A joint venture is when two or more businesses join together to work on a project for a set period of time. Doing online joint ventures can increase your chances of beating your competition, increasing your sales and profits, saving time and money, getting valuable referrals, and increasing your market share.

Plus:

-you can save money when businesses share operating costs

-you can get referrals from other businesses

-you can save valuable time when businesses share the workload

-you can offer your customers new products and services

-you can gain new business associates

-you can save money by sharing advertising and marketing costs

-you can get free advice and important information from other businesses.

You can find businesses to joint venture with online or offline. I try to find businesses that have the same target audience, but are not in direct competition with my business. Here are a few ways to find joint ventures online:

-subscribe and participate in e-mail discussion groups, online forums and newsgroups that deal with your target audience

-subscribe to e-zines that deal with your targeted audience

-note on your Web site or e-zine that you are interested in doing joint ventures

-search in your favorite web directories and search engines to find businesses to joint venture with online

Once you find a business simply e-mail them your proposal. Tell the business owner the benefits of the joint venture. Explain to him or her why it would be a win/win situation for both of your businesses. Give them a lot of compliments about their business, Web site, products and services. Using all three methods above will greater your chance of constructing a profitable joint venture. Good Luck!

JV ideas are virtually endless. Here are just ten online joint venture ideas:

1. A simple joint venture would be exchanging text links or

banners with other related web sites.

2. Share a web site with another business with the same target

market. You both will be marketing and advertising the same

web site which means double the traffic.

3. Exchange testimonials or endorsements for each others

products or services.

4. Combine your products or services together with another

businesses into one big package. You could split the profits.

5. Do you have and product or service that doesn't sell good?

Offer it as a free bonus for another businesses product or

service. In exchange ask for a small portion of the profits.

6. Offer to insert a promotional ad for another business into

your product package. Just ask them in return to do the

same for your business.

7. Trade e-zine or auto-responder ads with similar businesses.

8. Team up with related businesses to create an promotional

e-book to give away. Publish your web site ads in the e-book

then just give it away for free.

9. Host a virtual trade show or seminar with another business.

Include each other's promotional material on the web site.

10. Create a freeware program with another business. Include a

promotional ad for each of your businesses in the program. Submit

it to freeware and freebie sites.