Tony Robbins, Eben Pagan and Tim Ferris have all said it but I believe the originator was the late great Jim Rohn.

The quality of the people you surround yourself with will have a profound effect on your life, your thinking, your business.

=> What is Your Life Passion?

=> What is Your Purpose in Life?

Are the people you spend time with helping you achieve this?

It is a fact that your lifestyle will generally reflect the lifestyle of the people you have in your life.

What is a Mastermind Group?

Napoleon Hill is often credited with being the originator of Mastermind Groups, but the truth is Mastermind Groups have been around much longer.

Mr Hill had a very simple definition:

The coordination of knowledge and effort of two or more people, who work toward a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony.

Ben Franklin is also famous for a Mastermind Group. In 1726, despite working from early morning to late at night in his print shop, Ben Franklin organized a meeting group called The Junto. This group met every Friday evening to debate questions of morals, politics, and natural philosophy, and to exchange knowledge of business affairs.

Two questions Franklin asked the group each week were:

“Who is thriving & why?”
and
“How might they be emulated?”

Wow! These are still brilliant questions today!

Look at what is working in another industry. Ask yourself why it is working. Then figure out how you might emulate this success in your own business. It might mean reformulating your products, adding new elements to your books and information products, or studying video sales letter transcripts to make your sales messages more compelling.

I have been a member of various Mastermind Groups – it has allowed me to make introductions and connections it would have just about been impossible to have done any other way. Many of those connections have gone on to become very dear friends and colleagues. Indeed it was through a Mastermind Group that we first met Craig Ballantyne – IncomeDiary contributor and author.

Yanik Silver Mastermind Group 2009, inc Mike Dillard, Craig Ballantyne, Andrew Lock, Bernadette Doyle, Carrie Wilkerson, Ryan Deiss and Perry Belcher

Joining a Mastermind Group is also about giving back and helping others. When I first joined a Mastermind Group I was a little concerned that I would not have as much as some others to contribute to the group but it soon became clear I had skills and experience that others did not and vice versa. The common theme was that we where there to share and help each other and there is something quite amazing about witnessing a business problem solved by the group!

A Mastermind Group is for business owners who want to improve their business and who are willing to put the effort in. A Mastermind Group is not a Networking Group or A Coffee Club – it is for individuals who are serious about growing their business and who have the discipline to follow through.

Reasons To Join a Mastermind Group

1) You will create deep and lasting connections with some incredible people.
The life of an entrepreneur can be lonely – Sharing your dreams, aspirations and challenges with a group of like minded individuals makes it a lot less lonely! You will naturally raise your game as you spend more time in the company of these like minded entrepreneurs – plus of course the average of the five people you spend the most time with will change – for the BETTER!

2) To Challenge Yourself
A Mastermind Group will challenge you to grow your business to its fullest potential. In day to day business activity it is easy to get side tracked and way led – with a Mastermind Group you will keep on track.

3) Accountability
At the end of each meeting you will have an action plan, objectives you need to meet before the next meeting – which the Group will hold you to account for. It takes real discipline to succeed in any endeavour. Being held to account by your mastermind colleagues ensures you maintain the disciplined behavior necessary to succeed in your business.

4) Brainstorming.
Share your ideas and alternatives within your Mastermind Group. If you are not sure what to do next, what direction to go in, the collective power of the Mastermind will kick in and get you back on track!

5) Feedback
Receive feedback from successful individuals on how to solve business issues. Perhaps you have staff issues or financial challenges – let the Mastermind help you resolve them. Remember in the group we all have the same goal – to help each other grow their business. There is no hidden agenda – everyone is on the same side.

6) Support
Sometimes business is difficult and the challenges can seem overwhelming. Perhaps you have a difficult employee or a legal problem – chances are your Mastermind colleagues have experienced the same issue. You will never be short of alternative suggestions on how to overcome issues. Additionally you will develop deep and meaningful friendships over above all the business help.

7) Focus & clarity
Sometimes the day to day activities of running a business can distract us.The Group will keep you on track – just when you are losing focus, the group will remind you of your purpose and why you are in business.

8) Better Decision making
It is easy to put off a decision – but with a Mastermind Group you have your own due-diligence team to give you the confidence you need when making an important decision.

9) Increased Confidence
Better decision making means greater confidence – greater confidence spreads through your organization and inspires everyone to perform better. You will feel good. You will feel more confident.

