The Benefits Of Affiliate Joint Ventures

I'm like most affiliates: we get excited with a project then two minutes later we're on to the next.

One way around this I found was to add to my selection of product blogs a number of event blogs - such as Easter, Christmas, Valentines etc. This way I've always got something current to work on.

But sometimes that's not always enough. My nature is to be competitive. In fact sometimes I'm too competitive. The first thing I do in the morning is load up Analytics on one screen and Facebook's Speed Racer on the other - I have to get the Veyron before anyone else!

But the thing is I'm equally collaborative, I enjoy working with others and is one of the reasons I started doing consultancy work. So I was approached to do a joint venture blog from another affiliate I've known for a while. So I was thinking about starting a new blog with them, but what's the point when I've got a PR4 site with a Dmoz entry .... so let's get jiggy with that.

But when I looked at the Analytics it gets about 600 visits a month with no work and has some top rankings and a good variety of key phrases - so it should be fairly easy to make a success of the blog together.

So the benefits of affiliate joint ventures appears to me to be:

1. Mutual motivation - you don't want to be the slacker in the venture;
2. Two pairs of eyes on the market - you're less likely to miss opportunities;
3. Double your skills or extend them - the person is quite good at SEO, but better at other areas such as great content-writing skills. This can only be good for the both of us;
4. Increase your linkability - you can link from both of your other sites if relevant;
5. Network support - we've both got different contacts with the networks to leverage;
6. Merchant Involvement - the same goes from the merchant P.o.v.;
7. Holidays - keeping blogs fresh is an important factor. I won't get nagged for blogging on holiday when I know the other person is doing their bit;
   

But what are the downsides?

Well the most obvious is money. The way we've sorted it is that we both monetise our own posts separately. When it comes to "off-post" revenue generation, this is 
something we'll come  across at a separate date. My strategy, however, has 
always been to keep it to a minimum so it shouldn't be a factor;

Trust - can you trust the other person not to abuse the blog? In this case yes.

So, has anyone else ever done this? Do you have any advice to give to other affiliates?

Update: I've been given clearance to say what the site is. Of course its a discount codes site - which I feel is perfect for this sort of duplication because codes are made avaliable all the time so we can keep on top of it. I also think discount codes sites are perfect for joint ventures as we can each spend more time on each post - something I think is significantly lacking on most blogs of the type. We'll see how it performs!

Also does anyone have any views on the blog? We haven't SEO'd it or categorised thoroughly yet!