Gregory I. Simpson, PhD

Understanding how to manage weight loss is pretty complex, especially if you have developed habits over time that are triggered by environmental factors. To seriously study the social, genetic, environmental, and psychological issues involved would probably drive anyone into a state of shock if you aren’t prepared for the rigor and discipline involved. But is that really true?? Maybe not.

Lets take the Biggest Loser Champs, Bill and Jim Germanakos for example. Their story is so compelling, that it really would be a shame not to look at what they achieved in a relatively short period of time. Heck the guys lost over 300 pounds between them over a space of about  12 months. The real question is how did they do it and can you follow their approach and achieve similar results?

Well, they have done something that can help all of us lose, but more important control the weight lost so it doesn’t pile back on. Their new system called the Rapid Action Metabolism (RAM) Fat Loss System is unique in that it not only chronicles what they did and how they did it, but it also provides a road map for your success. How do I know all of this?

Well a short while back, I was asked to review their product and was totally blown away at the depth of knowledge, affordability and most important the fact that the RAM Fat Loss System can lead you to actionable steps. From diet and exercise, to dealing with the psychology of weight control, the Weight Loss Twins as they have become known, demonstrate the practical steps they took to lose over 300 pounds between them.

Through out their journey Bill and Jim Germanakos had to make major efforts to address some of the psychological triggers that led them to gain weight in the first place. Without understanding this aspect of food intake, making corrections become that much more difficult. One of the things that really impressed me about the Germanakos Twins, they have been able to provide really good incentives to help people get on the road to achieving their weight loss goals. The most exciting of these is the Caribbean cruise you get if you win their 60 day weight loss challenge with Bill and Jim as your hosts.

60 Day Weight Loss Challenge 1st Prize

The Weight loss twins have not tried to portray themselves as world authorities in the area of weight loss. What they have been able to successfully do is provide a template for anyone with weight loss goals to follow. They still recommend you consult professional help as you build your program, not only because they need that support and advice, but because the support from physicians, weight loss experts, psychologists, fitness experts is invaluable to your success. Why not check out their system, you never know what inspiration can be mustered just by listening to their story and using their experiences as a guide.

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gsimpson Health & Wellness Products Bill and Jim Germanakos, RAM Fat Loss System, Rapid Action metabolism, Truth About Diets, Weight Loss Twins

Recognizing the challenges involved in forming joint venture partnerships (JVP) in the Health & Wellness (H&W) niche is critical to developing a successful strategy for a product launch. It is challenging enough to get any JV partner to support your product, but the challenge becomes even greater, when trying to bring JV partners who are experts in the internet marketing (IM) niche on board. The main reason for this really stems from the greater level of control JV IMmers have over the marketing and distribution of digital products to their lists as opposed to typical H&W products.

There are several key issues that make H&W JV’s unattractive to strong IM based JV partners. Let us look at five of the more critical issues.

1. Health and Wellness niche products require a different mechanism for establishing validity and credibility to make them successful. In other words, if the digital products are backed by established physicians or heavily credentialed health care professionals, fitness trainers, dietitians, nutritionists etc, coupled with high profile endorsements such as Opera with acai berry juice, they are more likely to be successful or at least attractive more interest. This is very true of digital products in the fitness and weight loss niches, the two areas that find the most activity with JV partners. Using video marketing strategies is one of the more powerfuls tool that not only increases SEO and builds page rank, but also can be used to demonstrate credibility through video testimonials.  As a rule, however it seems that prevention doesn’t really sell, unless you either are forced to have it i.e. car insurance or a deep need was created for you to have to have it!

2. In many cases, products that are successful in the Health & Wellness niche are physical not digital products. These include supplements (of all forms), alternative medicine practices like reiki, acupuncture etc or beauty products. There is an extremely large number of readily accessible and free medical web sites that individuals can find information on practically any disease, condition or treatment approach whether traditional or alternative. Developing a successful information product that will do very well through a IM JV partnership will require creativity, lots of re-purposing and testimonials.

3. Supplements, health juices, organic foods, personal care products etc are sold to consumers through either traditional marketing or multi-level-marketing (MLM) platforms. The distribution through traditional marketing channels make these types of products best sold through websites such as eBay, amazon etc – warehousing becomes the main issue here, the very thing that IM JV partners seem to want to avoid like the plague in their business models! Reviews are mixed on MLM approaches, but from the JV partners I’ve spoken to they won’t touch these models, mainly because of the legal and ethical issues surrounding this form of marketing.

4. Health care systems or membership sites are far more attractive as a business model for IM JV partners because of the recurring income potential. The only challenge here is to keep members coming back. The question that has to be asked about membership websites revolves heavily around the exclusivity of the content and how do you charge for that if there are so many free competing sources of the information? Mike Merz JVNotifypro or Willie Crawford’s membership web sites are good examples of what can work, but for JV partners these types of sites would not generate immediate income. There are obvious benefits down stream, as a list building tool etc, but in the context of a health & Wellness membership site there will be challenges to penetrating the market and keeping membership growing. We already know that membership sites generally keep patrons for about 3 months, so the e-marketing plan would have to bear this in mind.