10) Creativity
Looking for new ideas for your business? Have a new idea for your business? Want objective feedback and help with that idea? The group will provide more ideas and constructive feedback on your ideas.

11) Increased Profits
Many businesses leave money (profits) on the table – the purpose of the group is to help you take full advantage of all the opportunities that surround you and build your business into the huge success it deserves to be.

12) Discover new business partners and cross promotion.
Collaboration is the name of the game. You may find someone in the group that is a perfect fit to work on a project with you. Or, you may be the perfect person to help another member as well. The group works together collaboratively, to achieve more together.

13) Think bigger.
You can’t help but think bigger and stretch beyond your boundaries when surrounded by amazing people doing amazing things. Fellow Mastermind members will help you to see the potential you are missing out on.

14) Expand Your Skills.
Everyone in a mastermind group is unique in skill, experience and connections. Everyone is expert at something and as you interact with each other you will be picking up new skills and talents – all the time, working towards a definite purpose, in the spirit of harmony.

There is a special energy that surrounds a group of success minded individuals – an energy that lifts the individual and the group. In a Mastermind Group participants raise the bar by challenging each other to create and implement goals, brainstorm ideas, and support each other with total honesty, respect and compassion.

15) Helping Others.
It was Zig Ziglar who said: “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” You will get great satisfaction from helping other business owners in their businesses.

16) Hot Seats
The principle of a Hot Seat is that you get a chance to present to the group your biggest challenge or issue right now. For starters this helps you gain clarity on the issue you are facing and what you need help on. The Group in turn will provide you with a series of options and opportunities to follow up on and the person in the Hot Seat walks away with lots more ideas and solutions than they could generate on their own. In my experience, especially in bigger groups, not everyone will get an opportunity to Hot Seat every meeting – but even those not in the Hot Seat invariably walk away with new insights and ways of looking at things.

17) New Business Ideas
I have purposely not placed the reasons to join a Mastermind Group in any particular order – but on a personal level I would have to credit the generation of New Business Ideas as one of the biggest benefits of joining a Mastermind Group. These are ideas over and above anything I may have come across when brainstorming – these are completely new ideas, not even related to my existing business. Just being in the same room as all this superior business brain power has led to some of my best new business ideas.

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.”

– George Bernard Shaw

Business Integrity and Sharing sensitive info in Mastermind Groups

Successful Mastermind Groups are built on trust, integrity and sharing. Naturally the format of Mastermind Groups means that you and your fellow members will be sharing sensitive information. It is important you understand the importance of holding a confidence. The Group facilitator will normally have established ground rules for the group that includes confidentiality. Typically what is said within the room remains within the room!

Closing Thought…

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best” ~ Epictetus, (the Stoic philosopher)

Author Bio: Barry Dunlop is a lifelong entrepreneur who launched his first Internet Business in 1998. He also invests in Blockchain technology, Domain Names and Website Flipping. You can follow / message Barry on Twitter

Seek Out and Join a Mastermind Today!

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The post 17 Reasons Why You Need To Join A Mastermind Group appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

All these businesses and ‘partnerships’ brought me new lessons and today’s post reflects on the Big Lessons these business journeys have provided.

But first some distinctions:
Partnership: A business owned and run by two or more partners.
Joint venture: It is temporary in nature and is terminated as soon as the venture is completed.
Shareholders: An owner of shares in a company – usually a limited company and shareholdings need not be equal.

Selecting a Business Partner Wisely

Business Partnerships are not unlike marriages – the separation (the divorce) can be very painful. So just like choosing a life partner, choose your business partners carefully.

I am regularly amazed at just how casually people end up in business together.

Most people would not marry someone without some serious getting to know them time. Yet, I find people who have barely met going into business with each other – especially in today’s digital marketplace.

Is your potential partner a positive happy person? How do they react under pressure? Are they the kind of person who is vengeful and vindictive? Beware of anyone who boasts about getting ‘one over’ in a previous business dealing – because chances are one day it will be you that they will want to get ‘one over’.

OK they may have a skill or money that the business needs but if you can’t get on or respect each other it is going to be challenging for both of you.

Before reading this list I should say this is not Legal Advice – it is some key lessons from a personal perspective – hire and pay a professional for advice.

Additionally one thing I see a lot of is individuals referring to each other as partners – when no legal partnership agreement exists. Beware of this term – in some parts of the world if a true partnership exists you could be responsible for the debts of your partner.

