Every email sent to an affiliate threatening them with “termination” unless they do something (and here it doesn’t matter what the affiliate manager is asking for — putting up links, traffic referrals, or lead/sale generation) is a big thick nail in the coffin of the affiliate program. Even in traditional management contexts threats are demotivating. How could anyone expect them to work in performance marketing contexts? I just don’t understand it…

Here’s a video from one of my Affiliate Summit presentations where I spoke on the topic:

Speaking in Alexander Hiam’s words, we want to present affiliates “with opportunities to succeed instead of telling them what to do”. Merchants should always remember that affiliates were the ones who have chosen to work with them — to invest their effort, time, and money into the promotion of the merchant’s product/service. And that step of theirs should be valued. It — as well as the very idea of performance-based remuneration! — should also dictate our approach to affiliate motivation.

A frequent mistake that leaders, and managers of all kinds (including affiliate program managers), commit is failing to admit mistakes. It is a very destructive path to follow. The main reason being that it compromises your integrity, which is, actually, the most important characteristic for any leader.

Addressing this problem in January 2010 at Affiliate Summit West (Las Vegas, NV), I emphasized:

…it really boils down to the problem of integrity and honesty with your affiliates. Very frequently merchants think that admitting a mistake means admitting that they are a failure. It’s quite the contrary: if you don’t admit a mistake, and don’t address it, that‘s when you are a failure.

Decades of leadership research have proven that the most admired characteristic of any leader is honesty.

Here’s the part of my above-quoted session where I addressed this topic:

Years ago when I first heard the phrase “it’s ain’t weak to be meek” it struck me how true these words are… Very similarly, it takes a lot of courage and strength to stick to the path of honesty and integrity. The weak ones, actually, follow an alternative route.

A few months ago, at an affiliate marketing conference in Israel, while discussing foundations of affiliate marketing success I touched upon the subject of proactive affiliate program management.

I’m afraid that we hear (and use) the phrase so frequently that it is quickly turning into a cliché (or a phrase that is losing its true effect and meaning as a result of its overuse). So what is “proactive management” exactly? And how do we achieve it in the context of affiliate program management — specifically on the communications front? Here’s a quick video to answer these questions:

So, in short, being a proactive affiliate program manager (or any manager, really) means “acting in ancitipation of future problems, needs of changes”. In any management context a large part of it is being covered by building a healthy two-way communication channel (with followers, affiliates, subordinates, superiors… doesn’t matter).

If you’ve got something to add to this, the “Comments” are all yours.

One of the biggest problems that affiliate program managers have is believing that their job is to manage affiliates (and not the affiliate marketing channel, or the program). Such approach, coupled with two destructive assumptions:

(1) that, by extension, an affiliate program manager is smarter than an affiliate
and
(2) that all affiliates are prone to fraud

…can bury an affiliate program. In this short video from Affiliate Summit West 2010 I explain this in details:

In the above video you will also find my favorite definition of “affiliate marketing”, and real-life illustrations of how not to do things. Enjoy!

Remember my post on picking my brain for free? Today is one of those days when someone is doing it, and, hopefully, for the benefit of others, as his questions are pretty broad and answers to them should address not only in this particular case, but help many others in the future too.

I have received this email:

I’m following your blog for the last half year and it helped me a lot.

There is one issue that is always a problem mostly in the Forex industry.

We have few types of Affiliates/Media partners: (1) CPC (only Google), (2) CPL, (3) CPA, and (4) Offline.

Our cookies are valid for 90 days.

There are few questions that I will be happy if you can answer…

1) Does cookie on CPC is consider same as affiliate cookie? and What about cookies for CPL?
2) Do I need to pay to a CPL in case they send me lead although he came from other affiliate/media partner? and What about CPA in this case?

I want to be fair with everyone but I also want to know what is common do to.

Being fair is a very good place to start. In fact, this (the fact that you’re trying to build a system where everyone is compensated in a just way) is one of the reasons that I’m replying to the above questions.

1. Is “cookie on CPC” the same as an “affiliate cookie” or “cookies for CPL”?

Much depends on the context, or how exactly you’re tracking and paying for the CPC program. It can be handled through an affiliate program (which is not the case in the above-quoted scenario), but even then — click (in the CPC model), lead (in the CPL model) and action/purchase (or deposit, which is frequently the CPA “action” in Forex programs) are three different types of actions. And while the affiliate cookie may be the same, since these qualifying actions (or the basis for payout/commission) are different, they are also tracked separately. So, for example, if you’re paying $0.50 on the CPC front, $1.00 for CPL, and $50.00 for those deposits (or, in other contexts, sales), then, should any one affiliate refer you a visitor that first clicks, then qualifies as a “lead” and then performs the “action”, you’ll end up paying that affiliate $51.50.

