that attitude, we're going to tell you take a hike. We’re going to ignore you, not take your calls and make fun of you. You are showing that you don't know how to play the game and you don't understand our world. If you don't like, that don't go after the big joint venture partners and that's OK. In many cases you're going to need to start smaller anyway. Instead of going for somebody with a list of 50000, go for somebody with a list of 3000 because they haven't paid their full dues yet and they're most likely more hungry than someone with a list of 50000. There are going to be less competition and less people chasing them around. You can make more mistakes and maybe still get a deal going.

Just don't shoot for the moon and blow your chances because that big list owner you can be sure knows a bunch of other big list owners in that field. And if you make a jerk of yourself, he or she is going to tell all the other ones to stay away from you and then making a deal with one of them will be very difficult. You might as well just quit going after them because you're never going to get any of them to go with you if you act like a jerk. Making a mistake because you’re new is acceptable. Being a jerk is not. So, you’ve got to be patient and easy to work with.

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Appropriate Products and Services
OK. Now when you get your chance finally… let's say you've located a person and they're willing to hear you out on your deal. Don't blow it at this point. Folks if you made it all the way that far I'm going to give you some things that you must be ready for so that you don't blow your chance when you get it. And the first thing is the product must be appropriate for their list. I used an example earlier about a parenting product. The reason that came to mind is because there been several people over the years come to me and try to make this pitch. “Oh, Tom you've got this big list of 100000 people and a lot of them are parents. You should promote our parenting product to your list.” And I'm sitting there thinking. All right you don't know how to play the game. You don't understand. If I would promote that parenting product to my list of people who are on my list for public speaking and Internet marketing which I told you before, you don't understand because you've never sat here and gotten cussed out in 18 different languages. You haven't seen 5000 people unsubscribe in about less than six hours because I said something that wasn't appropriate for why they're on the list. Yes, they might be parents, but they're not on my list because they’re parents.

You'd be better off taking that product to somebody that's got a parenting list.. So, if you come with an inappropriate product for the list, no matter how good it is, no matter how much money you offer me, no matter how sweet a deal it is, I'm going to tell you to take a hike. If you're nice and you're being nice and you just don't know any better. I might not tell you that take a hike but I'm going to get rid of you somehow because you're wasting my time. You obviously don't know how to play the game. You have no chance on earth of succeeding with trying to promote a product to the wrong list. So, you're wasting everybody's time and effort. Keep that in mind. The first thing is the product better be darn appropriate.

So how do you know that? You go back and you sign up for the persons lists and you see what they have been promoting. You look at back issues and you read their blog back for a couple months or more and you see the kinds of things that they're into and their people want. If your product or service doesn't fit, it's too bad you just go to the next list owner. All of us big list owners have heard beginners try to make a stretch of why your product is perfect for our list.

And we've been working our lists for years and we know that you're crazy, well you’re not necessarily crazy, but you would be making a fool of yourself and ruining your chances hurting your reputation by approaching a list owner with the wrong product.

Money
OK next thing there must be enough money in the deal. In other words, your product must cost enough to make it worthwhile for a major list owner to promote it. And here's another thing you might not understand. Some of the things I promote to my list I get a $2000-dollar commission on. Two thousand dollars! So, if you come to me and you say, “Well Tom I have this nine-dollar ninety-five cent e-book and I'll give you a 50 percent or I'll give you 75 percent to me. I'm thinking you don't know how to play the game. Take a hike because I don't want to burn one of my mailings and make a piddly little amount of money when you have to sell 200 of your piddly books to equal one of something else that maybe I get $150 to a thousand bucks commission. So, don't approach a big list owner with something that the money just doesn't make sense even if the product is appropriate.

If there's not enough potential money in the deal for the commissions of the list owner, it's not worth it to them to do the mailing. Most big list owners every time they mail they get so many people unsubscribe even if the products are appropriate. It's just the nature of big lists. That might just be the e-mail that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Many people get really frustrated and they can't handle the enormous amounts of spam and e-mails they get so they just start cutting everywhere. I don't want my e-mail to get cut just because I'm trying to get a two-dollar commission off of you.