OK, on to the main points:

1) 50% of something big, is better than 100% of nothing

You could argue that none of the businesses I created with partners would have ever happened, if I didn’t give up some ownership share and control.

2) It’s less stressful when you share responsibility.

This is especially good if say one of you is the writer / creative type and the other is say more technical.

3) Most people will choose what they want to do, not what is best.

This is a BIG one – all growing businesses have challenges – the road to the top is not a straight up arrow and there will be things that don’t go as planned. It is in those times that people often retreat into their comfort zone and do the things they like doing rather than the things that need doing. They fail to prioritize and if you don’t watch out the business will fail.

As Drew Houston (the founder of Dropbox) says:

“It’s OK to have growing pains, as long as you’re prioritizing correctly and working to address them. Every company looks messy from the inside,”

4) Greed at some point usually takes over.

Strangely the more successful the business is the more reluctant some partners can be to share. This is why it is essential everyone knows their roles / responsibilities. For example in some ‘deals’ one individual may have the idea and put up the cash and thereafter have very little ‘work’ involvement while the other partner would on the surface appear to be working harder and sooner or later may forget it was the other partner who put up the cash / had the idea. As I say. it is essential to have an agreement on different roles clear and out in the open from the start.

5) Sometimes you have to admit defeat.

Give it your best shot – know in your heart you did your best but if for whatever reason it is not working out sometimes it best to cut your loses and move on.

6) Don’t rush to make any decisions.

But on the other hand don’t take days and weeks over something – but in my experience ‘sleeping on it’ (taking 24hrs) over a major decision can often be the wisest choice. Whatever you do – don’t make big decisions when feeling angry.

7. Everything needs to be in writing

All the important stuff needs to be in writing – make it a habit to record all major discussions and outcomes of discussions. Should there be a misunderstanding later – you can always refer back.

8) Open communication is paramount.

I can’t help my business partners solve problems if they don’t tell me about them. I can forgive people messing up, what is not acceptable, is hiding from it. Tell your business partner everything.

As Marcus Lemonis, – the “business turnaround king” and star of CNBC’s prime time reality series The Profit is quoted:

“If you guys can’t communicate as business partners, you can’t be in business together. If you can’t tell him what’s wrong, then you shouldn’t be in business together”

9) Take responsibility

I am responsible. Sure… other people may cause problems, but I was the one who put myself in that situation.

10) Communicate on the phone and in person.

I hardly ever get anything achieved over email. You often end up playing email tag, resolving things slowly, waiting for replies. (But of course once something has been decided – confirm in writing / email)

One person I use to be in business with, would often ‘forget’ what he agreed to. Every time he ended up owing me money, he would make it a point that I had to prove that we ever had an agreement. Everything we ever did was done on a handshake, which admittedly was a silly thing to do, but I get excited about my ideas and just want to push forward with them quickly. Hopefully I’m done making this mistake.

What amused me about this example is, everything was in my name, the domain, hosting, merchant and so on. He only ever had a problem with our verbal agreements when he had any control over what we were doing. See number 4.

I never had a problem with anyone when business is conducted face to face. It’s when you allow them to hide away, they see the opportunity to be dishonest.

11. Crazy people can be hard to spot.

People will tell you what they think you want to hear. They will paint the picture that they are happy, smart, sane and willing to work there ass off. Never go into business with mean people. Never go into business with people who must always be right!

In conclusion – it is important to be realistic in all business relationships. Of course with good due diligence you minimize the chances of failure – but sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

Our ability to handle failure and move on / start again is ultimately one of the most important success traits for an Entrepreneur.

I should also say Thank You to all my business partnerships – even the ones that didn’t work out. We are always learning..

And finally a great quote from John D. Rockefeller:

A friendship founded on business is a good deal better than a business founded on friendship.

Read more: ‘24 Rules I Follow When Creating Successful Websites’

The post 11 Essential Lessons From Going Into Business With People appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

For a part-time blogger, Neil Patel is pretty successful.

Patel’s main focus is KISSmetrics, a mid-sized company that helps businesses track important online metrics. His business and marketing blog, Quick Sprout, is really more of a side project.

But that hasn’t stopped Quick Sprout from exploding in popularity and earning Patel recognition as a Top 100 Technorati Blogger. I’ll profile Neil Patel below and explain how Quick Sprout helps him earn a million dollars a year even though turning a profit was never part of the plan.

