While conversion rate metric is a necessary piece of potential joint venture package, it can be misleading if not properly qualified.

So, what questions do you ask to properly qualify what 'conversion rate' means and how do you verify it?

Short of looking at other marketer's web log, you really can't verify metric. The best thing to do is to review product yourself if possible and take a look at sales copy of product. Take a look at Alexa ranking to see what type of traffic site is getting, at least from a volume standpoint.

Remember, Alexa rankings measure volume of traffic not quality of traffic. Go to Google or some other search engine and see what types of sites link to site of product.

If there are professional well traveled sites that link to site that fit well within niche that product caters to, and sales copy, price point, and delivery are professional and fitting to product offering, maybe conversion rate is comparable to what you're being told it is.

But, just because conversion rates maybe close to truthful, it doesn't mean that sending a solo ad to your list will work well.

You have to decide for yourself if product could pull in type of conversion rates that are being 'sold' to you by proposer of JV.

Remember that source of traffic is one of main factors that will determine what type of conversion rate any JV will obtain. Ask yourself if your list will respond well to a solo ad JV. Only you as list owner will know whether product will be useful to your list and purchased by your list.

Be humble, work smart, keep it simple.

Karl Augustine "The Regular Guy" (c) Karl Augustine Starting an online business

The entire logic of using FFA's for increasing site traffic and advertising is severely flawed. What's even worse is that most search engines rank these sites lowly if at all. So where exactly then do you advertise your FFA site?

I performed a very simple test. I created a simple E-Zine sign up form, separate from my site, and used a well known autosubmit software to "Blast" my add to entire FFA network, which claimed millions of page views per day. Submission was done once per day, at same time for a period of 1 week. How many responses? 1! A single response that did not even sign up.

FFA sites for advertising are worthless. You'll hear many argue that they work if your careful. I would like to believe it would. Definitely easy to submit to and exposure would be phenomenal. The cold hard truth is that they do not.

Below are a few of what I find to be comical ad headlines posted at FFA sites. Enjoy!

(1)"Get your classified ad in 5,000,000 emails and 111,000 websites everyday for free without spamming". (If you follow link you find that what is being promoted is another FFA site!)

(2)"$1.67=massive income" (I wonder if they know that this is not an equality?!)

(3)"Getting 5,000 opt-in leads daily." (1 year amounts to 150,000 subscribers. Just about population of a small town!)

(4)"Delivers an endless flood of traffic!" (Perpetual motion?!)

(5)"Retire in months for only $6!" (The state of Florida is about to get an incredible population boost)

(6)"The secret to getting a million visitors to your site!"