Affiliate Manager Job Biggest Hurdles

Hey folks, welcome to Affilia Nerd out. I am your Nerdorator, dustin Howes, spreading that good word about affiliate marketing. You're gonna find me every Tuesday and Thursday here on LinkedIn Live and wherever you find your podcast, so please consider subscribing. It'll help out the channel a whole lot. My guest today is Randy Claim and he is the fearless marketer, and Randy is having some technical difficulties. He is so fearless that his computer is afraid to show his face and help him join us on this podcast today, so I'm gonna give him a little bit more time. You guys wanna spend the time and drop some questions in the live Q&A? I only have so many dance moves that are available in my repertoire, and so if you would like to know anything about affiliate marketing or have any questions or just wanna throw me a softball so I can create some more content here, I would love them. Toss them into the chat, please. Randy will be with us, hopefully shortly, and if not, this is going to be a super short episode. So let's see what I've got. Let's see what I've got here in the books Topic, just to fill some time here.

That I've been thinking about lately and that's really bothering me is getting on phone calls and not being personable. One of those you know intricate parts of being a good partner, manager of an affiliate program or any kind of partnership manager out there is building some kind of connection with folks. And when you get on a phone call and you've got this headset and this microphone on, I don't love it. I'm a total hypocrite in the fact that I do this every episode, but I internally absolutely hate it. I feel like it takes away from having the conversation and it being a one-on-one conversation. The closest thing that we can get today in our virtual world is talking to each other through a camera, since we're all basically virtual. But you know, until we get to conferences and all. But the fact that we're using microphones to come to conversation just bothers me a little bit, so I never use it during one-on-one conversations that are outside of this podcast or other podcasts. The podcasts are super. It's an absolute necessity for the audio and the microphone to be around so that you can have that conversation and get the highest quality for the podcast or wherever you're recording. But in general it just bothers me a little bit. If that bothers you at all, jump in this chat, say hello, I'm dying here.

I didn't have anything else prepared except for my talk about motion-driven marketing with Randy today. So I am just swimming up Shits Creek here, I'm going to give them a few more minutes and then we're going to call it a day and call it a wash. If there's anything else that you guys want to talk about, I'm here for you. Oh, you know what I could do.

I've got a piece of content that I've been talking about lately, asking people what are some of their biggest hurdles as an affiliate manager. Maybe I can go over some of those basic hurdles that I'm seeing and the recurring responses that I'm getting on LinkedIn. First, big one publisher education and activation. First we'll talk about what that looks like and then maybe ways that I think you can combat that as an affiliate manager. First spot publisher education and activation. What can you? What is it First of all? What is it?

Students have a hard time from one cold email to join their program to learning about your product. That's a big gap to fill. What's the bridge that can be between that is educating them in the fact of the product first. The best way I've ever found to do that is to give them a free sample if it's a physical product or give them a free trial if it's a SaaS product, and let them educate themselves. When you do that, they've got to spend their time evaluating what this product is and what to do with it and how they can use it in their world and how they can promote that product to their audience as well. Often times that's just nobody's got time for that. I know I have a busy content schedule with everything that I'm producing and I big as you work schedule with clients and I'm not available just to check out random products.

I get approached by affiliate managers and they say hey, can you promote our product? Making it as easy as possible for them to get the education is essential, so share with them some videos If they have any kind of interest in joining your program. Share some videos that are available that give a very quick presentation on what the product does in the first of all. Share a video that is a Loom video catered to them and how you think you guys can work as a partnership. Maybe that's sharing your screen and showing them on their website, where your brand could fit into their content, or on a YouTube video where they can promote you on something that's existing, or make a very short video promoting your product in some kind of capacity. So educate them on how you guys think you can work together and that is going to be your quickest way to activation.

And then money always talks as well. Like their time is valuable, ask them what an hour of their consulting would take. How much would that be? And it could be a really good investment for your company to buy somebody's hour for $200, $300 and for them to give you feedback. And then you get to get to know them a little bit. Ask them questions on how they would promote this or how they would approach others to go out and promote it, or ask them their expertise. If this is an influencer that you would really want the program. Get to know them a little bit and you're going to build that loyalty with them and maybe something comes of it. So those are a few ways to get over that barrier. I hope that's helpful. Let's see I've got another one that says I think the most annoying part is not necessarily a big hurdle.