2. If before turning into a “lead” (or performing an “action”) a visitor clicks several affiliate links, could I end up paying more than one affiliate?
(I had to paraphrase the original question — I hope I’m reading it correctly)

Neither in CPL, nor in CPA scenarios will you pay twice (provided your tracking is in order, of course). The majority of affiliate programs nowadays go by the last-click-wins rule, which, basically, means that the last affiliate to set/drop the cookie on the end-user’s machine is the one who will receive the full commission. Having said this, should one affiliate refer the customer as a lead, and another set the cookie on their machine prior to them committing to buy (or deposit funds, as is probably your case), the CPL bounty would then go to affiliate #1, while the CPA payout would credit to the account of affiliate #2.

Should you have any questions related to the above scenarios, feel free to post them under this post. I will address every one of them.

Quality is never an accident …it is always the result of high intention,
sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution
–William A. Foster

If you’ve attended Affiliate Summit West 2012 (or are subscribed to the magazine) you have a copy of the latest FeedFront. For those of you who don’t have it, I’d like to draw your attention to my newest published magazine article — one entitled Seven Precursors of Affiliate Marketing Failure.

I believe that there are 7 major ways to fail at affiliate marketing. In the article I outlined 4 reasons why merchants/advertisers fail, and 3 reasons for affiliate failure. Here they are:

◊  Merchants fail in instances when they

(1) have unrealistic expections of what affiliate marketing is, how it works, and what it will do for them,
(2) try to manage affiliates who are 100% self-managed and hate that “managerial” approach,
(3) expect something for nothing, and/or
(4) launch their affiliate program, and then let it roll on “cruise control”.

◊  Affiliates, on the other hand, fail when they

(1) aren’t devoting the time to thorough due diligence and education,
(2) fake passion, interest, and/or hard work, and/or
(3) fail to diversify and focus on only one niche, or one marketing method.

Whether you are an affiliate or a merchant — the problem most frequently “lays in the misalignment of hopes, goals, expectations and realities” of what works and what doesn’t.

You may download the full issue of this FeedFront here. My article may be found on page 10. It’s got a number of other excellent article in it, and I certainly recommend at least flipping through it.

Time flies, and lots has changed since my original announcement of the new affiliate management conference.

In fact, things have even changed since the day I announced the full agenda — believe it or not, but it has expanded even further!

But being a big fan of structured approaches, and easy-to-digest presentation, let me highlight the key points about upcoming Affiliate Management Days for you in a bullet-point format (which should be helpful both to those familiar with the event, and to those who are hearing about it for the very first time):

• Date: March 8-9, 2012 / Place: San Francisco, CA
• Target audience: affiliate managers, online merchants, digtal marketing professionals
• Content: 4 keynote presentations, 24 breakout sessions, covering affiliate recruitment, fraud, adware, black hat techniques, web analytics, attribution data, landing page optimization, branding, influence and persuasion, trends and innovations, mobile, video, social, and much more [full agenda here].
• Speakers: 28 speakers including (a) affiliate marketing legends Todd Crawford, Kim Rowley, Sam Harrelson, Karen Garcia, Rebecca Madigan, (b) such digital marketing celebrities as Tim Ash and Linda Bustos, and (c) experts from such organizations as Harvard, Google, eBay, Best Buy, JC Penney, and many others.
• Press: the conference has already received a good amount of press, and should you want to find out more about it see these links.

How to Save $620 on Registration

Okay… Here’s the three-step secret:

1. Find a speaker coupon code (like one mentioned here)
2. Go to SF 2012 registration page
3. Register within Early Bird period (which ends Jan 20)

These three steps will help you save $619.50 off the on-site price (or $419.50 off the regular price). But hurry! The Early Bird rate expires this Friday.

I hope to see you there.

I’m sure that in the past you have come across blog posts about affiliate marketing being “dead”, “dying”, too crowded, too risky, too dependent on this or that, and so on, and so forth… However, over the past few days I have witnessed a few signs that point in a completely opposite direction — namely, that affiliate marketing isn’t even just “alive and well”, but it is thriving, and working really well for those who take it seriously.

