Merchant, Would You Please Fire Your Affiliate Manager?

September 10th, 2007 by Vlad | Filed under Other (Fom Old Blog).

After watching Jim Kukral’s video about BestBuy affiliate program, and how his application was declined I wanted to title this post “BestBuy, Please Fire Your Affilliate Manager”. I had personal motives for a such title, BestBuy has denied my application in the past. But to be honest it did not bother me at all, until I saw Jim’s video. Jim is considered a veteran in many circles of this industry, and to deny his application is not such a good move BestBuy.

On the other hand when things like this happen, I question whether or not the affiliate manager is qualified enough to do his/her job. So here are few tips (derived from BestBuy mistake) for affiliate managers:

  1. For goodness sake enable auto approval- if you offer your program via networks. Especially if you are not able to get back to the applicants within 24-48 hours. You can always filter out the affiliates later on.
  2. Get back to your affiliates within reasonable amount of time.
  3. Stop acting as employer. Yes call me crazy, but you are not my employer- you are my employee. The sooner you start looking at things this way the better of your affiliate program will be.

This list of tips can go on and on, but if you just follow three tips above you can improve things dramatically.

Below is the video Jim posted the other day, if you are an affiliate manager I would advise you to listen carefully to what Jim has to say, he speaks for many of us. This video was very timely to me because when I watched it, I was still logged into my CJ account and was upset to see WeightWatchersc.om still did not act on my application- I have applied to their affiliate program on June 30th. Hey, WeightWathers how about firing your affiliate manager?-because now I care less whether you approve me or not.

Video thumbnail. Click to play.
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Viewing 9 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Vlad, I'm surprised you didn't vlog about this vlog post. You were on such a roll for a while. In any case, now I beat you to it ;)

    http://blog.searchanyway.com/2007/09/affiliate_...
    • ^
    • v
    Thanks Shawn,

    I did not know that affiliate managers do not have access to my phone number- which actually I do not mind if they did.

    I think another very frustrating thing is that not every affiliate manager provides contact information as well.

    I had a case that in order to find the contact info of one merchant I went as far as contacting the hosting provider of that merchant begging them to pass on my contact info to the merchant. Still did not hear from them.
    • ^
    • v
    I presume every affiliate manger has access to my contact info over CJ. What’s wrong with calling me in person eve if they have to deny my application?


    CJ doesn't give the phone number to the affiliate managers. They do give the e-mail if the affiliate elects to make it available to the affiliate manager

    Otherwise, the only contact option is to use the internal CJ system to make contact (which I rarely check out).
    • ^
    • v
    Shawn,

    what about being approved after two months of waiting just to receive and e-mail two days later questioning my "under performance"?

    I think we can list thousands of examples. I think the key element here is communication. I presume every affiliate manger has access to my contact info over CJ. What's wrong with calling me in person eve if they have to deny my application?

    I wish every manager had you knowledge and experience- but we both know it is not the reality.

    Jim's video had an impact on me because some one other than newbie like myself voiced concern that is important to me and many other new affiliates.
    • ^
    • v
    I will remember this advise every time I my application is not accepted- probably because I am a spammer and all the other things.


    You might be surprised by the volume of unsavory sites that are submitted.

    It's a big problem, and I think it needs to be addressed by the networks, because by their open acceptance of anybody with a pulse leads to these sorts of problems for legitimate affiliates.

    Don't get me wrong - there are also tons of clueless affiliate managers out there, too, and they contribute mightily to the various problems.

    I'm surprised there isn't a widespread certification for them, yet. Good $ opportunity for somebody.

    By the way, just a couple weeks ago, I applied to the affiliate program of a former client with a very relevant site.

    I was initially accepted and then booted a couple days later without explanation (as bunches of real leads were going through to them).

    No phone call or e-mail to ask any questions. Just plain kicked out.

    When I touched base to ask what was up, they were very apologetic and said they'd re-approve me right away and that the manager was new (isn't that always the excuse).

    Anyhow, I told them not to bother.
    • ^
    • v

    Shawn,


    Getting back within 24-48 hours is the key word. If merchant can act on applications that quickly it does not need auto approval. BestBuy and other evidently can not handle the volume of applications quickly.


    Not only is there the issue of brand liability, where rogue affiliates could bring harm to a company by their association, but auto-approval enables affiliates to re-apply who were previously booted for violating the affiliate agreement in some form (fraud, spam, spyware, etc)



    I will remember this advise every time I my application is not accepted- probably because I am a spammer and all the other things. ;)

    • ^
    • v
    For goodness sake enable auto approval- if you offer your program via networks. Especially if you are not able to get back to the applicants within 24-48 hours. You can always filter out the affiliates later on.


    I wholeheartedly disagree with you here.

    While this would be great if all affiliates were honest and clean, that's not reality and it can be perilous for a company to run their affiliate program with auto-approval.

    Not only is there the issue of brand liability, where rogue affiliates could bring harm to a company by their association, but auto-approval enables affiliates to re-apply who were previously booted for violating the affiliate agreement in some form (fraud, spam, spyware, etc).

    Manually approving affiliates enables the screening of volumes of sites that could be bad for the merchant by applying criteria (don't ask - I'm not going to post what I use) to identify which affiliates are risky.

    Also, auto-approval is a signal to the cheaters that the affiliate program isn't being closely attended and could be a good target for exploitation.

    I do agree that applications should be reviewed within 1-2 business days.

    Any company that is unable to do that sort of thing should staff up or reconsider having an affiliate program.
    • ^
    • v
    @Josh

    I think many of these affiliate managers have their heads stuck up into one of their body's cavity that they are not able to see the reality.

    I have one merchant that I bring him $25,000-$35,000 in sales a quarter. I still consider myself newbie to affiliate marketing.

    Now I am sure Jim has been in AM probably more than 10 years. If I can come up with these numbers, I am sure Jim can triple the figures. Then my question is how big or rather how stupid you have to be to pass by an opportunity of at least $100,000 a year in sales (triple this figure in Jim's case)?
    • ^
    • v
    ohhh man do I agree!!! Like Jim, I'm not huge on affiliate marketing either, but when I find a product I like I want to promote it.

    I had the EXACT same thing happen to me a few months ago. This was a book and of course the company's affiliate program was going through CJ. My CJ account was closed a month or so before the time I guess because I hadn't been promoting anything (although I made several thousand dollars in sells in the past) so I had to create a new one.

    Then after applying, I was automatically declined...idiots!!! I guess it's because the word "money" was in the URL.

    Now, I'm sure these companies do well with CJ, for the simple fact that CJ is such a huge network, but I just wonder how much better they would be doing if they would use their brain and allow people that want to to promote their products to promote their promotes. It seems like common sense to me!
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