If you’ve been following my blog for awhile then you know how strongly I feel about ONLY promoting affiliate promotions where you have access to a proactive affiliate manager that will work closely with you. As I’ve said in the past you want to build a relationship, really a friendship, with your affiliate manager.
However, I should warn you, this is a double edge sword.
Now I’m not speaking for the industry as a whole but there are some affiliate manager out there that will bend over backwards to help you, they’ll even tell you what other successful affiliates are doing.
REALLY?
Yes, but guess what? They’re telling other affiliates what you’re doing as well!
Ouch!
Now this is a serious breach of client confidentiality, however, I suspect, like myself, most affiliates don’t really turn it into a legal issue. That is, as long as it works both way.
This gets into a gray area. Is this affiliate manager really working in your best interest, or does he or she want a bunch of affiliates to slug it out, making the affiliate company richer while hurting the profit margins of the ppc affiliates who have to pay a big bill to Google every month.
Here’s some other not so honest tactics I’ve seen affiliate managers use:
- Lying about what their top affiliates make
- Not notifying affiliates (or a much belated notification) when their server is down, or some other major change that affects conversions
- Downplaying when sales are in downward spiral across the board
Of course they’re doing this to keep affiliates motivated. And inexperienced affiliates may fall for this bs, but I don’t. I know when my affiliate manager is lying to me, and I think it’s pathetic. I’m driving massive amounts of sales for you, IF THERE’S A PROBLEM, I HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!
Honesty is really the best policy, and the only way to develop real trust. And with real trust comes REAL loyalty. And if I can really truly trust my affiliate manager then when there is a problem we can work together to quickly solve it.
You deserve your income from your ethics and stance on promoting it in others alone. Keep up the real marketing attitude.
Interesting post, didn’t know things like that happen. “inexperienced affiliates may fall for this bs”
Well, to be honest, I’m an not too experienced. Do you maybe have some tips or things you should look out for to be able to notice such dishonesty?
Thanks!
I am always concerned with this, so I don’t discuss any “secrets” with my affiliate managers. I have had many of them tell me that they never share anything with other affiliates, but yet they start telling me what others are doing.
I usually use the subid/sub field to track my keywords in some matter. The networks all have their own internal SEM group and I don’t want these guys stealing my keywords, so I’m considering hashing my keywords
Hey Amit! Excellent post! As a part-time affiliate manager myself I find absolutely necessary and sometimes difficult to walk that fine line, on the one hand you are entrusted with a lot of confidential information, not only from affiliates, but also from the company itself. Then on the other hand it is your job to help affiliates increase their sales.
Personally, I respect the privacy and confidential information that my affiliates share with me, such as their websites, keywords, etc. I have had many affiliates give me full access to their Google campaigns to see if I could help them out. I think it’s fair to share certain common tactics such as general Adwords techniques, or various promotional tactics that many affiliates use, but there is a line when it comes to sharing someones keywords, telling others what their website is, specific advertising areas they are dominating in, etc.
I think it’s good to get to know your affiliate manager and to learn from them about the niche you are in, however there is never any need to share more information than you really need to with anyone, affiliate manager or not.
Hi Amit,
I assume that you have your own affiliate programm(s) as well. Could you please spend a blogpost on how to set up your own aff progr. I am in a business where there are no aff progr yet and I am sure that it would work, but I have no idea where to start.
Thanks in advance
Richard
Hi Gert,
There’s no hard and fast way to detect dishonesty. It really comes with experience in the affiliate marketing industry. Once you’ve been playing this game long enough, you’ll know what I’m talking about.
Amit, you have said that you try to get at least 10-15 pages of unique content on your affiliate sites. Can you please share what content management systems you use, if any?
thanks
paul
Hi Paul,
My team is not using a content management system for the articles. If we have a blog on a site, we use WordPress.
Hi Doug,
Not yet, I’m still trying to convince Perry Marshall the affiliate marketing is a REAL business! He’s old school, he thinks that blogging is overrated.