What You’ll Learn:

• The benefits of writing confrontationally
• Why SEO is becoming less important by the day
• What makes Quick Sprout’s ‘About’ page so unusual
• The one thing all of Patel’s monetization techniques have in common

Quicksprout Today

Global Alexa Rank:  8,033

Yearly Income:  Over $1,000,000

Twitter Followers:  119,000 (@NeilPatel)

Facebook Likes:  45,139

Pinterest Followers: 1,865

(Stats accurate as of 9/5/2012)

Blogger Profile: Neil Patel

Content

Spill the Beans

Have you ever had a strategy that was so effective that you weren’t sure if you wanted to share it with everyone else?

Since Quick Sprout’s subject is online marketing, many of Patel’s readers are bloggers and business owners. In other words, they’re his competition.

But Patel doesn’t worry about keeping his most effective strategies highly guarded. He’ll give his readers the inside track and “lay it all out there” because, as he says, “Sooner or later people are going to know what you know, so might as well be the first one to share the information and get credit for it.”

Write like an Alpha Dog

In business negotiation, Neil Patel advocates being assertive and cutting people off in conversation in order to demonstrate that you are “the alpha male of the group.” He says it helps you come off as confident, nonchalant, and in control.

A similar principle is at work in Neil’s writing. One of his personal favorite posts starts with, “You are thinking about starting your own business because you want to be rich, right? If that isn’t the case, I’ll be the first to call you out on your bullshit.” Why so confrontational? Patel elaborates:

Writing with confrontational confidence doesn’t just attract readers, comments, and social sharing. It’s also just makes for better, more interesting writing.

Write for ROI

The most important decision a blogger ever makes is what subject to write about. Quick Sprout covers two:  managing a business and online marketing.

In Patel’s Web Domination interview, he explains how he discovered that the site’s marketing content was making him more money than the business-related content. At the time he was writing about marketing only about 25% of the time, so he set out to make a change:

Depending on how you monetize your site, different categories of content will be more profitable than others. You can use Google free analytics tool or Patel’s own Kissmetrics software to determine the most profitable subject for your site… and then start churning out more of that type of content.

Driving Traffic

Give Google what Google Wants

Patel is outspoken in his belief that the best SEO is based on quality content. He discourages anyone from chasing algorithms, going gray hat, or over-optimizing. Patel elaborates:

It’s estimated that Google makes a change to its search engine once every 1.75 hours. Even if you succeed in gaming the system, it won’t last forever. Your energy would be better spent giving Google what it actually wants: authoritative websites that provide value to Google’s users.

You Can’t Rush SEO

Patel has 10 years of experience in SEO and a heaping helping of natural talent. Quick Sprout’s about page reads, “I was born with a gift, in which I am able to help websites get a ton of eyeballs through the web.” Neil Patel’s SEO consultant clients include Microsoft, TechCrunch, and Amazon.

But even he can’t get you on the front page of Google overnight.

One of Neil’s biggest pieces of advice for people hoping to get more traffic to their website is to think long-term. He advises that you pace yourself while link-building, pay more attention to monthly traffic than daily traffic, differentiate between fads and trends, and above-all be patient.

The Influence that Social Media has on Search is Growing

In a recent article, Patel told a tale of two big websites and their very different approaches to driving traffic. While About.com has become a “content farm” focused strictly on SEO, The Atlantic told their writers to stop worrying about SEO and become social media friendly. While About.com has been diminishing, The Atlantic’s web audience has grown from 500,000 monthly visitors to over 13.4 million today.

Obviously social sharing drives traffic, but it has started to play a major role in rankings as well. Google is actively counting pluses, tweets, and otherwise socializing it search rankings. So while Patel maintains that traditional SEO will always be part of the game, a site’s traffic depends increasingly on content that is socially shareable.

If you’re writing longer, better optimized posts in order to please algorithms, it’s about time you start writing to please your human audience.

Design

Patel Increases Conversion with a Hello Bar

Neil uses the sleek Hello Bar plug-in to get people to a page where he offers SEO consulting. It’s a thin, customizable pixel bar that rests at the top every page on his site and can be minimized with the click of an arrow. Other examples of bloggers using Hello Bar are Tim Ferris, Gary Vaynerchuk, and Nicholas Tart.

