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.

Many webmasters do have high quality websites but they are still unaware of how to make money online and how to choose the right affiliate program which will work with their website. A high quality website with original content, friendly user-interface, unique materials would definitely make a lot of money.

With that in mind, I have provided various tips regarding how to choose the right affiliate program for your website and how you would get yourself into it:

1. Always choose those affiliate programs which matches with your website, like if you have a website regarding health niche, choose an affiliate program related to health and it may be like herbal products, ebooks etc. Don’t go for car insurance programs or any other kind of affiliate progams which are unrelated to your niche.
2. Don’t go for peanuts. There are multiple affiliate networks which pays only 1%-5% commission on a sale and instead of them, hunt something huge as there are so many affiliate networks which pays a giant commission of 10%-75% on just a single sale.
3. Two-tier affiliate programs would be another cute thing to earn extra income, this will enable yourself to earn and as well as others can make money too and you will get commission on their sales too.
4. An affiliate program which have only 2-3 products in a niche is not going to let you make huge money so the best way is to join those affiliate networks which offers a line of products in various niche for you to choose the best product that converts for you pretty well.
5. Join affiliate programs which provides quality support via an e-mail, live chat, telephone etc. Affiliate managers plays very important part here as your affiliate manager will guide you with pre-made tools, sales letters, promotional banners, top converting offers etc.

Always remember, the top affiliate programs will make a lot of money with you and they will provide enormous support to you as they look forward to working with you for life-time. Also, try joining multiple affiliate programs and rotate products time to time and check which offer converts the most.

Well its official, Google Affiliate Network has been born out of the ashes of Performics. What will this mean for affiliate marketing as we know it? Not sure yet, but there could be good things in store of Performics merchants. Google definitely has the money and influence to serious grow their merchant and affiliate base. What will the Google Affiliate Network do for affiliates? I think it will benefit affiliate quite a bit. I think Google will try to bring its Adwords and Adsense advertisers into the performance-based marketing fold. Google Affiliate Network could be the greatest thing to ever happen to the affiliate industry. What a benefit to have those vast resources at your disposal to invest into the affiliate industry.

As a merchant looking to dive head first into the affiliate channel, you have a few things to consider before launching. First, you have to be willing to commit to a long-term affiliate program strategy that will grow over time. You also have to be willing to allocate and commit the necessary resources to growing your affiliate program. Most affiliate programs, when managed properly with intense attention paid to affiliates, will grow over time as more and affiliates come on board and start producing. Working with new affiliates and providing them the necessary tools to effectively promote your products and services should be a constant effort.

There are 3 main US-based affiliate networks that you have to choose from as an online merchant or lead generation company: Linkshare, Commission Junction, and Shareasale. Linkshare and CJ are the 2 primary networks that have been around the longest, however Shareasale has really emerged in the last few years as a very affordable and productive option. Since Linkshare has always maintained merchant exclusivity, online retailers have had to choose either Linkshare or CJ if they wanted to go big-time. I personally think all three are great and hold a lot of value for growing your affiliate program. I usually recommend Shareasale to merchants that want less initial risk but still want to create great affiliate relationships. CJ and Linkshare are pretty much a toss-up, but I personally tend to lean towards CJ because I’m just more familiar with the backend system and I feel more comfortable operating through there. I don’t think there is an issue at all by running in multiple networks simultaneously. Some affiliates prefer one network over another and it’s good to give them that choice.

There are several other affiliate networks like Performics, Pepperjam, Hydra, Rocket Profit among others that have show some good results, but overall you pretty much can’t lose with affiliate marketing if you run it well. Using the right affiliate management and recruiting technique is very important as well. Providing good ideas about how to actually promote the merchant on affiliates’ websites will help get more affiliates active and producing. If your company is looking for quality affiliate program management at affordable rates, you should use Experience Advertising. We know how to run affiliate programs in order to acheive the greatest success in the shortest period of time. We can be contacted through this website. Feel free to comment about this topic in our forum.

Over the past decade there have been 2 major affiliate networks that have dominated the affiliate marketing world, CJ and Linkshare. Both are very similar in functionality, allowing merchants to partner with affiliates (i.e. publishers) in order to drive sales through commission-based marketing. This affiliate model is also referred to as performance-based marketing and has gained considerable legitimacy in the last 5 years. When you talk about who are the actual affiliates/publishers, this runs the gamut of every type of webmaster, blogger, site owner, and big corporation looking to generate revenue online. Many of the super-affiliates of Linkshare and Commission Junction are actually large web properties or the corporate site of a Fortune 500 company. Some of the super-affiliates that are driving traffic through Linkshare and CJ are what are know as “SEOs” or search engine optimizers. These are individuals that are seasoned at getting search rankings and using pay-per-click marketing to generate traffic and sales. Most of the major webmaster affiliates out there are joined to both Linkshare and CJ because each has different merchants to choose from. Because Linkshare has always maintained an exclusivity clause in their contacts with advertisers, the companies that participate in CJ and Linkshare totally different. So, if you want to participate in all of these merchants programs you have to be joined to both. Both CJ and Linkshare have similar interfaces, both have undergone a lot of improvements over the years. I hear from affiliates I know that they tend to prefer CJ to Linkshare for tracking purposes, that its possibly more reliable, but that’s a fairly subjective thing. I personally recomend to all of my ecommerce and lead generation clients that they join CJ as opposed to Linkshare, mainly due to the fees and contractual issues with Linkshare prohibiting working with any other networks. Both CJ and Linkshare are great affiliate networks mainly due to the excellent affiliate bases they have built up over the last several years. Many smaller affiliate networks pop-up all the time but they rarely offer the same quality of affiliate. Most of those second and third tier affiliate networks are composed primarily of email marketers or email list owners and main Advertisers don’t want email used to promote their offers. Like anything, you really have to work your program and get to really know your affiliates to make the program successful. Mearly having an affiliate program in Linkshare or CJ doesn’t mean it will grow on it’s own. Affiliate programs can really stagnate and die if not managed properly. If you are interested in better managing your current affiliate program or want to launch a brand-new affiliate program, contact Experience Advertising today! Now get out there and drive some traffic!