Good question. I manage several affiliate programs with 1,000+ publishers/affiliates on board, and I can certainly identify.

1) To figure out the level of maturity of an affiliate, view their website(s), analyze their stats (hits, sales volume, conversions), and then categorize them. You can group affiliates within your merchant interface, which will help you manage your approach better.

Once you have introduced the different groups (note: remember to move affiliates between the groups as they grow), practice the individualized consideration on the group level.

2) Here are a few examples of how you can practice individualized consideration on a truly individual level:

* Personalized recruitment e-mails

* Individualized e-mails with advice on how they can improve their performance (you’ll want to carefully analyze what they are already doing, and propose truly constructive, concrete and hands-on solutions on things to improve)

* Development of personal relationships with affiliates (in informal settings: from Twitter to IM chats, from drinks at a conference to fishing trips, etc)

Thanks for the post. I got one question regarding the individualized consideration part. I think it is very nice of communicating with affiliates for the related things at their levels. But I am managing a program with more than 1000 publishers.

1. it is hard to know the affiliates real level
2. even I know their level, how can I communicate with so many affiliates based on their needs?

What do you advise?

Thanks a lot.

Naia