Affiliate Managers: Your Best Friends And Worst Enemies

This is S1ick. While Paul is off kickin it with his people at AdTech, he told me I could guest post. I’m the random blog on his blogroll that never posts, but he’s convinced me to share some knowledge.

Class, today’s lesson will deal with Affiliate Managers. Your relationship with your Affiliate Manager can be the difference between a campaign being profitable, and tanking. A decent affiliate manager will recommend campaigns with high epcs doing well on the network. A great affiliate manager will do that, and offer you instant bumps in payouts. I do a significant amount of business with CPA Empire, which I highly recommend, and my Affiliate Manager, Doug, goes above and beyond. He’ll send me personalized emails with what he calls the street payout, the payout everyone else gets, and the payout he’s willing to give me BEFORE I run any traffic to the offer. Yeah, its pretty sweet. As an Affiliate Manager his job is to help me make money, and he’s really good at it. So, how do you get to this level?

Yes, I’m sure it has to do with volume, but it also has to do with treating your Affiliate Managers like a friend. On the business side, this means telling them what you’re running on other networks, and what they’re paying you for it. If you haven’t already figured it out, top payout is a fallacy. You can ALWAYS get more. Before even running an offer, pit your AMs against each other. Get on aim, and talk to them in real time. This way they know, what your getting offered, and why your not monetizing your traffic with them. Its not rude, or shady, its business. When you start doing volume, tell all of them then as well. I’m doing so many leads for so much a lead, and would move my traffic if you could do better. And when you move to another network for a higher payout, tell them then as well. Its that simple, and yet so many affiliates ignore this very important part of affiliate marketing.

On the personal side, get to know them. I’m not saying spend hours upon hours learning their life story from birth till now, but the occasional casual conversation will go a long way. When you put time into the relationship you have with your AMs, they will put time into you. Like sending those emails out, giving you access to hidden offers, and giving you the courtesy call when an offer is about to get pulled.

But keep your eye on the prize. Remember that at the end of the day, the network takes part of your hard earned commissions, so eventually your goal will be cut out the middleman, and go straight to the advertiser. In most cases this takes a lot of traffic, but other times, it doesn’t. It never hurts to ask, and as trite and cliché it may sound its so true. I also do a lot of business with Commission Junction, and after I cut them out of the equation on a few offers, my payout increased by as much as 30% which is huge. Know that big affiliates have this process down to an art. Case and point is our good friend Mr. Diorex. The next time you see him, you should ask him about how much he used to get for ringtone leads.