It's the huge number of applications from low quality and fraud affiliates. I get like 10 a day in some accounts. It drives me crazy. This is a super common one Too many applications coming through your affiliate program, and what can you do to combat this? First thing that comes to mind is this is a good problem to have. If people want to join your program, that means you're doing something right, first of all. Now. Secondly, yes, I know it can be annoying to filter through all the garbage. I know way to for that access to go through like 50 applications a day and that's with filters. But he has set up but he doesn't mind that part of the job and neither do I. I actually enjoy applications every day and going through them and seeing websites. That might be a fit because there could be some real gold in there if you're doing this right and see opportunities.

So one of my favorite solutions here is to auto decline certain countries. I'm not going to name the countries here, I don't want to get shunned by those countries, but in the most part people don't want. People in certain countries traditionally don't have a high value as an affiliate partner. So when I do auto decline, make sure you have something on your decline message that says if I've made a mistake, please reach out to my email and I can take another look at you. So have that out, but that's one of the quickest ways to alleviate some of that hurdle. Other ways you could train a virtual assistant to do this. If you really don't want to spend that 15-20 minutes a day Like you could go through an application. One minute shouldn't be a tough pace. But again, switch your mind frame. If you don't like doing applications, maybe you should train your mind to start liking it. I enjoy it, but there is times in my career where I did hate it altogether. So I get it, but just deal with it Alright.

Next one says working with affiliates that are lazier or not as responsive. That's a funny answer. Oftentimes, affiliate managers don't really recognize what affiliates are going through when it comes to creating a content calendar and people getting on board with that content calendar. It is just a mess Trying to wiggle your way into it and talk them into pausing something else and doing your product instead. So lazy is not in the equation. If you are a good affiliate with high traffic and high value and a great domain authority, that is the furthest person away from lazy that you can be. They are not lazy, they just are not motivated enough. So you have to work on the motivation to get them to be more responsive, and best way to do that is pay for their time.

Again, I have traditionally paid out of my own pocket, not asking for company money to buy hours worth of consultations from people. If I get a bite from somebody that might be interested in promoting our product, then I will do my best to get all the information I can for free and get them promoting for free. But if that is not going to work, we put in sponsorship opportunities in the motion. And if even that does not work, if maybe they are way out of your budget, then you just ask hey, can I buy an hour of your time? What does that cost? And you will get great results. People will take an hour out of their time. I charge $200 an hour and people sometimes do not recognize how much their hourly rate really is. And I have got on phone calls first. Cheap is $25 an hour with people that do not recognize what kind of value they are because they just do not do hourly calls, and I will happily give a $25 to anybody for their information for an hour. So change the motivation and your attitude, because they are not lazy. You just have never been in their shoes before. All right.

Next one I have got is a finding solid, consistent, reciprocal traffic and long-term partnerships. That is a tough hurdle. If you are failing to find long-term partnerships, then you are not into the content world enough. Sounds like you might be in a business of buying lists or renting them for the traffic to your affiliate program or partners that are flashes in the pan. But the more content affiliates you have in your program even the long-tail ones that are good, for one is who sales a month If you can get 100 of those, they are going to make the difference and you just need more and more of those in your program. So finding content sites is a consistent battle, of course, but reciprocal traffic on that side of things is not necessarily a part of affiliate that a lot of this world is accustomed to. Doing joint ventures with other affiliate partners and sharing lists is one way to go about things and it can be extremely powerful for a short term. But the long-term value is really in Google and ranking on SEO. So work harder and use Semrush to find out who is ranking for the keywords that you need to be there for and go and reach out to them.

Alright, I'll go over one more. It doesn't look like I'm going to have my guests come today, so we'll give this a wrap up. I'm sorry to my sponsors today that are not. I'm going to get a sponsorship. I am going to roll this over and if you would like to join my community, go on up here to the QR code, check out performance marketing manager for yourself and hit me up if you have any questions.

I have dustinhowes. com slash nerd if you would like to be a guest on this podcast and if you would like 15 minutes of my time, go to dustinhowes. com slash pod and hit me up. Happy to get my 15 minutes to anybody. So that's it for me, signing off for now and we will see you back next week with my guests Olivia Savage and Joey Asleson. Can't wait to talk to them. Olivia, both of these folks are real experts in the influencer space and I'm very excited with the overlap that is coming with affiliate marketing and they're gonna drop all their secrets and I'm really excited about it. So join me next week and until then, we'll see you out there.