How do I best structure a cross country partnership?

bernard

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I've been talking to writers to expand my main site into neighbour countries and this one guy I know from online way back made a bid, but told me he planned on expanding into the niche himself.

Since I do know him from 10+ years going back, I offered a potential partnership on the spur. Which might have been a little rash, but on the other hand, I do trust my gut instinct usually.

Now, there are pros and cons with such a setup of course. It gets particularly difficult, when you have to factor in my intention to sell my site within 12 months and wanting to use a subdomain for the foreign site. That makes it necessary to either get the partner on board with a sale, and only receiving a calculated fraction, or setting up a new site, which may be able to expand to other countries as well. Other cons is the legal setup across country lines. Not a big deal I think, but still requires some lawyer work and perhaps a joint venture company, which carries some risk.

On the pro side, is that I risk virtually nothing, since he is going to translate my content. It would have cost me around $5K-$10K to have the site translated otherwise. I also gain someone who can better linkbuild locally. In addition, I'd like to be able to expand to this country with future sites. It would be very valuable to have someone to work with on this.

Ultimately the decision always have to be 1+1 = 3, in these situations. Partnering has to mean that the sum of the parts is greater than what is brought in individually. An example I'm thinking off is linkbuilding. If I can get links from that country as well as the links I can get on my own, then that can add significantly more in a partnership than on my own.
 
Are you giving up a percentage in order to get access to two things you can pay a flat fee for anyways (translations & links)?

I think you can get the guy to agree that a sale will be coming when your monthly profit hits a certain amount. It would be easy to add into any contracts and agreements.

A red flag kind of went off for me when you said you told him about your idea and then he was like "oh yeah I was going to do that." I'm skeptical of if he really was or he only said that after the fact as a manipulation tactic to help get what he wants out of the deal. This is what non-disclosure agreements and non-competes are for. I could be wrong here, since I'm basing it on your text and not the actual convo, of course.

Another angle to come at this is instead of slicing this guy off a piece of your pie, you get half of his "I was already going to do this" pie and keep your own entire pie for yourself. You can partner with him on a site in the niche while also paying someone to translate your own version on your own subdomain. Then you could double dip and even interlink a bit to help dominate.
 
I like ryuzaki’s angle. Offer to invest in his project. Also, find a new freelancer.
 
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