You can get Hello Bar for a one-time purchase of $29 or you can use it for free for up to 25 clicks a month by visiting Hello Bar’s site. Keep in mind though, the plugin will only be as effective if it’s well implemented – and for that, Quick Sprout offers a great case study in copywriting:

This short sentence piques the reader’s interest, offers specific results, generates qualified leads, and gives a clear call to action.

Quick Sprout has a Slim Header

In my blogger profile of Matthew Inman, I wrote about how The Oatmeal’s sub-70px header allows more room above the fold for content. But Quick Sprout’s header is even slimmer and simpler:  it’s just four links, a search bar, and a logo.

The slim header works both aesthetically and practically, since it’s especially important for Quick Sprout to leave room above the fold since Patel is using the Hello Bar plug-in.

But more importantly, the simple design encourages conversion. Instead of overwhelming visitors with an array of choices, there are only five links to click at the top of Quick Sprout – and two of them take you to Neil’s consulting business.

Make Your About Page into Your Life Story

­

An ‘about’ page is powerful. Not only is it heavily trafficked, it’s also an ideal spot to make a first impression, give people a reason to come back, and build a brand.

Quick Sprout’s ‘about’ page does all of these things, but in a highly unusual way. There’s no mission statement. There’s no call to subscribe. And most amazingly, there’s no mention of Quick Sprout at all.

Instead, there’s this self-deprecating caricature and a 2,000 word life story. By the time you’ve finished reading you don’t know the first thing about Quick Sprout, but you know everything about Neil Patel, you like him, and you trust him as an expert in his field.

Another highly unusual thing about Patel’s ‘about’ page? It has 1,405 comments – and that means it’s really making a connection with readers.

Monetization

Blogging as a Way to Attract Clients

When Neil founded Quick Sprout, he was already making a ton of money per year through companies, investments, and his consulting business. So it wasn’t about the money. In fact, Patel said in our interview that he didn’t “care to make money from it. But, funny enough, the side effect is that I actually make quite a bit of money.”

It doesn’t come from thin air. It’s just that Quick Sprout is a well-oiled lead-generating machine for Patel’s SEO consulting business. Neil explains in Web20:

A Blog is the Best Friend of the Serial Entrepreneur

Patel is so ambitious that he sees blogging as limited because a successful blog earns “probably still under a million bucks a year.” Most of us would be pretty happy with that type of income.

Neil’s sights are set higher:  “At KISSmetrics, we’re trying to become a $100 million revenue a year business… blogging alone isn’t enough.” A company like KISSmetrics is able to earn more money than a mere blog because it’s set on solving “a huge problem.”

So why does a busy many like Patel continue to maintain his blog week after week? Quick Sprout helps KISSmetrics make more money by sending it well-qualified traffic. But it also does the same thing for Crazy Egg. If Patel were to sell both companies tomorrow for $100 million, he would still have Quick Sprout – which means he would still have a powerful tool in launching, promoting, and monetizing his next startup.

The Best Revenue Streams are Recurring

All of Patel’s monetization techniques implement a flat-fee retainer. Neil explains:

CrazyEgg pricing plans range from $9-$99 per month while KISSmetrics will cost you from $29-$499 monthly. Patel’s consultant fees started at as little as $100 but now he’s worked his way up to contracts of over $100,000 per month.

Recurring income like this is the foundation of financial security and a thriving business.

The Final Takeaway

As I said at the beginning, Quick Sprout isn’t Neil Patel’s full-time employer. In fact, when we interviewed Neil for Income Diary’s Web 20 project, we mostly asked him about KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg.

Off the top of his head, Patel offered up a dissertation on everything from creating company culture to doling out stock options. We only got to talk with him for an hour, but one thing was clear:  the man on the other line was staggeringly intelligent and vital.

Above all, this is why Quick Sprout succeeds. Our work is a reflection of our selves. Patel is just so experienced, so multi-talented, so dedicated, passionate, and personable… and Quick Sprout has no choice but to reflect that.

When our interview with Neil Patel was up, we had one last question for him. “Any last words?” Here’s what he had to say:

It’s all about the hustle. Move as quickly as possible and don’t let anything stand in your way.

If you mess up and you fall down, learn from your mistakes and keep on pushing forward.

The post Blogger Profile: How Neil Patel Makes Millions with Quick Sprout appeared first on How To Make Money Online.

Why?

Because times have changed. Today success is about making friends. It’s about finding a common ground with your competitors. It’s about collaborating with each other to collectively get more customers.

