Creating A Joint Venture Contract

Okay, you've decided to go into a joint venture with a person or group of persons. Fine, but do you have a contract? Do you even know what should go into the contract? Well, unless you do, you could be opening yourself up for a world of hurt and some legal battles that you probably won't win. Many joint ventures have gone south because there was no written contract. This article will point out some things that you should include in your joint venture contract. This is by no means all inclusive and all joint ventures are different. But this should at least give you a good start on putting something together.

The first thing you should do is sit down with your partner or partners and decide exactly what it is that you want to do. Sometimes joint ventures don't get off the ground simply because the parties involved can't agree on the general direction of the joint venture itself. So that's the first step, Decide what the joint venture will be, whether it's creating an ebook, membership site or whatever, and put it in writing. This way, nobody can say, "That wasn't what we agreed on."

The next step is to iron out the finer points of how this joint venture is going to come together. For example, if you're going to create an ebook, you will need graphics for the book, a sales page to sell it and a merchant account of some sort. You will need to have in writing who will be working on what parts of the joint venture. This needs to also be clearly spelled out so that there is no misunderstanding on who is doing what.

The next thing you need to have written out is the timeline by which you expect each part of the project to be completed. Naturally, you don't want to rush anybody and put unreasonable time demands on a person, but you do need to get estimates as to how long each thing will take. If your graphic designer says that he can have an ebook cover done in a week, then you have every right to expect it to be completed within a reasonable amount of time, at least close to that estimate. If no ebook cover is even delivered for review after several months, that is not acceptable. Deadlines need to be part of the contract, though flexibly written. A lawyer can help you with that.

Finally, you need to have, in writing, how long this joint venture is for, who retains rights to the project, and should the project fall apart or the product stops selling and you should decide to take it off the market, who retains ownership of what. In addition to this, you need to have, in writing, how the profits are to be divided. If it's a joint venture of two people, usually profits are divided in half. With multiple participants, it's not so easy, especially if the work and expenses were not divided evenly.

Naturally, there is a lot more to a joint venture than the points above as all joint ventures are different. But the above points should get you started and thinking of other things you want to include in your written contract. After you have it completed, bring it to a lawyer and have copies made for all parties.

Creating a joint venture contract can be a lot of work, but if you go about it in a logical, step by step manner, there is no reason that it can't be done with little trouble.

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