What each Affiliate Manager should know?

I'm not sure how many affiliate Managers put themselves in the affiliate's place when using Control Panels, when choosing what products to display, or waiting to sell for the first time. But I can tell you about some items - the things really look different depending on which side you are.

So, let's discuss about 3 essential elements in understanding the affiliate behavior:

- Affiliate typology - are all the affiliates the same? - Affiliates and Control Panels - Add-ons for performance

Are all the affiliates the same?

First of all, there are a lot of misconceptions about thin affiliates, the (regular) affiliates and super-affiliates. We have the thin affiliates that just sign-up on any affiliate program because of the shinny ads on making passive income very easily.

They usually have a "just started" site, a lot of initial excitement and no experience at all. The (regular) affiliates have already some experience with affiliate marketing and they also do some sales, usually as a complementary business line or supplemental income to a full time job.

The super-affiliates on the other hand, are really a special breed of affiliates that need special conditions/services and support to sell at their full potential.

So, if they are so different, which one should you focus on? Well, on all 3.

Affiliate Marketing is an efficiency-based system to promote your products: from the thin affiliates you will most likely get free advertising (if they don't sell anything), from the (regular) affiliates you will get the steady consistent sales, and supper-affiliates will be the cash-cow of your affiliate program.

Now, actually things can be a little complicated when dealing with all the 3 affiliate types because they look for different things: - Thin affiliates: quick copy and paste some banners on their sites - (Regular) affiliates: constant help, content and efficiency based incentives - Super-affiliates: unique offers, products and special conditions to maximize peak selling moments.

Affiliates and Control Panels What are the most dreadful issues for an affiliate when working with the Control Panel? I have plenty to report; just say when you want me to stop:

Complicated sign-up procedures Let's say, I have converted from your site to the sign-up form. I'm very excited to have a look at the products and give it a go with the program. But wait, I have a complicated sign-up form that requires me a lot of details, some of them which might not be at hand: bank account, multiple verification procedures, or tax forms to fill in. Of course, if I'm a regular affiliate or a super-affiliate, I will take my time to fill in your forms, but frankly it's not the best way to start an "efficiency based" collaboration.

Hard to browse products If you have more products (for the affiliate networks we are talking about hundreds) not being able to filter/search the products on the criteria I'm interested in, is a major setback. Thin affiliates will simply look by the highest paying commission, but the rest will have to look for the product in their niche. Here I'm talking about relevant categories, keyword-based searches and conversion reports.

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