Wow, was I surprised to see 14 replies in a few hours.

Thanks for your contributions guys, it's a great thread. :-)

Here's more advice in a few posts than I've seen in a 150 pages ebook on JVs. There are so many things I could respond to, it would be a VERY VERY long post, so I pick just a few ideas:

I think one of major problems with Joint Venture Marketing in 2007 is that JVs have been pushed into the 'make money fast' category, as opposed to it's original intent ... mutual reward derived from combined effort between 2 parties.
Mike, that makes complete sense to me. At least in the internet marketing niche the term 'JV' becomes more and more synonymous to the term 'affiliate', or to be precise: 'affiliate with a huge list who's ready to promote my product'. I wonder when people started to use the term this way?

From a newbie point of view it does make sense of course. Because what could you offer if you have no list of your own, no business history etc.? So you know you can't bring much to the table, yet everybody is telling you you can't make it in the business without the help of the big guys and cool JVs.

Please note: I'm not being negative here, I just want to make the thought very clear, and thus I might exaggerate a bit in the wording. I guess you get the point...

So how does a newbie enter the market and make contacts? I'm not talking about making contacts that can be monetized right away with promotions. I'm more talking about being noticed at all.

A good start (in an early stage) might be to participate in forums and offer simple things like answering questions, offering reviews of products and sales letters to build relationships. (The advanced stage would be to get attention through your products and websites)

Over the last 15 month I was very active in a few closed communities. It may not have been the best use of my time regarding effectiveness for business, but I had lots of fun and being effective wasn't my goal at that time. And I learned a lot and it did build a few relationships.

What I found is that often those who require the most help in a forum usually aren't those who you really would want to have a relationship with if your goal is efficiency. Usually they are newbies who don’t even know how right click and save a file.

They can be very active, post a lot of questions, PM you for help … and after a few days or weeks they are out of business before they’re in. So did you waste your time? In a way you did, but on the other hand you get noticed by the more serious guys as well.

Which brings me to…

Make the effort to meet serious marketers and develop relationships with them.
That really got my attention. Especially the ‘serious marketers’, because that’s point: 95% of the people you will meet online are enthusiastic, but they are not serious. You can spend a lot of time with them, even a good time, but they will not be the ones that you will ever benefit from. So when you start networking pay attention to where you invest your time. While helping out people who may not follow through is still something that’s okay, you should not forget to focus on ‘serious marketers’ as well.

And I like to add one more criteria...

There are times that I've spent weeks of time working on something for someone (be it sales copy, helping support their customers, sending out a mailing, making tons of sales for them...etc.). In fact, if I mentioned the names of those people here, I'd bet that every single person would recognize them. I won't mention them though, simply because it isn't pertinent to the topic, nor do I know the circumstances and reasons behind the lack of response.

I've always heard that good things come back around...I've stopped holding my breath at this point. That doesn't mean I'll stop helping, just that I don't think the saying holds much weight.

Not one single time has one of the people I spent tons of time helping, come back and asked if there was anything they could do in return.
Christopher, thanks for sharing. I totally understand where you’re coming from, I met those guys too. Those who are ‘serious marketers’ but who still are not the best persons to network with. They are those who talk about mutual benefit but who don’t walk their talk. They make you work, forget to say thank you and they can’t remember you until they have new job to delegate.

That’s why we need a second criteria: A potential JV partner must be a ‘serious marketer’ but also a ‘trustworthy business person’. That’s more hard to find out of course.

So far my first thoughts on your posts, I might come back with more tomorrow.
Right now it's 4am in Germany and time to shut down the PC.

Again, thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and experience.
Ralf