[bbalfour]

Good question. Not to be a pessimist, but in most scenarios I have found partnerships to under perform initial expectations. Part of that can be mitigated with the things I outline in the post. But I think more than anything finding that one key predictor of success is important. For Viximo it was sites that had high DAU/MAU ratio. We'd rather take a company with 1/10 of the total audience, a crappier experience, and worse business terms but a high DAU/MAU ratio. It made a huge difference.

But that key predictor is different for every business. Finding it can be tough. But once you find it you increase partnership success chances by a lot.