If you want star affiliates in your market to join your affiliate and promote your products, you really have to go out and find them. You can certainly promote your affiliate program on your own website and to get people to sign up, but the best results come when you go out and find your own joint venture partners…and it sounds like you already understand that.
You can find potential partners by finding websites that:
- Have good website traffic
- Have decent sized email lists
- Target your buying audience
How do you find these people?
- Go to your favorite search engine and see which sites come up near the top for your target keywords.
- Check their ESTIMATED traffic ranking at Alexa.com – this site very roughly estimates how popular a site is based on traffic and page views. The lower the ranking number, the busier the site. This is not a foolproof method, but can be used as a guideline to compare websites in similar markets.
- See which sites link to your competition. Go to Google or Yahoo and type in the following: link:yourcompetitorsdomain.com. Just substitute "yourcompetitorsdomain.com" with your competitor’s actual domain name. The results that show up will be sites that link to your competitor. You will potentially find some good sites to partner with here.
- Check DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory for websites in an appropriate category for your market.
How do you approach these people?
The common method of many website owners is to send a mass email to entice the webmaster with the lure of commission. Of course, you should make every effort to get a first name to personalize the email and use your Autoresponder to automatically add their name into your email. Include information like their first name, their website URL and any other personal details you can include.
This method will get you the most partners for the least amount of time and effort. Of course, if there are some websites that you REALLY want to say yes, you will need a more personal touch. Realize that in competitive markets, these webmasters probably receive many joint venture requests and yours might be sent to the trash, along with the rest.
If you want to be taken seriously:
- Offer to send them your product for free so they can review it – or just mail it to them right away without any expectations. Even if they can’t promote your product now, if you treat them cordially, they might just promote your product down the line.
- Show them that you know something about their business and comment specifically on some of the projects they are working on or some of their products that you have purchased
- Do something for them first. List them as a recommended resource on your website, etc., and tell them about it.
- Pick up the phone and develop a relationship. Perhaps you can offer to promote his or her product first, instead of asking for a favor right away. Don’t be in a rush to get them to promote your product or you may just burn your bridges completely.
- Show them proven results of other affiliates or illustrate how well your website converts visitors to sales.
Overall, realize that you're probably going to get a lot of "Nos" before you get to the "Yesses". Don't take it personally because people are busy and they can't promote every product that comes their way. Just be open to developing relationships as that is the best long-term strategy in finding great JV partners.
A Long-Term Strategy For Securing Affiliate & Joint Venture Details
A Successful Business Financial Projection Can Be The Key To Securing Financing
A business seeking capital can’t afford to underestimate the importance of business financial projections. A business financial projection is simply forecasting your sales and revenue to the lender. This information is important because it is a key indicator to your ability to repay a loan.
If you are unsure about financial forecasting and how it relates to your business it is best to hire someone who does know. Most lenders will want to see a three or five year projection. There are 14 different items to include and fully support in your financial projections. With these different items it is best to give a month-by-month breakdown for the first year, a quarterly breakdown for the next two years, and an annual breakdown for the final two years you are projecting.
The different items to include in your projections are; sales revenue estimates, administrative costs, production costs, sales costs, capital expenditures, gross margin by product line, sales increase by product line, interest rates on debts, income tax rate, accounts receivable collection plan, accounts payable schedule, inventory turnover, depreciation schedules, and the usefulness or depreciation of assets.
The income projection enables the owner/manager to develop a preview of the amount of income generated each month and for the business year, based on industry supportable predictions of monthly levels of sales, costs, and expenses. When determining the total net sales you will be finding out how many units of products and services you expect to sell at the prices you are projecting. Make sure to think of what returns, allowances, and markdowns can be expected. The sales costs needs to be calculated for all products and services used. Ensure that when determining the costs of sale that you don’t forget anything such as commission paid to sales representatives, transportation costs, or any direct labor costs.
For the gross profit you would subtract the total cost of sale from the total net sales. To get your gross profit margin you will divide the gross profits from the total net sales. This will be expressed as a percentage of total sales or revenues.
When formulating your business financial projections there are five items that will ruin the accuracy of your projections, and hurt your chances of being approved for business financing. The first one is wishful thinking or being over-optimistic about your sales potential. Ask yourself: “Is it possible to achieve the sales levels you’re forecasting?”. A good example is that a sales team can only visit a certain number of customers each week or a factory can only manufacture a given amount of products on each shift. Make sure to keep your projections realistic and even more important to be based on supportable evidence. It is imperative to also make sure that your sales assumptions are linked directly to your sales forecast or your information will contradict itself. Most lenders are “by the numbers”, so if your numbers don’t add up, you will get declined. A good example of this is to say that you expect increased sales in a market that is declining. That just does not add up.
Another thing not to do when projecting your business finances is to spend a lot of time refining the forecast. Try to avoid tinkering with the target numbers once they are set. Many business owners neglect to ask the opinions of the sales people who know the buyer’s intentions about what they think the projected sales should be. It is important to make sure your sales team agrees on any sales targets that will be set. One other fatal mistake made by business owners when working on financial projections is not getting feedback on the projections from an accountant.