Joint Venture (JV) Giveaways Create a Feeding Frenzy

Are you an information marketer (IM) looking for a way to add subscribers to your mailing list? The IM marketplace is crowded and it can be pretty tough to get people to notice you - let alone sign-up for your newsletter.

A recent development in the IM community that can boost your list building efforts are JV Giveaway Events. I have personally added hundreds of subscribers to my own list by joining these giveaways.

What Is a JV Giveaway?

A JV Giveaway is centered on a website. This website allows visitors to sign-up (becoming members of the site owners list) and then gain access to hundreds of free products being offered by the Joint Venture partners who are participating in the event.

Before the members are allowed to download the free gifts, they must first agree to give their name and email address to the participating JV partner (thus building the partner's list.)

Why Would Anyone Give Their Email Away Like This?

The atmosphere of a giveaway site creates a feeding frenzy. People get click happy and just start signing up for everything in sight. Some of these sites process the sign-ups automatically so that the members never leave the site and can join each partner's list with a single click (other sites will send members to a Partner's squeeze page where the member must enter their name and email address.)

Giveaways are usually given a theme (major holidays or the sponsor's birthday, etc.) The events usually last for a few weeks or months (the time limit enhancing the feeding frenzy) and there are new ones coming online regularly.

How Do You Join a Giveaway?

First you must find a giveaway event and (usually) get an invitation from the sponsor or a partner. Another way to find them is to visit IM forums and read the JV Opportunity threads. Invitations are sometimes posted there.

Once you have signed-up, you need to setup an autoresponder to capture the email addresses of your new subscribers and send out your free gift. ConstantContact, Aweber, and GetResponse are three online services that you can use. You can setup your own, but managing an autoresponder is not for the faint of heart.

It is possible to have the entire signup and gift delivery handled through your autoresponder service, but I like to create a squeeze-page that visitors are sent to before they sign-up for my list.

Finally, you need something of value to give away. If you have written an e-book or special report of your own, use that. You can also offer things like custom website templates, graphics, re-publishable articles and more if your talents run that way.

If you don't have the time or talent to create your own product, there are hundreds of e-books available that come with resale rights.

Hype Alert!!!

The sales copy on many of these giveaway sites promises 1000's of new subscribers and sometimes money too! My experience has been hundreds of subscribers and I'm still waiting to earn a nickle from any of these events. (Your results may vary.)

Some of the people who sign-up for your list will either use a throw-away email address or unsubscribe as soon as they get the free gift. It is important to give them a good reason to stay, so your follow-up emails should be packed with valuable information and light on advertising.

In spite of these limitations, my mailing list has grown tremendously from JV Giveaways and I have earned money from my subscribers.

Plus, I've gotten tons of great e-books and software!