Affiliate Manager Tips

Do you remember this famous meme: “Being a good affiliate manager is as easy as riding a bicycle. Except the bicycle is on fire, you are on fire, everything is on fire because you are in hell.” Joking? No joking. Being a good affiliate manager is a real vocation. You need to be very flexible and carry out the responsibilities of advertising, marketing, PR and support managers altogether. This kind of profession requires the ongoing development and betterment from a person. You always need to look for new opportunities to time your affiliate program to perfection, learn new methods of promoting goods or services, attract new affiliates into the program and support existing ones. Cut a long story short, affiliate manager is a jack-of-all-trades. 

If you are a newcomer in this profession, you might be interested in some tips from real professionals in the sphere. Dmitrii Zotov, co-founder of Affise Performance Marketing Software has decided to find out the answers on top requested questions from 3 affiliate managers from ones of the best affiliate networks.

What personal characteristics a good affiliate manager should possess?
Tanya, Zorka.Network: It goes without saying that affiliate manager is a good starting point for those who want to work in affiliate marketing. But you should also be prepared, that during your long way in the sphere you will need to learn the information that does not exist in books and implement this knowledge in working process. I do not even mention that you will be working overtime communicating with your affiliates even on your weekends. Affiliate marketing is the industry that never sleeps.

Olga, Leadbit: A good affiliate manager should be very stress-resistant, tactful and diplomatic. This type of job requires a lot of patience and good communication skills. You will be working with absolutely different people starting from talented in digital marketing students to highly professional publishers with 20+ years experience. Sometimes you will have to answer the same questions hundreds of times a day. So being patient is simply a must.

Ofer Katz, Affiliate-mob: First of all, a good affiliate manager should be a performance-oriented person, who is aimed at achieving high results in anything they do. Every day they take responsibilities to decide what would be better for a particular affiliate program, which affiliates to involve in there, and so many more questions. Thus, being able to make decisions and be responsible for them on behalf of the network is crucial. And surely, possessing some basic technical skills would be a huge plus. Otherwise, you will have to learn all these during the work.

How do you recruit affiliates into your program and how do you notice a real potential in an affiliate?

Tanya, Zorka.Network: Usually affiliates come to our network having fulfilled the application form at our website. Thanks to our long-term experience we managed to work out a really good number of questions for affiliates. It doesn’t require much time from an affiliate as well as allow us to see his or her potential. If a candidate has 2-3-year experience, mentions their strong points in verticals and GEOs and drives traffic from high-quality sources – this is, for sure, our guy. Even if a person has absolutely no practical experience in digital marketing, but is prepared theoretically and has a strong desire to develop these skills – welcome to our affiliate network! We are always ready to accompany affiliates on their way to success and discover a new “star” in any newcomer.

Olga, Leadbit: Actually, we are open to all the affiliates that have a desire to try their forces in promoting offers in Europe, Asia or LATAM. All they need is some basic knowledge about digital marketing, and we will teach them about the details. Then, we assess the quality of traffic they are driving. If everything is ok, we will do our best to provide them with all they need to increase their volumes. We have a lot of cases when beginners turned into top publishers.

Ofer, Affiliate-Mob: If you want to attract best affiliates to your program, you should stand out from your competitors first. In this case, you won’t need to look for publishers, they will be reaching you out themselves. Usually, it takes 5 minutes for an experienced affiliate manager to figure out whether an affiliate has potential or not. If a person keeps to the point, shows the desire to work and learn, this is a potentially good publisher. In the end, only the time will show. 

How to build up such kind of relations with your affiliates when you help them increase their volumes and profit?

Tanya, Zorka.Network: The key is that you have to think how to earn WITH your affiliates rather than how to earn ON them. That is why you need to become a friend to your affiliates and help them to grow within the industry. As an affiliate manager you are aware of all the affiliate program peculiarities. You are contacting with an account manager and know the details about the offer from an advertiser. So you are such a great source of information for your affiliate. Thus, communicate with your affiliates, learn what are their strong points. And together you will find the way to increase their as well as your own profit.

Olga, Leadbit: First of all, you should build as friendly relations as possible so that your affiliates can tell you what they need to perform better and increase their volumes. Very often, attending key events in affiliate marketing industry, you meet your affiliates personally and get to know them better. So my advice is: use this opportunity to establish good relations with existing as well as with new affiliates.

Ofer, Affiliate-mob: Good relations are always built on the truth and mutual trust. Keep talking to your affiliates, be fair with them, tell them the truth even if it doesn’t sound good. These are so simple things, but they work really good.  

Your top 3 tips for affiliate managers

Olga, Leadbit: All the publishers are like children, so you need to look after them and care about them. Besides, the better you build the relations between you and your affiliate, the more efficient this cooperation will work.

Ofer, Affiliate-Mob: Always tell the truth to your affiliates, be as responsible as you can, and try to know your affiliates better – and the success will not be long in coming.

Tanya, Zorka.Network: Be a friend to your affiliates, try to give them most of your efforts, knowledge and care, and don’t forget to keep smiling!