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Launching an affiliate network is a daunting task for several reasons. One reason is due to the work load it creates for the people (usually affiliate managers) assigned to keep track of the affiliates of the network. Dealing with hundreds, if not thousands, of affiliate marketers of varying backgrounds creates a lot of work if handled properly. When your affiliate manager is devoted to working with your affiliates, your affiliate network will grow and prosper; if they aren’t proactive, it really won’t grow anywhere near like it should.
Affiliate managers need to have a varied skill set to effectively work with affiliates. Affiliate managers need to be experienced in disciplines like: HTML, SEO, paid search, social networking, site building, and article marketing … among other skill sets. Otherwise, they really aren’t managing the affiliate relationships as intensively as possible and therefore the program won’t grow like it should. Affiliate managers should be very pro-active and friendly by nature. Building the relationships with your affiliates should be the primary task affiliate managers are focused on because the closer the relationship with your affiliates the more likely they will be to produce for you. Recruiting new affiliates by seeking them out and contacting them should also be a high priority for your affiliate managers.
There are basically 3 ways to manage your affiliate network: in-house staff, hiring an experienced affiliate manager, or hiring an outsourced affiliate management agency. All 3 can be effective if you have the right people in place to do the job
Working with affiliates of your network is a highly specialized activity and should be handled by experienced, knowledgeable affiliate managers, who are willing to basically dote on your affiliates and spoon feed them what ever they need to be effective. Using people to manage your affiliates without enough experience won’t be effective and therefore your affiliate network won’t grow nearly to the potential you think it will. Make sure to hire the right affiliate managers to handle your affiliate network and you will enjoy a successful, prosperous affiliate marketing program that will grow year over year.
Author
Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she handled content strategy and marketing communications at several tech startups in the Bay Area. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned home to Charleston, SC, where you can find her strolling through Hampton Park with her pup and enjoying the simple things between adventures with friends and family.
Great read Evan! Thanks for contributing!
I feel like there is something missing from your post. The information is helpful, but I think if you went into the pros-cons, or reasoning for choosing to go with in-house staff, hiring an experienced affiliate manager, or hiring an outsourced affiliate management agency, that it would provide more relevant info.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Evan W.. Evan W. said: RT @hasoffers Why Proactive Affiliate Management is the Best Approach http://t.co/IMv7fEQ […]
I feel like there is something missing from your post. The information is helpful, but I think if you went into the pros-cons, or reasoning for choosing to go with in-house staff, hiring an experienced affiliate manager, or hiring an outsourced affiliate management agency, that it would provide more relevant info.
Focus is everything with affiliate marketing. Building relationships and understanding that each and every affiliate is unique in their own right is key to turning them into a high performing affiliate. My experience says, if affiliate marketing is a key channel then build your affiliate management in-house; understanding our affiliates directly and personally has resulted in expanding our client base by seeking campaigns where niche affiliates can drive serious volume OR highly targeted traffic.
I love the reporting of hasoffers. I actually prefer the offer layout compared to other tracking scripts such as hitpath. Its great.
What I would like to see is HasOffers use a shared list of known spammers/frauders that hasoffers networks can update and communicate through. I find that feature very useful in DirectTrack Networks.
Affiliate managers should also not be greedy and pull the ‘fraud/spam card’ on affiliates for no verifiable reason. I find a LOT of that happening on networks that run on the HasOffers platform.
Could you go into more detail about how affiliate marketing plays a role in SEO, paid search, social networking, site building, and article marketing. I know the benefits of it all and the traffic trackings, etc. but I am just curious as to how it works for both parties.