Time to bitch about affiliate managers
 

This has happened twice the past couple weeks, so I'm going to complain about it.

I get a stock email from a well-known program, basically "You haven't made many sales with us the past 6 months, please respond with an explanation or promo plan or we will terminate your account."

These are programs that I might have a couple banners up somewhere for, but haven't been actively promoting - either because they're oversaturated already or it doesn't fit with my current active projects. But maybe down the road I'll use them. And in any event, I *do* have some banners/codes up so it'd be annoying to lose credit for the occasional sale that trickles in. These are CCBill accounts, so it's not like they're having to cut tiny checks or anything. So I write back explaining this and to keep the account open.

Then an affiliate manager sends this patronizing reply where he looks at a couple random dormant sites of mine, then painfully explains the concepts of niche marketing and updating, as if I just stepped off the boat and have no idea what I'm doing. A list of where I went wrong, and that my lack of sales is due to incompetence rather than not actively promoting them.

The first time I just laughed. The second time, well I laughed too but it started to feel like a trend.

Anyone else had this happen lately?
Also, am I off base here? Do you guys keep semi-dormant CCBill accounts open just in case you might use them later, or because you do get the odd sale from a banner or blog post somewhere?

but affiliate management is easy..

LOL, Sextronix would never do that... you'd just zip over a sarcastic semi-relevant one liner and be done with it. :upsidedow

But seriously, there are some great affiliate folks out there too (including Sextronix) and I know from experience it's not easy. Just thought it odd, wasn't like I solicited their "advice" or anything...

...semi-relevant!

i think the problem you're having is 'new' people.. its easier one to sound like they know what they're talking about by taking control of the conversation in a 'do you even affiliate market bro'

the whole 'more traffic or else' is bizarrely stupid. Some affiliates only have a bit of traffic that might be relevant for me, it doesn't mean they don't have traffic, or will build something for me in the future

burning bridges is bad form

I don't see why an affiliate prog would can affiliates - Anyone who knows anything knows that affiliates are experimenting all the time - They could start promoting again at any time...

Obviously they are trying to make contact and push you into sending traffic - That will never work - If they piss me off enough they will make it onto my personal 'do not promote' list.....

We never can an affiliate account, even if you haven't sent a sale in 3 years you're still active with us. Only time we can one is due to fraud or if the aff himself wants It done.

Might be that program owners wanted to increase sales and told aff. reps to contact all webmaster and give "pointers" on how to increase traffic.

I can't think of a single reason why anyone would - Is my name and address taking up too much room in their database?..

And I wonder why do they terminate account. Does it cost anything to hold your account active?

I'm sure that is exactly what it is - However, there are ways to do these things without coming off as overly aggressive and patronizing...

Yes, rev share can add up

If that's what happening then its a different matter - They take away my rebills and I will start shouting about it from the rooftops...

At least you received an update on it. I setup one of my affiliate accounts to send me content based on my micro-niche, 6 weeks later those galleries were canceled. no notice.

I'm not an affiliate primarily, it's secondary income, moreover, it takes a bit of time for my guys to start clicking through, usually a couple months.

We speak about inactive accounts with no revshare income. What is the point of terminating?

time to name the program sponsor :)

Ah, I did check one of those emails and indeed the affiliate admin was new. Maybe that is part of the deal and it was just an attempt to open a line of communication with affiliates, seems an odd way to go about it though. Perhaps rookie mistakes. Either way the closing account thing still doesn't make sense.

Honestly I think it's the program owners pushing the affiliate manager to push the affiliates to make more money. But he didn't have to be such a dickbag about it.

A good affiliate manager knows that most affiliates sign up and are inactive for whatever reason. Only a small percentage send traffic and a smaller percentage convert. IMHO

Why blame the affiliate manager. Sounds like the owner or president told them to do that. Affiliate managers don't typically take it upon themselves to make company policy.

For some, the customer service part of affiliate support is the hardest to learn.

I can understand the temptation to take the shock path just to try to get an actual reply from an affiliate but it can fall into boy who cried wolf syndrome. Which, will backfire if you have an account you really do need to investigate.

Hammer, Nail, Head :2 cents:

Seen this happen a few times over the years. What they don't realize is word of mouth is a bitch. Affiliate A may not be a big dog but they have the potential to become one as we all started somewhere and you never know who their friends are that might pull the plug after hearing a shady story. :2 cents:

I think the ugly truth in our industry is that most of these programs get 80-90% of their sales from tubes now so they see normal smaller affiliates as a hassle and almost like a charity case. It's stupid, I know. But that is how it is. I can see not focusing on the smaller affilaites but to close their accounts and tell them to get lost?

Bullying affiliates to send more traffic reeks of desperation :2 cents:

The best way to motivate me is to convert and make me feel as if my increased work will pay off. Some fo these shavers don't get that. If I feel you are just going to shave 80% of my new sales why should I work harder on pushing more productive traffic to you?

Exactly. But to be fair there is a lot more to it than customer service, if the company you work for even trusts you to do the job properly, not just bullshit with affiliates on ICQ all day, like most.

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh

You honestly think companies are shaving you?

