Affiliate management half an hour a day

We receive many requests to pass on the contact details of an affiliate manager who would be able to manage the affiliate program on a long-term basis. The reason we receive these requests may be due to time constraints or not knowing what an affiliate manager should actually do.

But I have good news for you. If you or your employee are able to devote half an hour a day to affiliate management, we will give you specific instructions on what to do. (And if you’re not, contact us and we’ll pass on the contact details of an external affiliate manager who works with us.)

The work of an affiliate manager needs to be done repeatedly and consistently to lead to long-term results. And at the same time, adjust/improve the work based on what works for you in the affiliate program. A big part of an affiliate manager’s job is contacting and activating affiliates.

This article is a specific guide to managing a small to medium scale affiliate program, that is, up to 200 affiliates and with a turnover of up to 500,000 CZK per month (turnover is meant only from the affiliate program).

Starting point

• I have AffilBox set up and connected to my website/e-shop.
• I have SMTP set up, added campaign descriptions, commission amounts, cookies, I have added promotional materials (links, banners, xml feeds, iframes, etc…) and a welcome email.
• I have linked AffilBox with an email tool to collect newsletter contacts.

If you are not even in the default position, you can purchase the “Affiliate Program Setup” service from us. The price of the service is 4 900 CZK (excluding VAT) and you can get more information by emailing: info@affilbox.cz

Day by Day Affiliate Program Report

Month 1

Week 1

Monday:

Add a link to your program to affiliate sites:

1) FB group called Affiliate programs CZ SK PL.

2) FB group called TOPaffilak.cz – Affiliate discussion #CZaffil #SKaffil.

3) FB group called AFFIL ♥ XML (only if your affiliate program has a product feed)

4) Post information about your affiliate program on Twitter with the hashtags #czaffil for CR and #skaffil for SK.

5) Add your affiliate program presentation to the web forums webtrh.cz, webdeal.cz and affilaci.cz.

6) Add the link to the largest CZ/SK affiliate catalog affiliatekatalog.com.

7) Add a link to your affiliate program in the footer of your website (where you have terms and conditions, GDPR, etc…).

Note: If you don’t know how to present your affiliate program, check out the previous posts and copy the form.

TuesdayCashbacks

Contact cashback portals and ask them to list your affiliate program:

• hamty.cz,
• refundo.cz,
• tipli.cz,
• vratnepenize.cz,
• ziskejte.cz.

We have also prepared a simple sample email for you to use to reach them.

Sample Email:

Hello,

We have just launched an affiliate program for XYZ e-shop and we would like to invite you to join it.

The affiliate program is at.

The commission per order is X%
Cookies are X days

You can use my email for future contact.

Need something from me to run a promotion on your portal?

Thank you and I look forward to working with you.

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Coupon Sites

If you are going to use discount coupons as well, please contact discount sites:

• abkupony.cz
• eslevy.cz,
• kuponka.cz,
• kuponik.cz,
• kuponovnik.cz,
• picodi.com,
• skrblik.cz,
• tosevyplati.cz,
• vasekupony.cz,
• pandakupony.cz,
• <….

And many more. Just enter a keyword of some well-known brand + discount code (coupon) into SERP.

For example: vasecocky discount coupon / vasecocky.cz discount code

Wednesday

Make a list of potential content affiliates (we count mainly blogs, review sites and catalogues among content affiliates).

1. Create a spreadsheet to collect information about potential partners.

The table should contain columns: site name, type of site (blog, review, cashback, etc…), contact, when contacted, result.

2. Take a keyword that is related to your industry or products and put it in the SERP, collect all the URLs that you can find by the 5th page of the SERP (at this point, don’t address whether it is a competitor or not).

3. Dump the competition from the list.

4. Click on each site and try to find the contact for the site you entered in the table. If the site doesn’t have a dedicated contact page, try looking at the terms and conditions/privacy information page. Another place to look for contact information is www.nic.cz and their domain registry.

5. Contact each site with an offer of cooperation.

Sample Email:

Hello,

I noticed that your site is focused on “my business“.

