Managing your affiliate program is much more than just sending out monthly newsletters and responding to affiliate inquiries. Your affiliate management should be actively working with your affiliate bases and making sure they are promoting your offer effectively. There are so many thousands of webmasters and search engine gurus you can have involved in your program, the key is to make sure they are all involved. Most affiliate programs actually have a very low affiliate activation rate. I’m referring to the actual number of affiliates that are producing sales or leads each month. Getting more good-producing affiliates involved is part of the equation, but the other, more difficult part is getting relative novice and intermediate level affiliate marketers producing sales for you. This can only be accomplished by working one-on-one with them. Reaching out and letting your affiliate base know you are willing and ready to help them is the call of the day! However, most internal affiliate managers and even outsourced affiliate managers don’t know enough about building out websites and blogs on the Internet or running pay-per-click campaigns to be of much real help to this demographic. Good affiliate managers should have a good understanding of HTML, SEO, PPC, Link Building and Content Creation. This is why our company is particularly effective at growing affiliate programs. Growing affiliate programs to their fullest potential should always be your objective, whether you use an outsourced affiliate management company like ours or handle it inhouse. Some of our affiliate management clients will assign an internal company person to work with us to help facilitate communication and deal with tracking issues that may arise. But regardless you should not settle for inadequate affiliate managers and you should expect your affiliate program to grow every month by producers and revenue. Of course there are issues such as seasonality that come into play, but if you are constantly reaching out and getting more partners/affiliates involved, your performance-based marketing initiatives should always be on the rise and peaking. If you are seeking to grow your performance-based channel, affiliate channels, or search engine traffic please contact us: 954-662-8010. you can ask for Evan, I’m happy to give you a free consultation and let you know why kind of potential you can expect via performance-based/affiliate marketing. Now get out there and get it going!!

You affiliate program should be something that grows in participants and revenue every year, and makes gains on a monthly basis by attaining a higher level of affiliate participation. Operating across several affiliate networks can be a good strategy to give affiliates more choice and opens your offer up to more potential affiliates. Operating an inhouse affiliate program can be a very effective strategy, which allows you to work even more closely with affiliates and pay them more money directly. You can grow an inhouse affiliate program by recruiting affiliates from the web (by contacting websites and posting on forums) and advertising in Google, Yahoo, and MSN under “affiliate marketing” keywords, driving the traffic directly to your affiliate signup page. Once you are signing up affiliates directly you can measure the ROI they generate against what it costs to acquire the affiliate via PPC. From my experience, it does work well. You only need 1 good affiliates sometimes to pay for the entire monthly advertising.

Operating a successful affiliate program is a long-term strategy and should have certain procedures in place to grow a large and productive affiliate program. Having the right affiliate managers in place is a must. The question is whether to use internal company staff, hire an experience affiliate manager, or use an outsourced affiliate program management company or OPM. There are various pros and cons to using any of these options. Some companies will use a combination of inhouse people and outsourced management to get the job done. But not all internal affiliate managers and OPM are created equal…and there are many factors to consider.

If you use an internal staff member to manage your affiliates you likely won’t get enough proactivity or coaching going on. Coaching and training is integral to working with your affiliates to get them producing well. If you just rely on your top 5% of affiliates, you will never have a large, productive base of affiliates. When you have a large productive affiliate base you will have a tremendous foundation of traffic and revenue. Affiliate activation rate is also critical to getting the most out of your affiliate program and inexperienced internal staff may not be able to deliver in this regard. Similarly, if you hire the wrong outsourced program management company, you run the risk of having only somewhat experienced and knowledgeable people managing and working with your affiliates. Make sure the OPM company you hire can answer all the hard questions and give you a feeling of confidence that they can take your affiliate program to the next level. Also look at their list of clients and see who you feel has the right mix of programs and quality companies on board as clients. The more quality merchants an OPM has the more likely they are managing 10s of thousands of great affiliates. If they can project a vision for how your program will grow and how long it will take, it will help you feel confident in their abilities.

Outsourcing your affiliate program can be a good idea if you use the right company. There are two activities your affiliate management should be doing at all times: working with your current affiliate base and reaching out to new affiliates to bring them onboard. If both of these tasks aren’t being done simultaneously then you are not truly capitalizing on your affiliate program. Look for a company that is going to be innovative and creative with your affiliates. Running contests and designing compelling creative is a great way to get your affiliates excited about your program. Affiliate management should be extremely proactive in nature, there is no room for slacking or coasting with managing affiliates.

When looking to outsource your affiliate program, you can get a free consultation on you affiliate program needs by contacting us through this website. Now get out there and dominate!

