I just posted earlier this month a long post about affiliate activation and retention.

I spent some time to look for other good tips about what to do and also what not to do to run a successful affiliate program, get inactive affiliates to promote your products actively and to keep existing affiliates happy.

Affiliate Retention

Not a blog post but an old fashioned forums thread: 5 Ways You Can Keep Your Affiliates Happy a forum post at 5StarAffiliatePrograms Forums from August 2007.

Key take aways from the tread:

1. "EVERY time you face a tough decision about your affiliate channel, pretend you are one of your own affiliates and walk in his/her shoes."



2. "Pull Your Program Out of the Dark Ages - Keep up with technology"



3. "Find Out What Your Affiliates Want and Give it To Them!"



4. "Think Outside the Box! Offer Affiliates a Free Consultation"



5. "Raise Commission and Increase your Cookie Duration - Money talks!"

Affiliate Activation

This one was actually referenced from the forum thread above for the bullet point "Think Outside the Box! Offer Affiliates a Free Consultation". It's the blog post titled "Ultimate Affiliate Activation Email from zZounds Affiliate Manager" by Linda Buquet at the 5StarAffiliatePrograms Blog from August 29th, 2006

Finding Affiliates

Fitting the subject and always on the "hot-list" for affiliate managers is the subject of finding and recruiting new affiliates with the ultimate goal of finding one of the few super affiliates and getting them interested in promoting your services or products.

Heather Paulson wrote a detailed Review of the tool "Affiliate Recruiter" by Syntryx and how it can be used effectively to find potential affiliates and super affiliates in your niche.

Ouch, Affiliate Communication Gone Bad

Here are some bad examples that illustrate what you should NOT do. I would say that those examples are equally if not more important that the tips about what you should do.

Example 1: An Affiliate Done Wrong by Shawn Collins at AffiliateTip.com from November 30th, 2007

Example 2: Affiliate Account Suspension - Bad Joo Joo by Alice Seba at InternetMarketingSweetie.com from March 27th, 2008 and Part 2 from a day after.

Example 3: I actually have one myself, which I blogged about in June 2007 called "Call off the Cops and Get the Undertaker Instead" here at ReveNews.com. It still leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I talk about this one :(.

I hope you find those additional resources and information useful. Feel free to post any comments or tips for other affiliate managers based on your on successes and mistakes.

Thank you and Cheers!

Carsten Cumbrowski