In my last post I promised to tell you about my blog business experiences. So this post covers 3 Ideas To Build Your Business, gleaned from experiences with my blog.

These experiences and ideas may help you to grow your business. But I warn you, you’ll learn more from my mistakes than from my successes.

I cover three of these mistakes and how I’m now resolving them in this post. I’ll cover more examples of how you can grow your business in my next post.

Build Your
Business Foundation

I had already been learning about and working the Internet business almost two years before I started my blog. It will be two years old in February.

I studied blogging and following Yaro Starack’s advice from Blog Profits Blueprint. If you’re a blogger and haven’t got your free copy, I highly recommend that you get it and read it.

Yaro advises to first build the foundation of your blog by producing good quality content, then building traffic to your blog, and finally monetizing it. I followed this advice probably longer than I should have because I’ve never really monetized my site.

I’ve tried in-text links and promoted a few affiliate products, but haven’t devoted my time and attention to making money. I’ve been concentrating on content to do what I do best, research and writing, while avoiding what I don’t do as well, or what am not as comfortable doing.

Share The Risks
And Wealth

I know small business specialists say to “spend your time on what you do best, and hire out the rest.” I’ve spent much of my retirement savings hiring technical work done, but have tried to do everything else myself. As a result, everything but creating content for my blog as been “catch as catch can.” And that’s not the way to grow a business.

So I decided to exchange a part of my business in return for partners who will do the technical work, that I can’t do, and the marketing that I don’t have time to do.

In addition to their work, I brought two more brains into my business, who have a vested interest in its success. In return they’ll each get 25 percent of net profit plus stocks.

They are risking their time for a share of the business’ potential wealth.

Have you thought about giving away part of your business for the help you need to grow it?

Joint Venture With
Other Businesses

I’ve thought for some time that the best monetization for my blog is to joint venture with other business owners. But I didn’t want to compete in the Internet business with products and services sold by many others.

I also knew that I wanted to work with business owners who offer marketing-related products and services. But with the “catch as catch can” attention I’ve given to monetization, I haven’t approached any other businesses.

Yet someone else had the same idea from the flip side. Anthony Linn, who specializes in customer reactivation, contacted me about joint venturing with him. He’d followed my blog and its consistent increase in traffic. He said that he liked my information. Then he offered me a percent of his sales to promote his business.

For our joint venture, I’ve written four posts, three articles, and three emails for my list. I compiled a mini-ebook on getting and keeping customers for him to give to people from my lists, who also signs up to get his customer reactivation report.

Anthony has written a guest post, four emails to go to his list, his customer reactivation report, and a sign-up page just for my visitors. Of course he’ll provide all the customer reactivation services.

When anyone signs up on my page and eventually purchases Anthony’s service, I’ll get 25 percent of the purchase site.

I plan to offer a similar deal to other marketing related businesses for either a percent of sales or for a consistent cost per lead.

I can’t tell you how well it’s going to work. But I am beginning to monetize my blog through joint ventures with compatible businesses.

How Can You Joint Venture With Other Businesses To Grow Yours?

Participate In
The Conversation

Please share some of your ideas so that we can learn from one another. I believe you have more to gain than loose by sharing your ideas. Who knows you may make first contact with a potential partner or joint venture business owner in the comments below.

To get to the next post in this series, click on the link below:

Grow Your Business With Technology

If you need help planning your business, you can get easy and fast instructions at business plans.

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Posted 1-29-10:
3 Ideas To Build Your Business

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This entry was posted on Friday, January 29th, 2010 at 6:20 am and is filed under My Business, Small Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.