Today's Feature...

I'm sure you've heard the old adage: "You don't plan to fail, but rather you fail to plan!"

Now, imagine this:

You've worked your tail off for months trying to convince the top marketers in your field to promote your products.

You've shown them how great your products are, how well your customers like them, and just how well those products would appeal to their loyal subscribers and customers.

Then one fine day you get an email that goes something like this:

"Over the past few months I've gotten more and more email from my customers asking questions that I truly believe your product addresses perfectly. To help them (and maybe save me a few hours a week answering email ;-), I'm going to recommend they take a look at your product."

Imagine your surprise!

Then imagine a few short hours later as the traffic starts flowing through your website, and the orders start to come in...

Blam! Your server can't handle the traffic load, and your site is brought to a stand-still!

What do you do? All these visitors who are eager to read the recommendation, are running into a brick wall... a dead website. As you can imagine, most visitors simply move on about their daily chores, probably never to return again!

Could this happen to you? You bet it could.

Do you have a contingency plan?

If you're like me, probably not ;-(

I know this sounds like some fairy tale "Don't let this happen to you!" kind of thing, but it actually happened to me just last week.

Looking back, there were dozens of things that I *could* have done, or *should* have done, but I didn't.

In my case the 'top marketer' in question was none other than Jim Daniels! Luckily Jim is one of the Net's 'Good Guys' and completely understood the situation and knows all too well that these things can, and DO, happen.

Even more lucky for me was the fact that Jim doesn't just have subscribers and customers, he has FANS! Fans that are understanding and believe that if Jim recommends something, it *will* be worth trying to get to.

But that won't always be the case. When something fails, you can pretty much bank on the fact that you'll never have dealings with that JV partner again.

Lost opportunity. In most cases, lost forever.

So, why am I sharing my woeful tale today? Well for starters, Jim agreed to let me share this experience with his readers so YOU can learn from it. Plus, it gives me a chance to reward those of you who took the time to wait for my site to load.

When doing a joint venture, there are many things that can go wrong that will keep a website from performing properly. My own problems were due to a lack of memory on my server. But your website could fail to work properly for many different reasons, too numerous to go into. Most are unforeseen and unavoidable. The key is to prepare for these instances.

More on this after a short sponsor break...

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Now back to today's tip...

Here is what you can do to prepare properly for your next big JV:

1. Create "What-if" scenarios and determine how you would handle them. Let's face it, 99.9% of us face problems 10 minutes AFTER they've happened, right? And when they happen, we know EXACTLY what we SHOULD have done. Then why not think about a disaster happening BEFORE it does happen and do your best to avoid it?

2. NEVER go the cheap route on the important aspects of your business. If your business generates income from the Internet, your website is your most valuable asset. If you bought yourself a McDonald's franchise, would you want to put the restaurant in an old shack with a paper sign out front? No! You'd want the best place money could buy and a HUGE Golden Arch out front! Think of your online business this way too.

3. Before any large JV, contact your website hosting company and have someone verify that your server is configured properly to handle whatever type of load you are expecting. You may have the fastest, biggest computer there us, but if it isn't configured and optimized properly for your particular application, you're sunk.

4. Run stress tests to try and determine weak spots in your system. If you find that a certain function could fail under certain scenarios, figure out how to replace it. Or, at the very least know what you could use in it's place if it does fail.

5. ALWAYS maintain a current backup of your website AND your computer. All things electronic will, and do die sooner or later. And it always seems to happen at the *worst* possible time.

Bottom line is: Be prepared. ALWAYS expect the unexpected and know what you will do when that time comes.

If you prepare, you can save yourself a ton of grief, AND lost opportunity!

By Chuck McCullough
AffiliateMistakes.com

P.S. Many of Jim's subscribers DID manage to get through to that URL and many ordered my report. Those of you who did, please email me, "Chuck McCullough" <chuck@affiliatematch.com> as I'd like to send you my $97 Website Traffic System at no charge. (Just my way of saying thanks for your patience!)

And if you were one of the folks who could not get to the site, I'll extend that same complimentary gift to you, if you order my report at this special site. It's the least I can do to thank you (and Jim!) for giving me a second chance.
 

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