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.

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!

Losing Touch

Sometimes there are things that keep us distracted from what we’re intentionally trying to either finish or progress on. What I find myself doing sometimes is getting tangible with my tasks. Doing one thing on my sites sometimes I run into a problem where I stumble upon three or five other things that I find I want to do to my site. Although getting tangible on your mission is fine, keep in mind the original motivation should never be overshadowed.

When setting up multiple campaigns, make sure, even when distracted, that your site or landing page doesn’t lose its integrity. I’ve seen many people get so distracted from their original tasks that they lose focus and end up running a shotty campaign.

Just make sure you stay focused on your main objective. Take notes of any sites you stumbled on and go back to them later. Finish the one project/campaign and then move on to the next. You’ll not only be more productive, but your days will go by so much quicker having ‘more’ to do.

Preception on working ‘hard’

There’s a theory of “working smarter and not harder” in which I’m a huge fan of. The theory runs true in a lot of the things we do in this industry.

One solid campaign can perform just as good as ten “thrown together” campaigns. When building your campaigns, don’t just throw together a landing page and call it good. Instead, optimize your landing page. There are many affiliates out there who get away with throwing content in a page and redirecting the traffic straight into the offer. while that works, think about your returning traffic. if your only out to make a quick buck, then fine, redirect all you want. But if your in this business for the long haul. Take your time building these things in order to retain your traffic, make the user feel secure about what they’re getting into, and therefor maintaining the integrity of your campaign management.

Trust me, in time, you’ll be much happier, and your users will continue to visit you and see what else you’ve got for them.

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