Joint ventures have become increasingly popular with companies that outsource a major portion of their operations overseas.
Because there is an entirely new legal entity created by the joint venture; the companies who outsource and involve themselves in joint ventures usually retain a good portion of their business.
However, because the launch of a joint venture does creates a new entity, both companies are faced with their share of positives and negatives.
On the positive side; joint ventures provide obvious revenue and tax advantages to both the company and the out-sourcer.
Successful joint ventures can boost your reputation and your net worth providing both parties bring something of value to the table.
Another obvious positive to joint ventures, is the sharing of any inherent risk by both companies. Occasionally substantial losses can occur in business, especially in our current economic climate.
Where one entity could not bear the burden of a substantial loss; joint ventures can allow both entities to weather the storm and survive an otherwise disastrous economic catastrophe.
Joint ventures also provide more operational transparency to both parties. Because both parties are affected by the outsourced services; a greater degree of control can be exercised by the buyer of the outsourcing operation.
Because of their mutual financial interests, both parties in joint ventures tend to devote much more attention and commitment to their end goals than would normally occur.
Despite all these positives, there are some negatives associated with joint ventures that should be pointed out.
The number one drawback, is the amount of time that it takes for decisions to be formulated.
Corporations make decisions relatively quickly compared to the time it takes for decisions to be made in joint venture relationships.
There can also be an understandable clash of opinion when two separate entities try to quickly agree on a solution, strategy, or answer to a problem that affects one party and not the other.
Sometimes this clash of corporate cultures can lead to disastrous consequences for both parties.
Joint ventures require more sophistication from buyers compared to other business models, which is why both parties to joint ventures should take a deep breath before creating the new entity.
Weather or not free membership sites are better than paid membership sites used to be a matter of opinion however, because of the economic downturn, people have been flocking to free membership sites in droves.
Email marketers, Internet marketers and entrepreneurs are finding more advantages to free membership sites for their potential customers than they have in the past.
Lately, because of the obvious advantages of free membership sites, even the well established savvy Internet marketers who already have paid membership sites, are moving to free membership sites for their customers.
Because paid membership sites are usually limited to a specific number of members, your marketing efforts become limited to the number of people you have enrolled in your site.
Limiting your membership, also limits your marketing potential.
And, limiting your marketing potential is never a good idea, regardless of what type website you are operating.
We all know that marketing is a numbers game. By limiting your membership in a paid membership site; you have intentionally restricted your marketing potential and limited your bottom line earnings.
Although there are obvious reasons for limiting paid membership sites; that does not mean you can’t operate free membership sites right along side your paid sites.
Because there is never any reason to limit the amount of members you can enroll in free membership sites; there is no limit to the amount of money you can earn.
Most paid membership sites only retain their members for a period of three to six months before they cancel their memberships and opt out. In Internet marketing time, three to six months is a “blink of an eye”.
Once a member cancels their membership to a paid site, the site owner must replace them, sometimes at great deal of cost.
Membership cancellations at free membership sites are easily replaceable, usually at little to no cost to the site owner.
Additionally, marketing to members of free membership sites is virtually unlimited. You can continue to market to your free membership site members for as long as you care to.
Free membership sites are easy to run and cost almost nothing.
Free membership sites will supply their owners with an almost unlimited number of customers and potential customers to market all types of products and services to.
The passage and implementation of the CAN SPAM act made it mandatory for Internet marketers to use opt-in mailing lists in order to broadcast email marketing offers to their potential customers.
If you try to send bulk marketing emails without the consent of your recipients, you will likely see your online business closed down or subject to heavy fines.
This fact alone makes free membership sites and obvious choice for email marketers.
Instead of limiting your mailing list to the number of members in your paid membership site; why not just create a free membership site and gather an unlimited number of names and email addresses where you have the legal right to send your marketing emails?
Free membership sites are easy to set up, operate, and populate.
It’s much easier and more economical to populate a free site than is is to run PPC campaigns, pay for advertising, write ezines, etc. in order to attract members to your free membership sites.
Free sites are often made up of customers or potential customers, who will eventually become members of paid membership sites.
With that in mind, there is no reason why a savvy Internet marketer should not run both.
If you provide free membership sites that can be upgraded to paid membership sites when your members decide to upgrade, you have the better part of both worlds and it becomes a win win situation for everybody concerned.
This simple keyword research method will begin to get free leads within a matter of only a few days.
In addition to your own “capture page”, this keyword research method is also excellent for promoting your affiliates.
The three steps to the key word research method are briefly outlined below:
- Step 1 – First Google the phrase “free Google keyword research tool”.
Once you get to the Google keyword tool, type in at least 5 to 8 keyword phrases that apply to what your capture page is all about.
Go for something generic with your keyword that provides sites with that type of information, such as “training”,”information”, “ways to”, or “how to”.
Example: If your squeeze page is about weight loss; type in weight loss training, ways to lose weight, weight loss information, or how to lose weight.
Some of the “long tailed keyword” phrases can be really good to use; mainly because fewer people have thought about using these “long tailed keywords” and because there is usually much less competition for them.
Once you find a keyword phrase that has at least 500 to 1000 search impressions every month. Look for 30,000 site results.
When you choose your keyword or keyword phrase, put it in the Google search engine to see how many searches it brings up. The goal is to find one with 30,000 or so search results.
If your keyword is close to this; re-enter the keyword with quotes to see how many site results there are.
For example: Ways to lose weight brings up 6,910,000 search results and “ways to lose weight” brings up about 399,000 results for sites.
Because of the amount of competition, this particular example; ways to lose weight, is not an acceptable keyword.
When you finally do get a keyword that fits the criteria, go to www.namecheap.com and see if the domain is available to purchase.
- Step 2 – Purchase your domain name
If your keyword or keyword phrase is available, register the domain. Otherwise, continue searching until you come up with a keyword that fits the criteria outlined above.
Make sure the domain you register is a .com domain name and that it is exactly the keyword you researched. If you cannot find a .com domain that is the exact match to your keyword; DO NOT PURCHASE it!
The reason you want a .com domain, is that when people search the Internet they almost always type in the .com suffix. The .com will get you the most number of searches.
On the average you will pay about $10 per year for registering your domain in your target niche. This is really an extremely good deal when you do the math.
Assuming you have one website that brings in about 10 leads a week, that is 40 leads per month or 480 leads per year. Divide 480 leads per year minimum by the $10 per year you are paying for your domain and your average cost per lead comes out to be only a little over two cents per lead.
- Step 3 – Create your website
When you create your website using the keyword research method; make sure you add your keyword, title, description and alt tags to the page. This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT.
Next, add your EXACT keywords to the site content. Try to maintain at least a 2% keyword density. This means that if you write 500 words of content, you need to use your keyword at least 10 times.
Next wait for your new website to get indexed by the search engines. This will usually take anywhere from 3 to 5 days.
You can speed up the process somewhat by writing 4 or 5 articles and pointing them to your capture page using article directories like Ezines.com or other internet properties.
You can often achieve a top ten ranking in the Google search engines in less than three days.
When the keyword research method is done properly; you will have the name that people are searching for in the domain name, the title, the page title, pictures, and several times in your website page content and as a result, your website will get ranked higher up in the search engine results.
The more content and pages you add to your web site that has your keywords included; the higher your website will rank in the search engines.
By using the keyword research method, your keywords in the “capture” page of your website will begin to generate targeted leads within a week or even less.