5. JV partners simply don’t understanding, what the product does, how it provides a benefit or who the target customers are. This is probably the biggest concern for IM JV partners. Their lists, will be unaccustomed to this type of product and would be less likely to buy, partcularly if the communication lines are confused! No JV partner will risk losing their customer base because of this type of mis-communication.

These are just a few ideas to bear in mind when approaching IM JV partners with a H&W digital products or services you wish marketed through their channels. Building crediblity, however through video testimonials and video marketing, written testimonials and expert or high profile product endorsements can go a far way in winning over the toughest of IM JV partner.

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gsimpson Health & Wellness Products Joint Venture Broker, JV Broker - Health & Wellness Specialist, JV Specialist, video marketing

SOME BACKGROUND

To many, the internet is a marvelous venue to build relationships, connect with people, conduct research on practically any subject under the sun and to create business opportunities. Unlike off-line businesses, the challenges of growing an online business, rests squarely in two areas. First, understanding how to attract web traffic to the website and second to establish online credibility, but lets focus a bit on the former. The issue of website traffic.

A POWERFUL EXAMPLE
The success of Google as a search engine platform, for example, rests on that company’s ability to continuously out compete and out perform new and older search engine companies, in continuously attracting a steady flow of traffic. Alexa.com reports that global search engine traffic over the last 3 months, from January  to March 2009, sees Google.com with a traffic rank of 1 has 30.85%, Yahoo.com  26.54% and MSN live.com with 19.33%. To put this data in perspective internetworldstats.com reports that there are 1,596,270,108 internet users globally and of these 30.85% of there online search activities goes through google.com!

Well that’s all well and good, if you are google, yahoo or msn, but for an individual with a websites and a product to market through that website, the likelihood of receiving even 0.00001% of that traffic is a major undertaking. Achieving that goal would require really good search engine optimization strategies, building social networks (i.e twitter, facebook, myspace etc), running ad campaigns, and e-mail campaigns to name a few. Again to put this into perspective, according to alexa.com the website luxurylaunches.com, with a traffic rank of 64,281, sees just over 0.002% of all global web traffic!

THE PURPOSE OF YOUR WEBSITE
Websites are designed to achieve wide and varied goals, based on the niche, the content, the type of audience etc. Understanding how to bring traffic to a web site, for what ever reason is therefore the key behind successful websites and the down fall of others. For simplicity however we can reduce the over arching goals of a website to three key objectives.

1) To provide a continuous flow of quality information to visitors.

2) To gain information about your customer or visitor, i.e. e-mail and physical addresses, telephone numbers, product tastes and preferences etc

3) To facilitate a commercial transaction for goods and services i.e. digital products (software, electronic books, audio books, music, etc), physical products (cars, appliances, clothing etc), membership sites and so on.

The problem is that, with a new product or service in hand ready for marketing online, you probably don’t have any traffic coming to your site. This creates the perfect opportunity for you to begin looking for a JV partnership.

THE INTERNET JOINT VENTURE
The purpose of an internet joint venture (JV for short) is to harness or leverage traffic coming to a website with products that visitors to that site would be willing to take 1 of the 3 above action.
From a theoretical point  of view, the joint venture is based on what has been described as the so called “1 (JV Client) to 1 (JV partner) to X (target audience) model”. In which one client with a single product or group of products, partners with a large list holder or JV partner, to gain access to a specific customer base that can range from thousands to millions!

Sounds simple doesn’t it? And it is once you understand the rules, the objectives of the client, the partner and the needs of the online consumer. As the number of internet users has grown, so has the opportunity and need for product owners to want to form joint venture partnerships to strengthen their product’s position in a very competitive market place. In the next article we will tackle the anatomy of an internet joint venture.

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gsimpson Health & Wellness Products Joint Venture Broker, JV Specialist

Rarely do we ever see a physician admit mistakes in medicine. Yet,
that is just what Dr. Dwight Lundell writes in his article,
“Inflammation, The Fire Within.”  You can download your copy by clicking here
Inflammation, The Fire Within

His new book just released, “The Great Cholesterol Lie,” sold
across the USA and in 17 countries worldwide in three days bringing
words of praise and gratitude for his truth and honesty

In Chapter 6, he lists recommendation to cure heart disease
naturally without medication. His simple yet astounding
recommendations have changed the health of countless people
worldwide.

While the book is about inflammation and heart disease, he explains
how inflammation is the cause of so many diseases men, women and
children now face from diabetes to Alzheimer’s.

He explains why we have so much and how to end the silent yet
raging fire within. As he writes, you have the power to put out
the fire before it erupts in heart disease. He’s just the doctor
standing by to guide you.

Learn how to do that now. Click here to buy this life saving book: The Great Cholesterol Lie

As a special bonus, purchasers receive a 15% discount from
PharmaOmega.com. Dr. Lundell will email you the discount coupon
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the book. He really is the doctor standing by to help you.

Look for the next article in the series, “The Great Statin Scam.”

To Your Better Health

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