Welcome to The Affiliate Manager Weekly Strategist from Affiliate Classroom. Each week, we’ll discuss an affiliate management strategy and ask you for your input.

For this week’s strategy, we’re borrowing from one of our BlogClassroom pre-launch lessons … “Digging” Your Affiliates.

In one BlogClassroom pre-launch lesson, we teach affiliates how to generate traffic for themselves using Digg.com.

If you’re not familiar with Digg, it’s a community-based service for submitting, voting on and commenting on all types of online content. For example, if you are reading a blog post that you really like, you can go to Digg.com to submit it for others to see, vote on and comment on.

The marketing potential (if not abused) is obvious…

Affiliates can Digg their own content for a chance at getting more eyeballs on their site and more visitors to click on your links.

As affiliate managers, you can help your affiliates drive traffic by “Digging” their sites, blog posts and videos.

First, you need to ask your affiliates to alert you when they publish new content. They could send you a simple email, or add you to their “Friends” on Digg.

Once you know about their new item, you can give it vote by either:

1. Clicking the “Digg” link on their site. You’ll probably find that many of your affiliates are already using Digg and all you have to do is click on the “Digg” link to give them a vote.
2. Registering for an account at Digg.com and use the “Submit New” feature to add the link yourself.

Figuring out how to drive traffic and distribute new content is a big project for your affiliates. Helping them using services like Digg is a great way for you to build affiliate loyalty and increase their chances of earning commissions in your program.

If you’d like a crash-course in Digg, or you think that your affiliates would benefit from learning how to use the service, check out the free pre-launch lessons at BlogClassroom.com

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Questions for the week:

Do you help your affiliates drive traffic?

If so – what techniques do you use?

Welcome to the second issue of The Affiliate Manager Weekly Strategist from Affiliate Classroom. Each week, we’ll discuss an affiliate management strategy and ask you for your input.

Modules 5 and 7 of our AC Certified Affiliate Manager Training and Certification course are devoted to the topics of New Affiliate Recruitment, and Communicating with Affiliates. Today, we’re plucking a strategy out of those sections - the best way to communicate with your newly recruited affiliates – picking up the phone and calling them!

We know that you’re probably thinking that picking up the phone and calling your new affiliates sounds more time consuming than it is worth. We believe that the benefits of a real person to person phone call far outweigh the time it takes to make them, and here’s why:

#1 Reason to call – Make a good first impression

Just like you, affiliates are constantly inundated with emails. We all know how easy it is to set up an email template and send it out, but a telephone call takes more effort - and it shows. Let your affiliates know you are there for them from the get-go.

#2 Reason to call – Opening the lines of communication

Your affiliates need to know what you are looking for, and you need to know what your affiliates want from you. When there is a direct and open line of communication between you and your affiliates, you will find it much easier to share, understand, and reach your goals.

#3 Reason to call – Proactive Outreach

If you want to keep your affiliates happy, let them know that there is someone to help them when the need it. You can do this with an email, or – better yet, a real, live person on the phone.

#4 Reason to call – Retention

If you want to retain your affiliates and keep them loyal to you rather than moving on to a competitor, you have to build a relationship with them. Picking up the phone and giving a new affiliate a call will help you to stand out from other affiliate programs with weaker affiliate relationships.

#5 Reason to call – Fraud Prevention

Nothing helps weed out a potentially fraudulent affiliate quicker than calling the number they supply and hearing “BEEP – The number you have reached is no longer in service…” Of course you should give the affiliate a chance to supply you with a corrected phone number – or try to find one on their site – but chances are, you’ve found a potential cheater in your program that assumed you were like most affiliate managers who wouldn’t ever think of calling them.

Questions for the Week

Do you have a plan for contacting new affiliates?

If so – does your current plan involve making personal calls to new affiliates?

What could you do to make room for phone calls in your contact plan?

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Subscribe to our weekly publication The Affiliate Manager Strategist by signing up for the newsletter and demo on the homepage of our AC Certified website.

One of the biggest issues that Affiliate Managers noted over and over at our 1-day Affiliate Manager Workshop this past February was dealing with “time sucking” affiliates.

What are time sucking affiliates?

You know… the guy that writes you every day to ask you why he hasn’t made any sales yet. Or, the woman that calls and IMs begging you to “just show me how to do it, and I’ll be your best affiliate ever!” Neither of which is producing for you.

From writing nice email responses to placating a long-winded caller to writing help guides and training emails - Affiliate Managers admitted to:

1 - Spending FAR too much time on these non-performing affiliates

2 - Not knowing how to say “no”

Fortunately, there is a place where you can point these time-suckers that will allow you nicely tell them “no, I don’t provide this training - but I know of a great resource that you should try”.