Technorati Tags: affiliate manager,affiliate marketing,affiliate evolution,affiliates,recruiting

Affiliate marketing is evolving day by day and with the involvement of several affiliate networks, it is absolutely essential for every company to have a smart Affiliate Manager or Affiliate Management Company who will lead their affiliates/publishers to achieve the utmost success in very short span of time without any sort of huge headaches.

Affiliate Managers are the driving force of any affiliate program and most importantly, no affiliate marketer would be able to gain the highest amount of profit without a suitable affiliate manager guiding them.  A competent affiliate manager will guide your affiliates with all the tools you need for PPC marketing, SEO, Article Marketing, Viral Marketing, E-mail Marketing and more. In short, Affiliates + Responsible Affiliate Manager + Good Offer = Profits for both affiliates and the company.

The origin of affiliate marketing was initially introduced with very few affiliate managers but as time has gone on most companies will assign you your personal affiliate manager who is responsible to your queries, questions and other issues. However, not all affiliate managers are knowledgable in all aspects of internet marketing and this can seriously affect the growth and properity of your program.

Here are some attributes every good affiliate manager should possess. Affiliate marketing is a game of cards, where an affiliate manager plays the role of the Ace.

• Affiliate managers will support you in-terms of promotional materials, quality tips and more. Providing you resources like the best affiliate forums to join.
• They will even provide you with the top-most converting keywords every week so that you may earn more and operate from a position of strength.
• A personally assigned affiliate manager will talk to you via an E-mail, Live Chat, or even on telephone.
• You will be appreciated by your affiliate manager and they will boost your confidence and abilities.
• Whether you are earning $10 a day or $1000 a day, a responsible affiliate manager will treat everyone equally as every affiliate matters!
• If you are confused by affiliate marketing, your affiliate manager will sort out the issues for you and guide your way.
• Affiliate Managers implement several goodies for you like tracking conversions, adding SUB-ID’s, placing a pixel tracking code and more.
• With an affiliate manager by your side, you will actually feel that there is someone out that who really cares about your success and helps you whenever you are in trouble on your quest to making serious money.
• If you are totally lost into affiliate network offers, as there are more than 200+ offers in a single affiliate network, your affiliate manager guides you through the process and urges you to try the best converting offers which would work with your appropiate niche.
• Payment issues are sometimes a real pain, in this case you should contact your affiliate manager who will address this situation for you so you feel comfortable with the payment terms. They also will check on sales or leads if the reporting isn’t looking accurate.

Above are some of the basic advantages of having a responsible affiliate manager. Look at the top super-affiliates and check their blogs and see why they are pushing everyone into having good affiliate management, as those super-affiliates find themselves being assited by good affiliate managers.

Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing,affiliates,bloggers,blogging,seo,ppc,ppc marketing

Affiliate marketing is probably the most exciting and expansive form of online marketing you can focus your resources on. What’s better than having an army of motivated, hungry webmasters and bloggers promoting your company’s products or services on the ever-expanding World Wide Web. Your affiliate program should be a strong focus of your overall corporate efforts to grow your traffic and revenue for your site. Your affiliate marketing strategy should be constantly scrutinized to see if you are doing enough to motivate and grow your affiliate program. If you want a large, motivated affiliate base then you should focus on effectively managing your affiliates as well as bringing new affiliates into the fold. There are several ways to effectively manage affiliates, most of it boils down to build solid relationships with your affiliates in order to coach them into becoming more successful producers for your company. A constant focus on affiliate outreach and recruiting should be a major focus of your affiliate management activities…if you aren’t actively recruiting new affiliates into your program you aren’t effectively growing your program. Good affiliate managment should work with current affiliates on a daily, weekly and monthly basis to spur focus on your program.

Affiliate management is the key to building a highly successful and productive affiliate program. Too often inhouse affiliate managers or outsourced affiliate management companies won’t spend nearly enough time working directly with affiliates, from the novice affiliate to the most advanced SEO guru. Effective affiliate management will work with novices to make them producers and also work with advanced webmasters and “SEOs” to get them pumping quickly. Your affiliate management should be highly educated on PPC, SEO, HTML, content production and inbound link acquisition. If they are not then they won’t be able to effectively work with your affiliates to get them producing more search based and site based trafiic. Too often affiliate managers simply respond to emails and try to be helpful on a minimal basis. We recommend extremely intensive affiliate management and providing all levels of affiliates tools to become more productive. If you truly help an affiliate with a tip or a resource they will remember that and work on promoting your company over the thousands of others.

