Gain Your Affiliate Managers Trust. 7 Highly Effective Ways
When working with an affiliate manager in an affiliate network it is imperative that there is a relationship of trust between one another (client or affiliate and their affiliate manager). I have been in the affiliate marketing arena since 2004 and I’d like to share some tips on how an affiliate can gain your affiliate managers trust.
Here are my 7 Highly Effective Ways.
1. Start Off Small - When your account is approved, I would suggest asking your affiliate manager what is converting, what is a true network exclusive and get the respective data or conversion metrics on those offers. When you are ready to ‘turn on’ your traffic, start slow. Why? Because you have yet to establish a relationship with your affiliate manager and the network. You don’t want to go and generate 1000 debt leads a day that pays out $25.00 and not get paid for it. This will raise a red flag and will be an issue if the leads come back from the Advertiser as poor quality or invalid leads that didn’t convert. Also, it is best to speak to your affiliate manager daily via IM, phone or email in the beginning to make sure that the quality is OK from the Advertiser.
2. Account History – Make sure that your account with the affiliate network is updated and real. When the affiliate manager calls you to verify you account, in order to get approved and get paid, make sure that you give your real name, address etc. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard of affiliates applying to networks with fake names and addresses. You will get caught and will not be paid for your traffic that you generate. As well they affiliate networks are smart. They have processes in place to make sure that you are “real.” Think of the affiliate network as a a partner. Similar to a bank. Your success is their success.
3. Campaign Competitiveness - Always make sure that you are competitive with payouts. Although, you will have to build rapport over time with your affiliate manager in order to get the high payouts, always do your homework and research. There are several places where you can research or learn what the “going rate” is on any offer. One great example is Offervault. Offervault is a free service that allows you to browse and search for offers from these top networks. You can find CPA and Affiliate Programs from top CPA networks.
Once you have been working with your affiliate manger for long enough, and have built trust, you can then start to ask for higher payouts. If you have a good affiliate manager, he/she should automatically pass these top payouts on to you.
Another great trick is to join as many notworks as possible and get on their mailing lists for newsletters. Keep yourself updated with all the new offers that are being promoted on the different networks. This can be used as leverage when negotiating.
4. Quality Traffic – I can not stress how important this is to everyone. Having seen both sides of the business (starting and working at several affiliate networks), Affilaite Management and Business Development), affiliates generating poor quality is a huge mess. It causes such problems internally at any affiliate network. The Advertiser gets upset, the affiliate manager gets upset, the business development manager gets upset and accounting gets upset. Plus, you could be kicked off the network and have all of your funds that is owed to you frozen. Not good! Your affiliate manager represents you. Yes! But at the end of the day he works for the network. He hears it from the Business Development Manager that is at the jeopardy of loosing his client (the Advertiser) because of poor quality traffic (fraud, charge backs, invalid downloads, bogus leads etc.). Make sure to always generate the BEST quality traffic and leads. The name of the game is Quality not Quantity.
5. What are other affiliates doing? - No one knows better than your affiliate manager. They are in the trenches when it comes to affiliate marketing. They deal with hundreds of affiliates and see the day to day traffic. Ask them what is working on this offer? Email, Search, Display etc. They can share some valuable information with you when it comes to what is making money on the network. The are your partners and have tremendous useful information. Utilize their experience and time.
6. Meet face to face – Noting is better in business than doing a face to ace meeting and shaking your affiliate managers hand in person. Go to Ad:tech, Affiliate Summit or PpubCon. Make plans to meet your affiliate manager and the network team. Stop by their both and say hi. Have dinner with them and talk about growing the relationship and making it stronger. Talk about new traffic sources or what you have been up to. How you can get a higher payout or how you want to win the latest contest.
7. Show your pages and traffic sources – I know that this is hard to do but, until you can show your affiliate manager your pages, the relationship just isn’t completley trustworthy. Don’t show them all of your cards from day one, hold something back. You don’t want to give them your keys to the kingdom right away. As much as you need to earn your affiliate managers trust, you need to make sure that you trust them as well. This takes time. Like any relationship that is new. Ask your affiliate manager to sign a NDA perhaps. I have seen this before and protects your best interests and your proprietary information. By revealing your pages your affiliate manager can make suggestions and recommendations based on their experience and history in the sapce.
To sum up this post, I think, just like any business relationship that is new and fresh, both parties are always a little nervous, anxious and excited to get going and start making money together. My advice to any affiliate that is looking to Gain Your Affiliate Managers Trust is to follow the above steps and make sure that you are upfront, real, available and have all the integrity in the world to make this relationship work.
I know from experience that it is a two way street. One never benefits from a business deal or relationhip without the other. Focus on the prize and go after it. To quote the fable The Tortoise and the Hare “Slowly buy Surely wins the Race.”
Great post! Thank you.