Lazy Affiliate Managers Rant
 

I'm not gonna name names here, just feel like ranting.

I love finding a great program to promote but when the affiliate manager is an idiot and underqualified to do his/her job, it doesn't inspire confidence in the program.

Before I even start promoting, more often than not when I email about certain tools offered (like RSS feeds, for example) I get responses like "What do you need those for?" and sometimes even, "What's that? How do I find that?" or even "We don't have a need for those. Sorry"

I understand not every affiliate manager has developer/webmaster experience, most probably just have customer support experience and nothing else, but honestly, if you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about, don't ask me to school you. You look lazy and not qualified to do your job and I'm left thinking that the program I'm trying to promote is not worth the effort.

Am I the only one that gets responses like these? What are some of the dumbest things an affiliate manager has said to you?

Cant remember what was dumbest thing,but most legendary move was from Tassy while she was working for cherry program,she replied my icq message exactly one month after :)

Wow, that's bad. What did she say about it? I recently had something like that happen... I sent 3 messages through the program's "Contact Us" page, no response, finally emailed the affiliate manager by email and they said they didn't get my messages.

Honestly, they should be doing QA on that shit everyday. I know they could've received my messages and ignored them but "I didn't get it" makes me think all of your websites aren't checked regularly.

heheehehe but was she hot?

I expect mad view on this tread and the same 15 people in every affiliate manager thread..

Comments to be expected....

Affiliate managers are failed webmasters....

A comment from Kristin from Topbucks about how kick ass her affiliate managers are (rightfully so)

Affiliate managers are the sleazy car salesmen of adult

to be continued...

haha nicely done....


OP is right though, they should have a working knowledge of tools and what not.

One of the best in the business right here... Dwreck too!

Now... can someone tell me what an RSS Feed is? :winkwink:

Ouch man harsh! I have to disagree with that assessment wholeheartedly. Some of them may not do their job the best they could could but a lot of us are hardworking and honest people.

If a tool we offer is important to a webmaster it is important to me
If a webmaster wants to see a tool offered I do my best to see if we can add it
I won't BS someone, if they ask me a question and I dont immediately know the answer I will damned sure find out and get back with them on it.

Im not a cars salesman, their job ends when you drive it off the lot. I am the car salesmen, mechanic and the insurance company that tries it best to keep what a webmaster 'bought' in good working order and moving forward.... to try and follow your analogy :)

I disagree with it too spazlabz but thats what I have been called.

:thumbsup:thumbsup and a heap unfairly too :)

Ah, Dwreck. How's Orlando treating you? Been to Ibar yet GingerFace? :thumbsup

You with TeenRevenue now?

try dealing with a few porn agents :2 cents:

hardyfuckinghar!

Marquis85, your point is a good one and one that (without getting all smug) I often come across when people join our programs. Its always worth doing a bit of research into the network the program you're interested in promoting is from, you're pushing their products the least they can do is provide you with adequate support or at the very least point you in the right direction if they don't have the answers your looking for.

@ Dwreck - this ones for you: if you're interested in getting good quality support to promote adult health products hit me up (javinder [at] moreniche [dot] com, AM for MoreNiche) :thumbsup

I don't always have all the answers but the ones I don't know (as someone said above), I make sure to find out before replying out of my ass. One of the annoying questions the OP pointed out "What do you need those for?" might be an attempt by the rep to better understand your traffic and perhaps to give you suggestions. Sure, webmasters usually know their traffic very well and know what works and what doesn't but we know (or should) know our product and can make suggestions to help you get the most out of your traffic.

In the end we all have a job to do, some do it better than others but if you represent a good product (see sig lol) then there's no need for the car salesman approach. Instead you reach out to someone that can benefit from what you are offering and if they don't like it, move on...

Nope, just how some others suck.

My favorite, "do you have X?"
Answer: "I don't know, ask Y."
Me: "No, you go ask Y cause that's your job and remember it for the next person who asks you."

You usually get what you pay for. Which somewhat successful webmaster with his own sites and a good understanding in the needs of webmasters/affiliates is going to become an affiliate manager unless he gets good pay?

Many times It's someone that get $1k per month for a full time gig. If you hop on a full-time gig at 1k per month you couldn't have been much of an affiliate your self before that.

Most of the affiliate managers I've dealt with are very helpful. However, in the last year I've noticed a downward trend in knowledge and ability. I can only assume that hard-pressed programs are shuffling the job off on the most junior person in the office, and making it an "other duties as assigned" addition to their workload.

Dwreck lets have a drink sometime i think you might have some epic story about affiliate managers.

All I have to say is if the OP is complaining about someone on the FFN team, then please let me know and I will look into it for you right away.

In my case, I literally thousands of RSS feeds available, it would be lazy of me to just give you any old RSS feed.

It's my job to give you the feed best suited for your needs. So expect me to ask "What's it for?"

I'll come back to this... working on a new promo for you webmasters :)

it's a raw sirloin steak which you can use to feed yourself as you post on boards. ;)

come on that's just ridiculous...


it stands for radical silly string feeds

very important on the internets!