If you want to take your online business to the next level, understand the power of partnerships. Stop seeing your competition as your enemy. And learn to embrace it, instead of fighting it.

By joining forces with your competitors you’ll worry less about losing sales and be able to focus more on growing your business.

Now, the question is, how do you create joint ventures that give results – without hurting your own profits?

For starters, make sure you do your homework before you jump into any kind of partnership with a competitor:

Get Clarity: Be crystal clear about what you want to achieve with your partnership. Yes, ultimately it’s about growing your revenue. But having a more concrete, mutually beneficial goal can take you a long way.

Do a Background Check: Regardless of who your competitor is, always check them out before moving ahead. Because striking a good joint venture deal is not just about money. It’s also about safeguarding your credibility.

Find a Gap: Working with your competition becomes easier when you find a gap in their business that you can fill with your product. They’ll be more open to partnering with you when your product actually complements theirs.

Be Ready to Commit: If you’ve decided to team up with your competitor, then take it seriously. Always keep in mind that a joint venture of any kind requires commitment to make it profitable.

Let’s look at 5 effective ways to leverage your competition to boost your sales:

#1: Conduct Free Value-Driven Webinars

Free webinars are gaining popularity these days. Many online businesses are using them to connect to their target audience, get more leads and win more sales.

So why not partner with your competitor and host a webinar?

The reason why webinars work so well is because they have a high perceived value and lead to better conversions.

By doing a webinar with your competitors, you’ll be able to tap into their assets – more specifically, their list of customers.

Imagine being able to instantly reach out to a pool of qualified prospects that are willing to listen to you and take action on what you have to say. If that doesn’t get you more sales, I don’t know what will.

When it comes to convincing your competitor to host a webinar with you, you need to create a win-win situation. Here’s how:

1. Prove to them that you know your game. Give them a preview of the kind of quality that you can deliver. Make it clear that your aim is to give solid value to their list and nothing less.

2. Offer a percentage of the profit that would be generated through the webinar. Give them a bigger share if needed. By no means should your deal look weak. Make them an offer they can’t refuse.

Your aim here is to not only strike a deal, but also create a strong foundation for your webinar.

Once you successfully convince your competitor to do a webinar with you, the ball is in your court. This is when you’ll have to decide on the topic and content.

Let’s look into some webinar ideas that you can go with…

Give Tips and Strategies: People are always looking for tips they can use. Ideas they can borrow. And strategies they can experiment with. By sharing useful content you’ll be able to prove your expertise and win trust.

Share Your Success Story: Nothing sells like success. If you’ve got a story to tell that proves your point and showcases your authority, then share it in your webinar. Remember, stories bring out emotions, and emotions lead to action.

Hold a ‘How to’ Session: Have a solution for a difficult problem? Show your attendees how to solve it. Get into the details but don’t give everything away. Lead them towards your product and explain how it’s the better solution.

As long as you’re delivering value, doing webinars can be fun and rewarding. But ultimately, it all boils down to numbers, or how many attendees you convert into customers.

#2: Create Branded PDF Reports

Informative how-to reports have always been the rage in the Internet marketing world. Whether it’s getting people to join your email list or creating a bonus for your main product – PDF reports work.

However, there’s an underutilized way of using such reports to drive back traffic to your site and score more sales. It involves creating high quality PDF reports that are specifically customized and branded for your joint venture partner.

Here, let me explain…

Just like you, your competitors are looking for ways to reach out to their target audience, grow their brand and get more sales.

So technically speaking, if you help them do all that, they’ll be glad to help you market your product.

What you can do is create a PDF report with premium, high quality content, and add a ‘sponsored by’ page right in the beginning. This is where you put up a review of your competitors product. If the product has an affiliate program, you link to it with your affiliate link.

But wait, what about your product? How do YOU gain from this tactic?

It’s fairly simple. You get to:

• Have your website’s link on the cover page
• Display your website’s link throughout the PDF – in the footer
• Recommend your product 1-2 times within the content
• End with a call to action, soft-selling your product to the readers

When you’re done creating the report, the next step is to get in touch with your competitor. Email them the report straightaway and let them know you created it exclusively for them. Ask them to share it on their blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

The idea here is to get the report to go viral. But that will only happen when you over-deliver on the value.

So focus on creating a report that you’re proud of. Something you know will spread by word of mouth.

The more useful your report is, the more exposure it gets. The more exposure it gets the more targeted traffic you achieve – traffic that converts into sales.

