One of the most frustrating experiences for affiliates is working with affiliate managers who don’t understand the affiliate industry.

With the turnover prevalent among affiliate managers in the industry, it’s not surprising to have an experienced affiliate manager be suddenly replaced by a brand spanking new affiliate manager who’s just a couple of weeks (or sometimes even months) in the job. I can’t vouch for the training that they’re received, although from the looks of things, I get worried when the affiliate rep has no clue what a SubID is, how a Postback function works, or what an “incent site” is.

If you find yourself assigned one of these managers, you could be in pretty big trouble. Especially if they’re nice (or at least trying to be).

You might have an affiliate manager who IMs you at the start of your day to ask how things are going, and maybe even tell you what they did after they got off work yesterday. In their minds they’re being friendly, or even “nice” to you.

It’s likely to be a deathtrap and probably fatal to your income and earnings, because they’re not helping you become a better (and more proftable) affiliate.

Real advice in my book comes in the form of tips or feedback about a feature you might not be aware of, or even recommending third party services that might be able to help you bring your campaigns to a new level.

In my past experience within and outside of internet marketing, the best advice I’ve received are from people who’re willing to give you the uncensored truth (which usually comes with a painful sting attached), but will ultimately help you become a better person (or affiliate).

It’s hard to find someone who epitomizes the approach than Convert2Media’s Ralph “Ruck” Ruckman.

Some will read his postings on the affiliate and internet marketing forums and think he’s a total jerk, who probably ought to keep his trap shut. He’s probably been responsible for more than his fair share of reducing wannabee super affiliates to tears after he’s given them a piece of his mind.

Take this nugget from Ruck’s recent blog post to the “secret” to being a successful affiliate:

Here it is, in all of its glory.

Take keywords related to your offer and put them into a search engine. Look at your competition. Dont copy them because that shit is seriously lame and the more this happens, the more our lack of creativity sinks to a level where people outside of Affiliate Marketing refer to us as “scumbags”. Look at your competition, analyze them. What are they doing that you could do better? Find that out about them, and do it.

The lesson here is this. Nobody is going to give you shit. Nobody owes you shit. If you think anyone in this industry owes you anything, you need a serious wake up call. Unfortunately for you, that wake come call will probably come later than sooner.

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So if you can “handle the truth” and you’re one of the “few good men”, you might be one of this blog’s readers who’ve mailed me to say they’ve listened to the Friday Podcast I did with Ruck multiple times. And it’s something they keep going back to because they get more out of every listen.

Having been an affiliate working the marketing spectrum from whitehat to blackhat, it certainly helps to work with an affiliate network who knows what they’re talking about, and more importantly, can give you not just feedback, but offer promotion ideas.

Convert2Media (C2M) delivers on those counts, with Ruck personally posting offer promotion strategies with the C2M forum, and having launched a coaching system through their coaching forum about a month ago.

It looks like they’re stepping things up a notch with a live video training conducted by Ruck personally through the livestream video network and in a recent mailing to affiliates, there’s mention that July will feature a number of new video training (this is Ruck appearing on screen, vs a bunch of camtasia screencaptures).

I haven’t had an opportunity to catch the previous video training session that Ruck conducted and it doesn’t appear to have been archived, so the best bet might be to sign up as an affiliate and make the time to attend the session.

Because there might very well be some golden nuggets in the upcoming session.

Links:

• Sign up as a C2M affiliate
• Friday Podcast featuring Ruck

http://whoisandrewwee.com/convert2media

If you’re an affiliate signed up to multiple networks, you’d receive a constant barrage of daily emails with subject lines like “network exclusives, promote now!”, “Highest payouts!” and “Hot new offers”.

Likewise, I’ve checked out a couple of affiliate marketing forums where networks have sponsored sections of the forums and populated these sections with “These offers are hot!” then proceed to list down payouts and offer caps.

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I don’t know how you feel, but this is pretty much tantamount to email and social network spamming by overzealous affiliate managers.

A good affiliate manager should know when to promote offers and when to back off. And emailing/hounding me when I say I’m busy is one way to get on my really bad side.

The other thing that’s disturbing is how little time many affiliate managers take to understand their affiliates. Granted, each AM might have 500 affiliates under them with just 5-10% of them actively promoting campaigns.

