Would you ever propose a JV to a potential partner that insults his intelligence, aims to squeeze potential in his lists brutally and later on leaving him with a corrupted list?

Would you ever participate fully in a JV where sole aim is to prostitute your hard earned, well maintained lists?

As I write this, I have received 3 major JV invitations for Christmas and one of them -- quite frankly, will result in serious abuse of your lists. Two e.g. are given below.

1. There is a 12 day stuff going on where JV partners subscribers were initialy forced to download an email application which these JV proponent is trying to promote! And as a JV partner you don't know about it is until you yourself enroll for receiving these gifts!

But these guys became wise soon, changed their wrong approach and showed commitment to come up to expectations of JV partners.

2. Another JV venture, 117 gifts, is outrageous! Your subscriber is put through 6 steps before he gets first set of gifts!

Your subscriber has to click through their product promotion page twice. The objective is very clear! It is NOT to build lists of both JV proponent and JV partner, but it is a cheap ploy to sell products of JV proponent!

Again JV partner is neither aware nor informed about this! He joins with dream of getting a truck load of subscribers...but in fact he is compromising his own lists.

What kind of a JV is this where participants are taken for a ride with hidden motives?

Joining for JV's like this will seriously undermine your effectiveness with future interaction with your lists.

So how does one get started getting companies to advertise on a site? Here's a quick primer to getting out of gate.

Google AdSense

Probably one of most simplistic ways to place advertising on your site is to sign up with Google as one of its AdSense Publishers. The Adsense program displays text ads rather than images on your site. Google then serves ads based on content on on page containing their ad code. For example, if we post a tip on our site about email marketing, Google ads will likely deal with email marketing services or products (see our archived tip, How Email Formats May Affect Response Rates, as an example).

Just in case any of your competitors show up in these text ads, you have option to pre-block them with an ad filter. Google pays a percentage of revenue it earns (it does not disclose exactly what that percentage is) and sends checks to publishers monthly, provided that publisher has generated at least $100 in ad revenue.

Affiliate Programs

The next easiest way to get advertising on your site is to sign up with an affiliate program (or multiple ones) as a publisher. You will then have access to listings of hundreds of merchants (a.k.a. advertisers) who offer a financial incentive for you to promote their products. Though typically you only get paid when there is an actual sale (versus getting paid just to display their ad), all you have to do is place ad on your site or in your newsletter, etc., and affiliate program will take care of rest.

Some of most reputable and well-known affiliate programs are:

* Commission Junction * LinkShare * Affiliate Shop * Commission Soup * DarkBlue * Amazon Associates * Primary Ads * Affiliate Fuel

Ad Networks

An ad network is essentially one centralized re-seller of advertising space which brokers sales for its network of publishers at mass or liquidated pricing in exchange for a percentage of ad buy.