Making affiliate marketing your leading revenue channel with give you a highly diversified online marketing mix with thousands of sources of potential sales. Growing an affiliate program is a long-term strategy with short-term gains. NOTHING happens over-night in affiliate marketing, but you expect steady growth from your affiliate program. If you are not experiencing steady affiliate sales growth, then something is probably not being done as effectively as if could be. At Experience Advertising, we take very seriously the management and coaching of affiliates of all skill levels. If you would like to have your affiliate program managed as effectively as possibly contact us today. Now get out there and drive some traffic!

Online affiliate programs are possibly the best way for a company to increase their sales by allowing webmasters to promote their products/services and get paid on a commission basis. What could be better than this? However, your affiliate program has to be run right for it to have a chance to really become a significant revenue producer for your company. Many companies allow their employees to handle affiliate management in-house, but unless their affiliate management is highly skilled in areas HTML, SEO, PPC, social media and other traffic driving strategies, they will not be effective and the program won’t grow. These skills take years to master which is why there is so much bad affiliate management going on out there. Simply sending newsletters and banner code doesn’t make you an affiliate manager it makes you a maintenance person. Truly effective affiliate managers will get to know each affiliate on a personal basis and attempt to work with them to increase traffic and sales. I’m not saying all affiliate managers are not doing well, I’m simple saying as an affiliate of thousands of merchants I know the kind of lame affiliate managing going on.

That being said, there are some good affiliate managers that can be effective. Affiliates should be held up to the highest regard and motivated to make sales for your company. Coming up with innovative and creative ways to motive affiliates should be a priority. Doing things like running contests and facilitating interaction with affiliates is a must. Affiliate management has to come from within, you have to love it. You have to be willing to work nights and weekends to provide a higher level of affiliate support than other companies provide. There are thousands of affiliate programs vying for the same affiliates, so you have to stand out and seek to be different. Friendliness and likability on the part of affiliate management is also required. No boring or unenthusiastic people should be in the position of affiliate manager. Affiliate managers should be outgoing, proactive, friendly, helpful, ultra-responsive, and always looking to come with ideas to improve your affiliate program.

Where do you find the best affiliates? Affiliate are everywhere actually. They run some of the best websites and blogs on the Internet. By joining networks like Commission Junction you can gain access to 10s of thousands of affiliates that are wiling to promote your products or services. Once on a large affiliate network like CJ you can recruit affiliates by sending emails to their affiliate base and reaching out to websites that are related to your services. If outreach is not going on in affiliate management there is a problem. Recruitment should be going on at all times in one way or another. Working with current affiliates to build a good relationship and recruiting new affiliate into the program are the two activities that should be going on simultaneously on a constant basis.

Your affiliate manager says, “There aren’t enough hours in the day to get all this done.” Wrong answer, they wither aren’t working hard enough or efficiently enough. If you are looking for the best affiliate management services on the planet you should contact us here at Experience Advertising. We put proven strategies into place for you program and work with affiliates to increase production levels. We seek to work closely with all affiliates regardless of their skill level or expertise. Contact us today and find out how far you affiliate program can really go!

Launching an affiliate program for your company is a great move into the online advertising space. You have some decisions to make however before launch your affiliate program. Many companies just choose to launch on a Commission Junction, Linkshare, Shareasale or Google Affiliate Network or a “large affiliate network” to handle it all through their systems. This is the easiest way to proceed. Launching on a large affiliate network needs to be done properly with good affiliate management in place. If you just launch the program with no plan of action or person in place to work with your new affiliates, you can’t expect your program to grow much or reach its full potential. Another way to go is to launch an in-house affiliate program by building an affiliate tracking program onto your website. This can be done relatively easily and cost-effectively, but you need the right specs and the proper coders to excute the application development. I have built several inhouse affiliate programs over the years and would be happy to assist in the design and development aspects.

Some companies choose to do both, build an inhouse affiliate program as well as launch on a large affiliate network. This is what I recommend to my clients as the best option long-term. This allows you to recruit both to your inhouse program as well as into your network program depending on the preference of the affiliate. You can also afford to payout more money per sale or per lead through an inhouse program which is desirable to the affiliate. Just make sure you pay on time every month. Launching affiliate programs on both inhouse and network platforms quires more affiliate management and upkeep. There are many tasks to perform on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. Thats why you need an experienced affiliate management company, like ours, to handle this for you. Inhouse affiliate management can be effective when done properly with a large amount of proactivity on the part of the affiliate manager.

