10 Success Tips for Affiliate Managers

An affiliate manager oversees affiliate publishers on behalf of an advertiser. They will recruit, manage the program, work with current and prospective affiliates answering questions and resolving issues. Their job also involves optimizing the program, working with the network, ensuring compliance and analyzing the program activity to find areas for improvement. It requires someone who is data-driven, can multi-task, and is relationship-focused.

Because of the rise of affiliate marketing, there are a variety of books and events designed to help affiliate managers become more successful. A book that I have found super helpful and breaks down exactly how to excel at running an affiliate program is “Affiliate Program Management: An Hour A Day” by Geno Prussakov.

I’ve compiled a list of key tips that I have learned along the way that have helped me become successful. This isn’t a comprehensive list but it’s a great place to start for someone who is starting their career in affiliate marketing or for anyone wanting to improve their skills.

1. Research the Product and Industry

Affiliate market research Before you can manage an affiliate program, you need to have extensive knowledge of the product.

Learn as much as you can about the product, the customer, competitors in the space and general knowledge about the industry. The more you know about the product, the better equipped you are to answer questions and come up with strategies.

2. Set Your Program Up for Success

Make your program compelling. Set up a comprehensive overview within the network so potential partners can see the benefits of promoting your products and how they will be compensated. Provide your partners with all the tools they need to succeed. This means having updated creatives & promotional offers. The easier it is for them to promote and the less work they have to do, the more they will want to work with you. Don’t just limit yourself to adding banners and graphics in the network. Develop a sales pitch for your affiliates and give them all the information they need on your product and company. Show them what sets you apart from your competitors and give them examples of how other successful affiliates have promoted your product. Provide them with lifestyle images, videos, and even product samples so they are enthusiastic about your brand.

3. Focus on Affiliate Recruitment

Recruit, Recruit, Recruit! You should constantly be looking for new partners. You can’t rely on partners that you have in your program and should always be in recruiting mode. This article on affiliate recruitment explains in detail the strategies that are proven successful.

4. Work with Affiliate Partners

Recruitment is important, but there’s more to successful affiliate program management. In particular:

Activate. You have spent a lot of time recruiting affiliates. Once they are in your program, engage with them, and activate them. Develop relationships from day one. They will get an email from the network but send out a personal welcome email encouraging them to reach out with questions or concerns. Let them know that this is a partnership and that you want them to be successful. Set up an activation bonus so they start promoting you immediately.
Diversify. Make sure you are not reliant on one type of affiliate to drive sales. It’s not wise to put ‘all your eggs in one basket’. Make sure you have a good mix of affiliate partners.
Optimize. Look at the various type of affiliates that you have within your program and look at optimizing each group. Content, blogs, and coupon sites can be optimized differently so it’s important to come up with tactics and strategies for each group.

5. Remember to Communicate

For me, this is one of the most important ways to set yourself up for success. Over-communicate with your partners. Send affiliate newsletters through the platform used to support your affiliate program, schedule monthly, bi-weekly or weekly calls and always be super prompt to respond to emails. I also like to give partners several ways to connect — email, Skype, and even phone calls. Be conscious of time zones so you know the best time to reach partners.

6. Be Strategic

Plan for success and constantly evaluate your program for ways to make it better for partners.
Have a promotional calendar that you share each quarter so that your partners know your key promotional dates. You may have some sales dates that extend beyond the usual retail dates of Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Black Friday & Thanksgiving.
Does seasonality affect your product and should you plan key promotions around that time?
Can you offer exclusive offers or bonuses to partners?
Are there new product launches and if so, plan in advance with affiliates so they schedule posts and promotions around the launch.
Can you send products out for review?

7. Invest Time in Relationships

I can’t begin to tell you how important it is to develop and cultivate relationships. Building strong relationships with your affiliate partners can make a huge difference to the success of your program. These relationships also need to be mutually beneficial. You need to view these relationships as partnerships where you are just as concerned about the growth of their business and what you can do to help them.

It’s also important to develop relationships within the affiliate world. Learn from others and don’t be afraid to reach out and ask for advice.

