I can't seem to get the song from the "King & I" out of my head as I prepare to write this article

"Getting to Know You
Getting to Know All About You
Getting to like you
Getting to hope you like me"

I can't get it out of my mind because that's what online business is ALL about.

Some say it's search engines.

Some say it's a great pay-per-click campaign.

Yeah, yeah...those things are great, but it's important to get to know people and I'm talking about the people that reach your target market. You know, the people you might
think as your competitors.

It's possible you've heard me say it before – competitors can be your partners - but it seems the subject keeps creeping up over and over again.

People ask me questions like, "How do I get people to join my affiliate program?"

And recently, when I spoke at Kelly McCausey's Blogging seminar at her http://www.HotSummerSeminarSeries.com, it came up again. We are talking about joint venture blogs, where more than one writer comes together to keep adding fresh content to
the blog. When we did the seminar, people seemed excited about the idea, but really weren't sure how to find people to write with them.

Well, here's the solution and I hope you take steps to make this happen for you. It doesn't matter what market you are in, you should ALREADY be getting to know the people who are in the same market as you. You should be developing relationships and talking to one another.

This isn't the cut throat world of offline business where you might be competing fiercely with the restaurant across the street. This is the Internet where joint ventures are abound and are literally a goldmine for your business.

Here's Some Ideas for Joint Ventures:

- Join each others affiliate programs
- Create viral ebooks to give away
- Create a bonus for your partner to add to her product
- Interview each other for teleseminars
- Create information products
- Create membership sites
- Use each other's products as upsells
- Connect each other to other important people
- Co-write that joint blog we talked about
- Co-write and autoresponder series

...the ideas are endless.

The point is, if you already have these relationships in place, it's easy to get people to work with you. It's hard work to approach people you don't know and ask them to
promote your product or even contribute to an ebook. But if there's one thing about human nature, we tend to want to work with people who are already our friends.

So, please go make more friends! Then see how your business multiplies. I promise you it will be much faster than a speeding search engine algorithm and more powerful than a
high-cost pay-per-click campaign.

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Alice Seba is a full-time online business owner that thrives on helping others say good-bye to their J-O-Bs forever. Sign up for her "Internet Marketing Prescriptions" to cure what ails your online business: http://www.InternetMarketingPrescriptions.com