Hey, Justin.

Taking for granted you know my rule of contacting every single JV prospect, personally, prior to pre launch, to help form your core group, and qualify those who will or won't verify they intend on following through, while eliminating as many tire kickers and collectors of bright shiny objects as possible in the process ...

What I recommend doing, assuming you don't recognize the name, is asking how they intend on promoting, a link to their home page or latest/most popular product, and then I search Google and/or Alexa for results. If that doesn't reveal enough to satisfy me ... and they want a review comp, I ask them which past launches they've had success with ... by name, and performance. I then simply go back to the merchant at that point and have them check their sales logs.

Also ... please remember that there are a lot of launches out there ... add that to the daily responsibilities of operating an Online Business, and it becomes a no brainer that you have to grab hold of your JV partners attention ... keep them fully notified and on course at times intervals, and make promoting as brain dead simple as you possibly can ... don't make them jump through hoops to find the affiliate area, copy, links, and other creatives ... append them into the emails as often as possible ... or at least have a link in every JV mailing and sale notification to a page or blog where all is accessible.

Still not promoting? Send them an email the likes of ... "Bob, I'm a little concerned that you haven't been getting the JV notifications ... if there is anything at all you need from me to make this work for you, please get back to me. Things are going great, and I wouldn't want you ... or your list, to miss out ..."

Once you taken the time to qualify everyone, you should have a much better idea of who will make up your core group, who will at least promote ... and who you won't be depending on. It's a lot better than going into things blind, and then complaining at the end of the launch that nobody promoted.

Best,

Mike