8. Focus on Data

Rely on data from your affiliate program. Great affiliate marketing is always data-driven, as it’s data that going to show you what is going on and how you can optimize. Where are clicks coming from, who is converting, does mobile convert better than desktop, what types of affiliate partners perform best for you? I would advise you to dig into your program’s data as this will give you great insight and help optimize the program. I like to spend the first part of my day looking at the performance from the day prior. I also do a week over week review and month over month for the program as a whole and for top partners. Use data to make decisions.

9. Gain Industry Knowledge

Be knowledgeable about the industry. There are lots of ways to get involved and know what’s going on. Follow some industry blogs, get involved with the Performance Marketing Association, attend industry events where you can meet not only with partners but with others in the industry. Industry events will have a great panel of speakers and lots of workshops and breakout sessions. Check out the comprehensive list of Affiliate Marketing Conferences in 2019 here.

10. Give Back

Most of the above-quoted will benefit greatly if/when one learns to give back. After all, it’s a relationship-based industry that we work in!

Back in 2007, Missy Ward of Affiliate Summit started Affiliate Marketers Give Back. Since then, close to a hundred of affiliate marketers “helped to raise over $600,000.00 for organizations that fund breast cancer research, treatment, awareness and community programs.” But this is just one way you in which you could “give back.” You may also do this by sharing your time, knowledge and effort (like Geno Prussakov of AM Navigator does through his articles, presentations, and pro bono work), and in many other ways.

I’d love to hear if you have any tips or tricks that have helped you become more successful in your role. Please do share them using the “Comments” area under this post. If you have any questions, please contact us and we’d be delighted to help.

February 28, 2019February 14, 2022

7 Reasons to Work with an Affiliate Management Company

Statistics shows that 81% of brands use affiliate marketing programs and they continue to grow in popularity, due to their performance-based nature. It’s no wonder that retailers want to add this sales channel to their reach. However, it’s not just as simple as setting up an affiliate program and sitting back and watching the sales roll in. A successful affiliate marketing program requires oversight — recruiting the right affiliates for your program, ensuring all affiliates are engaged and active, policing inappropriate affiliate behavior, communicating with affiliates, and reporting, and analysis. This has been covered in more detail in the post about affiliate manager’s core responsibilities.

As a company, you want to make sure that your program is running efficiently and successfully. There are various ways to manage your affiliate program:

I. You can manage it in-house with a dedicated in-house affiliate manager.

II. You can have it managed by the network that you choose.

III. You can have it managed it by an affiliate marketing company also known as an OPM or an outsourced program management (agency).

So how do you decide which is the best option for your company? In this article, I am going to cover the latter option of using an outside company to help you manage and grow your program. There are a lot of benefits to this that you will see immediately and I have outlined each below.

1. Experience

Right away you have access to a seasoned affiliate manager. Not only do you have access to a dedicated manager with a wealth of knowledge but you also have access to their team and their collective experience. The expertise they bring will ramp up your program at a much faster speed. Having worked with multiple clients, they know what works and doesn’t work. They have launched numerous affiliate programs and will be able to launch quickly.

2. Lower costs

There are so many cost savings with using an agency. There isn’t any downtime training as they are totally versed in affiliate management. An affiliate management company will have technical resources, programs, and tools, all of which would be an additional cost should you run your program in-house. By using an agency, you get the benefits of these industry tools without the additional expense of purchasing them.

3. Relationships

This is a relationship-based business. Agencies have spent a lot of time developing and growing relationships with networks and publishers and hiring an agency gets you access to those relationships immediately. To develop these relationships can take a lot of time and work, but an affiliate management company already has the relationships in place and can hit the ground running for your program. These relationships can also help with cost savings as they are better versed at negotiating paid placements, securing network discounts for you.

4. Industry insights

Because it’s integral to their business, affiliate management companies will attend all the industry events. They will learn about new technologies and tools to help your program. They will know the trends in the industry and key insights. They will meet with experts in the field and learn from them and take that knowledge back to their clients. Also at these events, they will meet with qualified potential partners (affiliates, technology providers, etc).