No, no and no.

If someone did that they would be outed and blacklisted.

We do not speak about cases like this here.

We speak about terminating INACTIVE accounts (no sales and NO continuing revshare).

Never had any issues with any adult affiliate managers, but mainstream affiliate managers can kiss my ass. Pick any program on CJ and I'm sure their affiliate manager is a dumb ass. I can't believe how bad they are, I could do a better job.

</rant>

I've always felt like it is the program owner's responsibility to make the sale. Affiliates get the customers through the door, and then the website makes the sale. If it's not selling, that's on the website's shoulders.

free shaves are good wait :error :1orglaugh

Agreed. I was just commenting on that part of it. You can be great at marketing strategy, traffic management, etc but you still need the ability to communicate clearly and calmly. Of course, it goes the other way too. As we have all seen over the years with the folks who can charm most people but don't know the game itself very well.

The other thing is that what exactly an affiliate manager does at a company varies wildly. At some places you may be a glorified PR person and at others you are near enough running the whole show.

Truth. It's their responsibility to optimize their sales funnel. Blaming the affiliate sending the traffic is just lazy.

Really, I always see affilaites signup one day, sends nothing. Then months or a year after, start sending lots of traffic - maybe after contacting us just to see if we are alive and reply support.

I've gotten these emails as well since I only promote from within my Mem Areas so we're talking little traffic here. Personally I ignore them. But as a Program Owner (and Affiliate Manager) I can tell you that putting pressure on your affiliates is pure insanity. Work WITH your affiliates, HELP them, do not badger them or threaten to delete their accounts!

I swear, the Fucktard Factor in this Industry just keeps going up and up eh?

Thanks for the input guys, didn't expect so many responses but they do line up with my thinking. Maybe just noob affiliate admins, maybe the program owners, who knows. Sent them emails with my thoughts so we'll just leave it at that, no need for the GFY public shaming :)

I tend to agree with this, after the rise of tubes the tone & relationship between programs & affiliates *in general* changed a bit. And like a few of you affiliate marketing is just a secondary thing for me, so even in the best of times my #s never compared to the dedicated folks.

I think you were on vacation at the time.

http://m2.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1131523

http://m2.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1131574

http://m2.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1131749

http://m2.gfy.com/showthread.php?t=1131797

richard very nice fame dollars wont say a name :disgust affiliate tolls are fucked up

Yup Magnetron, they were indeed one of the culprits! From skimming those threads sounds like they recognized the faux pas and made amends. In my case it was more the reply that was annoying, but after reading this other stuff maybe it was the inexperienced affiliate manager wants to help type situation. The other program was a smaller niche one, they never responded to my last message so whatever.

Femjoy (oh excuse me, "FEMJOY") has some amazingly fucking beautiful women but converts like utter shite. Maybe because they've intentionally flooded the web with their content, hmmmmmmm.

Preach

8char

well, from the aff program side of things... bandwidth isn't free. Case in point, our hosted server pushes nearly 50TB of bandwidth a month by itself... for trailers and short clips.

Not saying I agree with this new, seemingly trending, method; but at the end of the day, if all you send a program is garbage traffic that doesn't convert, then terminating said account might make sense.

not tolls :1orglaugh

That's not what was mentioned in the OP - However, I can see that if an affiliate is just submitting/using your vids from your servers without sales then you have to draw a line...

I think you have to 'Handle With Care' though.....

Indeed. So far people were talking about cutting revshare or bandwidth issues and nobody seems to get that OP is talking about INACTIVE account termination as if keeping that username in their database cost money.
Not to mention that out of those inactive members someday some could begin being active.

I host all promo content myself, so no bandwidth issues. And the account isn't entirely inactive, there have been a small amount of sales last 6 months including rebills. Just out of curiosity checked the stats today and there are even a couple full-year recurring subscriptions set to rebill in the next month. So I guarantee my sales have covered any possibly bandwidth and admin costs the account might have incurred for the program, and then some. They just happened to be below whatever threshold triggered that email.

But yeah, FEMJOY admitted it was a mistake in those other threads - I just hadn't seem them as I was out of the country in Jan and not checking out the boards much. Still I think it's indicative of the changing relationship between affiliates & some programs, as the industry shifts away from that model at least relative to the glory days.

Yeah, I wasn't speaking in regards to the OP directly, just in general. But yes, I do agree that it could/should be handled better no matter the circumstance.

Does a bear shit in the woods?

Honestly if someone is like that just make sure to write down all the information you can find on the owners and put them on your personal blacklist for life. Fuck them. Go make money with someone who wants to do business with you. Usually people like that are the very first to cheat you anyway. It shows they see you as shit. In the long term they are doing you a favor.

Its not often I agree with you, but you are absolutely correct in this instance.

I display an empty page if the IP address it is from a 99.99% non-converting country, this saves a little.

Yep it's just stupid. Why not offer affiliates 100% revshare for a while if you want to encourage them to promote your sites, account termination that's just silly!

Sounds like someone who has too much time on their hands and instead of working on generating more of their own traffic they've decided to try and pressure affiliates into sending sales.