wheel - 7:21 pm on Feb 11, 2011 (gmt 0)

The only relationship better than those built on love are those based on cash. So you need to make sure that your parter is well compensated. And you both have a well defined exit strategy.

I've always found that partnerships work best if there's a clearly defined ownership of duties. You do this, they do that, and you aren't the boss 'o them in their job. In other words, partners are 50-50 in terms of sharing tasks; they're 50-50 in terms of assigning indivual tasks, then you own 100% of your half of the tasks. If they do marketing, they do marketing and keep your beak out of it :).

The initial problem is that you are starting with 100% of nothing and they're going to build it so that you both have 50-50 of something. I don't know that there's a best way to build someone's ownership from 0 to something. In fact, I've run into this before.

I was offered a substantial portion of ownership for doing SEO on a project. I didn't have time for a maybe, so I declined. They built the traffic, then called me back to ask about the SEO again. At that point I said 'sure, but how bout a cut', and at that point they declined - because now they had a gtd. traffic base.