When starting an affiliate program - do you?
 

Do you scout out some companies and start with a select few?

In my business infancy, I tried to do this once before but was unsuccessful.

20 years later....I'm gonna go again but want to do things correctly.

What does an affiliate manager position entail and how do you determine their pay?

Update your site and you don't even need an affiliate manager because ccbill can do it for you.
I got burned hard core by a lazy mother fucker who wouldn't update his site or upload to tubes for years after dumping about 4 grand in a total revamp.

So I think your question should be... how many updates per week should I make to make myself successful?

I have my own merchant account so I won't be going through CCbill.

I am already successful without weekly changes =) That's not my question.

So wat you asking? An affiliate manager who cab handle affiliates without any updates?

Is that what an affiliate manager does? Deals with updates? I figured that would be the web designer.

I figured they would guide the affiliates in what works best to bring in the money. Help analyze traffic and sales, figure out the holes and fix them. I'm not close on that?

I work in the phone sex industry so it's a little different. More live sales and it's not about content at all.

I remember makeme... from recollection saraetta vouched for you as a girl. Are you really a girl trying to find an affiliate manager to I suppose handle chats?

If so, post up sign, with tits, saying I'll let beaner handle these tits.

You are a wealth of knowledge.

Post your tits worked in 2002. Move on.

Post your tits is the backbone of gfy. You are asking how affiliates or affiliate managers can help you post your tits to find out.

Well, that's not what I'm asking. I have someone for the position, I just was curious what kind of things he'd be doing. What normal affiliate managers do? You somewhat answered that and I was pretty far off what I was thinking his responsibilities would be.

With that said, maybe it doesn't matter what they do at other places and I create my own requirements based on my needs and those of the affiliates.

Still, a question remains about WHO should use the program. I think I'd be quite happy with just 10 affiliates but not sure what criteria to discuss to come up with who I'd like to work with. Just let people sign up or choose people? That's the question.

My tip would be to use ccbill as they only need to add a code pretty simple to get more affiliates.

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.

This seems to be a case of confusion of basic definitions

:2 cents:

Doesn't it make sense to use my own merchant account like I always have as well as have my own programmer build it for me?

Hard to answer without knowing what kind of site you will have.

For big programs with multiple sites NATS is the best platform, which can handle many billers.

I'll assume you'll run a small site yourself, rather than creating a bigger company with employees, accounting, etc.

Many affiliates will avoid promoting a custom built program that handles payments themselves. Burnt too many times with inaccurate or tricky stats, sales not being tracked properly, and not getting paid. Yes I'm sure that won't happen with Your Program. But such promises mean nothing, affiliates can't know in advance which programs will go south within a few years. I think 99% of the small programs mean well, but that's not enough.

Running your program in NATS and paying affiliates yourself is a bit better, because at least the stats tracking will work correctly.

For small sites owned by a single person, I'd only promote them if their affiliate program is operated through CCBILL, to avoid all risks like the above. My hits will be surely tracked and I will be surely paid. Even if the owner starts doing drugs, needs to pay their family member's hospital bill, gets in an accident, or disappears in the jungle during a treasure hunt.

And I'll also be paid if I only make $30 in two years. Mind you that some affiliate doing $30 with your program might be doing $3000 with another, they're just not pushing your program in particular. It's a bad practice to dismiss such affiliates as "not worth the time/energy", be unresponsive or rude to them. Many programs make that mistake, and the result they get is that some big affiliates avoid them completely, or send way less traffic than they could. A program treating small affiliates shitty is a warning sign to big affiliates.

A middle ground could be using NATS with a CCBILL paid feature. Then NATS handles tracking, and CCBILL handles affiliate payouts.
https://gfy.com/fucking-around-and-b...dam-promo.html

International affiliate payments can be a headache. Different affiliates around the world need different payment methods, payment service providers go down, your banks might kick you out for sending "suspicious" payments all over the world, payments don't arrive sometimes. It's a lot of help if you don't have to worry about these things, and CCBILL takes care of all that.

The hardest part about running an affiliate program is to get affiliates and convince them to send their traffic to you. Now if you're sure that it won't be a problem for you and you have affiliates lined up already, you're free to build your program in any way you want.

One of the tasks of the affiliate manager would be actually to GET you affiliates. They'll also have to talk to them, find out what they want and what their problems are. If he can deliver them these things, they'll send you more traffic and sales. The affiliate manager has to cooperate with your developer and you to set up partnerships/tours/promotools/etc. Solve the problems that come up, to get more traffic and better conversions.
Most affiliate managers are not developers, you'll need someone who knows business / marketing, is good with people, and has a little tech knowledge. The best is if they're already in the industry and have a good reputation.

If you're building a phone sex affiliate program it's a different story, many of the things above might not apply. The tools/platforms for paysite affiliate programs might not work. Most of the affiliates promoting phone sex won't be the same who promote paysites/cam sites. I don't think there are too many phone sex affiliate programs to choose from (just guessing). So you might actually have it easier and have a great chance of attracting big affiliates who have phone sex traffic.

:2 cents::2 cents:

id also talk to the CPA networks about the product.. good way to shake out what is needed for your program working with just a select few who have their own affiliates

long life to gfy :thumbsup

Yep will be phonesex/sexting based. Unfortunately, my guy, I want in the position of an affiliate manager has no experience in the industry. He's strictly a numbers guy...nothing more. He does, however, have some personality, and would be willing to travel to events to promote.

You gave me a lot of solid advice. I'm still against using anything other than my own merchant account. I feel like going through a 3rd party I am giving up too much of my money.

What's a CPA network?

Thank you! This helps. I appreciate your thoughtful response.

Doesn't sound bad IMO. Being good with numbers and people are good traits for an affiliate manager.

Since your niche is quite different than most, I don't think you'd gain that much from getting someone already in the industry.

In your case with the phonesex/sexting vertical I'd probably also go with a custom platform and my own merchant account. You won't be competing with traditional paysites and you'll attract different affiliates for the most part.

The Lurking Giant . . .

an affiliate manager is there to help keep the affiliates up to date with the latest promo material and to always trying to get more affiliates signing up. Also, help them promote your stuff the best way to convert for them.

Hey I'm curious how your business works? Do you man the phones or do you have a platform for women/men that work from home offering phonesex, and take a cut?

I have managers who have teams, each team has a goal to hit a certain amount of minutes each week.

There is no platform, however, I have an excellent programmer who has built me a custom CRM and at this point, I have confidence he can build anything.

I think I want to go down this rabbit hole, but I don't want to waste any of my time or have higher expectations than I should.

As an experiment why not mirror and run one anyway it is a bit of a shock to find 10 x the sign up for affiliates over your own.