5. Optimization

So while recruiting and finding quality affiliates is a huge part of running your affiliate program, optimization is also crucial. An affiliate management company will have experience in this area. They know the importance of quality traffic, conversion rates, and CPA. They will watch your competitors, monitor their campaigns and promotions and make recommendations.

6. Familiarity with technology

Affiliate networks and tracking software can be complex and overwhelming. How do you decide what network to use for your program or the benefits of one over the other? Which affiliate software is best for an in-house-based affiliate program? Affiliate management agencies have set up hundreds of programs across all the network and know which ones are best for the various verticals. They also have great relationships with key people within these platforms. They can run the data and reports for you and can also leverage discounts.

7. Results-focused

Affiliate management companies are often paid a retainer plus performance bonuses. These bonuses can be a large part of their compensation. They are clearly incentivized to get results so will work to ensure your program is performing.

Should you decide to go down the route of hiring an outside company, how do you decide on the correct one? Let me give you 7 points to cover in your due diligence:

Ask questions. Find out what are their strengths and what sets them apart from other agencies.
Pricing. How do they charge for their services?
References. Talk with others who have used their services.
Professional experience. How much experience do they really have in the realm of affiliate program management?
Possible conflicts. Do they manage competitors’ or potentially conflicting programs?
Representation. Do they attend industry events? How else will they be able to give your program maximum exposure?
Niche experience. Do they have experience in your niche or vertical?

Using an agency to manage your program gives you access to a wealth of knowledge and resources that can take your program to the next level. Set clearly defined guidelines and work together to grow the program. Outsourcing does not mean giving up control of your affiliate program. Rather, you are enhancing the program with the use of the best and brightest in the industry.

We hope that we have given you some insight into the benefits of using an affiliate management company. Good luck with your program and feel free to email us or comment below with any ideas or questions.

January 29, 2019November 10, 2021

The Complete Guide to Content Monetization Platforms

I am obsessed with home improvement shows. I watch them all — Fixer Upper, Property Brothers, Flip or Flop — and have recently started binge watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.

I realize I am not alone as there are lots of blogs on the rise regarding home projects, DIY and easy ways to update your home to the recent trends. There are several sites that I follow that provide great tips on how to carry out some home projects and where to buy the necessary material. For these sites, valuable and engaging content is what attracts their readers and keeps bringing them back. We’ve all heard that “content is king” and its true. Content is the core of online marketing and how we talk to an audience and attract traffic to a site. It’s necessary if you want to grow a successful business and is what turns prospective customers into buyers. Customers search the Internet for reviews and information about products to help them make informed buying decisions.

What’s a Content Monetization Platform

As a home improvement blogger, I know that strong content is crucial and that is where I need to focus my time. However, I also want to monetize my site and there are several content monetization platforms that can help. These platforms are, essentially, tools that allow you to benefit from affiliate marketing without having to join individual affiliate programs. Once you’ve integrated with them, they would transform regular links into affiliate links. If sales are generated from these links, commissions will be passed back to the website after taking a percentage. For example, if I write about the latest and greatest Dyson to help upkeep my home, these content monetization tools will change my retail link to an affiliate link so that I can earn money from sales that I refer.

So before I give examples of some of the available monetization platforms, let’s talk about the benefits of using them.

Benefits of Monetization Platforms

1. Time Saving

By using these tools you have access to lots of merchants and you don’t have to individually apply for each of their programs. Plus you don’t have to individually create affiliate links.

2. Ease of Integration

Seamless. You can basically set it up and go about what you do best writing content!

3. Links Look Normal

You post a retailer link and they convert to affiliate links. Click-through rates are better and the links are kept up to date.

4. Higher Payouts

Because they do such a large volume of business, these tools can often negotiate a higher overall commission rate with the advertiser. So even with paying them a percentage, you may still be better off than you would be able to get on your own.

If you have a lot of traffic and product-related content, these tools can help you earn money.

5. Robust Reporting

Their reporting interfaces contain great data on your customers and their purchasing habits.

6. Free to Join!

Whatever you earn is incremental. If you already have some affiliate links on your site, the tools will not overwrite those.

Importance of Disclosures

If you choose to monetize the content you produce, remember of the necessity to stay compliant with the Federal Trade Commission’s disclosure requirements.

