Several days ago a merchant has contacted me with a good question. They have decided to build an in-house affiliate program, but they do not want to mess with payments, and would much rather outsource the payment part to a third party. So, if they manage their program in-house, track […]
Outsourced Affiliate Payment Solutions Read More »
Throughout my own affiliate program management practice, and examining other affiliate managers’ styles and techniques, I have noticed that all successful AMs and OPMs* exhibit the three characteristics that I believe to be the key components of success (not only in affiliate program management, but in any management/leadership). If you
Three R's of Affiliate Program Management Success Read More »
Double dipping — used in the classic context of a merchant running an affiliate program on two (or more) affiliate networks — is an instance when an affiliate receives their commission twice (or, figuratively speaking, dips his/her cracker into the commission sauce twice): on each of the two (or more)
Double Dipping in Affiliate Marketing Read More »
Today I’ve read an good article by Nigel Nicholson in the Harvard Business Review 81 (1) of 2003. In it, the author looks into the question of motivating “problem people.” Looking at manager-employee relationship in the traditional management context, he described his recipe for working with employees that are neither
Nicholson's Motivation Method & Affiliate Context Read More »
Amazon has announced earlier today that they starting from May 1 2009 they are prohibiting affiliates from engaging in direct-to-merchant (DTM) paid search campaigns. The exact wording of the letter is as follows: After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to
Amazon Prohibits Affiliates from DTM PPC Read More »
First of all, what is microblogging? About.com defines it as follows: Microblogging refers to the posting of very short updates about oneself. It is in contrast to long-form blogging, where there are usually at least a few hundred words. Instead of posting a message on their regular blog, people who
To Microblog or Not To Microblog? Read More »
Almost a month ago I stated that the ultimate goal of every affiliate manager should be in making his/her affiliate intrinsically motivated [see the full post here]. I’ve been reading more about motivating people, specifically in culturally diverse contexts (and the affiliate marketing context is certainly a good example of
Managing Culturally Diverse Affiliates Read More »
In his Organisational Behaviour and Analysis: An Integrated Approach, Derek Rollinson points to the importance of looking at the leader-follower relationship through the prism of “reciprocal causality.” This concept presupposes that in healthy leader-follower interaction the influence between leaders and followers happens simultaneously, reciprocally, and continuously. Ignoring, or neglecting, the
Reciprocal Causality and Affiliate Program Management Read More »
When setting up an affiliate program, the question of cookie life inevitably comes up. Affiliate cookie life is the time span that starts with the consumer’s click on the affiliate link and ends on the day beyond which you, as a merchant, do not wish to remunerate the affiliate for
Affiliate Program Cookie Life Question Read More »
It seems that mobile is both one of the less crowded affiliate marketing arenas, yet one of the fastest developing ones out there. The total number of mobile Internet users in the U.S. has grown from an average of 10,821 unique users a day in January 2008 to 22,369 a
Mobile Affiliate Marketing: Are You In? Read More »