eBook Marketing: Finding The Best Joint Venture Partners To Help You Sell More eBooks

When you joint venture to sell ebooks and information products, you bring your strengths to the table and then partner up with someone who is marketing to the same group of people but whose products and services compliment rather than conflict with your own. So how do you find the right joint-venture partners? Here are 7 places to look for successful joint ventures

1. Conferences and Meetings. I've found conferences to be a great place to meet people that I can joint venture with in my ebook business, where as local meetings have not worked that well for my business because most of these people were offline. Every business is different so check into both types of events and see what works best for your business. The important thing is to put yourself in situations where you can talk to people face to face and where there is the best possibility of forming an alliance that will benefit both of you. (Face to face contact can help you form partnerships more quickly than by telephone.)

2. Your Students. If you have a teaching or coaching business, your students could be one of your best sources for joint ventures. I find that my best students who are in fields relating to ebook writing and marketing have great potential to become joint-venture partners. They are earnest, they are committed and they are taking action on a regular basis. So
really get to know your students and always look for joint-venturing opportunities with them.
(It will also be an added incentive for them to work with you in the first place.)

3. Your Customers. People who buy your products are obviously interested in what you do and some of them will most likely be in related fields. Find ways to engage your customers to find the ones that can increase your bottom line through joint-venturing.

4. Affiliate Partners. Affiliate partners can often turn into joint-venture partners.
An affiliate is someone who is already promoting your products and services which means that they have a market that is already interested in what you have to offer.
Some of them will be a natural fit and will move from promoting your products and services to working with you as a joint-venture partner.

5. Vendors. The vendors that you work with may know other people who are exactly the kind of people you are looking to joint venture with. You might even considering offering vendors a "hook-up fee" which will give them even more incentive to help you find the best joint-venture partners for you.

6. Trade Associations. Get to know the people who run your local trade associations and ask them which vendors they use. Then make a point to get to know these vendors. They can also be a good source for joint-venturing opportunities.

7. People whose services you use. Think about the people in your life who perform a service for you. Do they have a business where joint venturing with you makes sense for them? Will it help them expand their business while helping you to do the same?

If you want to find great joint-venture partners, pay attention to your students, your customers, your affiliates, your vendors, people in your trade associations, people that you meet, the people that you work with, and the people who work for you. You never know where you will meet the perfect partner who needs what you have to offer and will help you to expand your reach, sell more ebooks and make more money with less effort than many of the other ebook internet marketing strategies require.

Why Write An E-Book?

I love settling down to a really good book. Actually, I love the whole process, from going to the bookshop or library, browsing the books on the shelves to choosing one with a catchy title and bringing the book home to read at my own leisure. So why recommend writing an e-book? Regular paper books have so many advantages. I can pick it up anytime I want to. I don't have to wait for the computer to be free, hope for a good internet connection, get a neckache trying to read it on-line... I can put a bookmark where I've stopped reading in a regular book, instead of scrolling up and down on the computer screen. I can't read an e-book wherever I want. Unless of course, I kill a few trees printing the entire book out in a larger font than it would otherwise have been in a regular book.
E-books mainly have words. Pictures take a long time to download and take up a lot of space. I like books with pictures. As they say, a good picture is worth a thousand words.

Back to my question. So what's so great about an e-book? Let's look at it from the author's point of view first.

I have a friend who has been thinking about writing a story book for months now. She's got the whole plot worked out. She's even thought about some illustrations. She went as far as entering her book into a competition, hoping that if she won, it would get her some prize money to fund the initial start-up, and provide free publicity. So what happened ? Well, the whole long-drawn process of finding a good illustrator, trying to get her some funding, being really busy with her usual life, and probably sheer inertia got in the way.

That's when I suggested she consider an writing an e-book instead. Here's why.

1. Writing a regular book and getting it published needs money. Not everyone has enough money to start the process going. It becomes worse when you consider the lag time between the publishing of your book and the time you see any money from the sale of your book. E-books need very minimal capital. There are programmes that help you get started at the fraction of the cost.

2. Finding a publisher that will publish your book. You could try to publish it yourself, but you'd have to pay for your own printing. Writing an e-book eliminates that problem. The internet will allow you an easy, cheap and quick way to get your book out.

3. You can publish the book the way you want to. Nobody edits bits out.

Sometimes people get so thrilled with the idea of writing that great story, they forget that great story can only be sold if people want to buy it and read it. It has nothing to do with how well you write. Great book but no traffic equals no sales. The key word here is MARKETING. As Robert Kiyosaki, the author of the best-selling book Rich Dad, Poor Dad pointed out, he wasn't the best WRITING author. Many people, he felt, could write better than him. He failed English in school. But their books weren't being snapped off the shelves like his were.

So why get round to writing an e-book, or any book at all ? There's the attraction of having financial independence and a passive income stream. You get the satisfaction and prestige of being an author.

Writing a book, e-book or not, is not just about having a great idea and putting it down on paper. It takes a lot more to turn it into a best-seller quickly and profitably.