Internet marketing is a long-time commitment between you and your online customer base. But, what is Internet marketing? At it's most basic level, it's the process of putting a product in front of a consumer, selling the product, and asking the consumer to return. But this is only the first part of a strong internet marketing strategy.

Internet marketing is also about making a website work its best for you, the business owner. That is why the successful formulas, secrets, and 'My strategy for wealth' schemes do not work. There are no 'Ten Steps to Success' for Internet marketing. What works for one business, will not work for another.

In the internet world, instead of two companies coming together in a merger, they form a joint venture.

The Commonwealth Alliance Program anticipates that strategic alliances (Joint Ventures) accounted for 25% of all revenues in 2005, a total of 40 trillion dollars. "This figure has been steadily growing over the past years as more solopreneurs and Work At Home Parents (WAHPs) decide to unite to augment their revenue in the highly competitive global environment."

It all comes down to understanding all of the strategies and picking the right one for your business. In simple terms, internet marketing strategy is the 'how' and 'why' of online sales.

Joint Venture

The term Joint Venture is a simplistic process in the Internet marketing realm. A Joint Venture means different things to different online businesses. You can use a Joint venture to build your opt-in list, earn income, increase hits, and increase exposure. A joint venture in the internet world operates differently than it would in the brick and mortar world.

An example of a joint venture in the brick and mortar world would be a gym coming together with a company that produces body building supplements. The gym needs equipment to operate, and they may sell some products on the side.

An example in the internet world would be a content rich, 1,000+ page niche web site that affiliates for a company selling products to that niche. The content rich site is well optimized and ranks well with all of the major search engines, and has its own large, loyal list of unique users. They need a product to sell.

A Joint Venture represents the easiest way to start an online business, and increase revenue. In fact, for many new entrepreneurs, it is the only 100% risk-free methods of marketing.

A joint venture is like a marriage. A good JV can create fortunes. It can bring together products and services, free media attention, and resources to cut down the amount of time needed to spend promoting and marketing. There are four players in the JV world, each works together to create a win-win situation for all.

The Product It can take a long time to find a list owner who will take a new product. Most list owners want products with a proven value for their subscribers. There are thousands of list owners. Product owners uses these lists to leverage their sales and split profits with the list owner.

The trick for product owners is to find lists with an incredibly narrow niche. This can be hard. Many list owners try to be everything to everyone. A list with a target audience will produce more sales than a larger list that has a broader audience. Remember that the brokers and customer list owners have something that you need - trust. You cannot buy trust, so when it comes to negotiating with them, do not try and nickel and dime them, especially if your product does not have a proven track record.

Mailing List Owner Product owners aren't the only ones who can profit nicely from joint ventures. Often a product owner will offer a much higher affiliate commission to the owner of a large, targeted list, for promoting the product. This is a win-win situation for both parties - the product owner's sales will often explode right after the product is announced to a large, responsive list. And the list owner makes a nice commission on the product, all for taking an extra 5 minutes to mention the product in his or her newsletter.

Some of the best places to build opt-in lists are free and fall under the radar of most internet marketers. For example, did you know that Myspace now drives more hits to websites than MSN? Or, did you know that you can buy the top space on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Altvista for less than $50 a month? Yes, that's right.

This is a great time to get building a list. The internet is still not awake to the idea that Web 2.0 doesn't work the same way as the old websites. You no longer need to spend so much time optimizing your websites. In fact, MSN is the only major search engine that really cares about meta tags anymore. The rest of the search engines use keyword density to ban websites that pump more than 5% of a keyword. It is easy to find brokers who will help you build a list. This is because few people work at building lists. The Brokers need these lists to survive.

Broker The Broker's job is to match the right product to the right list of customers. A good broker will charge a percent from both sides for as long as the joint venture remains, which could be years. This is a great job for someone who is internet savvy, a real people person, and who can sell new concepts to people. The first step for a new broker is to join the forums, ezines, and communities that will put them in contact with products, and then do the same with content rich websites that under-utilize their marketing ability.

An easier way to do this is to contact hundreds of ezines, and get them to pay a fee for advertising on each other's ezines. The ezine owners may pay you $100. In return, they get $1000 of advertising, build their opt-in list, and hike up the prices they charge their advertisers.

Providence Man This is the most neglected Joint Venture method. It requires a lot of research, and there is failure. But, eventually, the providence man will earn 50% of all direct sales.

The providence man searches for great products that have poor exposure. They identify a product or service, review their web site, sales letter, order forms, web design and many other things, then recommend improvements. In this way, a providence man is sort of like the systems analyst of the brick and mortar world.

Then, the providence man will arrange a Joint Venturing agreement with the product owner. This is great for the person who is more at home on the internet than in the brick and mortar world. If you have already formed yahoo groups, have an ezine, host chats, sell ebooks, then you are a natural.

For example, you may know a lot of people who have created their own business software. You in turn build a contact list with dozens of ezines, websites, and forums where small businesses are looking for something easy, cheap, and reliable. Now, ask the programmers if they would be willing to pay you 10, 20, and even 50% of all sales through those ezines. In return, you pay the ezine owner 2 - 10% in sales.

Scams The introduction to the Joint Venture world can be treacherous. Many of the new list-building communities are nothing more than old 'safe list' programs cloaked as Joint Venture communities. They charge a fee to join, and offer nothing. Their products are rarely more than the 'secret to my success' or 'how to make a million overnight' programs that used to be sold from websites and forums.

A certain amount of wading through scams is to be expected. However, once you find the real brokers and providence men venues, there is a fortune to be made.

Why It Works One of the easiest to break into Joint Ventures I have seen is in the blogging sphere. The blogger builds 10 plus blogs and gets hundreds of hits. They ping daily, write free articles to build links, and build subscriber lists. The Internet Marketing companies pay them $5 - $10 per blog, to post a press release or ad from their clients. I know bloggers who write 200 blogs a week, post 50 ads in them, and make $500 - $1000. It is that simple.

This does not mean that a person who has a dynamite online course cannot hook up with one of the major players in their niche, and create a partnership with that one person, earning money hand-over-fist. The reason why more people are not profiting from Joint Ventures is because they do not believe that the system works. That is because they lack vision. Yes, to many people it does sound impossible to make $1000's a week, but that is because they are thinking like a laborer. Not like a solopreneur.

This is not a get rich quick scheme. Yes, it does take work to make $1000's a week. I won't kid you. But look at it this way. The internet transfers literally trillions of dollars in wealth every year. The measly $1000 you have been promised, in return for 100 - 500 hours of prep work, over a few weeks, or months, is totally in proportion to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that will trade hands in the time it takes you to read this report.

How Joint Venturing Works Joint Venturing profits all parties, without any cash investment whatsoever. The parties rely upon two basic marketing rules. The first is that people buy from someone they trust and know. The second, there is more money in the list and backend sale, than there ever is in the initial sale.

A joint venture can be as simple as exchanging banners and text links. Most websites have engaged in a Joint Venture with Google's Adsense program. Or, it could be a complex case where a content rich website with client lists finds products to sell in exchange for a percentage of those sales.

The beauty of a Joint Venture is that you do not need to sign away any of your business. This is not a merger. It is a symbiotic relationship where two entities will use each other's strengths to ensure their survival in the vast world wide web.