I don't mind somebody leaving if I'm trying to get a $2000 commission because with a $2000-dollar commission I will land a few of those and make a lot of money which is enough to replace those people that unsubscribed. You see every list has a value to each subscriber. It costs the list owners so much to get the subscriber either by great search positioning and finding them on the web and putting lots of Web sites up to grab these subscribers and using Pay Per Click ads and so forth. So, it costs people like me to get my subscribers even if they're coming for free off of Google. There's still a cost to it. And there's still a value to each one. So, if they unsubscribe because I sent them this e-mail and I only had a chance of making a little pittance off of it, that’s not good and I’m not going to do it.

I mean I might have done it when I was younger and didn't know any better or when I was a smaller list owner I might have done it and you can still probably find some because they are more hungry. But don't approach a large list owner with a product that doesn't have enough money to go around. I mean it just will not work.

The exception to this is if you have a proven sales funnel that leads people to buy a lot of stuff over time, and the large list owner gets a commission on whatever they eventually buy. Then the large list owner might even send out one of your freebies to get people to opt in to your funnel knowing they will get commissions on into the future.

Guinea Pig
Now the next thing is a really important thing and not all list owners will hit you with this but most big ones that have been around a while will. Let’s say you researched the list owner. Check! Let’s say you got to him or her and you were polite, professional and patient. Awesome! Let's say there's enough money and commission percentage in the deal. Ya got that covered. And let's say the product is appropriate for the list so you passed that test.

Don’t start counting your money yet. You still haven't passed all the way. You could kill the entire deal by innocently asking the list owner to be your guinea pig. What that means is if you don't have any kind of proven sales on this product, don't go to that list owner and ask them to mail their list in hopes of making some sales. You're asking that list owner who's sweated blood and worked day and night and built tons of Web sites and did search engine positioning and probably paid for certain placements and pay per click. You're asking them to send a mailing out with no guarantees that any money is going to come back. Of course, there aren’t any absolute guarantees on any promotion, but I mean you have not even given an inkling of proof that there could be any money coming. You haven't proven that your sales letter or video can take somebody and get them to pull their wallet out of their pocket and give you money. You haven't shown that.

So, a list owner might ask you, “What's your conversion rate on your sales letter? If you stand there like Elmer Fudd saying, “bada, bada, bada I don't know” Guess what happens next? Take a hike because it's not worth it to that list owner to be your guinea pig. If I send a mailing to 100000 people and I get nothing back from you in sales commissions, I've just lost a ton of subscribers and wasted a mailing and got nothing in return. So now I have to replace those lost subscribers which might be worth a dollar or two dollars apiece to me and I didn't get anything for it. So, you totally wasted my time and cost me money. After doing that a couple of times in my earlier career, I'm not going to do it anymore and no other big list owner will either unless you they owe you a big favor or you're one of those you know good looking girls that talked him into it.

So, don't go in there without any sales figures. You might say, “Well, Tom how can I have sales figures if I don't have a mailing list or any subscribers. That's when you have to invest a little elbow grease in your knowledge and a little money in some ads.

In episode 028 I covered “Advertising and Promoting your Business Online”. You could substitute the word “product” for the word “business”. So, it would be Advertising and promoting your product online. In that episode I showed you many ways to get viral traffic along with ideas to save you lots of money when advertising. So back and listen to episode 028 carefully and it would be a good idea to get a copy of the e-book I wrote that goes much more in depth on the topic. It’s in the show notes on episode 028. Now Google Ad Words is very difficult to learn but it certainly will work for you.

Back to the guinea pig stuff. What you will do is use the techniques from episode 028 and drive traffic to your sales page or video.

