When would you consider partnering with a foreigner (me)?

bernard

bernard

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Just curious.

I am not looking for partners at the moment or in the immediate future.

I do however, have good experience doing partnerships, with foreigners as well. I work in a smaller language, which is a blessing and a curse. I'm wondering if the competition, while tough at the top, might be easy for some of you guys, used to swimming with the sharks.

I don't see a lot of successful foreigners though. A few in the payday loans biz with sophisticated blackhat SEO. A few in the health niche clearly running a big operation with multilanguage staff in London.

I ask again, what kind of circumstance, what kind of niche, what kind of website, would be interesting for one of you guys to go after a partnership in a smaller language market?
 
What do you consider smaller language market?

Because for example, i'm native Portuguese and we are actually in the 9 postion of the most speaking languages, we actually ahve more native speakings than French or German for instance, but we have two huge from the european prespective:

1st - In Portugal theres only 10 Million people, the most majority of the language speaking come from Brazil, nearly 200M;
2nd - Theres some diference, i personally consider quite big since the writing is completely diferent from the reading perspective, in the Brazilian Portuguese and the "European" Portuguese, which make dificult to work for both countries. I actually believe that theres some kind of disbelief when Portugues are reading Brazilian websites and vice-versa, which makes kinda hard to work in the Brazilian Market from a Portuguese perspective.

Right now, i'm actually thinking about start a Amazon Review website, something i wanted to do for years but have been postpone, but since my english isn't that great and i dont have a really huge market in my native language, i'm "studying" the options.

I would like to see what you and other people thing about this, for example targetting other targets with bigger market but with a slightly diferent language, like the Portuguese/Brazilian situation.

Sorry if i hijack your thread, that's was not the objective.
 
The only problem with partnering with foreigners is the lack of legal protection. Who's really going to defend a contract or deal with international litigation?

But if I had known you for a long time and trusted you, I'd do something informal. But I'd also try to keep as much control as possible, like own the domain and hosting. Especially if it's you coming to me to do a USA site, and I'm in the USA and you're not.
 
Most of my partnerships were dealt with like that, all successful, on a handshake. We kept everything 100% transparent and upfront. I have done x,xxx,xxx+ / yr that way. I owned the site and handled SEO and other promotions making the beans, they counted the beans and handled orders/ logistics. Equaled win win for me. Nutshell version, I'd build and own the mall, and they leased it from me % based as a partner. If things didn't work out I'd drop them as a partner and find another. Honest money for me, easy money for them = win, win.

Zero contracts. When u become too big of an asset/valuable to fuck over, u stop getting fucked over and contracts are not needed.
 
mj22 said:
Most of my partnerships were dealt with like that, all successful, on a handshake. We kept everything 100% transparent and upfront. I have done x,xxx,xxx+ / yr that way. I owned the site and handled SEO and other promotions making the beans, they counted the beans and handled orders/ logistics. Equaled win win for me. Nutshell version, I'd build and own the mall, and they leased it from me % based as a partner. If things didn't work out I'd drop them as a partner and find another. Honest money for me, easy money for them = win, win.

Zero contracts. When u become too big of an asset/valuable to fuck over, u stop getting fucked over and contracts are not needed.
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Experience , they say , is the best teacher.

The only way i'll do a partnership on handshake is if its for non-profits or a project that wouldn't require too much of my attention and i generally , don't really care much is i lose.

But if its something that'll require my body , mind and time , everyday , you better give me a damn contract!.

Got screwed over 4 years ago despite doing all the heavy lifting for them... And we had such a wonderful relationship , but i still got fucked! Ouch!
 
Sorry that happened to u bro, I've had some shifty shit happen to me, after I changed how I did things to what I said, I'd nvr had a problem. The way I set things up is, if they try fuck me, they fuck themselves and then some, so I nvr really had to worry much.

When I own the property and the traffic, I'm in control. Partner slacks on me or doesn't carry wieght, they get shit canned and I find another to replace em.

The guys i roll with know my word is bond, and I don't make a red cent unless they turn a profit. I firmly believe in production based pay vs hrly or salary.

That game = employers pay the employee just enough to keep them there. The employee works just hard enough to keep Thier job. Shit don't make sense to me mang... How is that shit productive?
 
bAFFet said:
What do you consider smaller language market?

