Okay still getting going on this blogging and not a lots happened today appart from go to work so I might as well explain what I do!
I am the Affiliate Manager for www.alpharooms.com now not a lot of people even know what an affiliate is, so I think well cover that first. Now according to answers.com:
af·fil·i·ate (ə-fĭl’ē-āt’) pronunciation
v., -at·ed, -at·ing, -ates.
v.tr.
1. To adopt or accept as a member, subordinate associate, or branch: The HMO affiliated the clinics last year.
2. To associate (oneself) as a subordinate, subsidiary, employee, or member: affiliated herself with a new law firm.
3. To assign the origin of.v.intr.
To become closely connected or associated: The two unions voted to affiliate.
n. (-ē-ĭt, -āt’)A person, organization, or establishment associated with another as a subordinate, subsidiary, or member: network affiliates.
So an affiliate is basically a parner, or at least thats how i’ve always thought of the relationship. In very very simple terms you hve an affiliate and a merchant. A merchant site such as www.alpharooms.com sells something, in our case hotel rooms. An affiliate could be anyone, for example one affiliate of ours is Holiday Watchdog, their site doesn’t actually sell anything but it affiliates with a lot of other companies.On each hotel page and destination page they show you which companies a user can book hotels or holidays through, saving the user from searching each different website. So if they know that they want to go to Limassol in Cyprus you ca nsee that hotels and holidays there are bookable with Thomson Summer Sun, MyTravel, Airtours, Thomas Cook, Alpha Rooms, Expedia and there will be some deals on Teletext Holidays.
When a user clicks on any of these links the ‘action’ is tracked. Now this is done in a number of ways and there are a few different purposes for the tracking but for now well just say that, its a tracked action.
Then again, the very basics of the affiliate relationship if the person who clicked the link purchases from the merchant website the affiliate gets a pre agreed commission or payment, as it is effectively their referal that has led to the sale.
Pretty simple?
So as an Affiliate Manager what do I do, the affiliates are doing all the work surely?
True. As an affiliate manager I dont actually sell a thing, however I help our affiliates in any way possible. Its my job to help our affiliates make as much money as possible from the affiliate relationship because the more money they make the more sales we make, and everyone loves sales.
This is done in a lot of different ways, bribes being the obvious one. Find someone promoting one of your competators heavily and bribe them to either promote you instead, or you as well as. The other, and the one I prefer is to build relationships. I don’t go round kissing all our affiliates, not that sort of relationship but a working one. By talking with our affiliates I have, I think & hope, built some very strong relationships which id like to think would stand strong if another merchant came along and tried the bribery tactic. It also means that I can enjoy working with our affiliates, the last thing anyone wants when at work is to not enjoy what you do.
This is in very basic terms but thats a rough outline of what I do. Im sure more posts will follow going more in depth with different issues and aspects of affiliate marketing, affiliate relationships and online marketing in general.