New affiliate training for $1.00

Yep, for just $1.00 your newbie affiliates can get access to Affiliate Classroom’s library of step-by-step training materials. If they want to stick around and continue taking advantage of the continually-updated course, they can for $29.97/month - plus, we’ll give you a kick-back on that. So, not only will you be freeing up your time and creating knowledgeable (and hopefully profitable!) affiliates, but you could be making a few extra dollars on side.

For more information, visit our Affiliate Classroom website.

Free Training on Setting up a Blog

As we get ready to launch the next Blog Classroom session, trainers Anik Singal and Rosalind Gardner are giving away 8 free lessons on setting up a new blog.

Send those time sucking affiliates over to Blog Classroom , and in a matter of a few minutes they could be up and running with their own content-rich blog pointing right to you. They don’t even have to spend a dollar to get started - it’s completely free.

So - now you have two great resources for those time sucking affiliates. Don’t let them take any more of your valuable time. Send them to us ready to learn, and they’ll come back to you ready to earn!

AC Certified Advisory Board Member, Peter Figueredo of NETexponent talks about his views on AC Certified. Here’s what he has to say:

“The Affiliate Marketing Industry is severely lacking in qualified affiliate manager talent. Companies looking for experienced managers now have an unbiased 3rd party accreditation service to help them identify solid candidates. AC Certified provides a comprehensive certification program that evaluates the experience of affiliate managers across many key areas. I am confident that this service will benefit advertisers and publishers by identifying well qualified affiliate marketing personnel. “

Linda Woods of Partnercentric has reviewed AC Certified. Here’s what she has to say:

“I finally got a chance to review the training materials in depth, and I have to say, I am really impressed with the detailed content, easy to read format, simple explanations for complicated concepts and a very well thought out curriculum to know what any beginning affiliate manager (and even some veterans!) need to know to do their jobs well. Good stuff! “

Have you taken a look at AC Certified yet?

We’ve created a demo walkthrough of the system that shows you everything from signup to the course, to tests and the career center.

Signup for demo on our homepage www.accertified.com

Strategy of the Week - The Essential Affiliate Newsletter 

Welcome to the first issue of The Affiliate Manager Weekly Strategist from Affiliate Classroom. Each week, we’ll discuss an affiliate management strategy and ask you for your input.

We decided to start the publication off by talking about newsletters - how appropriate!

In our AC Certified Affiliate Manager Training and Certification course, we go as far as to call the affiliate newsletter “essential”.

However, we know that many affiliate managers aren’t using this strategy. So, today we want to discuss some common road blocks that keep even the best affiliate managers from writing and sending out an affiliate newsletter.

Road Block #1 - I don’t know what to say!

This seems to be a common theme. Affiliate managers want to communicate with affiliates, but they don’t know what to say.

So, start off easy - talk about the things you know. Give affiliates more information about your products. Tell them about new links or promotions that you’re running.

Road Block #2 - I don’t have enough to say!

Even the shortest updates can be useful and motivational for your affiliates. Plus, shorter messages are more likely to be read than long messages, and most readers won’t be bothered if you send short messages more frequently.

Road Block #3 - I don’t have enough time!

Of course you don’t - and, honestly, you really never will! Affiliate Managers are known for their overflowing plates. But, hey - that’s why you love this job, right!

Give yourself one hour every week for newsletters. You may actually find that setting aside an hour to sit down and cover all of the little things that you have going on - you spend less time communicating the same thing over and over to multiple affiliates.

Road Block #4 - I don’t think that my affiliates want one!

Ahhhh - this statement sound like nails on a chalk board to us. After nearly 4 years of one on one work with affiliates through the Affiliate Classroom, the biggest complaint that we still get from affiliates is “my managers don’t keep me informed. I need to know what is going on.”

Your newsletter won’t replace the personal contact you make with top affiliates - but it’s good to have it there as a steady, reliable source of information even for your most active affiliates.

Questions of the week:

Do you send out a periodic affiliate newsletter?

If not - what road blocks are keeping you from getting it done?

If you are sending one - what advice do you have for other affiliate managers?

Join the discussion and post your answers in the comments section. Remember to add the URL for more information about your affiliate program!

The AC Certified Career Center has launched and we have several companies who are looking for talented Affiliate Managers and other interactive marketing careers.

Are you looking for a career in Affiliate Marketing - signup for a free account today to search through our jobs database. We’ll let our employers know that you are “Certifiable” and they can rest assured knowing that when they hire you, they’ll have the AC Certified system waiting and ready to get you completely trained on the best practices and successful techniques for managing a profitable affiliate program.

Employers - are you looking for Affiliate Managers? Post your jobs and find your perfect match!