When you go to launch an affiliate program you have to make sure you have a good plan of action, good affiliate management in place, and the resources to stick it out for the long-haul. Nothing happens in affiliate marketing over-night, it’s a process that should grown every month and every year. But doing the right things with your affiliates you can be sure that you will have a flourishing affiliate program in no time at all. Contact Experience Advertising for more information about your affiliate management needs. 

The question of should affiliate managers work on the weekends is deeper than just is it more effective. With a large percentage of affiliate marketers working on their sites/blogs on the weekends, it is great to be able to respond to affiliate questions and issues over the weekend to deliever the answers in a highly responsive fashion. It also shows that you put in extra effort for your affiliates. Of course, I think affiliate management should be a 7 day a week effort, but many times affiliate managers working for large companies will stick to the corporate schedule and never really give affiliates attention on the weekends or at night. The affiliate manager would have to have email enabled at their house or on their blackberry to be able to get their inquiries after working hours. And then it depends on the commitment your affiliate management has to being as responsive as possible. Of course, I think it’s extremely important to be there 24-7-365 in order to effectively grow your affiliate program and help affiliates to become more productive. You have to satisfy an affiliates needs when they are focused on your program or planning to give it attention. So in my opinion affiliate management should be done over the weekend and at nights to be as effective as possible.

As a company looking to expand online, your affiliate program is one of the key aspects of your revenue driving strategies. Affiliates are your sales force on the Internet, so they should be treated as well as possible. Catering to affiliates needs and wants should be a constant priority. Quickly responding to questions and phone calls should be paramount. Make sure your affiliates are treated like gold, and provide them the tools and resources they need to prosper with your program. Equipping affiliates with things like top performing keywords, top selling products, custom banners for their site, and even unique content they can use on their site to describe your products and services. Futhermore, you should want to know how your affiliates are driving traffic to their sites currently, in order to provide them suggestion on how to improve what they are currently doing. 

Affiliate management is not an easy job, it’s highly skilled job, and takes a super-human effort practically in order to motivate as many affiliates possible to participate in your program. Good, effective affiliate management is what is needed to propel your affiliate base into over-drive. For this reason, you should seriously consider outsourcing affiliate program management to whats called an OPM or Outsourced Program Manager. Of course you have to choose the right company to provide this service. If you are rethinking your affiliate management options and considering outsourcing your affiliate managers, please consider Experience Advertising. We are expert affiliate managers and recruiters with over 10 years in online marketing. We can be contacted through this website today for a free consultation.

Most companies that run an affiliate programs, or affiliate program management companies on behalf of clients, send an “affiliate newsletters” every month. This is piece of html email that is supposed to be intended to inspire production by affiliates for the merchant’s program. But what does an affiliate newsletter really do? Let’s take a closer look at the effectiveness of affiliate newsletter sending. Affiliate managers will say, “But how are we supposed to communicate with our affiliates??” The answer is by using effective means of communication to work each individual affiliate on a one-to-one basis. When my phone rings at 10 o’clock at night with an affiliate call from California or somewhere else in another time zone I don’t not answer it because I’m relaxing for the night. I answer the phone pretty excited that I am about to make another really solid connection with a potential producer…and often times a friend. Some may ask, “Should you really become friends with your affiliates?” If you are asking this question, then you definitely shouldn’t be an affiliate manager. Of course you should! Building relationships with affiliates will lead you to some really awesome experiences and meeting some cool people. It’s pretty self-evident that affiliates that like you will promote your program isn’t it? Getting back to the newsletter thing…they are simply too impersonal and passe. What really works well is actually individually emailing your affiliates and asking to review their site and give them pointers on traffic driving strategies. Another thing I like to do is to put all my contact information in the email and encourage affiliates to call, IM, or email me, day or night, Monday-Sunday. I always try to make myself available to answer affiliate questions whether it’s the weekend or at 11 o’clock at night on a Friday. If you are not making yourself available like this then you will only ever be so effective Monday through Friday 9-5. If you aren’t willing to sacrifice for the good of your affiliate program then you will only ever be so effective. Affiliate newsletters are rendered even more pointless with a subject line like: “The Retailers Affiliate Newsletter - June Edition”. Ya thats gonna get a lot of opens, probably in the 10% range. Try a more emphatic subject line like: Achieve Success with these Affiliate Traffic Strategies or Some Ideas for Getting Your Affiliate Site More traffic. Of course you have to provide some traffic driving strategies and fill your email with ideas and concepts intended to inspire the affiliate into production. I’m not going to give away all the secrets! If you are interested in learning how an affiliate program should be properly managed contact us though this website today. If your company is in need of explosive affiliate growth and would like to discuss hiring Experience Advertising, Inc. contact us through this site. Thanks and now get out there and drive some traffic!