Now let’s take a deeper dive into some of these content monetization platforms. In what follows, I’ll review several of them for you.

VigLink

VigLink converts your normal outgoing links into affiliate links, and if users make a purchase, you earn a referral commission from it. In a normal scenario, you could be linking to product pages on many sites, and you don’t make money when people buy or download the product. VigLink identifies commercial products mentioned within content monetizes those links. All links will go to the highest paying destination so their technology will route your original product link to whichever retailer will earn you the most! With regards to revenue split, VigLink keeps 25% of the commission and 75% goes back to the website owner. Set up is simple! Copy a line of VigLink Javascript code and paste it into your website’s template and let it go to work. The great thing is that it will find old links on your site and monetize so you don’t have to go back through all your old posts.

There are three main products for VigLink:

VigLink Convert. This takes your unaffiliated merchant links and automatically converts them to monetized links. Add links to products and this will link to a merchant.
VigLink Insert. Insert scans your site for common product terms or merchant mentions and adds an affiliate link.
VigLink Anywhere. With VigLink Anywhere, you can turn any social media link, email link or any other link into a robust, high-powered hyperlink that earns you revenue. This means you can now make money from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and your email list. The opportunities are endless!

Another great feature of VigLink is their dashboard which tracks analytics for your site. You can see what content is popular and what people purchase.

Skimlinks

A description from their website tells you “If you write about products, we can help you make money from your content. Over 60,000 publishers around the world already trust us to automatically monetize the commerce content they create. Skimlinks aggregates access to 65 affiliate networks (including Awin, CJ, Rakuten, and others), enabling publishers to earn commission from 48,500 merchants around the world, in one place.”

Like VigLink, Skimlinks is also super-easy to install. You add a snippet of code onto your site and all links to merchants in the Skimlinks network become affiliate links. Skimlinks keeps 25% of the commission and 75% goes back to the website owner.

Some of the features of Skimlinks are:

Desktop widgets to research revenue-generating products to write about.
A comprehensive reporting dashboard.
Audience By Skimlinks allows publishers to can gain access to a deeper, broader dataset for better insights on their audience and shopping behaviors.
Aggregated product feeds to create your own shop front.
URL shorteners so that you can also monetize your social accounts and email.
Skimlinks Editor Toolbar Extension. Without navigating away from a merchant’s website, you can see:
- If a merchant offers a Skimlinks commission rate.
- What the average commission rate from the last 30 days was.
- If exclusive commission rates are available.

With this tool you can also:

Find out more details on commission rates and merchants at the click of a button.
Quickly create links for social media and email.
Discover new merchants that offer commission rates.

YieldKit

YieldKit enables publishers to aggregate and optimize their performance marketing via their Yieldkit’s Monetization Platform. Like the others, they automatically convert links, keywords and onsite searches like brand and product mentions into monetizable links from thousands of retailers.

Among some of their tools you’ll find:

YieldWidget – a widget is injected over your links. Its small in size and boosts the user’s experience as it is filled with relevant content and detailed information that will greatly increase conversions. It offers an image of the product, a brief description, top 3 places to buy and reviews of the linked product. Offering a few places to buy helps increase the chances of conversion.
YieldNative – a functionality that allows publishers to generate and embed ads exactly the way they and their users like best. Inserting Native ads in content wherever they provide value.
YieldSearch – a technology that detects keywords in user’s search queries in the publisher’s website search box and shows relevant ads embedded on the results page.
Yield Insights allows you to discover what topics are most relevant to users and what topics deliver the highest revenue. Insights can be used to learn more about your audience.

Infolinks

Infolinks is an online advertising platform that enables website owners to make money from their site by displaying relevant ads to their visitors. You can select from a number of ad units that best suit your needs. It’s also super easy to sign up and install: Just enter your website address, add a snippet of code to your site, and get paid. Each advertiser on Infolinks sets their own price and as a publisher, you receive 65% rev share.

