What’s one big difference between a great affiliate program and a not so great affiliate program?

The affiliate manager.

There are, of course, many things that make up a great affiliate program but a responsive and helpful affiliate manager can make a huge difference in how successful you, the affiliate, can become.  

As with any marketing, you have to start with a great product.  Don’t promote mediocre products just because they offer high commissions, that’s committing affiliate suicide.  Look hard at the quality of the products you promote, your reputation depends on that.

Look for programs that provide helpful sales tools such as quality banners and text ads, materials that you can brand and articles that you can use. Go over carefully the product’s sales page and determine how well it converts to sales.

Once you can determine that your affiliate products meet the above requirements then it’s time to get acquainted with the affiliate manager and work to create a close relationship with them.  Your affiliate manager will be your channel for how to best promote the product.

A good affiliate manager will be happy to review your website, provide personalized content for your site and even create personalized banners and anchor text.

This is how many affiliates achieve their super affiliate status, they get personally involved.  

One of the top affiliate programs I’ve done very well with is the ‘Five Pillar Affiliate program’; you might recognize it as the ‘SiteSell affiliate program’ by Ken Evoy.  This is one of the few affiliate programs that meets all of my affiliate requirements, it offers quality products with money back guarantee, it has a well converting sales page, it provides affiliates with quality sales training, has tons of sales tools and has affiliate managers that are approachable and will help you.

Important Side Note: Notice that I didn’t say that it pays well. This particular affiliate program does pay very well but that’s not what I focus on, instead I think of it this way, if I steer a prospective customer to buy a mediocre to poor product simply because it pays me well, I’ve just lost my credibility. Start with quality products first.  If that means using them yourself, by all means do so.

The Five Pillar Affiliate program also has some very well trained and hard working affiliate managers.  I converse with may affiliate manager, Erin, a lot, she often emails me with sales advice, personalized banners, personalized content and site evaluations. It’s that kind of help and support that’s invaluable for getting your pages ranked well in the search engines.

The unfortunate thing with most affiliate programs is that many of them aren’t available for personalized help; in fact there are many affiliate programs I’ve been with where I never even knew who the affiliate manager was.

The bottom line is if you want to boost your affiliate marketing commissions; get to know the affiliate manager.  Let them know who you are and ask for help on how you can best succeed.  Their response to you, or lack of it, is a big clue in how successful they are as a program and as a business.