4 Things To Think About Before Doing A Joint Venture

4 Things To Think About Before Doing A Joint Venture

Joint ventures in business are a wonderful thing. They can allow you to make money you wouldn’t otherwise be able to make on your own, they enable you to tap into other people’s expertise and knowledge, and potentially they can speed up projects, whilst making them more successful and sharing some of the risk. Joint ventures are talked about a great deal in the internet marketing world, but despite the many benefits there are also a number of drawbacks. Here are 5 things to think about before doing a joint venture:

1.       Joint ventures mean shared profit

Say you decide to join forces with another marketer and create your own product together. You can share some of the development costs and utilise both of your respective expertise, however assuming the joint venture is split straight down the middle then it also means you’ll only make half of what you would if it was solely your own product. Of course in many scenarios this is irrelevant because the project might have been impossible on your own, but it’s something to think about.

2.       Joint ventures can go wrong

It can be the case that your joint venture partner simply doesn’t share the same commitment to the project as you do. This can be extremely frustrating if you’re putting in lots of hard work yourself and your partner simply doesn’t do their bit.

3.       Before you start, make sure you have an agreed timetable

It is all too easy for a joint venture project to slip behind schedule because your partner is not good at doing things on time (relating back to the point above) or simply that you both have other commitments and the project never gets finished. Before you start make sure you agree a timetable that both of you are happy with and are sure you can commit to.

4.       Choose your joint venture partners carefully

Are you compatible with the other party? Should you even be considering working together? There is little point in doing a joint venture with someone who has a completely different skill set or way of thinking. Whilst joint ventures allow you to tap into other peoples expertise, it is also essential that you have SOME shared knowledge, skills or common ground since otherwise the venture will become impossible. Similarly it is usually of little value to join forces with someone who has exactly the same skill set or market access as yourself. If, for example, you have a product but no list to sell it to then look to joint venture with someone who has a list but no product to sell to them!