I would like to talk to you about a possible affiliate collaboration to promote our product 1, product 2, product, 3 and other products. (Alternatively, replace “e-shop/web promotion“)

If you are interested, I would be happy to have a call with you about a possible collaboration.
I will be looking forward to your reply.

Have a nice rest of the day.
Regards,

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Here’s another list of interesting Czech review sites:

• 5nej.cz,
• arecenze.cz,
• price-vykon.cz,
• covybrat.cz,
• equiplo.cz,
• chytryvyber.cz,
• nastrojeproweb.cz,
• rankito.cz,
• spotrebitelskytest.cz,
• testado.cz,
• testy-rady-recenze.cz,
• testy-spotrebicu.cz,
• vas-pomocnik.cz,
• vyber-si.cz,
• vseumel.cz
• geeklife.cz,
• nejchytrejsihodinky.cz.

Ideally review sites contact with a specific offer (XYZ product review, store review, etc…)

Thursday

Contact the partners from the list created the previous day and write in the spreadsheet that the site was contacted.

Friday

Check to see if anyone has replied, or make calls to the sites that want to make calls.

Week 2

Monday

Checking emails/requests from partners.

If you already have any partners in the program – call or write to them and ask if they need any help with promotion. Examples of good help include communicating good keywords, who your ideal customer is, special banners, discount codes, or landing pages.

Also check to see if you have heard back from potential partners (contacted last week) and re-contact those who haven’t.

Tuesday

Is there an event/left/event planned in the next few weeks that partners should know about?

Prepare a newsletter and send it to partners so they are prepared for the event.

If there is no event, continue to contact potential partners.

Check partner emails/requests.

Wednesday

Follow up on partner inquiries.

Prepare an email to your customers with information about the affiliate program. There may be skilled individuals among them who will become your strong affiliate partners. No one will promote your site and product better than a satisfied customer.

Thursday

Checking on affiliate and customer inquiries.

Preparing an article about the affiliate program for your blog. Prepare an article summarizing the benefits of the affiliate program and why people should sign up for it.

The article should include:

• what an affiliate program actually is,
• what is the commission rate,
• what is the cookie period,
• what is the average order,
• what is the conversion rate,
• what promotional materials are available to partners,
• where to promote (web, email, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc…),
• where it is not possible to promote (pirate sites, adult content sites, etc…),
• a link to sign up for an affiliate program.

Friday

Checking on affiliate and customer inquiries.

Completing an article about the affiliate program and sharing the article to your company blog and sending the blog post to your customers.

Week 3

Monday

If you have done all the previous steps, you should have some affiliates registered in the program. See which affiliates already have some clicks or even sales and see which affiliates have nothing.

Contact the affiliates who have no activity yet one by one and ask them what they need to promote. Partners who are already promoting and have some clicks/sales also contact them and ask them if there is anything you can do to make the promotion work better.

Tuesday

Check for inquiries from partners and customers.

Sign up for one of the SEO tools and put your competitor’s site into it and make a list of sites that link to it. If the competitor has an affiliate program, getting them will be that much easier because they already know what an affiliate is.

If the competitor doesn’t have an affiliate program, contact the sites anyway because you never know who they might get. You can gather potential affiliates in the same spreadsheet we made last weeks.

Middle

Contacting partners collected by competitor analysis.

Checking on partner inquiries.

Thursday

Checking orders from the first week (if any) and approving/rejecting them. When approving affiliate commissions keep in mind the 14 day return period and never approve commissions before that date.

Ideally allow 3 weeks for commissions to be approved to allow for any delays on the part of the shipping company. The same applies for services. In general, approve commissions as soon as it is certain that the order will no longer be returned by the customer.

Friday

Checking partner queries.

If you haven’t heard back from Wednesday’s contact, re-contact potential partners.

Week 4

Monday

Review affiliate inquiries, approve/decline orders that are in the affiliate program Week 3.