You will count how many people visited the sales letter and you will count how many people bought. Even if your numbers are small or let's say you get a small list owner that's got 500 people and you can sell two or three of your products from mailing to that small list. At least you're coming to me with some kind of figures.

Here's a scenario of what you would say to me if I or some big list owner ask you what's your conversion rate? Well you would say, “We tested it with a small group with a person who had a list of 500 people. We had 500 people get the announcement. We had about 150 people click through to check out the sales letter and out of those 150 we sold three of our four hundred ninety-seven-dollar packages. That’s a 2 percent conversion rate on a $500 product.”

So, I'm sitting there thinking, “This person knows what they're doing even though they're a beginner. He did his homework. He’s coming to me properly. He’s coming to me with some figures which tells me he invested in himself and that he tried this got some results, i.e. he’s not asking me to be his Guinea pig.” Then he says to me, “I got this result and I’m thinking that with your seasoned list of more warm customers that maybe we can even do better.”

Just the fact that he’s coming to me talking like that even though the numbers weren’t great I'm thinking wow this person knows how to play the game and just passed the next test.

Again, you’re doing great, but don’t count your chickens yet. This still doesn't mean I'm going to mail for you but you've made it to third base and you're ready to round to make a home run here pretty soon. Because of how you acted so professionally I’m going to take the time to look at your sales process. I'm going to look at your sales letter and I might see why it's not converting as well. I'm going to dig in and see the list you sent to to see what they're all about what type of people they are. And then if I say Well I think we can do better than your last mailing if you would tweak some things on your page and I'll do a warm e-mail for you or I'll even suggest possibly we do a tele class or a webinar.

However, that's it's hard for me to do a teleclass or webinar with you if I've never heard you on one. I had one lady that was great on what she did as a living. She totally sucked on a teleclass. I was so embarrassed that I was pulling teeth to get her to say what she was supposed to say and then she'd contradict me and she just made an ass out of both of us. So, it's very unlikely I'll put you on a tele class or webinar unless of course, you come to me with a recording of how well you did on another tele class or webinar..

Even if you suck on teleclasses and webinars I still might do an e-mail for you if you come to me with appropriate product there's enough money and you give me some type of conversion rate figures and you don't ask me to be your guinea pig. So, if you do those things if you find partners that are appropriate, meet them in person if possible, give them an extra commission to entice them. Make sure you're easy to work with and one of the things you do if you finally land the deal is don't make the joint venture partners work. They worked for years. Now it’s your turn.

You darn well don’t want to get all the way to the end and you’re sliding into home plate and then you get tagged out.

There would be a mistake that would kill the whole deal. Do not expect the joint venture partner to write up an e-mail and set everything up and go and sign up for your affiliate program and do all this work when they're really busy.

You should do all of that. You should write sample e-mails that they can tweak for their list. You should write sample questions for them if they're going to have you on a tele class or webinar. You should sign them up for the affiliate program and give them the link. Don't make them work because I've seen deals get all the way to the end and then I've been involved in them. I got all the way to the end and it was a good deal. And then they want me to write stuff and go sign up and I'm desperately busy from morning till night and the deal fell apart because they didn't make it easy for me to participate. So, don't let it fall apart at that point.
If you do all that stuff folks you will surpass 99 percent of the people trying to get joint venture partners. Doing this correctly can really put you on the map. I’ve had other big marketers tell me, that I was the one that put them on the map. I can tell you, they wouldn’t be on the map, a GPS or toy compass had they not approached me properly.

I suggest you get the show notes for this episode and the complete transcript and make yourself a written outline of all the points I made today.

If you do this seriously and do it the way I just outlined for 90 days. I mean I don't care if you work morning till night. The end result is worth it because you could be in front of a million people warm leads that never heard of you. Which could mean a boat load of money for you, joint venture partners that can’t wait for your next promotion and a firm position established on the Internet marketing map.

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This has been episode 031

Episode 032 John Drebinger has made a life for himself where he can take his whole family grandkids and all on vacation.

I’ll catch ya on the next episode.

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