Affiliate Manager This is one of our last posts in the series we have written about Aymen and the Arbitrage Conspiracy; we hope you have learned something from the posts and you feel as though you have more of a handle on what the course can offer you. This post describes how the Arbitrage Conspiracy Team dealt with the concept risk management to maximise outcomes. In general the Arbitrage risk management strategies includes solid keyword research and capping PPC budgets to using free (and later paid) tools to monitor other campaigns. But the strategy we will focus on in this post is developing a solid relationship with your affiliate manager.

Aymen and the Arbitrage Conspiracy team continually raised the need to develop a ‘real‘ relationship with your affiliate manager at the CPA networks which makes sense – we all want good working relationships right? Aymen’s rationale for developing a good working relationship with your affiliate manager is to be in a better position to negotiate specific aspects of a given offer eg landing pages, pay outs etc. That aside, it also makes sense to develop a solid relationship with your affiliate managers because, as you know from your own experience, it is harder to overlook someone when you have a ‘real’ relationship. So when you take time to develop a relationship with your affiliate manager you are more likely, as a natural bi-product of that relationship, to find out those things that can/will make a difference to your business.


And, from our limited experience, we also know that affiliate managers are not necessarily across all the detail you may need – see Network Responsibility post.  Affiliate managers manage affiliate relationships but are not necessarily across the details of campaigns. So for example, we emailed our affiliate managers, repeatedly, and asked them to list the most ethical offers they had on the network at that time.  Their response was they were not in a position to assess whether an offer was ethical or not.  In the case of our affiliate manager from MaxBounty he has always made himself available to us so we had no reason to believe we were being fobbed off…maybe we were.

And we made the mistake of thinking the offers listed on the networks met some kind of criteria – you know, were vetted. That is almost certainly not the case and as a result of that assumption, our Google account was suspended/canceled.  At no stage did our affiliate manager give us a heads up to stay away from certain offers. That said, they are not undertaking daily monitoring our account like they undoubtedly do with Aymen’s. What we are saying is – do your own homework and do not rely on the relationship with you affiliate manager to be your safety blanket. Like Aymen says, use the training offered by the search engines and networks – be your own authority and work with the affiliate manager as a reference. Of course if (when) our account was (is) just a quarter as one one of Aymen’s accounts we know we would (will) have a completely different relationship with our affiliate manager.  And so we progress one step at a time. One more thing, Aymen advises not signing with networks you cannot contact by phone – makes sense.

A good working relationship with your affiliate manager is one way to limit your risk and maximise outcomes. The other central strategy is capping your campaign budgets. We know from experience both work. Campaigns can rapidly chew up money – so monitor, adjust, cap your budgets develop a good working relationship with your affiliate manager, be your own authority and develop a network of reliable sources to go to when you need help. The support crew at Arbitrage is one such support and given membership with the Arbitrage Conspiracy ensures life time access then you know you are covered.

May you live long, healthily and prosperouos.

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