Thank You, Affiliates

From the manager's perspective, I don't thank my affiliates enough. Sure, I thank you for your promotions and your efforts and your successes. But, I really want to thank you for your time.

As an affiliate manager, I do not often act as an affiliate because I don't have the time and I don't want the perception of any conflicts of interest. What little I have done has been for one program in the last few years. With my kind of traffic, I have been successful promoting Affiliate Summit, selling tickets for upcoming shows. That's an affiliate link, obviously.

I have a new side project right now where my passion for the tropical fish hobby is focused. I'm creating a dedicated landing page with all the specs of my aquarium and will hopefully draw some traffic from other enthusiasts. If they like the equipment I'm using and showing off in updates and pictures, I'm hoping they will buy through my links.

It wasn't easy and it wasn't fast. Most managers don't realize how much effort goes into a good promotion.

Yesterday, I spent the majority of the day applying for programs, writing content and linking products. I understood your frustration a little bit more. The big box retailer that had everything I needed because that's where I shop locally, declined my application automatically. CJ merchants can auto decline by country, category or network rank. So because my affiliate checks come from ShareASale, I'm considered a 0 in CJ. The program is also managed by CJ, a conflict of interest, so if I'm approved in the future I don't expect much when I have to compete against the toolbars they love so much.

I found four alternative programs, three of them in ShareASale. One doesn't have prices in the datafeed. One has only 1% of what I was looking for in products. The other two are not managed by active employees. None of them have any deals or coupons relevant to my niche and banners are also limited. I was able to use deep linking, datafeed links and some widgets to link all the products described on the page. That was the time-consuming part.

Now, if any of the merchants go offline, reduce my commission or simply don't convert, all that time is wasted. Affiliate marketing isn't easy and I wish merchants appreciated affiliates more.

Thank you to all my affiliates that work hard. I understand managers and merchants don't make this easy for you. I will keep fighting for you.

This article predates the transition to Apogee and may contain outdated references or links. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.