Infolinks offers a range of native ads, including:

InArticle: Highly viewable ad which opens once a user engages with the page content.
InFold: This ad unit takes advantage of the power of search and display, delivering ads on a wider scale of traffic. These will appear in right above the fold.
InScreen: An interstitial ad delivering relevant content between page views.
InText: Ads are neatly presented within a page’s text. You can customize the link color, and choose how many will appear on a page.
InTag: This shows the most valuable keywords related to the content of the page. Hover over these words to view the ads.
InFrame: These attractive display banner ads appear alongside your content.

Brandreward

Brandreward was created to help content networks, apps and websites realize the “real value” of their content by easily and effortlessly monetizing through a complete platform solution. It is a full-service platform which allows publishers to instantly find and connect with top brands. Their site states that they work with 30,000 brands across the world. Some of the brands listed are Nordstrom’s, Kate Spade, Target and PetSmart.

Some of the benefits of using Brandreward include:

Real-time reporting.
Exclusive deals and offers.
85% commission policy for publishers which is higher than the industry standard of 75%.
Brandreward has a real-time advertiser system, ensuring publishers have the highest possible commission at the time of each sale and that links are live and commissionable across servers in 3 different countries.
SEO friendly.
Referral program. For every successful referral that you send to Brandreward, you will receive 35% of the earnings for the next two years.

BrandCycle

BrandCycle is an affiliate monetization platform that connects retail brands with lifestyle publishers. BrandCycle works exclusively with lifecycle publishers – meaning content driven websites that cater to the following niche audiences: Mom & Family, Wedding, Style, Home Decor, Health & Wellness, Baby Boomer and Green. It is free for publishers to join.

BrandCycle also has a consulting team to work with large-scale publishers who are looking to enter or grow their presence in the affiliate performance marketing space. They will provide strategic recommendations and dedicated publisher development services to help you get the best deals and maximize relationships with advertisers.

Publishers/Influencers: Get immediate access to over 300 top retailers on a performance basis through a single payment and reporting interface. We also help negotiate rates and design custom content and campaigns around new products and deals to use on your site or across social media. Leverage exclusive campaigns, value-added content and special promotions to increase affiliate partnerships and drive incremental sales.

Advertisers/Retailers: You want the long tail, but you need to improve efficiencies around long-tail recruitment and activation. BrandCycle provides instant and fully transparent access to thousands of high- quality content publishers and social influencers in the mom, family, baby, wedding, home and lifestyle spaces.

BrandCycle works through multiple affiliate networks, including ShareASale, CJ, Impact Radius, Rakuten Affiliate Network, and Pepperjam with additional integrations underway.

BrandCycle’s technology delivery content and campaigns to publishers and affiliates in a more streamlined, user-friendly way.

Bookmarklet Tool

Make money and create links right from a retailer’s site
Access deals and content from a single click
Reporting Included
product Deep linking

User-Friendly Portal

Access to all retail partners across all networks
Sample content and exclusives

Curated Product Feed

Access bestseller lists to know what products are trending and have the highest conversion
Find the right partners based on the content you want

Proprietary Reporting

Easy to read stats
Key Performance Indicators
Customized dashboard

digidip

digidip is another example of a tool that provides an easy solution to monetizing your website. The company started in Germany in 2013 by Sabrina Spielberger, who was a successful blogger. Today they operate in over 50 markets worldwide and provide access to multiple networks and to more than 40,000 advertisers. Some of the advertisers listed are Groupon, Debenhams, Macy’s, Target and Walmart.

They have a lot of the same features as others. They are free to use, saves you time, and easily turns retail links into affiliate links. The difference is that they work on invite only and focus heavily on being ‘premium’. They want to ensure that their publisher network has a high quality and thus creates, not only for the network but also for the associated advertisers, networks and agencies, an additional value. So they have a certain set of guidelines and standards that you need to meet to join.

As you can see, there is a variety of content monetization platforms to help you earn money from your website. The key is to make sure that your content is authentic so that your readers continue to return and your audience grows. That’s one of the things makes you a truly valuable partner to any online advertiser. You should partner with brands that are relevant to your audience and deliver value.

I hope that you find this information useful and please contact us or comment below with any questions or feedback.

Disclosure: If you click some of the above links and sign up, we may be compensated for this. Regardless, we only recommend products/services we use personally or believe to be of value.