It's mainly due to the fact that many years ago most affiliate managers/reps that were hired were basically blond bimbos with no real business knowledge. In the end this make all affiliate reps/managers look bad. For me, when I was an affiliate rep I did my best to take care of all webmasters that contacted me as quickly as possible and with exactly what they need. (of course, there are limits when it comes to this)


We're not all bad.

You're right. I was thinking of the internets in another place. I think the moon or some place, but I may be wrong. My bad. ;)

I thought It stood for Really Sucky Seo :upsidedow

You often comment about how you hate the word affiliate rep coming up because it always opens a can of worms.

But a serious question - have you ever had an affiliate be a dick to you, not work with you because of other experiences with reps from other companies? I'm genuinely interested in the answer as I haven't seen it but I don't work with the same type of WMs you did for so long with cams.

I think support ticket systems are wise because people will email support and not necessarily know they are being answered by reps.

I do comment how the term affiliate manager opens up a can if worms every time.. its in the same category Epassporte, Zango and Chris 3.0.. :winkwink:

The job duties of a affiliate manager differ so greatly from company to company and its like being called a webmaster, it's very vague. Some do strictly sales the whole time, some a more like program managers....


Program owners made a critical error and hired inexperienced low wage people with the promise of high commissions to be affiliate managers for the company. They forgot to realize they are the first point of contact and they scared away more traffic then they will ever admit. There is no school for affiliate managers and not all of them have genius husbands :) So you can blame both sides to why they got this reputation.

Do I have affiliate's be dicks to me? Oh hellz yes... verbally assaulted, threaten, hit up at all hours yet the min I lose MY COOL... IM GOING TO GFY!!!!!!!!!! it's the nature of the beast.. I'm not mad I love what I do but our job is very public.. and it's not a job its a lifestyle..YOU BECOME an affiliate manager.. this place never closes..

Support tickets are great in theory sure... but its 2011 my guys want instant support, top converting sites, payment details, new tools like yesterday... Submitting a ticket is all pretty and nice and gives me the luxury of prepping nice complete replies...I simply don't have that luxury.

Lazy affiliate rep threads make me laugh out loud... If I posted lazy webmaster threads this board would look different.....

I kinda went off their and miss your question Kristen...the answer is.... being a pretty girl in a male dominated industry has it advantages and this is one of those cases...No disrespect...

The best affiliate rep I ever encountered was Kevin from Twistys.

Thought:

What about no affiliate rep at all (or several people's added part time role), just a ticketing system that sent everyone in the company that could possibly respond an e-mail?

Perhaps getting the president to respond to customer requests would have a profound effect on several levels. First, you'd be in a race with your boss to respond to tickets. If they're responding to too many, you'd feel like a worm.

Second, it would give all levels of management forced responsibility to make sure a bit of micromanagement was happening. Also it would force them to think about what they can be doing on a macro level to solve company problems. Real customer problems should get any executives mental wheels turning.

Thoughts?

Basically this.

Sometimes affiliates like to pad their pockets, though, by taking these gigs... so not always true. However, a program will only get the effort and talent for which they're willing to pay. Offer me $1k/mo to be your affiliate manager and I'd probably say yes, but you're only going to get $1k/mo worth of effort while I'm working on all my other projects. Offer me the whole nine yards(good pay, benefits, etc) and I'll give you a reach around every day at lunch. no homo

Interesting idea. The minute you're expecting the president to answer a quote of customer service calls though, you're removing her or him from the presidential duties, which tend to be quite time consuming. Better to hire people who are closer to the "front line" to handle that, not execs who might be awesome in business management but not the best at telling you how to optimize your traffic flow.

Just my .0224 cents.

They can easily filter the e-mails and respond as they wish, but even the small chance that the person who signs your paychecks is actively following your responses and occasionally responding themselves would be a kick in the pants to work better.

Also, someone who runs the company should be able to spend the correct amount of time on such things. The whole concept is that if they see they have to spend too much time on it, or can't spend enough, then they should be solving the problem on on a higher level by changing strategies, or doing more hiring, or talking to their employees, etc.

Lots of major company owners here even find time for GFY, some daily... :)

Wow, so I'm good cause I'm a girl married to TheDoc. Nice.

Bring on the sales!! I could use the commission for my vacation because I didn't sell my soul for $150k/year.

If you look at a lot of the companies hiring affiliate managers, they are usually mainly looking for people that have connections from past jobs and can bring in affiliates that can send a lot of sales. They aren't really looking for webmasters that can help with a lot of technical stuff.

DING DING DING! We have a winner.


EDIT - I would also like to add the age of the sales rep are dead for programs. For an "affiliate manager" to be cost effective these days they need to know a lot more then just helping someone with their link codes, getting banners made etc. They need to be able to contribute to and oversee new projects.

A person to just handle sales in my opinion is a waste of money. They need to bring more skillz to the table then just sitting on ICQ all day bullshitting with webmasters.

Dear God, make it stop.

I've noticed the "connection" thing doesn't go far nowadays. You either can sell or you can't.

Successful people hire employees because they don't want to do stuff like support :winkwink:

This is pretty contradictory. You're saying that the top-level people should have the time to check in on every little thing going on, but they should also be smart enough so that they don't have to check in on every little thing going on.

What you are suggesting is also a huge drain on morale. Some jobs need babysitting, some don't. Micromanagement usually stifles more than encourages.