Affiliate marketing involves a lot more work than most people realize. Unless a person decides on outsourcing, the skills necessary to run a successful campaign can include: web design, content creation, copywriting, social media engagement, and more.
Not everyone has the time, patience, or talent to learn every skill required for affiliate marketing. But it’s quite possible someone will excel at one or more of the required talents. It may be that someone has all the skills but would benefit from assistance in running a larger marketing campaign. In these cases, a good option could be to team up with one or more affiliate marketers in a joint venture.
Below are some pros and cons of forming an affiliate marketing joint venture. First come the pros, then the cons.
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The PROS
1. Division of labor
In any collaboration, one of the biggest benefits comes from combined knowledge. With the plethora of skills required for affiliate marketing it would take one person a long time to become familiar with, let alone skilled in, all facets.
An affiliate marketing joint venture can fast-track the process by bringing together people who excel at specific areas of affiliate marketing. A collaboration ensures the best people perform the right tasks, and this produces a unified result far beyond anything possible by working alone.
2. Increased productivity
Working alone on a project may sound like a great idea at the time, but it requires incredible self-discipline. When planning a solo campaign, it can be way too easy to underestimate the amount of work involved and how long it will take to complete.
A joint venture brings multiple opinions and evaluations to the table and this can produce better planning, scheduling and organization. The result being: less time wasted on course corrections or restarts as the result of linear thinking or rushing to complete everything on time.
3. Two minds are better than one
One person’s good idea can become a truly great idea with a simple suggestions from someone else. If one person is great at presales lead generation and another person is a whiz at creating advertisements that get high click-thru ratios, it makes perfect business sense to join forces.
There can be a tendency to develop a “tried-and-tested” methodology in marketing but long-term success demands dynamic strategy. A joint venture provides the opportunity to learn new tactics from each other. These tactics can be combined into one strategy that will best suit the target market.
4. Faster returns on investment
If one new venture will take one person approximately one month to plan, design, and execute, then it makes sense that the same venture could be achieved in two weeks by two people, should both persons be sufficiently skilled.
Of course, this would be a ‘perfect world’ example. But there is no denying that a marketing campaign can be performed in less time with more human resources. The sooner a marketing campaign is launched, the sooner returns on investment can be achieved.
5. Networking
In general, business is all about networking. Whether this be sales persons liaising with clients or meeting other sales persons at conferences, business is socially driven. Affiliate marketing is no exception.
Joint ventures forge business relationships and these relationships can produce new opportunities through recommendations from current or previous venture partners. Networking can lead to an increased customer base and improved reputation.
The CONS
1. Balancing the workload
In any affiliate marketing joint venture, the workload will have to be shared. How the various tasks are divided and distributed could be an easy process… or it could be a can of worms waiting to be opened. What if two people share the same skills and both want to do the same tasks? What if one person has the skills to complete four of six required steps but the other person can only perform two?
In these types of situation a 50/50 collaboration may be less than ideal. A weighted collaboration may be an option, where one person does more work but receives more of the revenue. But even this type of agreement, if not carefully negotiated, could be problematic.
2. Reduced efficiency
A joint venture does not require those involved to live in the same vicinity. However, if there is a geographical separation, then the people involved will be heavily reliant on digital communication. Everyone involved has to be aware of what they, and everyone else, is responsible for.
Any breakdown in communication can lead to work being duplicated. Lack of effective communication can also lead to important steps being missed, i.e. when one person thinks the other is working on that and vice versa. Poor communication could see the the whole venture end up disjointed and way over schedule.
3. Artistic differences
A difference in opinion is not a bad thing. Anybody entering into a joint venture should, hopefully, be willing to listen to opposing ideas and evaluate those ideas logically, rationally and with a willingness to accept an alternative action, should it be the better solution.
However, disagreements do occur and sometimes no middle ground is found. There is always a chance of a joint venture ending in tempestuous disaster, if the wrong buttons are pushed.
4. Sharing the profits
Sometimes it just all comes down to money. After all, affiliate marketing is business. One issue to be particularly wary of is how different resources are fiscally evaluated.
One partner invested more initial capital to get the venture going but the other partner performed more of the work. How do they divide the profits? How will they decide on the monetary value of the person’s time and effort? It’s rare for any joint venture to be a perfect 50/50 effort with the same capital investment and same work performed and deciding on who gets what percentage of the profits may put a strain on the business relationship.
5. Power struggles
Unless someone is fully aware they are about to team up with a megalomaniac, it is reasonable to assume that all involved in a venture should have an equal say, with the exception of the odd differences of opinion.
If two determined personalities end up with opposing ideas then there may be a power struggle for leadership. This type of situation could destroy a collaboration based on equal standing.
Do the pros outweigh the cons?
As long as all parties go into an affiliate marketing joint venture with honest intentions, and all aspects of the arrangement have been agreed and understood, a collaboration is likely to be a success.
Any of the cons mentioned above can easily be avoided with careful planning and the huge benefits obtainable through a joint venture should be enough to encourage anyone considering an affiliate marketing collaboration.
