Welcome to The Affiliate Manager Weekly Strategist from Affiliate Classroom.

Each week, we discuss an affiliate management strategy and ask you for your input.

This week, our VP of Marketing and 10 year affiliate marketing veteran, Rachel Honoway talks about the importance of networking with other affiliate managers.

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GROWING YOUR PEER NETWORK
– Rachel Honoway
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Since launching AC Certified in late November, I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with several professionals who are new to the industry.

It’s always fun to hear comments like, “last week I had never heard of affiliate marketing, and now it’s all I can think about!”

I usually finish off my conversations with them by welcoming them to our industry and inviting them to contact me anytime.

I think that the welcoming, open nature of this industry is one of the things that makes it so attractive and so successful.

That being said, it seems that as our industry grows, newer entrants are less and less connected to veterans and to one another.

Maybe they are worried about “bugging” us. Maybe they don’t know that we actually like to share our thoughts and offer help when we can.

Regardless of the reason, the effects of not being well-networked in this close knit group could lead the growing number of new entrants to fail unnecessarily simply because they didn’t take advantage of the extremely generous veteran members of this industry.

Helping them become connected can help veterans ensure that the industry continues moving forward and that the best practices and values that we’ve established are adopted by the future influential industry players.

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QUESTIONS FOR THE WEEK
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Are you new to the industry? Are you connected?

Let’s connect - follow me on Twitter - and I’ll follow you: rachelhonoway

Join my LinkedIn Network, I’d be happy to introduce you to others - http://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelhonoway

Are you an industry veteran? Would you like to open your network up to new members?

Join the discussion and post your answers.

(Remember - participating in industry blogs can help with brand/program recognition and with recruiting
affiliates!)

Welcome to The Affiliate Manager Weekly Strategist from Affiliate Classroom.

Each week, we discuss an affiliate management strategy and ask you for your input.

This week, our VP of Marketing and 10 year affiliate marketing veteran, Rachel Honoway weighs in on manually approving affiliate applications.

Clearing Application “SPAM”
–Rachel Honoway

I remember the days when affiliate managers and even networks would boast about the number of affiliates they had…

“We have over 2,000 affiliates…”

“Last month 5,000 affiliates joined our network…”

It wasn’t long before we all realized that we weren’t above the old principle of quality over quantity.

In fact, we’ve reached a point now where affiliate applications not only fail to excite us - but actually frustrate us.

If you’re managing an established program, or a program for a well-known brand name, manually approving affiliate applications can easily become a dreaded part of your day.

Much like with clearing out spam from your inbox with one finger on the delete button …

… you spend hours each week scanning through applications with your finger on the “deny” button.

As any efficient marketer would, you’ve probably daydreamed about using all of those hours for tasks that feel more productive and directly impact your program in a positive way.

But, don’t let this temptation fool you - the time you’d save by flipping your program over to auto-approve can quickly be eaten up with time spent getting to the bottom of fraud attacks and analyzing reports that are clouded with useless numbers and empty data.

I’d even go as far as to say that if the time and distraction of approving affiliate applications has overwhelmed you - it’s time to set your program on “auto-deny”.

This probably isn’t an available setting in your merchant interface… but you get the idea!If you’re already doing all it takes to keep your head above water, opening up the floodgates is the last thing you need.

Without going to extremes, you can request that new affiliates complete specific tasks or deliver additional information to help you validate thier existence and intentions. For example, request that they call you to verify their information and to discuss how they’ll be marketing your products and services.

This extra step will deter many fraudsters and affiliates looking for an easy buck from even trying. Since they’re calling you, you won’t waste your time on wrong numbers, voicemail or affiliates who don’t want to be found.

Plus, you’ll get a chance to learn about your new affiliates and build a solid foundation for a long-term relationship.

QUESTIONS FOR THE WEEK

Do you manually approve your affiliate applications?

What criteria must affiliates meet to make it past your screening?

On average, what % of your applications do you approve or deny?

Join the discussion and post your answers!

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!

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!