If you made the effort to head to Affiliate Summit, PubCon, AdTech or any of the other industry shows, you’d have had the opportunity to meet up with networks (affiliate/CPA as well as traffic), and fellow affiliates and marketers with whom you’d speak to regularly over AIM or on the forums, the question is aside from the tax break, what benefit have you got out of attention the event?
I’d started out with 6 possible projects following this past January’s Affiliate Summit West, and following up and following through with possible partners is part of the business.
About 3 are proceeding, with progress underway. If all works out, at least 2 of the 3 will continue growing till the next Affiliate Summit West at the Wynn.
I’ve seen potentially successful partnerships break up sometimes due to pretty trivial reasons. Here’re some of the most common:
- Investment of time and resources: While we’re all subject to a finite amount of capital, I’ve found that time is often the breaking factor, especially if one of the partners put in only 30 minutes a week. This is fine if the business is up-and-running and generating consistent projects. The reality is most new projects will end up being a timesuck, at least until they’re on their feet.
- Clear outcome and objectives: Document all discussions you might have, especially when it comes to roles, responsibilities, how much each partner is expected to put in in terms of time and capital and including exit clauses. Make sure all parties are agreeable to the terms and edit if needed. With a reference document, it significantly reduces any disagreements which may arise later.
- Partner selection: Although you can pick possible partners based on their reputation or your initial assessment of them, it’s not easy to understand how well you’ll work together until the project is underway. This also means that you could put in a significant amount of time and work and discover that the partnership isn’t going to work out. Rather than get angry, frustrated or feel upset about it, it’s in your best interest to keep moving forward.
If you’ve similarly got some followup projects post-Affiliate Summit, how’re they working out for you?
Testing and tracking joint ventures ..Interesting topic to have. The valid point is of Partner selection and you can select your partner on the basis of initial assessment.
Regards
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Good post – everyone comes home from these conferences all hyped up with new ideas and partnerships, but a few months later more often than not it’s status quo.
Just wanted to add that after this past summit, I’ve actually implemented at least 3 new ideas/projects which *may* be more than I’ve done in the past. 😉
The key thing is your #2 – really developing concrete goals during the conference, or immediately after you get back, for at least a few manageable and realistic new projects, then setting deadlines to get them completed.
One of them might be lobbying to get mini-car racing back for ASW 2011. 😛
Really Appreciate this blog post, is there any way I can get an email sent to me whenever there is a new update?
In joint ventures tracking is one of the most important part and I agree with it.
Cel foarte colorat e… eh, e o chestie de gusturi, pre.Apun:Dsusta in schimb e foarte foarte dragut, desi nici primele incercari nu mi se par tocmai de aruncat. Eu n-as fi indraznit sa pun albastru la ochi verzi, dar vad ca arata chiar foarte ok.