The commandments of Being a good AM

I just read a post here that gives a great explination of what i think to be the unwritten rules of affiliate management.

My favorite is #3 and i can’t stress this enough to any other affiliate manager in the business.

“3) Thou shall know what the hell you are talking about

I don’t care if you’ve been in the affiliate game for 1 month or 6 years.  KNOW WHAT THE HELL YOUR TALKING ABOUT.  I’ve had affiliate managers who don’t know what a scrub is (they had to check with their manager).  I’ve had affiliate managers who don’t know the difference between traffic sources.  I’ve had affiliate managers who can’t tie their own shoelaces.  Figure out what you are doing and learn about your industry before you make a fool of yourself. “

you can read the full post here

SOLD OUT! But try this instead…

Have you ever been our shopping for a certain product only to find the shelf empty with what you were looking for? After looking around for the product and not finding what you wanted, you start to look for quick alternatives. The product right next to your empty shelf might be just the same thing with a different logo. If the price isn’t extraordinarily higher than compared to the original price of your once sought out product I’m sure consideration for this new purchase might be in order.

This correlates DIRECTLY into affiliate marketing and what is called herding. A study, recently taken, shows that people are more likely to purchase something knowing that their original intended purchase is no longer available to them.

Read more on the study taken, here

Scarcity can be a very effective marketing tool as long as it’s used properly and in moderation. Try to implement this slowly in your campaigns and see if there’s any effect on conversions. But proceed with caution, you don’t want to overuse the scarcity tactic too much or it won’t have the full effect of your initial intentions.

Introduction to your goals!

“Before you begin a thing, remind yourself that difficulties and delays quite impossible to foresee are ahead. If you could see them clearly, naturally you could do a great deal to get rid of them but you can’t. You can only see one thing clearly and that is your goal. Form a mental vision of that and cling to it through thick and thin.” – Kathleen Norris

So everyday we wake up and get to the grind (except for some of us on Sundays who have cocktail flu) but that’s a different story. We hit the road on projects we’ve either started or need to get started. Think about the goals you’ve set for yourself. Is it turn for you to accomplish a daily or weekly goal? Or is it time for you to get working on that long term year end goal?

Having a goal can make a persons drive THAT much stronger. In order to continue growth as an individual, there must be something you’ve wanted to get accomplished or want to get started.

This follows affiliate marketing very much in the sense that if your goals aren’t set in perspective then you’ll never amount to much. Try panning out a goal for the month. you’d be surprised how much you’ll get accomplished in a few months time.

Greener Pastures

I hear from time to time about another new affiliate network starting up from an affiliate who wants to make more money in the industry. I get asked, how much does it cost to start an affiliate network?

I tell them that it’s not about how much is COSTS, it’s about CASH FLOW.

So I ask them, how much cash flow do you have to cover your first month or two of payments? Take in consideration that your net payment terms are not going to coincide with advertisers and you need to manage and carry the balance from your affiliate’s earnings. Do you have the cash flow for that? What happens when you don’t get paid at all?

Another thing I think about is why this affiliate would even want to start an affiliate network? Do they feel the need to progress in this direction to maintain stability in this industry? Is this just something they think is an easy task to do? What’s the motivation here?

How is it that the already established networks can leverage their traffic for better payouts, payment terms, and campaign management? And then in turn, become mega affiliates themselves?

Is the Grass really greener on the other side?

My answer to these questions is no. If you’re an established affiliate looking to expand in the industry, don’t. Expand in yourself. Why would you want to compete with other well established networks, some of whom you’ve been working with for years?

You remember how hard it was to initially get into this game? It’s like starting over again. Only now you’re a ‘network’ and you have ‘affiliates’. Keep in mind some of the points I said in my previous post.

Being an established affiliate is great! Why would anyone want to venture outside of that? If you want to build, build relationships and partners. Leave the negotiating payouts/offers/payments/terms up to the guys who already have those relationships with the advertisers.

For those who will continue to strive to build quality networks after becoming great affiliates. Good luck, and may the best network win!

Communication and campaign management

I came across a campaign the other day that was performing well at the beginning of the month and slowly but surely dwindled away towards the middle/end of the month. As I noticed this trend of the campaign, my initial reaction was to contact the owner of who was running this offer. After a couple phone calls and a few emails sent out to the publisher, I had received no response. Now there are two things I could have done at this point. Let it run through the rest of the month, or redirect the offer to something else. Redirecting offers is not something I like to do, there are ad copies that need to be considered, keywords that might be being bid on, and/or targeted email lists that this campaign may have initially been set up for. I chose to let it go hoping we could get in contact with that publisher in order to discuss and agree on something else.

I finally get a call back from this particular person running this offer. As our introductions finish, I mention to them that the current offer they’re running is sucking ass. They mention to me that this offer (and my company) was the topic of conversation this morning and how can they run anything else from me based on this particular offer. ???.

I can completely understand when an offer sucks that it doesn’t reflect well from that merchant. But what some people fail to keep in mind is that as an affiliate network, we’re receiving campaigns from SEVERAL merchants at any given time. I asked them to take this in consideration and not be all too quick to judge my entire company as a whole based on one single campaign.

I didn’t want to divulge too much into a traffic issue. So I suggested that I inquire about the offer with the merchant and we see what may have happened to the campaign. I know this might not have been the quickest solution but, given the speculation of the way my company runs, I have only limited of options for satisfaction.

What I’m saying with all of this is, don’t be so quick to turn the back on a network as a whole based off a single issue. I can understand payment issues, sure, or even maybe consecutive problems with reporting, OK fine. With what you might take away from a simple phone call, early, could save a world of stress for both you and the guys on the other end.

Cheers!

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