#3: Refer Sales to Get Sales In Return

Ever thought about building a fruitful relationship with your competitors? If not, then you seriously need to consider it.

The fact remains that a business can’t be everything to everyone. You might have the best product in the market, but it most certainly doesn’t solve every problem under the sun. The same applies to your competitor’s product.

If you look around, you will find competitors who aren’t directly competing with you. They may be selling products that are complementary to yours. And that’s where the opportunity lies.

For example, if you sell web design software, you could refer prospects to your competitor who sells web design ebooks. This not only helps you get a percentage of the sales you refer (as an affiliate), but also positions you as someone honest.

As you start referring sales to select competitors, it gives you the opportunity to talk and persuade them to refer your product to their prospects.

Besides that, when you refer your prospects to quality products, you become a trusted source. The next time they need something, they’ll come to you. So your honest referral helps you bring in more sales in the long run.

However, this also means that you have to be choosy about whom you’re referring your prospects to. Besides a great product, the competitor you’re sending your referrals to should have:

• A professional website that makes a good first impression
• A proven track record in delivering quality service
• A proactive customer service that exceeds expectations
• Testimonials/feedback from existing customers
• Anything else that makes them look genuine and trustable

Growing your online business becomes simpler when you know how to partner with the right people – without putting your reputation at stake.

#4: Cross Sell Related Products

“Would you like some fries with that?”

Sounds familiar? It’s a common cross selling method practiced by fast food restaurants.

Cross selling is not new to the online marketing world. Many Internet marketers cross sell to get more sales.

Since the customer is already paying for one product, it becomes easy to convince him to add another one to the shopping cart.

So how do you go about using this tactic for your own business?

By finding competitors selling related products and negotiating with them to cross sell your product in return for a share in the profits.

Alternatively, you can also choose to cross sell their product if they cross sell yours. This way both of you can keep your own profits and still get to leverage each other’s assets. It may not work with everyone you approach, but is definitely worth a shot.

The cross selling tactic can make a big difference to your sales, as long as you avoid these 2 mistakes:

1. Choosing the Wrong Partner

Your product may have the highest conversion rate, but it won’t do much if you’re pitching it to the wrong audience. Choosing the right partner is crucial to make the most out of your cross selling.

So don’t go into partnership with just about anyone. You have to have the same audience to ensure that you get sales. The more targeted the prospects are, the better.

2. Offering the Wrong Product

On the flip side, you may have found the best joint venture partner to work with, but if you’re cross selling a product that’s not related to their audience, it’ll bomb. Just as it’s important to have the right audience, it’s also important to offer a matching product.

Regardless of how many products you sell or who you decide to partner with, see to it that the product you’re cross selling is relevant. This not only improves your conversion rate, but also ensures a long term relationship with your JV partner.

If you’ve got a useful product with a fine reputation, you won’t have a hard time striking partnerships. Even a few good competitors cross selling your product can help you reach out to a bigger audience.

#5: Give 100% Commission on a Front End Product

In order to increase your sales, you need more people to sell to. You need leads that are ready to buy what you’re selling. You need prospects that trust you enough to invest money into your product.

Generating such leads requires you to think tactically. It requires you to go beyond free email subscribers and start building a list of customers through an effective front end offer.

This is the first step towards getting people into your sales funnel, so that you can follow up and sell them your other products.

One of the easiest ways to start getting sales for your front end product is to leverage your competitor’s existing customer list. But it’s not easy getting someone to say ‘yes’ to promote your product, even if you promise a high commission to them.

The solution?

Create a front end product and make sure it’s good. I mean REALLY good. Something you’d be proud to sell. It could be an ebook, an online course, a WordPress plugin – basically anything that is saleable. And make sure you price it well.

Once you’re done with it, get the Rapid Action Profits script and install it on your site. RAP is an affiliate management system that allows you to give 100% commission to your affiliates/joint venture partners.

You see where we’re going with this?

With the product and the affiliate system in place, you’ll be able to easily convince any of your competitors to promote your front end product and keep all the money for every sale they generate.

Most fail to realize how powerful this tactic can be. Even though you’re not earning anything on your front end product, you are still growing your database of customers. Customers you can to sell to over and over again in the future.

Don’t take my word; ask any successful Internet marketer, and he’ll tell you that the real money lies in the back end – not the front end.

What do you think? How else can you partner with your competitors to grow your online business? Do share your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

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