3 Signs of Affiliate Marketing Thriving

1. Largest Affiliate Summit to Date

Two days ago Affiliate Summit, the industry’s central conference, has completed in Las Vegas, NV. This has been the largest one to date, gathering nearly 5,100 attendees (yes, an almost tenfold growth in 7 years!) under one roof. More about the conference’s spectacular growth in the newest issue of FeedFront magazine here.

2. Wide Interest in Affiliate Management

Right after presenting at the above-quoted Affiliate Summit, I uploaded my 64-slide PPT deck to SlideShare. Yesterday I learned that it made its homepage. And at the time of this post, it is already nearing 1,000 views (in under 3 days). There certainly is great interest in serious affiliate program management.

3. Affiliate’s Hard Work Pays Off Big

Not sure if you’ve caught my yesterday night’s tweet, but as you can see above we’ve had an affiliate in Compete.com’s program make $1,000 from one sale; and this isn’t the first time it’s happening. Hard work certainly pays off.

I hope these encourage you as much as they’ve inspired me.

As always, if you have anything to share with regard to this post’s subject, the Comments are all yours.

Earlier today I’ve held my Advanced Affiliate Program Management & Analysis session at Affiliate Summit West in Las Vegas, NV.

I do realize that with the four sessions running consequently some people, who may have liked to attend, couldn’t be in more than one place at the same time. Also, some of my blog’s readers emailed me that they aren’t going to the summit, but would love to at least see the slide deck for my presentation. Finally, due to the fact that some of the slides intentionally contained long text, I promised everyone who was present at the session that I’ll make my PowerPoint slides available in my blog by EOD today (I know that it will also be uploaded to Affiliate Summit’s SlideShare account later, but want to make it available to people while things are still fresh in everyone’s mind). So, here it is:

In the course of the past three weeks we were flooded with speaking proposals for Affiliate Management Days, the new professional forum for affiliate program managers, and everyone involved in affiliate marketing on the advertiser’s side. It wasn’t an easy task, but we’ve selected the speakers for the San Francisco 2012 conference, and the agenda is already live on the website. Here are just a few things to highlight:

• 4 keynote presentations
• 20 breakout sessions
• 25 speakers
• Topics include affiliate recruitment, dealing with fraud, adware, and black hat techniques, web analytics, attribution data, landing page optimization, branding, influence and persuasion, trends and innovations, mobile, video, social, and much more!

The full agenda for AM Days SF 2012 (which will take place on March 8-9, 2012) may be viewed here.

Here is also an alphabetic list of all confirmed AM Days speakers (with the corresponding Twitter list located here and speaker bios here):

1. Kush Abdulloev, Affiliate Program Manager, VMInnovations
2. Tim Ash, CEO, SiteTuners ← keynote speaker
3. Sarah Bundy, CEO, All Inclusive Marketing
4. Linda Bustos, Director of Ecommerce Research, Elastic Path Software
5. Todd Crawford, Co-Founder, Impact Radius
6. Ben Edelman, Assistant Professor, Harvard Business School ← keynote speaker
7. Karen Garcia, CEO, GTO Management
8. Chris Goward, CEO, WiderFunnel Marketing
9. John Greathouse, Partner, Rincon Venture Partners ← keynote speaker
10. Kristin Hall, Head of Publisher Development, Google Affiliate Network
11. Peter Hamilton, Partner & CMO, HasOffers
12. Sam Harrelson, Publisher/Editor, PayPerTrends
13. Simon Jones, VP of Strategic Solutions, Plimus
14. Siva Kumar, Co-Founder, TheFind.com
15. Joanna Lord, Director of Customer Acquisition & Retention, SEOmoz
16. Rebecca Madigan, Executive Director, Performance Marketing Association
17. David Naffziger, CEO, BrandVerity
18. Tony Pantano, CEO, Imwave
19. Ali Pasha, Product Manager, Google Affiliate Network
20. Geno Prussakov, Chair, Affiliate Management Days
21. Kim Rowley, Founder, ShoppingBookmarks.com
22. Jared Saunders, Affiliate Program Manager, JensonUSA
23. Jason Spievak, CEO, RingRevenue ← keynote speaker
24. Kevin Webster, Internet Marketing Manager, Forbes Custom Products
25. Jenny Williams, Merchant Manager, Skimlinks

We’re still in the “early bird” registration phase, and if you register by January 20, you’ll save $300 off our regular price pass. So, don’t delay. Register soon!!

We also have a number of sponsorship opportunities available. So, if your target audience matches with the one we cater to, do consider them.

As always, should you have any questions, the “Comments” field under this post is all yours; and I’ll be happy to answer.