Partnering advise

Greetings. I have a website that offers boating reports. I was recently approached by another website owner that offers boating news.

I'd like to work with this person but am not sure what approach to take. I have information that he could benefit from and vice versa.

What do we do?

I don't want a simple link exchange and I don't want to sell my site. I do want to work together somehow to get my viewers over to him for news and his viewers over to me for reports.

Any advice?

Few thoughts:

User's perspective - Start by figuring out what would be the best one-stop website that a user might want. And think about whether you guys are industry-leaders or just sortof little fish that are hoping to survive or even make it to the big time.

Know the other person - Get to know the person that you potentially might do business with. Is she/he more experienced than you? More successful? More ambitious? More skilled? Able to work well with others? Even if there are lots of things you can do together, it makes no sense if the potential partner is not someone that you can work with.

Baby steps - Putting up ads to each other is a good place to start. It gives you a sense of reality. Make it initially a working relationship that can be stopped at anytime. No contracts, just email agreements. After you get started, if you want to take bigger steps, you'll be acting based on real information and experience.