Originally Posted by Forkbeard

In case it's helpful, here's what I need as somebody who has been sending affiliate traffic since 2002.

I want an affiliate manager to contact when:

1 - I need access to content that's not available through the regular tools.

2 - There's some sort of issue with my payment.

3 - I am having issues with broken links, affiliate tracking maybe not tracking, stats not appearing to work, or issues of that sort.

4 - There are chargebacks or refunds that don't appear to make sense -- like in the all-too-common situation when I can't match the amount of a chargeback against any combination of prior credits for sales.

In short, the affiliate manager is there to make up for shortcomings in your tools, your affiliate-facing stats package, or your billing and payment practices that affect affiliates. If all of those things were perfect (they never are) you would not need an affiliate manager.

In theory, a bored affiliate manager (because all your affiliate shit is top-notch and perfect) should be out recruiting new affiliates, but I've never known one who was effective at that.