Perfect team members (or business partners) don’t grow on trees. It takes time to find someone you click with that you want to work with for years and years to come. That’s the point after all, isn’t it?

Now that doesn’t mean that you have to be best friends or soulmates and that you need to spend most waking hours together –far from it. But it does mean that you want to find someone that’s a good fit.

Someone that complements you and wants to work toward a common goal. Take a look at the “What to look for in a good business partner” blog post for more on that topic.

The next step is to find this magical person that may make your perfect business partner. It’s pretty similar to dating. You have to put yourself out there and get to know some people in your industry and in your niche. Participate in online groups. Join a mastermind. Go to conferences and events. Meet people. Make it a point to talk to everyone and start cultivating those relationships.

Not only will this increase your chances of finding someone that would make a great potential business partner, networking also helps you learn more, pick up some tips for others who are doing what you’re doing, and it allows you to find people you can collaborate with or simply cross promote each other’s sites and products.

If someone reaches out to you, take the time to get to know them. Talk about work, but also your personal life. In short, take the time to not only network, but start to build a relationship. Go the extra mile and do something for them. Share a tip, mention their website in a social media post, sign up for their affiliate program and promote them. Then see how they react. You can learn a lot from that.

Take the time to follow up on new relationships. Check in and see how things are going and if there’s something you can help them with or how the two of you could start to work together – through a cross promotion or an interview for example.

Start to grow and nurture your own little circle of online business friends. These can be people that work in the same or similar niches, or people who have a completely different target audience from yours. It doesn’t really matter since you all work on similar strategies and with similar end goals for your own businesses (think growing your list and getting more traffic for example).

As you get to know the people in your “inner circle” better, you start to get a feel for who you may want to work with more closely. Those will be your potential business partner prospects. Time to gauge interest, and maybe tackle a project together to see how things go.