I am planning to do a case study on JV Giveaways and report the results here.   You can help my by following along with the study and (more importantly) signing up for to be a JV partner.  This will give me the points I need to participate.  This will also give you an opportunity to participate in the giveaway and build your  list.  If you have never done a JV list-building event before, now is the time (because we can do it together).

This JV Giveaway Is Different

I've got to tell you the truth.   In the past, I have not been a big fan of JV giveaways.  They have the reputation of generating tons of un-targeted, unresponsive leads.   They also put you in a position of having to "give away" some of your list to participate.  But recently, I learned about a JV giveaway that sounded like it might be different -- it is being run by someone that I trust, has several big name A-list marketers on board, has the potential to save kids lives.

To give you an idea, here is a promotional graphic from the event:

Let me back up a second.

In a JV giveaway, internet marketers recruit other internet marketers to participate in a giant giveaway.  All of the participants do three things:  they recruit other marketers to participate (that is what I am doing now, by the way), they contribute items to the giveaway (more on this later), and they send traffic to the giveaway.

The JV Giveaway Promise

The idea is that many marketers send tons of traffic to the giveaway, and some of those prospects will see the free gift (or gifts) that you donated and decide to download it (or them).   To access the download, the prospect will need to opt-in to your list.  So, by participating, you hope to build you list.  (Note:  There are some cases where you might want to give something away without opt-in, but we will talk about that later.)

To get this to work, you need some heavy hitters in the mix.  So far, the giveway has over 100 participants planning to send traffic, including some big names you might recognize (Willie Crawford, Kevin Riley, Kathleen Gage, Jeff Herring, Lynn Terry, Bob "The Teacher" Jenkins, Maritza Parra, Nicole Dean, Sid Hale, Denise Wakeman, Dan R Morris, Roger Carr, Cindi Dawson, Joe Marsh, Karon Thackston, Paul Evans, Doug Hudiburg, Traci Knoppe, Doug Champigny, Mark Hendricks and David Perdew)

For this JV event, the goal is 1000 contributors and 100,000 "members" during the week that the event is live (next week - Aug. 20 to Aug. 27, 2010).  Amazing.  Hope his servers are up to the task.

And of course, if you are participating in this as a JV partner and you have One-Time-Offers (OTOs) or affiliate links associated with your opt-in, you can profit directly from the event.

The organizer usually benefits in a couple of ways.  First, the organizer can (and usually does) require and opt-in to get to the give-away in the first place.    Secondly, the organizer can place offers inside the software that runs the giveaway (these days, giveaways are completely automated).  This particular giveaway has a lot of those (see the postscript at the end of this post).

Saving Kids Lives

In this giveaway, the organizers intend to collect donations for Dr. Mani.  In fact, the literature indicates that all the proceeds from the front end of this effort go to Dr. Mani's CHD Foundation.

That is one of the things that made this interesting for me.  I have donated money to Dr. Mani before.  He is quite an amazing guy.

If you don't know about Dr. Mani, this guy basically uses internet marketing as a way to fund open heart surgery for kids that can't afford it.

Here's a one paragraph comment from Mark Joyner in the forward to one of Dr. Mani's books:

"To hold this (book) up as the measure of the man is a great disservice to one of the greatest men now walking the earth...What makes Dr. Mani great is the way he has leveraged his info- preneurship...  He doesn't make a big fuss about it, but he uses the funds he raises with his entrepreneurial endeavors to save the lives of children who really need it. He is a heart surgeon who has dedicated his life to providing heart surgery to children who cannot afford the costs."

Join As A JV

So, here is what I would like you to do. 

Thing one: Stay tuned and follow along.  I plan to see if this "really works" to drive traffic to my list.  I also plan to report all of the details to you.

Thing two: participate.  If you sign up as a JV partner, you can easily add a giveaway and participate.

Your participation under my signup link will give me "points."  These points give me a higher priority in the giveaway, and make it more likely that this will be a decent case study.  So, even if you are not sure that you want to participate, signing up would help (it's free).

Oh -- and don't forget that you can help save kids lives by participating.  This fact is part of the reason that I decided to do the case study.  So, if you are on the fence, you can use that as your excuse.

Thanks -- look for my next post about setting up my giveaway items tomorrow.

PS -- If you do sign up, you'll immediately see a couple of OTO asking you to upgrade your JV account.  I did upgrade my account ($17), but there is no reason for you to do that unless you want to contribute multiple gifts.

Also, you will see some OTO's in the back end software.  Again, just ignore those (but pay attention to the marketing).  I'll be talking about that part of the JV Giveaway magic in a future post.

I am sitting in a room at NAMS with 20 people in a masterminding discussion with Mark Hendricks.  Talk about “business savvy” – Mark Hendricks is truly an amazing guy and incredibly insightful.  Mark Hendricks has probably already forgotten more about being in business on the internet than I will ever learn.

The conversation today was about many things, including the “True Path” and whether or not Social Media is on the true path.

Mark talked about managing relationships on the internet.  Relationships on the internet go through stages: Know Me, Like Me, Trust Me and about “Fish Jumping into the Boat.”  You just had to be there to get a full appreciation for Mark and the genius therein.

We spent some really good time talking about Benjamin Franklin and how that has impacted Mark’s business plan.

Best quote from Mark (there were many): “I’m a really good test dummy.”

Mark is not a huge fan of the hyped product launch model – he is more about delivering value over time, and encouraged us all to deliver real value to our customers.  He would rather have a lifetime customer than a quick buck and told us to avoid the “she got the coal mine and I got the shaft” model.

Great time with Mark – you can find him on Twitter @MarkHendricks.  My masterminding and 1:1 time with Mark was one of the real highlights of my trip to NAMS.