How to handle income from joint venture partners with integrity

Affiliate programs are great for bringing in additional income. For example, if you hold a joint venture teleclass and your partner promotes one of her programs at the end of the call, you often agree to getting a cut of sales. This is a commission for helping your partner reach a new audience – yours! Affiliate programs like this usually range in compensation from 25 – 50% for a product, but less for a service. I have found that while most people feel comfortable with this arrangement, sometimes a question of integrity crops up. A few clients have expressed feeling uncomfortable and that it impinges on their sense of honesty. Once a client told me about a product she had created in conjunction with another company. While she was very excited about the product and believed in it, she felt funny recommending it to her clients because she was going to receive a percentage of sales. I recommended that she simply be upfront about it and say, “I get a tiny portion of sales, but here’s how I work. I would never recommend it if I didn’t believe in it. In fact, I use it. Just so you know I get a small thank you gift for introducing this to you.” This is how you can stay in integrity about getting a cut if you don’t feel totally comfortable with the idea. Sometimes people feel funny about getting a “kickback”, but that term feels more like an underhanded arrangement. Shift how you think about it to be more like a “thank you” for introducing people to this great product that they could really benefit from having. I love the definition of integrity as living life by doing the right thing even when no one is watching. Another way of saying this is living your life as if somebody was pointing a video camera at you all the time. There is nothing wrong with benefitting from affiliate programs if the person making the purchase has a genuine advantage from having the product or service. If you honestly believe in it, you are aligned with the greater good and stay in that higher vibration of serving. Your Client Attraction Assignment: Have you been putting off working with joint venture partners because you don’t feel comfortable with the affiliate program piece of the equation? Try thinking about the income from this perspective – you are being of service by introducing them to the product or service. That works with your integrity right? So you are coming from the heart. And you also get compensated. See if that feels better and allows you to move forward with potential partnerships where everybody wins.