How to Turn a One-Time JV into an Ongoing Revenue Stream

My favorite thing about affiliate marketing is how you can use it to fill in gaps in your own product line.

Example:

At Simple Programmer, we don’t yet have a product aimed specifically at freelance software developers.

I’d like to create a freelancing course, but this is a relatively small sliver of our audience, so it’s not a huge priority just yet.

But recently we got approached by someone who has an excellent course that fills this need.

They wanted to do a “JV”—joint venture. Basically we promote their webinar to our audience, and they’d split any resulting sales with us.

Promoting this webinar is like a dry run for a product launch.

It’ll give us a way to take the temperature of our audience without spending 3 months shooting videos and writing copy.

And here’s a nifty little twist on this idea:

Instead of a 1-time webinar promotion like most people do (which gives you a nice little influx of cash and then nothing after that)…

I’m going to turn this into an “evergreen” promotion by recording the webinar.

Then I’ll write an email course specifically for freelance software developers. Haven’t decided what this will look like yet—it’ll probably highlight several common mistakes that cost freelancers clients and send them on a rollercoaster of income instability.

The course will lead naturally into a pitch for the webinar, where they’ll get more great info and an upsell for the paid course our affiliate is offering.

And then I’ll offer that email course to every new subscriber who joins the email list.

This way I’m converting this JV to an ongoing revenue stream instead of a one-time “sugar spike” of income.

Then if we ever get around to creating our own freelancing course, I already have half the sales funnel built and tested.