By Jimmy D. Brown, http://ping.fm/t14aH
What if there was a magic bottle that you could rub and a
traffic genie would pop out to beckon to your every
internet marketing command?
After the initial shock wore off, you’d be quite happy to
have it in your possession, right? :-)
Well, in a manner of speaking, such a genie exists. She
exists in the form of an “affiliate manager”.
An “affiliate manager” is someone who oversees the
operations of an affiliate program in exchange for
compensation.
And, out of all the traffic “tools” on the market, the
affiliate manager is the one that you should be using daily
in your business if you own your own product.
Why?
The bottom line is: more traffic, which results in more
revenue for you.
But, specifically, there are 3 reasons why you need an
affiliate manager...
1. Recruiting.
Your affiliate manager can recruit new affiliates into your
program for you. Instead of you spending time trying to
find (and then convince!) affiliates to join your program,
your “affman” can do this for you while you focus on other
things.
2. Rewarding.
Everyone knows that simply getting people to join your
affiliate program is not enough. It takes a lot of effort
to get passive affiliates to become (and stay!) active. An
affiliate manager is responsible for motivating your team
to remain involved in your promotions.
3. Running.
Beyond getting affiliates into your program and making sure
they stay active, your affiliate manager can “run” as much
of your operations as you want her to. Here are just a few
things my affiliate manager (props to Nicole!) does...
* Creates training materials
* Write follow-up mailings
* Communicates with affiliates
* Answer affiliate support questions
* Monitors contests and incentive programs
* Posts to our blog
* Clerical stuff (creates rebrandable files, etc.)
* Circulates content (article directories, etc.)
I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
Perhaps the best part of hiring an affiliate manager is the
fact that it doesn’t have to cost you a penny in out of
pocket expenses. That is, you can setup your agreement to
be performance-based: you pay the affiliate manager a
percentage of the overall revenue generated through her
efforts ... the more revenue she brings in through the
affiliate program, the more she earns.
Now, the question is –
** Where do I find an affiliate manager? **
There are actually quite a few ways to find quality
(emphasis needs to be on “QUALITY!”) affiliate managers for
your program. Let me share just one...
One of the easiest ways to find an affiliate manager is to
visit your favorite affiliate marketing (or internet
marketing) forum and post a request asking for
recommendations or responses for your needs.
You can do this in two ways -
1. Post a PUBLIC Request.
That is, you post a message for everyone to see, with brief
details on the position you have available and that you are
seeking recommendations or interest to explore further.
2. Post a PRIVATE Request.
The other option is to identify those participants at the
forum who appear to have experience and/or knowledge in
affiliate marketing who might be good affiliate manager
material. Then, you would simply contact them privately to
see if there is interest in discussing your needs.
Running your own affiliate program is a tremendous traffic
generation tool, but it has a lot of parts. There are many
different activities that are involved in successfully
running an affiliate program, and hiring an affiliate
manager to oversee your operations is a great way to free
up your time to work on creating additional products and
other “creative” work.
A good affiliate manager can bring in affiliates, train and
motivate them, and run your operations for you. Her efforts
bring in the traffic; your efforts turn the traffic into
orders.
It’s the closest thing to a traffic genie in a bottle that
you’ll find. Rubbing is optional. Using this strategy
isn’t.
-----------
Jimmy D. Brown is the author of Sales Army Secrets, full of
meaty details on ways to find affiliate managers, how to
structure your agreement with them and tasks to have them
handle. Details at http://ping.fm/oZdfX
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