But my thought is this – If you’re already investing a couple of minutes using an instant messenger or making a phone call to the affiliate: what’s the best way to use this time?

Should you:

1) TELL the affiliate about your best converting offer, and the exclusives and the highest payouts. (I doubt an affiliate running a credit repair website might be able to clear many acaiberry lead gen offers for you…)

OR

2) Should you ASK the affiliate what type of offers they’re interested in, and filter your pool of offers down to the most relevant 10-20 and email that information over?

The concept of customer relationship management (CRM) does not apply only to the advertiser-affiliate network relationship because the advertiser is paying for the leads/customers, I’d say that affiliates are equal part “customers” in the equation too.

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Having said that, using Twitter, or a blog to publish an endless stream of breaking news on “offer updates” is just another way of doing what everyone else is doing.

Here are a couple of ways to disrupt the “traditional” way of affiliate management, and stepping the standards up a notch:

Engage with affiliates: This is more than just sending me a Christmas card (even if I live halfway around the world), it’s engaging and understanding your affiliates’ requirements.

Geordie Carswell, back when he was CEO of affiliate network Revenuewire, would be available over AIM to give PPC campaign tips and promotion ideas. Likewise, Mike Krongel, CEO of Intermark Media which owns the Copeac network would be available too.

These days, Ralph Ruckman AKA “Ruck” is active on the Wickedfire forum and actively posts on the Convert2Media blog and gives out promotion ideas on the C2M affiliate forum with clear, actionable ideas to promote the offers on his network. Not to mention that his partner and co-founder Steve Howe practically lives on AIM.

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Building A Goodwill Virus: I hadn’t heard of Market Leverage till meeting some of their team at the Affiliate Summit last year. Since then, they’re proactively got my mailing address from my domain whois information and sent me a schwag bag earlier this year (and included some gifts for my daughter too).

Likewise, they’ve been following on their promotion efforts by organizing a series of contests on the popular blogs and rollout their “Cashinator” money grabbing machine thingie at events they’re taking part in. While these items and cash won’t be significant for successful affiliates, it does demonstrate that affiliates are a priority for the network and building credibility and a reputation among the affiliate community are some of its goals.

Also, having a regular video broadcast does help build the reputation of the affiliate network (or merchant). Market Leverage has it’s Market Leverage TV weekly broadcast, while Buy.com has it’s Buy.tv broadcasts.

If anything these intiatives demonstrates the networks or merchant’s investment in long-term projects which will ultimately bear fruit from its core of affiliates.

Taking some of lessons to mind when attending an event like Affiliate Summit will help any network get more mileage out of their participation in the event.

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Related podcasts:

• Mike Jenkins, founder Market Leverage
• Geordie Carswell, former CEO Revenuewire
• Dina Riccobono, Market Leverage marketing manager

And we also talk shop about how networks can up their game.

Our discussion built on a number of points raised in Shawn’s AffStat 2008 report in which 200 affiliate managers were surveyed and disclosed information about the industry. It was certainly nothing short of an eye-opening experience.

Check out the Friday Podcast:

Filesize: 13 MB | Duration: 33 mins

And the AffStat 2008 report.

It’s always a pleasure talking to affiliate marketing veteran Rachel Honoway who’s one of the pioneers at affiliate marketing service agency Kowabunga (later acquired by Think Partnership), having started in 1997.

She’s not only friendly, but highly knowledgeable about prevailing issues in the affiliate marketplace.

If you haven’t yet, check out Partnercentric president Linda Woods’ interview with Rachel on a recent episode of Affiliate Marketing Insider.

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For this edition of the Friday Podcast, we discussed:

• Challenges for affiliate managers, especially in keeping up with your affiliates
• The chronic issues related to talented affiliate managers leaving for greener pastures and how networks can address this
• Highlights from the recent AC Certified workshop
• Why Syntryx might be the “killer app” for affiliate managers
• The rise of the Web 2.0 social/community-based affiliate
• Jim Kukral’s role in the affiliate universe (with a pointer to the Daily Flip)
• And lots of AC Certified goodness

Check out the Friday Podcast below:

To find out more, visit: AC Certified