Because for example, i'm native Portuguese and we are actually in the 9 postion of the most speaking languages, we actually ahve more native speakings than French or German for instance, but we have two huge from the european prespective:

1st - In Portugal theres only 10 Million people, the most majority of the language speaking come from Brazil, nearly 200M;
2nd - Theres some diference, i personally consider quite big since the writing is completely diferent from the reading perspective, in the Brazilian Portuguese and the "European" Portuguese, which make dificult to work for both countries. I actually believe that theres some kind of disbelief when Portugues are reading Brazilian websites and vice-versa, which makes kinda hard to work in the Brazilian Market from a Portuguese perspective.

Right now, i'm actually thinking about start a Amazon Review website, something i wanted to do for years but have been postpone, but since my english isn't that great and i dont have a really huge market in my native language, i'm "studying" the options.

I would like to see what you and other people thing about this, for example targetting other targets with bigger market but with a slightly diferent language, like the Portuguese/Brazilian situation.

Sorry if i hijack your thread, that's was not the objective.
Click to expand...

Your English doesn't actually look that bad. I'm sure after ~ 100k words you would become pretty good. Also, get Grammarly premium, which helps a lot. Heck, some of my competitors get ~300k monthly views and their posts are written in broken English.

I'm also not a native speaker. I live in eastern Europe and my language is spoken by only two million people. Hasn't stopped me from making an affiliate site though.

Although I know my writing isn't perfect, people usually say that they wouldn't have guessed that I'm not a native. The first few articles were tough, but now I'm getting the hang of it.
 
What do you think about your chances of applying your skills to dominate in a smaller market?

Would your skills in SEO/design/marketing etc make up for the fact you don't master the language. Provided you had a local language partner.
 
mj22 said:
Sorry that happened to u bro, I've had some shifty shit happen to me, after I changed how I did things to what I said, I'd nvr had a problem. The way I set things up is, if they try fuck me, they fuck themselves and then some, so I nvr really had to worry much.

When I own the property and the traffic, I'm in control. Partner slacks on me or doesn't carry wieght, they get shit canned and I find another to replace em.

The guys i roll with know my word is bond, and I don't make a red cent unless they turn a profit. I firmly believe in production based pay vs hrly or salary.

That game = employers pay the employee just enough to keep them there. The employee works just hard enough to keep Thier job. Shit don't make sense to me mang... How is that shit productive?
Click to expand...

This is excellent. And without a doubt the position I want to be in.

Question: how much transparency do you get/need? I've done lead gen in the past in situations where it should have had a solid upside but "the leads were no good".

It seems to me:
  1. the leads might have been no good
  2. they may suck at sales
  3. they may have been closing them, and I didn't know
Is this something you begin to get a feel for as time goes on? Or do you need complete transparency and to trust no-one until they prove they can be trusted?
 
bernard said:
I ask again, what kind of circumstance, what kind of niche, what kind of website, would be interesting for one of you guys to go after a partnership in a smaller language market?
Click to expand...

Anything which makes money with minimum risk. I am always open to partnerships so hit me up whenever you (or anyone else reading this!) are ready.

Couple of anecdotes:

I have successfully concluded low-mid five figure deals with a "foreigner" (on another forum) whom I have never seen or spoken to. No signed deals, just Skype and private messages.

I have also done a deal with another "foreigner" (on this forum) which fizzled out because of his lack of commitment, but ended without any bad feelings on either side.

My point is, your country of residence doesn't matter much. What matters is your perceived trustworthiness and perceived ability to add value to the partnership (What do you bring to the table? Momentum? Clients? Potential deals? Insider edge? Language skills?).
 
@jjj_ I guess the trust was built over the years. I'm not sure how a guy could do lead generation with it since I've never tried it before. Most of my partnerships have been and are with ecom. I've also ran an affiliate site in the weight loss market as a partner to where they went in and put my PayPal id as the account paid to and I just wired his half to him. I run my own sites and also have certain partners that I'm familiar with on different sites (busier markets & depending on the scale of the project.)

When it comes to transparency, I mean transactions conducted, customer service was handled properly, via email, IM, or phone. Etc.

Haven't had much time to be online last day or so, is freaking -30f here (-45-50f with wind chill) sorry for late short reply, trying to survive ND, usa lol
 
No need to apologize @mj22. Thanks for your helpful reply.

My ADHD is still encouraging me to do a bit of everything, lead gen and affiliate.

I can see myself building out some lead gen sites to start actual businesses (but need a partner who fulfils the service in that location), then turning the affiliate sites into dropshipping or full blown branded products (but need someone who does product development/sourcing).

Seems the story on this forum and others is that it's better off to pursue partnerships, get screwed then find a great partner through trial/error than limiting yourself to being a solo business owner forever.
 
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