Contact major affiliate blogs, affiliate influencer blogs or AffilBox.cz to request visibility of the affiliate program. One very good option is to have a conversation about your products/services and why affiliates should promote them.

Tuesday

Reviewing affiliate inquiries.

Analyzing the next competitor in the industry and collecting contacts of potential affiliate partners.

Wednesday

Checking affiliate enquiries.

Checking cashback/coupon portals and displaying your offer on these portals. If the offer is displayed but not in the top positions in the category or on the main page, contact the portal with an offer of a limited time commission increase for extra display of your offer.

The appropriate display of the offer is pre-fold (what the visitor sees without having to scroll on the site) either in the category or on the main page of the portal.

TIP: This is good to do repeatedly whenever you have a promotion, new products or just want to work on increasing sales on a regular basis.

ThursdayChecking partner enquiries.

Do you have the ability to send items to your affiliates to try or unlock the service? Do it. Contact your content partners with an offer of free goods/services in exchange for a review/video review.

Friday

Review affiliate inquiries.

Open YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (or LinkedIn or Pinterest) and enter keywords related to your business in search one by one. Create a list of influencers to contact in turn.

Month 2 and beyond

Follow-up management of the affiliate program consists of 3 regular tasks.

• 1. Recruit new affiliates to the program.
• 2. Activating affiliates who have registered but not promoted.
• 3. Arranging better promotions with partners who are already promoting and bringing in orders.

Then there are tasks that need to be done once a month, such as reporting or coming up with a contest (a contest can be once every six months, for example).

TIP: Some larger portals offer, in addition to the classic promotion through affiliate links, the possibility to buy paid space on the portal, or to buy more visibility, a newsletter, a social media post, etc… Don’t be afraid to try these extra promotions but always evaluate their benefit against sales.

Affiliate Program EvaluationYou should always look back at the previous month and evaluate its success. I recommend doing this reporting up until around the 20th of the following month, mainly because of the conversions you always approve in the 3rd week of ordering. I recommend doing 2 reports.

Total Results Report

The total results report should not be missing:

• number of sales for the past month,
• total sales for the past month,
• total commissions (affiliate, management and network),
• number of clicks in the past month (to calculate conversion rate and check for “penny traffic” – low quality traffic often from questionable sites),
• total number of affiliates,
• total number of active partners (partners who have at least one sale in the past month).

TIP: You can get all this data with a few clicks right in AffilBox.

Best Affiliate ReportA list of active partners, ranked by sales amount (or sum of sales) from largest to smallest.

This list is used to quickly navigate between partners and quickly access their contact email.

TIP: You can export this report directly from AffilBox.

Affiliate Contests

As I wrote above, one of the most important tasks in managing an affiliate program is to continually motivate affiliates to promote. Incentive campaigns have two missions. Firstly, to motivate active affiliates to invest even more time or resources in promotion, and secondly to somehow wake up and motivate inactive affiliates.

Incentive campaigns could be divided according to the type of motivation into:

• promotional,
• intentional,
• product.

A commission campaign promises partners an increase in commission when they take an action, usually achieving a certain amount of sales in a set amount of time.

For example: It’s January now, so if partners raise sales by 25%/50% during February they will get a 2% higher commission for March.

NOT

When an affiliate achieves 25% more sales than the previous month, the affiliate gets an extra 2% commission by which the previous month’s sales will be raised.

An in-kind campaign promises the partner some kind of in-kind reward for making a certain turnover within a certain time. Apple products are very common.

Product campaigns are campaigns where you promise partners products or services from your portfolio. For example, if you have an e-shop you can offer partners products that you sell.

What is the best? In-kind campaigns used to be very popular, especially because Apple products are a more expensive affair and partners were strongly motivated by this. Nowadays, commission campaigns are used a lot and that’s exactly why don’t be afraid to use in-kind campaigns again.

Affiliate Manager Essentials

If you don’t follow the instructions exactly, at least stick to the affiliate manager principles and you won’t go wrong.

Don’t know what to do? Let us know

If you don’t know what to do, don’t hesitate to contact us or our trained affiliate managers.